We understand that an important post is vacant in St.
Bartho- lomew's Hospital,--the Demonstratorship of Morbid Anatomy,— which is very generally regarded as the stepping-stone to an assistant-physicianship, and then to a physicianship in the hos- pital, and that Dr. Wickham Legg, the author of the paper in the last number of the annals of St. Bartholomew's (published by Messrs. Longman) on certain surgical experiments made on cats, for the purpose of inducing what seems to be a kind of arti- ficial jaundice, is a candidate for the office. We doubt whether the managers of St. Bartholomew's will wish to select for so important a post in their institution a gentleman who has dis- tinguished himself so unfortunately by a series of experi- ments, all of which,—though in the first instance made on crea- tures under the influence of chloroform—(which, as the operator remarked, was essential to the surgical success of the experi- ments),—involved a protracted and miserable death. Some of the unfortunate cats experimented on by Dr. Legg lived for several weeks after the injury had been inflicted on them, and in one case at least, the poor creature was a whole week in dying, after all the worst symptoms of weakness and helplessness accompanying a mortal disease had been observed. Moreover, so far as a layman can understand a professional discussion, we do not gather from Dr. Wickham Legg's own observations on his results, that he obtained from the pathological grindstone to which he subjected his victims any scientific grist at all worthy of the cost of animal suffer- ing inflicted. St. Bartholomew's would not gain, we think, in public confidence, by emphatically marking with its favour the practice of vivisection.
Previous page
