Vivisection and the diseases of animals.

  • Fleming, George, 1833-1901.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vivisection and the diseases of animals. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    purpose a worthless horse, or, better still, an ass, is inoculated, and a tew days suffice to decide whether glanders is present. If the result of the inoculation is affirmative, the experimental animal manifests symptoms, generally at the seat of inoculation, which cause it little if any discomfort, and it is at once destroyed, as is also the suspected horse. By this precautionary procedure, many horses, possibly those of an entire regiment or army corps, may be saved from peril and human lives preserved from a loathsome and fatal disease. In elucidating the processes of disease, in framing preventive measures, in investigating the spread of contagious disorders as well as in perfecting modes of cure, and the most humane method* of surgical operation, experiments on hiving creatures are absolutely necessary, for their own interests no less than for those of mankind Veterinary medicine and surgery are based on humanity no less than on utility, and their aim is to remove or alleviate pain among the animals placed under the dominion of man. By experiments in pathology, disease and mortabty have been vastly diminished, and continued experiments in the same direction will cause further diminution. If mankind benefits, so do animals. A discovery which will avert disease in one will probably do so in the others: even- advance of knowledge is a boon to aU. To prohibit resort to ex- perimental pathology would be at once to doom creatures which we are bound to protect, to the endurance through all time of terrible suffering from diseases that might otherwise be vanquished. Abhorring cruelty in every shape, and desirous of abolishing it by every possible means, I must nevertheless deprecate the attempt to place a barrier across the path pursued in pathological investigations on animals. • George Fleming.