Appendix to Third report of the Commissioners : minutes of evidence, April to July, 1907.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Vivisection (1906)
Date:
1907
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Appendix to Third report of the Commissioners : minutes of evidence, April to July, 1907. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    29/272 (page 23)
    protuberance. This can easily be done by a few lateral movements of the instrument. ‘Once within the cranium, the instrument is passed obliquely downward and for- ward, so as to cross an imaginary line drawn between basilar process of the occipital bone. The point then penetrates the medulla oblongata between the roots of the auditory nerves and the pneumogastrics, and its projection serves to protect the nervous centre from more serious injury from the cutting edge. The in- strument is then carefully withdrawn and the opera- tion is completed. This experiment is almost pain- less, and it is not desirable to administer an anesthe- lic, as this in itself would disturb the glycogenic pro- cess. 7263. (Dr. Gaskell.) Would you mind mentioning v0 the Commission that Professor Flint is an American? —Professor Flint is an American, but this experiment is one that is frequently referred to in all textbooks on physiology, and I have here an English book describ- ing the same experiment—it is “ Recent Advances in Physiology and Bio-Chemistry,” edited by Leonard Hill (page 340)*—which likewise describes those experi- ments, also without mentioning any anesthetic. 7264. (Chairman.) What Professor Flint, I under- stand, said was that it was better to perform it with- out any anesthetic?—Professor Flint distinctly says that anesthetics must be avoided in experiments on the glycogenic function. 7265. Then it is very material to know that he was an American, because his book was written in America (and I suppose originally for Americans) where there is no vivisection law I understand in most of the States ; therefore it is a very different case from that of England ?—I wish to bring out, too, that an English book, “Recent Advances in Physiology and Bio- Chemistry,” edited by Leonard Hill, describes the same experiment, also without mentioning the use of aneesthetics. | 7266. But Professor Flint does mention the use of anesthetics. Does the English author use the same phrase about aneesthetics ?—No ; he says nothing about it at all. 7267. But that is a most material difference ?—I quite appreciate the difference, and I quite appreciate, too, why the English author says nothing about it. 7268. You think that by not mentioning the use of anesthetics in a country where the law is that anesthe- tics must be used, the author is implying that they ought not to be used?—I should think that as a scientist, as a physiologist, Dr. Hill knows quite well, what all physiologists know, that these particular ex- periments have to be performed without aneesthetics. I cannot form any opinion as to what he means by not saying anything about them. 7269. Are you citing this for the purpose of bring- advise the students in England ?—Yes. _ 7270. I want to know whether you are reading that passage to show us that they refrain from advocating the use of anesthetics, and therefore encourage illegal operations by such a passage as you have just read to us in an English author’s book ? 7271. (Sir Mackenzie Chalmers.) You know that that experiment would be illegal in England ?—Yes. I am not at present dealing at all with how the law is car- ried out or administered. 7272. (Chairman.) It is the interpretation of what the author means that we are dealing with; we have to interpret his meaning, and one wants a great deal more than that. Do you mean to suggest that he is inculcating the illegal] performance of operations in his book? 7275. (Sir William Collins.) Does Dr. Hill say that glycogenic experiments can be successfully performed in England without anesthetics ?—No, he does not say that, but he would know as a physiologist that it would be impossible from a purely physiological point of\ view. I now come to “Practical Physiology,” by Beddard, Edkins, Hill, etc. ; « 7274. (Sir Mackenzie Chalmers.) What Dr. Hill is that ?—The same Dr. Leonard Hill. On page 156 we read, “ The gastric secretion is obtained by making an 23 incision in the stomach, as in Figure 138, and then reflecting and suturing the mucous membrane of the stomach so as to make a separate secreting sac which is still in muscular and nervous continuity with the the opening in the abdominal wall. The vagus is ex- posed and divided.” I must say in fairness, that there is a note in Mr. Beddard’s book saying “ This experi- ment cannot be demonstrated.” That note, I should think, evidently refers to the English law; but these are the words: “Three days later the peripheral end of the vagus is excited in the unanesthetised animal, and the juice collected. Anesthesia or operative pro- cedures easily inhibit the gastric secretion.” 7275. (Chairman.) Is Dr. Leonard Hill an English- man or an American?—An Englishman. This is an English book, “ Practical Physiology.” This experi- ment is one typical of the methods of the Russian physiologist, Professor J. P. Pawlow, Director of the Physiological Department of the Institute for Experi- mental Medicine, St. Petersburg. 7276. (Colonel Lockwood.) But it does not refer to ex- periments done in England?—Yes, I am coming to that. Professor Pawlow has been much quoted lately by physiologists as a vivisector who is able to work under “perfect physiological conditions ”’—that is, no pain and no anesthesia. Professor Starling has described those conditions as “an ideal” which. has been attained by Pawlow; and in his admiration for these methods he used the following words in his evi- dence (Question 4119): “You get an animal and you alter its anatomy in some way or other so as to make some process accessible to simple observation, so that you can see what goes on without inter- fering in any way with the animal’s comfort or with the animal’s normal condition.” In the Harveian oration for 1902, Dr. Ferrier refers to these methods as “novel and luminous.” And there are many expressions of admiration for his methods in the literature of physiology. But a direct reference to Professor Pawlow’s lectures published in England under the title “The Work of the Digestive Glands,” shows that his methods are far from “ideal” or perfect from the physiological point of view, and that even those vivisectional methods speedily become patho- logical instead of physiological, and that disease and suffering are by no means absent. On page 183 Pro- fessor Pawlow says:—‘“I had by no means the inten- tion at first to set up conditions of disease ; I operated solely for physiological purposes, and kept my animals alive for months or years. How many and how pro- found pathological processes have under these circum- stances come into existence before my eyes! I have seen in connection with a disturbance of the functions of the liver an enormous ascites develop, at another time an ascending paralysis of the central nervous system, or, again, a general lacerability of the blood- vessels, and so on,” On page 171 he speaks of a dog which got an ulcer in the artificial gastric cul-de-sac, which gave rise to violent bleeding and produced. a secondary peritonitis. And in describing pancreatic fistule he tells us (on page 7) that only one in every four or five dogs will be found which tolerates the operation with- out any nursing, meaning thereby that it is a difficult operation, which takes'‘'a great deal of nursing, or the animal will die. I suppose that is what is referred to. T have brought this before the Commission, although it may seem irrelevant, because Professor Starling, in quoting Pawlow’s experiments, has at the same time brought forward a plea for more experiments in the future under Certificate B, that is, the certi- eate which allows the animal to recover from the anesthesia and’ to be kept alive, and under which several operations are at present performed legally on one and the same animal. But Pawlow shows clearly himself that he has not attained any ideal conditions by any means. He uses the very words here in con tradistinction to Professor Starling. Professor Paw- low himself says: “ Our solution of the problem ”—that is of these fistule—‘is evidently by no means an ideal one” (page 8), and he tells in this book which I have brought with me how these fistulke—pancreatic and other fistulee—frequently produce corrosion and various skin troubles, which must give a great deal of dis- comfort and pain to animals. He tells a story of one of the dogs in his laboratory, and I am relating this because thes? are the vivisectional methods of the M. acleod, M.B.—L. L.-af-H. Miss L, Lind-af- adageby.