Dr. Walter Robert Hadwen's works.

  • Walter Hadwen
Date:
1896-1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Dr. Walter Robert Hadwen's works. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    to originate. (3) It must reproduce the specific disease of which it is supposed to be the author when inoculated into the body of a lower animal. Allow me to illustrate this in the case of Klebs Loftier bacillus of diphtheria. (1) The discoverer of the germ has himself acknowledged that he found it absent in 25 per cent, of the cases which he had diag- nosed as diphtheria. (2) It is well known, and has recently been reaffirmed before the British Association, that it is frequently found in perfectly healthy throats. (3) When communicated to guinea-pigs and other animals the disease produced bears no resemblance to the diphtheria of the human species. Every postulate upon which Sir Victor Horsley relies is falsified. The trouble between English and German bacteriologists concerning the microbic origin of bovine and human tuberculosis saves me from dealing with that matter. Moreover, there is a grave fallacy in all such experi- ments, inasmuch as you cannot transfer the micro- organism apart from the medium in which it exists, and there is every reason to believe that these micro- organisms are the results of disease and not t eir cause. I would remind Sir Victor Horsley that I am not the secretary of the society for the total abolition of experiments on animals (N.B., man excluded). But I am, as I accurately signed myself, Hon. Secre- tary of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisec- tion. Most decidedly man would be included were any known deliberate attempt made at the exploita- tion of human beings in a similar manner to that of our helpless and speechless fellow-creatures.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant, WALTER R. HADWEN, M.D. 32, Charing-cross, September 15, 1908. [N.B.—The last paragraph was not inserted in some editions of The Daily Mail.]
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