Does science need secrecy? : A reply to Prof. Porter and others of Harvard medical school / By Albert Leffingwell... With statement concerning vivisection by Prof. W.T. Porter, reprinted from the "Boston transcript."
- Albert Leffingwell
- Date:
- 1896
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Does science need secrecy? : A reply to Prof. Porter and others of Harvard medical school / By Albert Leffingwell... With statement concerning vivisection by Prof. W.T. Porter, reprinted from the "Boston transcript.". Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.
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![adult oats vary less than dogs in size, and are much more vigorous and tenacious of life tiian labbits or other animals usually employed in physiological laboratories. The latter poiiit Is One of considerable importance in experiments ex- tending ocer severed hours. Tiie animals were ntrarized and kept alive by artificial respiration, while the pheripheric end of the divided sciatic nerve was stimulated by induction shocks, varying in intensity and frequency. . . . The experiments were so prolonged that it seemed important to give to the air thrown through the trachial canula into the lungs a temperature as neai* as possible to air re>>pired through the natural channel. ... The cat to be experi- mented upon was first etherized by being placed in a bell- glass with a sponge saturated with ether, and then secured, the head being held in an ordinary Czermak's rabbit- holder. The sciatic nerve was then divided. In some cases the cat was allowed to recover from the effect of the ether, and the experiment postponed some days; in others, a half- per-cent solution of curare was put into the circulation while the animal was still etherized. (The effect of the curare would be to render the animal motionless, after recovery from the ether; it has no other use.) In all, there were 909 obsel•^•ations made upon about seventy cats.* In one ex- periment a tetanic stimulation was applied for fifteen min- utes to the sciatic nerve. The result was a constriction steadily maintained during continuance of the irritation. If there were an^' results for ''benefit of humanity in these investigations, they are not recorded. These experiments were made at Harvard ]Medical .School; and I submit that they were by no means painless. 7. Dr. Bowditch's Experiments on Nerves. These were made u^wn cats in the laboratory of Harvard Medical School. The animals were kept under tlie * In the Boston Transcript of Feb. 10, 1896, the Dean of Harvard Medical School was reported as denying that cats were used for vivisection, and as affirming that although connected with the School since his graduation he had never seen or heard of a cat being in the building. It is indeed strange that the fame of Dr. Bowditch's researches upon these seventy cats did not even reach his associate in the same building!](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2121511x_0020.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
