The influence of vivisection on human surgery / by Sampson Gamgee.

  • Sampson Gamgee
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of vivisection on human surgery / by Sampson Gamgee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Some persons fear that scientific experiments on living animals may brutalize, by hardening the experimenter. They would think otherwise, if they knew more of physiology and psychology. As the power for hate, jealousy, and lust, increases with exercise, so by the Divine Providence do the' best and noblest aspirations of our nature. None more so than does the power of sympathy with those who suffer. Natural endowments, sense of duty, severity of discipline may enable a strong man to seem unmoved amidst scenes of the direst woe. But if interrogated, he will often answer in the heroic anguish of Dante’s Ugolino, “ Io non piangeva ; si dentro impietrai.” Yet, the surgeons who are trusted with such responsible, nay holy, work, and their brother physiologists who are gentlemen at least as able, as cultured, and as kindly as themselves, are not to be trusted with the vivisection of a rat or a toad, for the purpose of discovering something to prevent the vivisection of a man or woman, or to ensure its success when it has become inevitable. If to-morrow I saw a case the parallel of Czerny’s, and resolved to excise a man’s pylorus, the poor creature, threat¬ ened with otherwise certain death, might grasp at the remotest chance of life. If I operated, and he died in a few hours, death would be looked upon as a natural result after the great risk incurred, and no one would say anything, assuming of course that I had used all reasonable care and diligence. But if before operating on that man, I resolved to gain experience on Czerny’s “ Zwei reihige Naht ” (double row suture), and put a brute animal to sleep, to try it on his pylorus for perfection and safety in operating on the man, I should be liable to be brought up at a Police Court under a charge of cruelty to animals.
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