What animal experimentation or so-called vivisection has done for humanity / by J.P. Warbasse.
- James Peter Warbasse
- Date:
- 1911
Licence: In copyright
Credit: What animal experimentation or so-called vivisection has done for humanity / by J.P. Warbasse. 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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![Tlie most important knowledge concerning the disease was developed by Pasteur. He conclusively proved its infective character, and by great pains succeeded in making a serum which has the power to prevent the development of the disease in an inoculated man or animal. This discovery is saving thousands of lives. Every large city now has a Pasteur Institute where the preventive treatment is carried out. One of our best institutions is the Pasteur Institute in Baltimore, where, of the first one thousand per.sons treated, six hundred and thirty-two had been bitten by animals which were proved to be rabid by (i) the development of rabies in rabbits inoculated from them, or by (2) the development of rabies in other animals or human beings bitten by them. But two of the patients who completed the im- munizing treatment died—a mortality of .2 of i per cent. The mortality among persons bitten by rabid animals has been reduced from ten or twenty per cent, to a fraction of one per cent, by means of the treatment worked out by Pasteur’s experiments on animals. Experiments have shown that no dog with rahies lives longer than ninety days. The disease could be stamped out entirely it every dog could be muzzled for that length of time, .\ustralia has no mad dogs because of the ap])lication of this knowledge. Denmark. Sweeien and Norway have entirely eradicated the disease. Jt was Professor Felix von Xiemeyer who said that, no one who exiKMids sympathy on the poor dog and petitions against his being tied up or wearing a muzzle, is so inhumane but that he would be cured of his consideration for the poor dog if he could sec but one human being with hydrophobia. In England the number of deaths from rabies among dogs and human heings has fluctuated with the enforcement of dog muzzling laws. When dogs were muzzled, rabies diminished: when the authorities listened to the petitions of the so-called “lovers of dogs , and relaxed the muzzling laws, rabies increased. The disease has spread extensively in the United States. In the registration area in 1908, representing less than half of the country, one hundred and eleven deaths in man due to rabies were reported. I his is undoubtedly much less than the real number because of the cases in children which are apt to be overlooked. \\ c might go on with the enumeration of arterio-sclerosis, snake-bite, hook-worm disease, filarial disease, and most other human ills, and we should find that experiments on animals have contributed greatly to man’s knowledge. Humanity is looking anxiously to this method of research to .solve the problem of cancer. In New York State seven thousand people die annually of this disease, and it is believed to be increasing. In England one out of every ten women over thirty-five years of age dies of cancer. Study of the disease made slow progress until it was found that it could be transplanted](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22460676_0012.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
