Vivisection : is it necessary or justifiable? : being two prize essays published by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

Date:: 1866

Credit: Vivisection : is it necessary or justifiable? : being two prize essays published by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 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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$suddenly brought amoug them when all was tumult and rebellion. The teachings of pathological anatomy are most instructive, and when, during life, the diseases which afflict vital organisms are closely observed, and the varying changes and compli- cations are duly noted, no experimentation can equal the results to be obtained b}'' an examination of the morbid ap- pearances after death. To mark the traces left by disease, the changes which it has produced, the peculiar functional dis- turbance which accompanied these changes—all this furnishes most valuable instruction and gives results which the vivisector cannot emulate, but which he very needlessly tries to repeat. How often does disease present itself to us. bearing, as it were, the form of an experiment by nature ! How much can the habit of observation teach, without the wilful infliction of pain on those men or animals which, by disease, come into our hands to be relieved! Hippocrates observed the ]5eculiar crossed function of the brain when the skull was injured, and this organ involved. He remarked that, on the injured ,'^ide, convulsions of the corresponding part of the body take place, and paralysis of the opposite side. Hydatids in the brains of sheep also testify, by the symptoms they produce, to this opposite action. These were noticed long before vivisection attempted to repeat their effects. How frequently do we find injuries of the spinal cord teach us all that experiments can! Have we not loss of sensation when the posterior portions are damaged, loss of motion when the anterior aspect has sustained injury, and hemiplegia when the lateral tracts are the seat of disease ? What more than a fracture or dislocation of the upper cervical vertebra can prove the functions of this part of the spinal cord ? In all the experiments to prove the cause of the heart’s sounds, have we anything more conclusive of the production of the second sound than the permanent patency of the aortic valves, which is a consequence of disease. T)o not the muscular fibres of the heart, by their length and disposition, betray their com- bined action in the conti'action and dilatation of the organ? Goodwyn thought oxygen in the arterial blood was the cause of the regular succession of the heart’s action, and its absence as a cause of asphyxia. Brown-Sequard opposed this view, and affirmed that carbonic acid is the special .stimulant to its movements. They both forgot that the heart will act in vacuum, sometimes even for days after its removal from every$