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
Licence: Public Domain Mark
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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![VIVIfSKCnON r>[ apparent vital influence. We a].>o recognized the rhythm of its beats by those accidents or iiialformations which exposed it many years before it was fashionable to mutilate living animals for this purpose. Destruction of the epiglottis by disease might have convinced vivisectors that this cartilage was not absolutely indispensible to swallowing. The obli- teration of large bloodvessels during the progress of a malady have long ago conclusively shown that the value of anastor- mosing branches in carrying out the circulation of the blood is of the very highest. What more did Hunter’s and Cooper’s experiments prove? The insensibility of the sub- .stance of the brain, of the bones, tendons, and cartilages, were well known in the course of accidents and amputation.s, long before Haller and his school began their experiments to demonstrate these. What better facts have we regarding vital operations than many of those which are elicited by the humane practice of surgery ? No experiments on the lower animals are half so conclusive or so useful to mankind.* • Dr. Wilson in his own beautiful way, while opposing the general practice of vivisection, points out in simple language the merits of pathological obser- vation. Ho writes : — “ Further it is not only in the pages of death, but also in those of disease, that the history of life is written. Disease is the per- version, rather than the reversion of health. The sick body is not deserted by its natural or normal forces, and possessed by unnatural morbid ones ; but the forces are working wrongly, some too feebly, others too powerfully, so that the nicely balanced equilibrium of opposing agencies in which health consists, is overturned. The sick man’s frame is like a clock keeping false time, not because any new forces have usurped the place of cohesion, gravity, elasticity, or inertia, and held back or pushed on the hands of the dial; but’[because the altered length of the pendulum, or the diminished elasticity of the spring, or the increased friction of the pinions, has changed that relation between the weight, inertia, and momentum of the component parts of the machine, which is essential to its being a true chronometer. And exactly, as the movements of certain portions of an engine can be best seen when it is moving slowly, and the movements of certain others when it is moving swiftly, so the characteristic actions of living organs are often most surely ascertained by watching them when morbidly slow, or rapid in the Action. The pantings and convulsive struggles of a suflerer from Asthma, show most vividly the power of the muscles by which we breathe. The throbbing pulse of high fever, exaggerates in a striking way the natural action of the bloodvessels. The sickening palpitations of the invalid from heart-disease best demonstrate the use of the valves which in him are deranged. The cold and powerless limbs of the paralytic teach the true use of the nerves, which are the seat of his malady, hi or is there any disease which does not carry with it a le.sson as to the nature of the function which it disturbs. Again, it is bv its own living actions that the diseased body cures itself, if it is cured at all. The assuaging of a fever, the disappearance of a dropsy, the closing of a wound, and every other healing act, though it be but the departure of a headache, or the stopping of a leech-bite, is the putting forth of a living power most instructive for the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22342060_0066.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
