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
Catalogue details

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.

    68/94 (page 58)
    vivis?;cx]ON r»8 Bransby Cooper, the editor of the Life of Sir Astley Cooper, and the gentleman who thought it a remarkable reason that his talented uncle should abstain from a series of experiments, because they were too cruel for his accustomed hand, says in that work* that the most eminent men of the medical profession have practised vivisection, and that it seems almost essential to the acquirement of the higher orders of surgical and phy- siological knowledge. “ By this means only are theories proven erroneous or correct, new facts brought to light, im- portant discoveries made in physiology and sounder doctrines, and more scientific modes of treatment arrived at. Nor is this all ; for the surgeon’s hand becomes tutored to act with steadiness, while he is under the influence of the natural abhoi'ence of giving pain to the subject of experiment, and he himself is thus schooled for the severer ordeal of operating on the human frame. I may mention another peculiar advantage in proof of the necessity of such apparent cruelty, that no prac- tising on the dead body can accustom the hand of the surgeon to the physical phenomena presented to his notice in operations on the living. The details of the various differences which exist under the two circumstances need hardly be explained, as there are few minds to which they will not readily present themselves.'” Now, it is exactly the absence of these details which might militate against their arguments, that renders the motives of vivisectors so suspicious. With regard to the practice of living dissections seeming almost essential to surgical and physiological knowledge, I have in the preceding pages given a few of the opinions of men of much greater weight and experience in this line than Bransby Cooper as to their value in physiology, which is shown to be extremely doubt- ful. There is, I am certain, no eminent surgeon of the pre.sent day who would not stand aghast at, or treat as a joke, the as- sertion, that it was only by operating upon the inferior animals that real surgical skill could be obtained ; and that the man who was most expert at amputating the limbs of men, had gained his proficiency by removing those of dogs and cats ; or the professor who was celebrated for such plastic operations as forming a new nose from the texture of the forehead, had spent years in learning this on pigs, dogs, or ducklings. The thing is too ridiculous ; and, besides, we have distinct proof that surgeons entirely and indignantly repudiate such a source • Vol. L, p. 144.