Evidence of Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton before the Royal Commission on vivisection, Wednesday, July 24th, 1907.

  • Moulton, J. Fletcher (John Fletcher), 1844-1921.
Date:
[1913?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Evidence of Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton before the Royal Commission on vivisection, Wednesday, July 24th, 1907. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    monia, and other diseases, and to the serum treatment of diphtheria, you will find that they all came from the knowledge that the cause of the disease was a foreign organism, capable of multiplication, and that Nature defeated it hy a change in the organism which made it more capable of resisting. These practical applications Avere the direct outcome of those two facts, which were pure pieces of scientific knowledge. So long as the disease was considered merely as a disease which ran its course, which was due to an unknown cause, whose consequences were only known by its symptoms, no one of those things could possibly be discovered. Their discovery was solely due to the experimental examination of natural processes. I was much amused by some evidence given by one of the lady witnesses who have given evidence before you. She seemed to be very much disgusted with the conse- quences of all this knowledge, and, if I might para- phrase what she said, it was : “ Nature has made such nice drugs and put them in the plants all around us. Why should we not use these, and not go to such messy things as serum ? ” Those are not her Avords, but they express the effect of them. Nature has put all kinds of useful drugs in plants, but she never dreams of using them for curative purposes. Her method of curing is entirely by means of the messy.things with which the researches of the last 40 years have led us to work. We are now, thaiiks to the theoretical know- ledge that we have acquired of the cause of these diseases, working to help Nature along the very lines which she has from the foundation of the world herself taken in fighting these diseases; and therefore, in my opinion, if we are to be guided in our action by our respect for what Nature has so kindly done for us, our course would be to pay very little attention to drugs.