Misstatements of antivivisectionists : correspondence with American humane association / [by] W.W. Keen.

  • William Williams Keen
Date:
[1901]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Misstatements of antivivisectionists : correspondence with American humane association / [by] W.W. Keen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    Few of these fourteen newspaper references can be consulted in this country; five of them (Nos. 6, 7, 8, 11, and 14) are impossible of consultation for want of any date whatever. In no case would I be willing to admit a newspaper para- graph, a non-professional and usually unsigned statement—even if correctly quoted-—as a sufficient authority for a grave charge against an individual or the profession. Look for a moment what stuff Senator Gallinger stated at the Hearing he had himself caused to be printed. It is published on page 31 of the Hearing and on page 3 of the pamphlet. It consists of cable dispatches printed in some newspaper—Senator Gallinger did not even rememher its name. The author of the dispatch from London is utterly unknown. The dispatch states that the Vienna correspondent of the [London] Morning Leader says' so and so. Who and how reliable is the Vienna correspondent? He says that the physicians in the free hospitals of Vienna do so and so. Who are the physicians? In what hospitals were these deeds of darkness done? And upon such evidence it is seriously proposed to indict the medical profession! Whether these dispatches are garbled and inaccurate in their alleged facts who can find out? If a lawyer tried to convict a man of petty larceny on such testimony, he would be laughed out of court. An yet a senator of the United States and the American Humane Association actually adduce such statements as evidences of the gravest charges and spread them broadcast! I now add six other vague and indefinite references not to newspapers. 15. On page 13 there is a quotation from Tertullian. The reference in the foot-note is 'Tertullian^ De Anima, Vol. ii. pp. 430, 433, Tran., by Holmes. I have compared the quota- tion with Clark's Edinburgh edition of the Translation of Tertullian by Holmes, the date of the edition being 1870. No such quotation exists on pages 430-433. Possibly it may be that the quotation is from another edition. No edition is named in the pamphlet; another instance of a vague and indefinite reference. 16. On page 17 a formal accusation is quoted as made by a Dr. Eugen Leidig against certain surgeons. No reference lohatever to any book or journal is given by which the accuracy of the quotation can be tested. Is not this again vague and indefinite? 17. On page 24 is a reference to a paper by Professor E. Finger, of Vienna {Allg. Weiner Med. Zeitung, Nos. 50 and 51. No year is given, a somewhat essential part of the refer- ence, as there are over forty volumes of this journal, each with
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