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

  • William Williams Keen
Date:
[1901]
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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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    ministration of the poisonous substance was given for any beneficial purpose to tlie patients, for he took care to select patients that were probably incurable. On the contrary, Berkley's original paper expressly states that instead of being incurable, one (Case 1) was cured and another (No. 3) was improved. Besides this, though the pamphlet is dated 1899, it omits all reference to Dr. Berkley's letter to the British Medical Journal for October 30, 1897, in reply to your friend Dr. Berdoe, which shows that, as a result of the administration of the thyroid tablets to these eight patients—a well recognized remedy for insanity,- not one died from the effects of the drug but that, on the contrary, two of those alleged incurables were cured—25 per cent. In his admirable letter to Life—Dec. 6, 1900—Dr. Berkley says: The purpose for which the article was written was to show to the medical profession that a certain 7nedicament in common use was not free from objection, and should not be given in unsuitable cases. In proper ones the results are among the most resplendent attained by modern medicine, con- verting the drooling dwarf into an intelligent, well-grown man or woman; or in other instances, as in myxedematous insanity, affording the otherwise hopelessly insane with al- most a specific to recover their reason. [See the addendum at the end of this letter.] 2. The Cases of Lumbar Puncture by Dr. Wentworth, of Boston, (p. 5) : Lumbar puncture, I may remind you, is the simple insertion of a hypodermic needle between the vertebrae into the sheath of the spinal cord, but below the cord itself, to obtain a few drop of the cerebro-spinal fluid for diag- nosis. The pamphlet gives Avhat is called a brief abstract of five of the experiments related. The abstracts are indeed brief, so brief as to give a wholly erroneous impression as to the causes of the patients' death. The omissions are glaring instances of what the logicians call a suppressio veri equivalent to a sug- gestio falsi. Let me point this out in detail. Case 2. It is correctly quoted that the last puncture (where there were several punctures I only give the last date) was made Feb. 16, on the day of patient's death. The pamphlet fails to add, however, the important fact stated by Dr. '^Vent- worth that the postmortem showed an emi3ycma [abscess in 2. I quote the following from the eighth edition of Hare's Therapeutics, as to the use of thyroid extract: In the dose of from 5 to 20 grains (0.35-1.3) three times a day [i. e. 15 to 60 grains a day] according to the degree to which it produces its ef- fects, it has proved of value in acute mania and melancholia, puer- peral and climacteric insanities, and in stuporous states with pri- mary dementia. Berkley's maximum dose was 15 grains a day.
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