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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    lU the chest] which had burst into the lung, pneumonia, and in- flammation of the brain with pus as the cause of death. Case 3. The pamphlet correctly says puncture Jan. 17, 1896: patient died Jan. 22. What Dr. Wentworth adds is omitted, namely: No symptoms attended or followed the operation. ^loreoA^er, the post-mortem showed that the pa- tient died from the widespread changes common to infantile wasting. Case 5. The pamphlet says: Puncture Feb. 3, 1S9G; patient died Feb. 4.'' It omits to state what immediately afterward follows, that the post-mortem showed primary tuberculosis of the intestines. Double pneumonia, as the causes of death. Case 6. The pamphlet quotes Puncture Feb. 1; patient died in convulsions three weeks later. It neglects to state what Dr. Wentworth particularly mentions, no reaction on the part of the patient attended the operation. and it also fails to state that the child was seen only once and that the diagnosis then made was tubercular meningitis, which was clearly the cause of the child's death, three weeks later. Case 7. The pamphlet quotes Punctured Feb. 27; patient died Feb. 28. It omits the fact that the post-mortem showed that the child died from defective development of the brain and other causes: and that the history showed that the child, who was 7 months of age, had frequent convulsions, which be- gan when he was about 3 months old. While in the hospital the convulsions occurred not less than twenty times a day. Oftentimes he had several in an hour. The inference from the pamphlet's brief abstracts of these cases is clearly, and it seems to me by these omissions was meant to be, that the deaths were due to the lumbar punctures, whereas the evidence is that the deaths were due to other causes and in two instances the operation is expressly stated not t-o have done any harm. Are not these abstracts garbled and inaccurate? 3. On page 7 the pamphlet refers to some experiments on the inoculation of lepers with syphilis, made in Hawaii, but pub- lished in the N. T. Medical Record of Sept. 10, 1892. It is stated that the patients were already suffering from'' one incurable disease and the object of the experiment was to ascer- tain whether with another, and even worse disorder, they might not be infected. This statement is incorrect. Most wi-iters recognize only three stages of syphilis, primary, sec- ondary and tertiary. The writer of the article in question believed that leprosy was a fourth and final stage of syphilis and not an independent disease. It is a well recognized fact by all scientific wi-iters that a patient suffering from syphilis in anv stage is immune to an inoculation of the virus: that
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