Report of the Royal Commission on the practice of subjecting live animals to experiments for scientific purposes : with minutes of evidence and appendix.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Vivisection
Date:
1876
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Royal Commission on the practice of subjecting live animals to experiments for scientific purposes : with minutes of evidence and appendix. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    covered with varnish has been the subject of much dis- cussion. It has been ascribed to asphyxia, reduction of temperature, retention of perspiration, &c. Dr. Feinberg has repeated the experiments, and he considers that the symptoms are due to a general dilatation of the entire Dr. Proegler experimented on rabbits by suppressing the function of the skin by painting them partly over either with oil, gum, varnish, &c., or producing inflamma- tion of the skin by croton oil and turpentine. He experi- mented on thirteen rabbits. Two of them died after forty hours, four in the first twenty-four hours.—Mr. Pardon, The Lancet, No. 2,713, contains an article approving experiments made by Dr. Sokoloff on rabbits and dogs by painting their skins, after these had been denuded of hair, with substances to prevent transudation of moisture. Various varnishes were employed, but it was found that the most satisfactory application was a thick oil. A com- that the effect on the internal temperature varied accord- ing to the area of the skin on which the application was made. If the application was a very partial one, during the first days there was either a slight elevation of tem- perature (in the dog) or a slight fall (in the rabbit) but the deviation from the normal was never considerable. Sub- sequently, there was a slight rise, followed by a fall, and simultaneously a series of symptoms indicated the com- mencement of serious organic mischief, general weakness, loss of appetite, evidence of weakened heart, dyspnaea, &c., and these symptoms continued till death.—Lancet, He has thus removed from rats and dogs, after opening the abdomen, a part of the liver by means of a galvano- caustic knife. By proceeding slowly there was no bleeding, ' and the animals completely recovered. The autopsy of these animals was made three weeks after ■ the operation. We found in a rat from which a notable part of the liver had been removed, and which had not presented any symptom of jaundice, the liver quite healthy and in the part cut numerous and strong adhesions to the stomach and a part of the intestines. We also removed a portion of the kidney from two dogs. In one we cut the kidney through almost its entire length, opening up the pelves. It was impossible quite to obliterate these, and as the urine dropped into the peritoneum the animal died in forty-eight hours. In the other dog we made a very deep cut in the cortical part, without opening the pelvis.' This dog lived ten days without presenting symptoms of gravity, on the tenth day it fell sick and died rapidly. With other ideas, but always in order to show the innocuity of galvano-cautery, we jnerced right through the thorax of a guinea pig with a large needle, and at once cauterised this wound in the lung by means of a platinum thread made red hot i)y the galvanic current.—Dr. Onimus’ When rabbits are starved, glycogen disappears Irom the liver. In such rabbits puncture of the fourth ventricle does not produce diabetes. After a few injections of cane sugar into the stomach of starved rabbits, glycogen re- appears in the liver. Injections of water, albumen, or fat, have not this effect. If the fourth ventricle be punctured before the injection, no glycogen appears in the liver, and no sugar is found in the urine. Poisoning by woorara produces diabetes in starved rabbits, although puncture of the fourth ventricle does not. After poisoning by woorara, injections of sugar into the stomach do not produce glycogen in the liver, but sugar is abundantly found in the urine.—Dr. T. L-. Brunton, British Medical Journal, No. 686, p. 222. Dr. Pavy, in his lectures on diabetes, mentioned that, when he divided the superior cervical ganglion of the sympathetic, he could, at will, produce diabetes in the lower animals, but that he found it impossible to keep the subjects of the operation under obser- vation for any length of time, because they aU died in a few days with pleurisy and pneumonia. The same lesion whicb produced the diabetes, caused also the Medical Journal, No. 691, p. 428. Dr. Hughes Bennett (of Edinburgh) contributed some “New Investigations to determine the amount of the Bile secreted by the Liver, and how far this is influenced by Mecurials.” He stated that although much had been of mercurials upon it, very little exact information existed on the subject. Last winter a committee was formed in Edinburgh to re-investigate the amount of bile secreted in health, and after the administration of mercurials. This committee was composed of Professors Christison and Maclagan, Drs. Rogers, Rutherford, Gamgee, Frazer, and stirdying all that had been previously published by authors, the committee made further experiments on dogs, animals best suited for the purpose. The results of four series of these experiments were given as to the amount of bile secreted, with and without mercury. In each case the weight of the animal was taken, a biliary fistula formed, the amount of food taken and analysed, and the secretion of bile for twenty-four hours measured. — The Lancet, Of these, the mercury rejiort of Dr. Hughes Bennett, which had also been brought forward at Oxford, and was now again submitted to medical criticism, was perhaps the most interesting. . . And we are informed that there was an indisputably superior weight of opinion in favour of .the conclusions expressed in the report, namely, that in dogs mercury is entirely incapable of increasing the secretion of l)ile, and that the analogy is sufficiently good to allow of our con- cluding the same of its operation in man. Now, in com- menting on this conclusion, and the various arguments which have been urged against it at Norwich and elsewhere, we must in the first place express our entire conviction that the experiments themselves were performed with an amount of care and labour which renders them perfectly reliable, and for which Drs. A. Gamgee and Fraser deserve the warm thanks of the profession. It seems to us esta- blished beyond a doubt that mercury never increases, and that in large doses it seriously diminishes, the flow of bile in healthy dogs. And in spite of the objections which have been made about the infeasibility of arguments drawn from experiments on dogs (objections which are chiefly put forward by persons who are not familiar with experimenta- tion on animals, as Dr. Gamgee rightly observed), we con- sider that the inference of a similar ineffectiveness of mercury as a cholagogue to healthy human beings is quite legitimate.—Lanc^, No. 2,348, p. 285. Professor Bennett read a “ Report on the action of Mer- cury on the secretion of bile,” in which he reiterated the statements made at the meeting of the British Medical As- sociation at Oxford, viz., that in whatever doses mercury may be administered it fails to influence the secretion of the bile; in fact it diminishes it. An animated discussion followed, in which Dr. Crisp called in question the accuracy of the Committee’s faets, because the dog was not at all like man in the general formation of his alimentary canal. In their wild st^e dogs are carnivorous, in domestication that the pig would be a better animal for. experiment than the dog. He thought we were hound to analyse with great care the nature of these experiments, and should not hurriedly abandon our long entertained views regarding mercury.--LuMceL No. 2,348, p. 292. Professor Gross, of Philadelphia, said that whilst acknow- ledging the accuracy of the facts, he was yet not disposed to ignore the action of mercury. An experiment on a dog was one thing, but a careful observation on the human frame performed at the bedside was another and wholly different one.—Lancet, No. 2,348 p. 292. [See also p. 38.] I have found that, in cats, the glyeogen disappears from the liver within a few days after the bile-ducts have been tied; and also that, on the fifth or sixth day after ligature of these ducts, irritation of the fourth ventricle is not followed by the appearance of sugar in the urine. It would appear, therefore, that within a few days after com- plete obstruction to the gall-ducts, the liver ceases to seerete glycogen.—Dr. Wickham Legg, British Medical Journal, No. 698, p. 646.