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.

    403/450 (page 373)
    gave no re-action with Trommer’s test. At 2.15 urine pressed out of bladder, likewise gave no re-action with Trommer’s test. July 4th.—Cat still alive; urine gave no re-action with Trommer’s or Moore’s test. July 7th. The cat died in the night, between July 5th and bth. Examined to-day at 2 o’clock. Much more peritonitis than in any other of the experiments. In all these cases it may be remarked that the jaundice of conjunctivBe was very close to declare itself. 1ft none was it noticed until the tenth day after the operation; in one it did not show itself until the fourteenth. The cats were daily examined for this appearance. On the other hand, Frerichs asserts that a yellowish colour of the con- junctivte could be noticed in sixty or seventy hours after the operation. Tiedemann, Ciamelin, Leyden, and Golowin also found their dogs jaundiced on the second or third day. In Heinrich Mayer’s experiments the jaundice seems to have come on later, about the same time as in my own ; and it may be further noticed that he used cats, not dogs, upon which circumstances the difference between observers perhaps depends. In an old experiment by Jaunders the hepatic ducts of a dog were tied. Two hours after the dog was killed. The absorbents were found distended with a fluid of a bilious colour, and white paper dipped into the serum of blood taken from the hepatic vein gave a deeper tinge than from the jugular. I have repeated this experiment in the dog without success. Although the appetite in these animals remained good in most cases, yet they wasted; in one case the weight fell from 7ilbs.to 4| lbs. in-nineteen days. The cats appeared to become weaker daily without any marked symptoms of disease. The cause of death in these creatures is obscure. Blondlot and many others attribute it to peritonitis. Blondlot gives a distinct cause. He says that the ligature eats through the bile duct; the bile is thus poured into the peritoneum. Leyden seems to think that it is the addition of the jaundice to the peritonitis which kills the animals. I should be far more inclined t.o think the cause of death to the changes which take place in the liver. The liver in these cases, as tested by iodine, contained little or no glycogen. Of all the functions of the liver known to us the most important is the preparation of glycogen, and this seems to pass into complete abeyance soon after ligature of the bile ducts. Glycogen is one of the most important elements of nutrition; and it is not surprising that the animals should have wasted so rapidly when the system was deprived of it. And it is to this defect in nutrition, even while the^animal was taking nourishment freely, that 1 am inclined to attri- bute the fatal end. In [human] disease the state which most closely imitates ligature of the bile ducts is congenital obstruction of the bile ducts outside the liver. Of these cases, of which there are but few on record, there were found, in one of the more carefully examined cases, appearances which the writer calls hepatitis interstitialis ; in other words, an overgrowth of the capsule of glisson. Here the same chain of events seem to take place. The change of the bile ducts into a fibrous ,cord influences all the connective tissue in the portal canals, and an overgrowth takes place. The nature of these changes, whether of a so-called inflammatory origin or otherwise, it is unnecessary and would be unprofitable here to discuss.—Dr. Legg, St. Bartholomew's Hospital Reports, Vol. IX., pp. 161-81. normal. In a second series of experiments the autho.*’ sought to give pigeons a peculiar position of the head, without wounding important parts, a position such as occurs in section of the canals, with the beak directed upwards and the occiput towards the ground. On fi.xing the head to the breast in this position with a thread, the animals conducted themselves partly like those in which the horizontal as well as the vertical semicircular canals were destroyed. On section of one horizontal canal the animal made several lateral movements of the head, beginning from the injured side, which soon ceased. In section of the corre- sponding canal on the opposite side pendulum movements of the head occurred, and persisted very long. The violence of the movements increased from the beginning onwards until they reached a maximum, when the animal lost its equilibrium, fell over, executed movements de manege, &c. In a few cases the animals recovered completely, but generally after four or five days the anirnal was found in a corner with the peculiar position of the head above described and quite quiet, but when disturbed it resumed the pendulum movements, &c.; most of the animals died in from ten to twenty days. • • • • • On section of all four canals, violent movement of the head, resembling a screw motion, occurred immediately, accompanied by general swinging movement of the whole body.— Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, 1873, p. 400. L. Perl, in- his first series of experiments (on dogs), performed seldom and large bleedings (every five or seven days, three to three and a half per cent, of the body weight at each time), in a second series more frequent and smaller bleedings (every three or four-days, one to one and a half per cent.) were practised. The animals endured the operative proceedings well. The wounds healed well without fever, and only in one case did embolus of the lungs occur. Whilst the animals of the second series, on which ten as the minimum and seventeen as the maximum of bleedings ■were practised, remained quite cheerful and well, and when killed, from the thirty-sixth to the thirty-seventh day, showed no signs of change in the muscles of the heart, the seven dogs of -the first series, on the contrary, on which five to seven bleedings were practised, became lean, lost appetite, became kad, had partial oedema of the e.xtremities, and died (6) with “the phenomena of marasmus, within eleven weeks. With a single exception, all the animals dying after four weeks showed a very flabby heart, with a yellowish colour, and under the microscope the muscular fibres were found to have undergone extensive fatty degenera- tion.—Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, 1873, p. 407. He ligatured the bile duct of a dog. The animal lived nineteen days, and though it continued to have a voracious appetite it emaciated visibly. The colouring matter of the bile was found four hours after the operation in large quantity in the urine, and on the second day the faeces were quite discoloured.—Journal of Anatomy and Physi- ology, 1873, p. 420. J.W. Legg(St. Bartholomew’s Hospital) operated upon cats. The animals survived the operation for varying times up to twenty days, and peritonitis when present remained local. The cats became emaciated and died without convulsive phenomena, and only became comatose shortly before death.- AVith regard to the cause of death the author lays stress upon the decided diminution or libsence of glycogen of the liver (tested with iodine solution).—Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, 1873, ji. 420. Goltz ascribes the disturbance of movement produced by L. Seelig experimented on rabbits which had (p. 422) section of those organs, to the loss of the feeling of been allowed to hunger; diabetes was produced by Eck- equilibrium ...... hard’s method. The author then convinced himself th&t The first point investigated by Solucha was, how far is in the starving animals, after the diabetic sugar had an abnormal position of the head able to disturb the disappeared from the urine, or occurred only in traces, feeling of equilihrium of the animal, and so to produce the corresponding to the results of Dock (the hunger period abnormal movements ? The author confirms the experiment lasted three to five days, the collected urine was evacuated of Longet that mere section of the recti capitis postici by pressure after it had been collected for six hours) majores et minores in the dog renders the movements of . . . A solution of sugar (generally the animal uncertain and insecure, the dog was unsteady 20 ccm. of a 10 per cent, solution = 2 grms. sugar) was on its feet, moved from side to side, kept the fore feet then injected into the jugular vein, in the one case into widely apart from each other, running was rendered difficult, the starved animals, and in the other into the starved &c. After five or six days the head generally assumed the diabetic ones. In the former case only traces of sugar normal position, and at the same time the walking became appeared in the urine when the animals had starved for