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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    App. IV. down with it as before. I shall now irritate the lower end of the nerve. Watch the diaphragm. You see that the right half is drawn violently downwards during the irri- tation, and that the flabby state returns when I stop the irritation of the nerve. We conclude that the right phrenic nerve contains motor fibres for the right half of the diaphragm, and that these influences pass through the nerve down the neck.—Idem, Lancet, No. 2,483, p. 439. Under this head some general questions regarding sensory nerves were discussed, and the mode of estimating the amount of ordinary sensibility in a part was demon- strated. ...... I take another frog. In this case I open the cranium and remove the brain and medulla oblongata. — Idem, Lancet, No. 2,487, p. 565. He was aware that there were some who entertained the idea that vivisection was not necessary when it had for its object the mere demonstration for educational purposes of facts ah’eady known. Those who held this doctrine appeared to him to forget that physiology was an experimental science, and that no right conception of the subject could be obtained unless the student was shown the experiments that were necessary for the demonstration of certain facts. Now he maintained that this definite and critical know- ledge regarding the bodily organism could not be attained unless their students were shown experiments on living animals.—Speech of Professor Rutherford, the British Medical Association, Edinburgh, 1875.—Scotsman. In recent years the teaching of physiology had made a great stride in this country. Laboratories duly appointed had been and were being organised; and the method of physiological instruction had in most instances passed from the mere prelection illustrated by diagrams to an experimental exposition of the subject. In his student days the latter element was wanting, and at this moment there was distinct danger of a return to something like that miserable mode of instruction in consequence of the fanatical clamour of a number of persons, excited, it must be admitted, by one or two members of their own profession. Physiology was an experimental science, and that no right conception of the subject could be obtained unless the student was shown the experiments that were necessary for the demonstration of certain facts. Had not every teacher repeatedly observed the altogether different mental attitude which students assumed the moment he passed from mere description to a demonstration of phenomena ? He far more forcibly arrested their attention, and far more deeply imprinted on their minds the facts he would bring home to them. Definite and critical knowledge regarding the bodily organism could not be attained unless their students were shown experiments on living animals, and he held that those authorities who seemed to be of opinion that this method of tuition might be dispensed with, were entirely overlooking the vast importance, not only to the student himself, but to the whole race, of an experimental manner of laying the foundation of a knowledge of the institutes of medicine. It was not necessary for a sound physiological education that their students should be shown all the experiments that were needed to demonstrate physiological truths; they probably did enough if they showed experiments on the cardinal points of physiology ; and he averred that all the experiments on the higher animals that were really required for the purpose of education, could be performed with the aid of narcotics. Seeing that this was so, why should it be that some had become convinced that, in consequence of the present inflamed state of the popular mind on the subject of vivisection, the right education of medical students must be abandoned ? The popular mind had been abused by inaccurate and misleading statements regarding both their motives and their actions. He main- tained that a great and deplorable error was committed when the unreasonable clamour of the anti-vivisectionists was met in the spirit of compromise instead of the spirit of stern resistance. He believed that the unfortunate Vivi- section Bill which was laid on the table of Parliament conferred a dignity on the policy of the anti-vivisectionists which, but for that Bill, it would probably never have possessed. It was true that there had been a withdrawal ot th^ singular Bill, according to which they were to have been fined fifty pounds, or to have been sent to prison for two months, if they had dared to show to their students any experiments, even upon a narcotised animal. But the effaced; the increased boldness which it had given to the pretensions of the anti-vivi- sectionists was only too evident. All that they could now hope was that the good sense of the Legislature would in the end prevail, and that it would do nothing to hamper the education of medical men. ^ The learned professor went on to explain, with the help n diagrams, the result of a series of e.xperiments he had made in reference to the action of certain drugs on the bilmry secretion of the dog.—Dr. Rutherford, Lancet, No. 2,/11, pp. 238-9. On the art of experimenting.—Professor Brown-Sequard Lancet, No. 2,380, p. .514. M. Bernard, Lancet, 1872, No. 2,535, p. 438. Students should spend time in the physiological labora- tory.—Dr. Ross, British Medical Journal, No. 738, p. 238. Dr. Burrows, Lancet, No. 2,371, p. 208. Elementary lessons in physiology.—Professor Huxley, Saturday Review, 1/10/74. Experiments performed at the Physiological Laboratorv. University of Edinburgh. ^ W. B. A. Scott, M.D., Edin. [Letter to the Echo.'] J. Burdon-Sanderson’s Lectures delivered in the Physiological Laboratory of University College. 1 n 1863 the lamented v. Bezold published his well-known researches on the nervous system of the heart. Among a number of other less important discoveries, he showed for the first time the nature and extent of the influence exercised by the brain and spinal cord on the circulation of the blood. He found that when, in a curarised rabbit or dog, the spinal cord is severed from the brain, the arterial pressure sinks very considerably, while at the same time the nmnber and extent of the contractions of the heart are diminished ; and that if, on the other hand, the, upper end of the divided spinal cord is irritated below the point of section, the pterial pressure rises to its original level and the heart to its previous activity. The leading experiment is as follows :—Two centigrammes of curare, dissolved in a cubic centimetre of water, are injected below the skin, and immediately after artificial respiration is begun, ihis dose is sufficient, as was first shown by v. Bezold himself, to paralyse the extremities so completely that neither stimulation of the cord nor of any muscular nerve produces, the slightest contraction of voluntary muscles, while, as we shall see on another occasion, it is not sufficient to interfere with the action of thd heart. Respiration of course ceases, but it is main- tained, as I have said, mechanically, the means employed for the puriiose being a pair of bellows the tube of which communicates with a cannula adapted to the trachea of the animal. The membrane between the atlas and the occipital bone having been previously exposed and one of the carotid arteries connected with the manometer of the kymograph, observations are taken of the arterial pressure and of the frequency of the pulse. This done the spinal cord is divided at the atlas. Immediately the rate of pulsation is diminished, say from 140 to 100, and after a few seconds the arterial pressure sinks, say from three or four inches to one or two. Needles are then inserted into the spinal cord, one at the upper edge of the axis, both of which are connected, with the secondary coil of Duboi’s induction apparatus. At once the heart beats more frequently and vigorously and the mercurial column attains its former level. The next step in the experiment is the destruction of the cerebro-spinal cardiac nerves. Tliese nerves, as you know, reach the heart or leave it either through the vagi or the sympathetic. The destruction of the nerves is best effected with the galvanic cautery, the action of which is more certain and more easily controlled than any other agent which could be