The futility of experiments with drugs on animals / by Edward Berdoe.

  • Berdoe, Edward, 1836-1916.
Date:
1889
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The futility of experiments with drugs on animals / by Edward Berdoe. 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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    performed a number of experiments to support his theory, and equally, of course, another experimenter (Wood, p. 151), says, This theory in itself is so improbable that it would seem scarcely worthy of discussion were it not for the fact that Nobiling asserts that the tartarate of antimony and soda is not poisonous (even to such lengths will men go who have a theory to support!) Dr. Radziejewsld {Reicherfs Archiv fur Anatomie, 1871), has repeated and extended the experi- ments of Nobiling, and completely dis]proved both the asserted fact and the theory based upon it.—{Wood, p. 151.) A rabbit, says Wood, poisoned with this drug could still drag itself around, and suffered its paws to be deeply burned without evincing the slightest evidence of feeling. Upon this our author says, In man the anaesthesia which occurs ia animals has been overlooked, but in the advanced stages of poisoning it is no doubt present. This point evidently wants clearing up ! Thein, from Tea. Chemists and physiologists tell us that the active principle of tea, Thein, and that of coffee, Caffdn, are identical. Dr. A. Burnett experimented with these alkaloids upon frogs, mice, rabbits, and cats, and came to the conclusion that they were identical throughout the whole range of their action. Are we to conclude therefore, that the action of tea and coffee on the human system is identical ? By no means. Says Stille (p. 1424), The identity of these alkaloids in their physio- logy does not imply a similar identity in tea and coffee. As little should we be entitled to infer that aU alcoholic drinks produce identical effects because they all contain alcohol as their chief constituent. It is just as certain that tea and coffee differ in their action upon the human system as that Rhenish or Bordeaux wines act very differently from whiskey or brandy, although in all of these liquors the common cause of their effects is alcohol. So much, therefore, for the value of physiological medicine !