Treatise on human physiology : For the use of students & practitioners of medicine / By Henry C. Chapman. Illustrated with 595 engravings.
- Henry Cadwalader Chapman
- Date:
- 1899
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Treatise on human physiology : For the use of students & practitioners of medicine / By Henry C. Chapman. Illustrated with 595 engravings. 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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![formed the duties of a servant, and Mas during this time frequently of inestimable value to science, as affording Dr. Beaumont and others the rare opportunity of observing gastric digestion in man under the most favorable circumstances. One might as well object that the pain suffered by St. Martin, after the explosion of the gun, vitiated the conclusions drawn by Beaumont, as to object to the conclusions of Blondlot because the making of a gastric fistula in a dog involved the giving of the ani- mal pain. A far more important objection than that just referred to is that, as animals differ very much in their organization, con- clusions drawn from experiments made upon one kind of an animal cannot be applied to another kind ; digestion in a dog, for example, not being: exactlv the same as in a man. It is undoubtedly true that, while frogs, turtles, pigeons, rabbits, dogs, horses, etc., agree anatomically in many respects with each other and man, they disagree to such an extent tliat tlie result of experiments made upon one of these animals is often utterly inap- plicable to the other, and entirely worthless as applied to man. In- deed, the most striking differences in the effect of certain substances are observed even in closely allied animals, varieties of the same species. Thus the black rhinoceros feeds upon the euphorbia, which poisons the white species; goats and lambs avoid most of the so- lanaceous plants ; the ox and the rabbit will eat belladonna; the goat, the hemlock ; the horse, aconite. Such differences should be always taken into consideration when the results of a vivisection upon one animal are to be applied to the determination of the function of a structure in another. It must be always proved that the structure and functions compared are homologous. Further, a careful post-mortem examination should be always made after the vivisection, in order to learn exactly what has been done, to show that no structure has been involved which would modify the results except the one examined. It is the neg- lect of such precautions, the indifference to the infliction of pain, the comparing of utterly milike conditions, the absence of the test of post-mortem examination, the want of controlling experiments, and of comparison of the results obtained with the facts of pathol- ogy and comparative anatomy that has brought vivisection into the disrepute in which it is held at the present day by many even edu- cated persons. Crude generalizations, based upon imperfect ex- periments ])erformed upon animals illogically applied to man, have made even medical men doubt altogether of the efficiency of this method, and account for their sympathizing Avith the Avell-meaning, no doubt, but ill-judged efforts to suppress experimental investiga- tion altogether; and yet if vivisection should be banished from the laboratory, the physiologist would be deprived of his most fertile methods of research. The history of physiology proves not only the importance of vivisection, but its indispensability as a means of present research. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that there](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21226131_0031.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
