Animal experimentation and tuberculosis / E. L. Trudeau.

  • Trudeau, Edward Livingston, 1848-1915.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Animal experimentation and tuberculosis / E. L. Trudeau. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    and then a painless death if it be killed, or death from tuberculosis if it be allowed to live. Those who cry out against animal experimentation trust as with the'lives of their families when sick, but fear to trust us with rabbits and guinea-pigs. Surely the motives of physi- cians who are trying to learn how to prevent and cure disease, when their livelihood depends on the practice of medicine, can hardly be called into question. Those who in their blind ignorance or through false sentiment are trying by legislative interference to stop or to restrict animal experimentation do not, as we doctors do, have to witness daily the ravages of this terrible disease and live in the midst of the suffering and sorrow which follow in its wake; they seem to be content that all this should continue indefinitely so long as they are not brought into contact with it. The new knowledge of tuberculosis, of such over- whelming importance to the human race, a knowledge which already gives assurance that generations to come will not die of this disease to the extent that former generations have died, has been won in recent years by animal experimentation. For all this is the death of any number of guinea-pigs and rabbits ton high a price to pa.y? Are we to stop on the threshold of this newly acquired knowledge, and are the fruits of ultimate vic- tory to be denied to humanity? These would seem ques- tions that could safely be left to the common sense of unprejudiced men.