An Ethical Problem | Page 8

of medicine is thus ignorant of history, is it not because those who have taught him were equally devoid of knowledge of the facts? Of the history of the vivisection controversy previous to 1875, some of the most distinguished men in the medical profession have proved themselves profoundly ignorant. Illustrations of this lack of information might be almost indefinitely adduced, but I propose to bring forward only a few instances typical of their kind.
On June 10, 1896, Dr. Henry P. Bowditch, then professor of physiology in Harvard Medical School, delivered an address on vivisection before the Massachusetts Medical Society. The character of his audience, and the profession of the speaker, might be presumed to give assurance of absolute accuracy concerning any question of historic fact. A quarter century before, Dr. Bowditch had studied physiology in German laboratories Returning to America in 1871, he had been given the opportunity of reorganizing the teaching of physiology at Harvard Medical School, so as to bring it into conformity with Continental methods. It is quite probable that to him, more than to any other person, is due the introduction of Continental methods of physiological instruction in the medical colleges of the United States.
According to Dr. Bowditch, the criticism of vivisection in England began in 1864. To his audience of physicians he made the following statement:
"The first serious attack upon biological research in England seems to have been made in an essay entitled `Vivisection: is it Necessary or Justifiable?' published in London in 1864, by George Fleming, a British veterinary surgeon. This essay is an important one, for although characterized at the time by a reviewer in the London Athenaeum as `ignorant, fallacious, and altogether unworthy of acceptance,' its blood-curdling stories, applied to all sorts of institutions, have formed a large part of the stock-in-trade of subsequent vivisection writers."
The sneering reference to "blood-curdling stories" is of itself extremely significant. It indicates unmistakably the utter contempt which nearly every physiologist feels for the sentiment of humaneness which underlies protest against experimental cruelty. The speaker omitted to tell his audience that this essay of Dr. Fleming received the first prize offered by the "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," and that the Committee which decided the merits of the essay included some of the most eminent scientific men of England, among them Sir Richard Owen and Professor Carpenter--the latter one of the most distinguished of English physiologists of his time. He forgot to add that if the examples of atrocious vivisection given in this essay were horrible--as they were--yet every instance was substantiated by reference to the original authorities, and that their accurate quotation could not be impugned. Especially curious is the fact that Professor Bowditch placed the beginning of criticism at 1864. Of the arraignment of cruel vivisections by English physicians and English medical journals before that time, Dr. Bowditch apparently never heard, and all the infamous atrocities which they condemned he dismissed with a sneer as "blood-curdling stories." Yet, in his day, the speaker was one of the leading physiologists of the United States. We cannot believe that the suppression of material facts was intentional; it was due rather to complete ignorance of the history of that protest against physiological cruelty which England witnessed during the first part of the nineteenth century, and of which some account shall follow.
Take another instance. In the International Journal of Ethics for April, 1904, there appeared an article in defence of animal experimentation by Professor Charles S. Myers of the University of Cambridge, England. Of any abuses of the practice, Dr. Myers gave his readers no reason for believing that he had ever heard; and as an indication, perhaps, of an animal's eagerness to be vivisected, he tells us that "again and again dogs have been observed to wag the tail and lick the hands of the operator even immediately before the beginning of the operation." Commenting upon the singular conclusion which this fact seemed to suggest to Dr. Myers, the present writer quoted a sentence or two from an editorial which once appeared in the columns of the London Lancet.[1] It would apparently seem that Dr. Myers brought the quotation to the attention of someone in the editorial office of the Lancet, on whose judgment he thought he might safely rely; for, in a reply, he refers to it as a quotation "attributed to the editor of the Lancet, which, AFTER SPECIAL INQUIRY, I HAVE REASON FOR DOUBTING." Concerning a reference to some of Dr. Sydney Ringer's experiments upon patients in a London hospital, he is even more confident that they could never have occurred, and indignantly rejoins, "I unhesitatingly declare SUCH ABOMINABLE ACCUSATIONS TO BE FALSE."
[1] See p. 73 for this Lancet editorial.
Now, all this indignant scepticism was rather creditable to the writer's heart.