Morning journal and courier., 1885-04-20
Monday, April 20, 1855.
VIVIsECTION DRFENDED.

The practice of vivisection is constantly attacked by those who believe that it is too cruel to be allowed under any circumstances. But it has very able defenders, who seem to have the best of the argument. One of them -Dr. William W. Keene-discusses the matter in the current number of the Popular Science Monthly and gives an impressive &C., count of some of our recent debts to yiv- isection.
 The new local anesthetic, cocaine, was, it seems, first tried on animals. It has been used successfully in deadening all effects of pain in the eye, for example, or the ear, the larynx, etc., so that surgical operations could be performed as painlessly as if the subjects entire body was under the effects of chloroform. Says Dr. Keene: Who would think it right to put few drops of the hy drochlorate of cocaine (a year ago almost an unknown drug) into the eye of a man, not knowing what frightful inflammation or even loss of sight might follow? Had one dared to do it, and had the result been disastrous, would not the law have held him guilty and punished him severely, and all of us said Amen! But so did Christison with the Calabar bean, and we'll nigh lost his own life. So did Toynbee with prussic acid on himself, and was found dead in his laboratory. Ao- cordingly, Roller, of Vienna, properly and wisely tried cocaine first on animals, and then, finding it's beneficial effects, tried it upon man with like results, and one of the most remarkable drugs of modern times was thus made available
 One of the most useful lessons lately learned from vivisection is connected with dealing with wounds of the abdomen, which have been among the most fatal injuries known to surgery. The recoveries from 3,717 such wounds during the late civil war only numbered 444, and of those with es- cape of the intestinal contents, the recoveries, says Otis, may be counted on ones fingers. A Chicago doc tor recently made series of systematic ex- periments on thirty-seven dogs, that were etherized, then shot, the abdomen opened, and the wounds of the intestines, arteries, mesentery, etc., treated by appropriate surgical methods. The results confirmed the belief awakened by earlier experiments and observations that surgery could grapple suc- cessfully with multiple and formidable
 
 ways, or even by removing piece of the bowel and uniting the cut ends. Hard upon | the heels of this important work and largely as it's result, comes striking improvement l in practice. Dr. Keene thus points out some | of the results which have followed expert ments on dogs: One hundred and ninety eight times the kidney bas been removed and one hundred and five human lives have been l saved, eighty three times abscesses in the kidney have been opened and sixty-three 1 lives saved; seventeen times stones have been removed from the kidney without 8 single death;- ;-or, in all, in the last eighteen years, two hundred and ninety-eight opera 1 tions, and one hundred and eighty eight lives l saved. And he asks: Looking to the future when not hundreds but thousands of human beings will enjoy the benefits of these opera tions, and increasing percentages of re- coveries, are not the sufferings inflicted on 1 these few dogs amply justified as in the highest sense kind and humanea Most | sensible and thoughtful people would prob- ably answer yes to this.