Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-11-10
VIVISECTION DISCOVERIES.
What Live Beasts Teach as to Our Diseases
and Our Systems

and Our Systems.
Deprecating the violence of controversy
between vivisectionists and those who, like
Miss Cobbe, have been agitating against
experiments on live beasts, the London
Times says:
cat one point however, the position of the
anti-vivfsectionistSis is assailable by reason
ing. They deny broadly that experimental
t1ons on living animals has contributed to
enlaIg ge the domain OF medi cal science or to
increase mans power of graphing with pain
and disease. We think it is to be regretted
that Sir Andrew Clark, Sir James Paget. Sir
George Humphrey and Dr.. Wilks should
have committed themselves to statement
that no good could come of a discussion on
this subject in the newspapers. Men of
science who take up an attitude of lofty
disdain toward popular agitations, and re-
fuse even to show the futiltty of the asser-
tions of the agitators, may some day find
themselves unexpectedly overwhelmed by
a sudden rush of the sentimentalists.
"The subject is a highly technical one.
and the weight of the argument in its en-
tirety can only be appreciated by trained
minds competent to draw differences from
large numbers of individually inconspfcu-
ous facts. Still, 1t cannot be useless to bring
before the public few characteristic in
stances in which vtvisection has been of
priceless service in extending the limits of
medical science and in perfecting the prac-
tfce both of medicine and surgery.
Presented i'll an absolutely dispassionate
manner. and as far as possible in plain and
non-technical language, facts go far to
establish the contention of DIR. Lauder
Brunton that almost all our exact knowl-
edge or the action of drugs on the various
organs of the body, as well as of the physf-
ological functions of those organs, has been
obtained by experiments on animals Har-
vey's discovery of the circulation of the
blood, the very foundation stone OF our ex-
listing knowledge of physiology, was based
LEGATIONS into the nervous system, which
opened up new regions of science and prac-
tice, and, carried forward from point to
point according to the same methods by
Hail, Hitzig, Ferrier and others, have
already been of immense benefit to man
Kind.
1.-THE diagnosis and treatment of heart
disease, again, which would have been
wholly impossible but for Harvey's dis
eove1y, were placed on their present foun-
dations by the experiments OF Hope. Hun
ter's treatment of aneurism, and Won
Graefe's treatment of glaucoma were
worked out in the same way. The action OF
the most pow erful and dangerous drugs has
been ascertained by perpetual experiment
alizing on living animals, while there is
hardly a conceivable limit to the advance
that may be made by these means in the
newly developed regions of 'bacteriology.'
With all this 1t must be remembered that
yivisection in this country fs carefully-in-
law. Is so powerful an instrument for good,
guarded so strictly against abuse, to be
abandoned in Difference to the unreasoning
fanatieisln of the agitation that has pro-
duced the Nine Circles as its contribution
to enlightened scientific CONTROVERSY"