The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-12-21
Our Debt to ViUisecfiora
By Frederic J. I-iaskin.

Mal&IWM82&AanAnaz " ai1k ' ssslA 4s' | The crusadors against vivisection in 1 the United States have been very ac- I tive during the past year, and 1t is probable that they will try to secure | legislation by Congress forbidding viv- | isectIon in the future. They take the l ground that 1t Is e cruel practice, l which causes more suffering than IL prevents. and which does moye harm | than good. They think # has
 brutalizing effect on those who prac-
 tiee it. and that on the whole. the game is not worth the candle. This | extreme view is not shared by all | anti ti-vivisectionists. however. Some | of them admit it's value and its nec- l essity in the hands of scientific men, but decry 1t as practiced in schools
 and in the hands of irresponsible in-
 blot out the practice entirely and for
 ever.
 The victories of science over disease | offer reading matter more fascinating than fiction. And when one comes to
 listen to the scientist as he names
 these victories, he is impressed by the large proportion of them that rest upon the foundation of vivisection. There | are threee great fudamental discover
 les made within the time of living men that have entirely revolutionized
 the art of healing--anesthesia, anti | these discoveries as the foundation, the
 magnificent superstructure of modern | medicine has been reared. Without arl- esthesia the wonderful surgical op- 1 arations that have reduced the death
 rate so materially in peace and war.
 would have been impossible, since the | human frame can stand only given degree of pain. Without antisepsis those operations could have been per-
 formed only to result in blood poison- l Ing, gangrene, or other equally fatal maiady. And without the germ theory
 medical men would still be treating
 tuberculosis. typhoid. yellow fever. cholera. scarlet fever. diphtheria-- i avery contagious and infectious dis ease in the category--without knowing It's source of It's cause.
 Yet the scientist has given all these I great discoveries to men solely through Experiments on animals. The state of the public mind has not yet reached the point where 1t will warrant a doctors trying new and improved the- ories on mankind. His only recourse
 Is to try them on animals first and
 thereby develop and prove his theor- les. the guinea pig, the rabbit, the
 mouse, and the dog are his favorite
 subjects for experimentation. In 1855
 two water companies in London ex-
 perimented on a half million people.
 with the result that there were 3,476 I Theirch of Leipsic, expertmented on
 fifty-six mice. Had the lessons he
 learned from his experiments on
 half hundred mice been needed, the
 cholera epidemic in London would have
 been averted.
 Since the advent of modern medicine
 the death rate for the whole world
 has shown a remarkable falling off.
 The death rate from tuberculosis, for
 instance, has been reduced practically
 one.half in nearly all civilized coun-
 tries since the discovery of the germ
 that causes 1t. The death rate from j diphtheria in Baltimore has been cut
 down to one-tenth It's former pro-
 portions. and in Chicago to one-third
 what 1t used to be. Typhoid fever.
 scarlet fever, yellow fever. cholera,
 bubonie plague and other eptdsmtcal
 diseases have been forced out of their
 stronEholds. Every time the worlds
 death rate Is lowered one per thousand
 1t means the saving of million and
 half lives every year. and 1t has
 been SC lowered more than once. In the United States the taking of one per thousand away from the total . death rate means the saving of S0000 , lives a year. Mortality statisttcians , assert that more than one per thou sand has been substracted from the total death rate. In fact, the total death rate in 1906 was 16.1 per thou- > sand, as compared with 10.6 in 1890. Comparing the mean rate between the
 found that some 100000 lives have been saved by improved medical , methods.
 This, then, is the answer of science to the anti-vivisectionist.
 It Is interesting to note 'Rith what ] care the scientist proves his case be- fore he tries his theory on human I Aaks AtNHAxgaRAA bacillus of tuberculosis. first took sputum and stained 1t, so as to over come the transluscence of the little jelly-like rods which he suspected of s being responsible for the disease. : These he introduced under the skin of a guinea pig. After certain time 1t . was killed, and he found tubercles in its body when he held his post mortem . examination, and the germs were also ' present. To the ordinary mind that 2 would be conclusive proof. But not to 1; the scientist. To complete the proof he inoculated another guinea pig with the ' virus of the one killed, and 1t in turn ' showed tubercles and bacilli. So his theory was proved. The world would . have regarded such experiments on human beings as criminal.
 e Men uepd to act on the theory that n Iockjaw was caused by treading on a
 l rusty nail. In 1884 Nicalaier announced
 tnAk lI c&filS LEOIn n 8SIiH anu hldt lHAo
 germ originated in the soil. Even the = medical world looked as trance at such a a proposition, but the discoverer tried f the germ on some rats he had and
 proved the correctness of his theory. ? Deaths from Iockjaw used to be fre-
 ouent even from surgical operations; = now Iockjaw so contracted is a curios- lty to the medical fraternity. The same Is largely true of other diseases which used to follow surgical operations.
 In 1867 Lord Lister, then unknown to A fame, tied the great cartoid artery of a
 horse with a piece of pure silk. sat-
 urated In a solution of carbolic acid {. He found that Il worked satisfactorily | and did not produce secondary hem~ orrhage. Tn 1868 he tried the same \ principle on a woman. She afterward died from another cause. and he made a post mortem examination which showed that his operation had been en- tirely successful and was not followed ! by tho secondary hemorrhage. He then tied the cartoid artery of a calf with catRut, and when the calf was Killed 1t was found that 1t had been entirely aasimilated. These experiments laid ! the foundation of all modern antisep- tic surgery. Without the animal ex- periments surgeons might still be un- aware of that great principle that has saved thousands of lives. Before Lis ! ter's introduction of these catgut an- tiRceptfo liRatures. thousands of people \ who had undergone surgical operations bled to death from secondary hemor-