The Falls City tribune., 1911-05-26
VVSECTION NO AID.
English Surgeon Calls Cancer
Experiments Absurd.
DR.. Snow, for twenty-five Years
Head of London Hospital, Striving
to Have Laws Passed Pro-
hlbltIng Practice.

Philadelphia.-Cancer as found in
human beings has no analogy to the
supposed cancer declared to have
been found In mice, according to DIR.
geon, and the experiments of y~ivisec-
~tionists along this line, he believes,
are, therefore, futile and absurd.
DR.. Snow, for 20 years head of the
cancer hospital in London, is an ar
dent antl-viyisectionist, and is in this
country for the purpose of striving to
have laws passed %forbidding expert
ments on living animals. He is the
guest Of Mrs. Caroline Earle White,
president of the Antl-Vivisection soci-
ETY. of Philadelphia. He will appear
before the committees of the legisla-
lures of this state and New York,
which have In charge bills prohibiting
experimentation on living animals.
4 do not base my opposition to ylvi-
section wholly or even largely on the
ground that it is inhuman and barbar
GUS" said DR.. Snow. at seems to me
that on the much broader common
sense ground of futility and absolute
uselessness 1t Is most open to condem-
nation. Throughout the years of its
existence as d practice not one thing
of value has been added to medical or
surgical science.
1T is quite true that some rather
startling and even revolutionary
things have been asserted, but these
assertions are merely su%bterfuges.
The advocates of yivisection know
an excuse for their practices, and
they throw dust in the eyes Of the
people and fool them by insisting al
ways that they are on the v of
great discoveries.
II am not blinded by adherence to
one side of the question only, al are
practically all the adherents of the
practice. / formerly was a believer
In and practitioner of yiyisection. l
conducted researches In that way,
but after years of experimentation I
was forced to the conclusion that,
however valuable such research might
be in other departments of medicine,
II was absolutely valueless so far as
lancer was concerned.
"Yivisectors never tire of asserting
that the immortal Harvey made his
discovery of the circulation by living
animal experiment. Harvey himself
aseribes it to careful observation
among the living and the dead. Sec
ond, he does not appear to have dis
covered it at all. The question was
in the air. Many persons were work
ing in the same direction. The Ital-
ians claim the honor for Fracastorius.
Malpighi first microscopically showed
a circulation In the web of a frogs
foot about eight years after Haryey's,
death. Third, no modern psychologist
would dream Of demonstrating the cir
culation by a %viyisection experiment;
there are almost insuperable difficult
ties In the way. And the discovery
could not we'll have been made by this
method.
The late royal commission has
ELECTED from strongly pro-yivisection.
witnesses the worthlessness of Cal
mette's antiyenene, of the plague era,
of the tetanus and dysentery antitox-
ms, which were SO yaunted in the
medical press that even doctors were
disposed to accept them as valid rem
edies. Cancer research, which now.
causes the great majority of i%nocula'
ton experiments In England, has not
yet published one single novel fact.
so far as they know to us all the
laws of nature are characterized by.
extreme simplicity, and all the utter
ances of true science are clear, con-
else, Ineligible. Until medicine dis
cards the alchemlst's jargon of vivi-
section research, cultivates precision
of thought and accuracy of language,
learns to simplify and elucidate in
stead of confuse and obscure, it can
make no progress, but must inevita-
bly r~etrograde."