1000 DOCTORS (AND MANY MORE) AGAINST VIVISECTION

 

Edited by Hans Ruesch

 

 

First published 1989 Ó Hans Ruesch Foundation

 

(PART 4 OF 4)

 

 

 

Dr. Ernest de Coster, Brussels, senior physician in the Belgian Army: "I am not a supporter of vivisection, for medicine has learnt nothing from these experiments. The conditions of life are completely different for the human being and the animal..."

 

Dr. med. Reuss: "But I should like to warn against one thing, against over­estimating experiments on animals. Animals often react basically differently to poisons, ie. to narcotics, than humans do. The maximum human daily dosage hardly produces any significant effect on a dog, but many animals, on the other hand, have immensely lower resistance to the fatty narcotics such as chloro­form." (Zahnaerztliche Rundschau, Berlin, 1912, p.48)

 

Dr. G.R. Laurent, physician (from his work Qu' est-ce que la vivisection? - "What is vivisection?" 1912):

 

"The physiological laboratories are nothing but torture chambers, and animal experiments are a real barbarity. Whereas in past, times one encountered representatives of an advanced humanity, people who were ahead of their time and already dreamed of brotherliness and goodness, nowadays there still exist representatives of a type of human that belongs to the savage and cruel past. In today's society there are primitive, retarded beings such as the alcoholics or those who have retained predatory and murderous in­stincts - such as burglars, murderers - and vivisectors...

 

“Vivisection is dangerous. It is dangerous not only because it results in de­pravity, but also because it proliferates errors, since the experimental animal is put by vivisection into an abnormal condition which never arises in practice. Vivisection is additionally dangerous because it draws conclusions from ani­mals and applies them to humans. The experimenters dispute with each other; they overturn the theories that have been slowly and laboriously worked out in the laboratories, as soon as they are presented. It is impossible to learn anything from this flood of contradictory opinions. All of them contradict each other. The experimental results are different for animals of different species, even for in­dividual animals of the same species, some times even for the same animal at different times during the experiment...

 

“What can we learn of use to mankind from experiments like the following? The vivisector, Schiff, filled the stomachs of his experimental dogs with sand, pebbles, and limestone, after the pylorus had been sewn up. He also poured water at temperatures of 60 to 120 degrees into the stomachs of rabbits; the suf­fering of these unfortunate animals only ended with death a few days after the experiment. Wertheim poured boiling oil or turpentine over dogs and then set fire to them. Paschutin and Petermann stripped the skin from living dogs. What is the value of freezing living animals, or boiling them to death in water heated by stages to ever-higher temperatures? Of what use are the experiments with poisons, when we know that they have nothing like the same effect on animals of the same species, and even less so on animals of different species?

 

“How does one expect to deduce, from the results obtained on certain ani­mals, what results one would obtain with humans? But the vivisector Benett car­ried out six hundred and nineteen experiments of this kind, and Orfila sacrificed six thousand animals for his poisoning experiments! For these ludicrous and abominable experiments, Schiff alone massacred fourteen thousand animals.

 

“Why all these cruelties? For nothing. only for the pleasure of it! Not one single discovery can be undisputably attributed to experimental physiology. Its result is a pathetic zero. Not the slightest advantage has been derived from the numerous painful, maiming and deadly experiments..."

 

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L. Forbes Winslow, DCL, MD, LLD. MRCP (1844 - 1913): "Vivisection is against all principles of religion...As a result of forty years experience I say that vivisection should not be tolerated. (From his address given at Caxton Hall, Dec. 5. 1910)

 

Dr. med. E. Reich: "Surely nobody can be so stupid as to believe that the same experimenter who in the morning has caused animals this appalling suffering will in the after­noon treat his fellow-men with brotherly love. On the contrary, in 99 out of 100 cases it is certain that this treatment can only be a series of experiments and will ultimately deliver the patients to the dissection slab of pathological anatomy." (Scheveningen, Villa Sabina)

 

Med. Dr. Hans Tumpach. general practitioner, Deutsch-Gabel (Bohemia): "Ailing mankind gets little use from animal experimentation." (Dec. 4, 1909)

 

Med. Dr. Leopold Schmelz, Vienna: "Only he who has himself helplessly faced human beasts some time in his life can perhaps sense some part of the unutterable suffering that a poor, tor­tured, vivisected animal has to endure." (Oct 21,1909)

 

Med. Dr. Franz Cemy. Prague: "I am happy to sign this petition, for I too am of the opinion that today's vi­visection is nothing but cruelty towards animals. " (Oct. 1909)

 

Med. Dr. Anton Mastny, gynaecologist, Prague: "Any humane doctor must be an opponent of vivisection."

 

Med.Dr. Ludwig Salus, district panel doctor, Hernkretschen a-d- E.: "I can only most warmly welcome and recommend the action which has been started against vivisection. The latter is cruel, is brutalising in its effects, is misleading and, therefore, unscientific." (Oct. 18, 1909)

 

Med. Dr.Carl Schmiedel, Vienna: "Modem diagnostics certainly did not reach the high level at which it now stands through animal experiments, but through diligent study at the sick-bed; vivisection is highly irrelevant to therapy; animal experiments do not belong in the lecture room; the lessons gathered from animal experiments are well-estab­lished axioms which it is totally unnecessary to repeatedly demonstrate. Vivi­section is, like hunting, to be seen as the hobby of mentally decadent people, and must be legally forbidden." (Oct. 15, 1909)

 

Med. Dr. Karl Kornfeld, specialist in diseases of the stomach and intes­tines, Prague: "I am opposed to vivisection on principle." (Oct. 14, 1909)

 

Dr. Ludwig Kalteis, district physician, Strasswalchen near Salzburg: "I am a convinced opponent of vivisection." (Oct. 11, 1909)

 

Med. Dr. Hermann Schiffer, general practitioner, Krems (Lower Aus­tria): "Away with the knacker's men with their scientific arrogance! To keep re­peating the same experiments on gagged animals is no longer an urge for re­search, but pleasure in torturing - perversion." (Oct. 6, 1909)

 

Med. Dr. Leo Zamara, district and health resort physician, Rauris near Zell a.S.: "... Away, away with animal experiments, at least, the most flagrant wrong done to animals!"  (Oct.6, 1909)

 

Med. Dr. Josef Drobny, district physician, Moraschitz, Bohemia: "I am fully in agreement with the bills against vivisection, for the abolition of vivisection can only be seen as an advance in public education." (Oct. 6, 1909)

 

Med. Dr. Max Neumann, general practitioner, Vienna: "I have never been a supporter of vivisection." (Oct. 5, 1909)

 

Med. Dr. Pretislav Pacal, dentist, Prague: "I have pleasure in welcoming your fight against vivisection, which is a scandal of the 20th century." (Oct. 5, 1909)

 

Med. Dr. Adolf Petschauer, Prague: "I can only wish the (anti-vivisection) society's efforts the best of success." (Oct. 5, 1909)

 

Dr. Karl Praitschopf, general practitioner, Maria-Saal (Carinthia): " 'Only a good person can be a good doctor' says Nothnagel. I cannot con­sider those who remove half of a dog's thorax wall- in order to demonstrate the movement of the heart - good people." (October 5, 1909)

 

Dr. Franz Kohut, district physician, Schichowitz (Bohemia): "The undersigned has been and remains an opponent of vivisection." (October 5, 1909)

 

Dr. med. Hugo Kecht, Ear, Nose, Throat and Chest Specialist: "Doctors who speak out in favour of vivisection do not deserve any recog­nition in Society, all the more so since their brutality is apparent not only dur­ing such experiments, but also in their practical medical lives. They are mostly men who stop at nothing in order to satisfy their ruthless and unfeeling lust for honors and gain." (Linz, October 5, 1909)

 

Med. Dr. Hieronymus Svetineich, general practitioner, Mauer (Lower Austria):

 

"If one declares vivisection to be indispensable, that is a matter of opinion. But it is a fact that the results of animal experiments have continually proved to be dubious, contradictory, often misleading and even harmful. As a dividing line between experimentation and cruelty to animals also seems hardly possible in the case of vivisection, and since the profession of doctor cannot be identi­fied with that of an executioner, 1 am, in keeping with the intentions of my wide­ly-renowned teacher Hyrte, for the unconditional abolition of vivisection, for it only spreads dangerous brutalization on the one hand and barbaric destruction on the other." (October 5, 1909)

 

Med. Dr. Emil Schwarzkopf, general practitioner, Vienna: "The many experiments on animals, which often stem from a sickly obses­sion with immortality, cause more harm than good and lead to deadening of the doctor's humane feelings. One day of sound observation beside the sick-bed teaches us more than a hundred days of cruel animal experimentation." (October 5, 1909)

 

Med. Dr. Josef Wolf, district physician, Helfenberg (Upper Austria): "I have always been a firm opponent of vivisection." (October 5, 1909)

 

Med. Dr. Rudolf Neumann, general practitioner, Vienna: "Anyone who experiments 'scientifically' on an animal will also not hold back from 'scientifically' experimenting on a human being. Such science, how­ever, is deserving of condemnation by everyone." (October 4, 1909)

 

Med. Dr. Ottokar Hanel, general practitioner, Neu-Bydzow (Bohemia): "The learned lawyers of earlier centuries also considered torture to be ab­solutely necessary for obtaining evidence!" (October 4, 1909)

 

Dr. med. Hans v. Hepperger-Hoffenstal, former clinical assistant, spe­cialist in nervous diseases and psychiatry, Bolzano: "In order to prove extremely unimportant, so-called 'scientific' facts to us students, poor helpless animals were tormented in the most irresponsible way." (Bolzano, 4 October 1909)

 

District veterinary surgeon Dr. Zermecke, Elbing: "The horrible disease-causing agents are injected under the skin, in the most varied body cavities - even into the brain and eyes - of these unfortunate ani­mals, so that a slow infirmity sets in, lasting for many weeks, until the animals finally perish dreadfully from the results of this transmission of infectious dis­eases. It is a deliverance when they are finally found dead one morning, on the floor of their cramped cage..." (Aertzliche Mitteilungen, September 1909, No. 9)

 

Dr. med. Wofgang Bohn - Surgery and Vivisection: “...Animal experimentation has helped lead us into the errors of vaccina­tion and serum therapy, it has helped the growth in the excessive use of surgery, without rendering any service to surgery itself, it has provided mankind with a stream of drugs and with a hundred mishaps, which it would have been better for mankind never to have got acquainted with, vivisection has not in any way shown how to heal disease, or pointed the way to natural healing...In hospitals one has got used to violence being canied out on the sick for experimental pur­poses..." (Aertzliche Mitteilungen, 1909, No. 7189

 

Dr. Guido Kretz, general practitioner, Braunau am Inn: "Anyone who has no feeling for an animal can also possess no feeling for a human being." (December 3, 1908)

 

Dr. Josef Dalbosco, district and health cure physician, Rabbi (Trentino, Tyrol): "As I am convinced that nobody and nothing in the world is absolutely necessary, and that animals have the right not to be tortured, something which doctors should know and understand better than anybody, I declare my opposi­tion to every scientific experiment on living animals." (November 22, 1908)

 

Dr. Peter Galzigna, district physician in Arbe, Dalmatia: "Being convinced and aware of how painful even the slightest knife inci­sion is for patients, I can clearly deduce how great the torment must be for the poor animals under vivisection. Such a practice must therefore be called inhu­mane, and I join with my humane colleagues who are taking action against such a practice." (November 19, 1908)

 

Dr. Eduard Fischer, consultant to the Emperor, holder of the Golden Dis­tinguished Service Cross and Crown, physician at Gross-Tajax, Moravia: "I have been and remain a determined opponent of vivisection." (November 18, 1908)

 

Dr. Gustav Blankensteiner, general practitioner, Straning, Lower Austria: "I am totally in agreement with a stand being made against vivisection..." (November 18, 1908)

 

Dr. Bronislav v. Majerski, general practitioner, resident physician, public medical officer, obstetrician and panel doctor, holder of the Golden Distin­guished Service Cross and Crown, Czemowitz, Bukowina: "I am absolutely against vivisection; it reduces public confidence in the medical profession."  (November 17, 1908)

 

Dr. Josef Kroo, general practitioner in Buczacz, Galicia: "From the ethical viewpoint, vivisection is an atrocity. From the theoreti­cal standpoint it is a proved piece of nonsense, shown up as such by the most extreme contradictions of its findings and real facts. From the practical view­point it is quite useless, due to being damaging, because the young students are demoralised by it. People who torture a wretched animal for no purpose are per­petrating an inexcusable crime...I am an opponent of every vivisection experi­ment in any circumstances." (November 16, 1908)

 

Dr. Josef Ritter v. Lachmueller, doctor and dentist, Brixen, Tyrol: "I was always an opponent of vivisection before the big audience in the lec­ture hall. It is nothing but a pointless and cruel torture of animals, which every swdent who has any heart must abominate." (November 16, 1908)

 

Dr. Josef Fuchs, district physician in Brand, Lower Austria: "It still torments my conscience to have joined in looking at those demon­strations of long-known facts without protesting, and to have taken part in what is a crime." (November 16, 1908)

 

Dr. Karl Georg Panesch, specialist, Vienna: "I consider it cowardly and morally deeply contemptible when a doctor, al­though convinced of the total justification for the Austrian Anti-vivisection League's petition to the State Council, does not sign the declaration out of fear that his signature could make him enemies among his powerful colleagues." (November 12, 1908)

 

Dr. Heinrich Deluggi, general practitioner, Bolzano: "I am opposed to vivisection on principle, for true science should never re­sort to criminal activities." (October 20,1908)

 

Dr. med. Rud. Roubal, district doctor in Wamberg, Bohemia: "26 years ago, as I recall, when I was a medical student, things were dem­onstrated to me on a laboratory animal which any normal brain could have ex­pressed and understood with ten words." (September 30, 1908)

 

Dr. A. Laab, Graz: "Vivisection is unscientific and misleading, and therefore useless; what is more, cruel, brutalising and immoral; it is in truth a crime." (September 19, 1908)

 

Dr. Julius Winkler, general practitioner, Abbazia: "Vivisection awakens cruelty in the young doctor, and destroys in him the noblest human sentiments: compassion and humanity."   (September 19, 1908)

 

Dr. Max Mader. general practitioner, Graz: "Vivisection is rooted in error and when the truth becomes known it will disappear."  (September 16, 1908)

 

Dr. Eduard Emmel, consultant to the Emperor, health cure physician, Graefenberg: "The horrors of vivisection are inhuman and a scandal for mankind, in fact, a crime which serves no purpose." (November 16, 1908)

 

Dr. Heinrich Moser, general practitioner in Trient, Tyrol: "I am totally against vivisection, for I consider it inhuman cruelty." (November 16, 1908)

 

Dr. Karl Zaleski, general practitioner, Sanok, Galicia: "Without vivisection, without the urge to do what is fashionable. Medicine would be able to achieve better results." (November 15. 1908)

 

Dr. Johann Maneth, public health and district physician, also a qualified veterinary surgeon: "I am against vivisection!" (November 15. 1908)

 

Dr Johann Perco, general practitioner in Capodistria: "I have the greatest pleasure in signing the attached statement and enthusi­astically welcome the honest and noble endeavours of my colleagues...The dis­gusting indifference towards cruelty to animals is certainly not justified by the results so far obtained through such tortures." (October 29. 1908)

 

Dr. Leopold Nemrad, general practitioner, Olmutz, Moravia: "Vivisection...no longer corresponds to the spirit of our time. It is inhuman, unworthy of medical science and in no way necessary to it." (September 14, 1908)

 

Dr. Felix Schaff'er, district physician, Murzzuschlag, Steiermark: "Every vivisection experiment means torturing an animal, and this is a scan­dal." (September 13, 1908)

 

Dr. Jaroslaw Barth, general practitioner, Prague: "Vivisection is just as terrible an error in the field of medical science as the medieval inquisition was in the Church - in both cases it was believed that it was beneficial to Mankind." (September 12, 1908)

 

Dr. Hermann Platter, district physician and medical consultant to the rail­way authorities, PetU1en am Arlberg, Tyrol: "Many vivisectors inject, insert and pour any possible poison and acid sub­stance into this and that living animal, and then into all their organs, so as to see what sort of effect this produces. This is a totally purposeless and senseless exer­cise, aimed at satisfying childish curiosity, but is is also despicably cruel and cowardly, because the poor animal victim is completely helpless against these human monsters." (September 9, 1908)

 

Dr. Emanuel Pochmann, general practitioner, Linz: "Today's vivisection experiments on animals are devoid of any value for science as regards healthy or sick human beings. Any doctor who works scien­tifically has to abhor them." (September 8, 1908)

 

Dr. Franz Seidl, regimental physician to the 3rd Infantry Regiment, Krem­sier: "Nothing good and lastingly good can ever come from behaviour that is in its nature bad; therefore no benefit can ever come to mankind from vivisection." (September 7, 1908)

 

Dr. Anton J. Aust, works doctor, district and panel doctor, Gaal: "Cruelty towards animals hardens one's feelings towards humans." (September 7, 1908)

 

AUSTRIAN AND HUNGARIAN DOCTORS

 

In 1908, at the time of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the Anti-Vivisec­tion League of Austria (long since defunct), with seat in Graz, addressed both Houses of Austria's Parliament with a memorandum (Denkschrift) protesting against the Vivisectionist method of "research". The following medical auth­orities signed the petition: (In the book ‘1000 Doctors’ there follows a lengthy list of names, here omitted.)

 

Dr. Josef Theuille, senior district physician, Landeck, Tyrol: "Vivisection seems to me an atrocity and a contradiction of Nature." (September 7,1908)

 

Dr. Karl Fischer-Colbrie, general practitioner, Vienna: "I have always been horrified at the cruelty of vivisection..." (September 6, 1908)

 

Dr. Josef Gratzinger, Vienna: "Vivisection has so far done precious little for suffering mankind, but has caused numerous living creatures unspeakable torments. " (September 6,1908)

 

Dr. Julius, general practitioner and dentist, Bielitz (Silesia): "Away with animal experimentation!" (March 20, 1908)

 

Dr. Med. N.P. Krawkow: "Anyone who has ever chloroformed dogs knows how difficult that is to achieve and how pronounced the excitation stage is with them, even after a pre­vious morphine injection. When chloroform is used alone, on the other hand, the blood pressure rises immediately after removal of the mask, and the animal soon begins to react to pain stimuli, and awakens...Following anaesthesia with chloroform the animals visibly feel very bad and recover more slowly..." (Archiv fur experimentel/e Pathologie und Pharmakologie, p. 322,1908)

 

Dr. Rudolf Kaiser, district panel doctor, Pemitz, Lower Austria: "I endorse the above declaration and would add the comment that it is the duty of every humane-thinking doctor to give the utmost support to this move­ment. The more doctors support the abolition of scientific experiments on liv­ing animals, the more respect the medical profession will gain." (December 20, 1907)

 

Dr. Eugen von Kosierowski, Assistant in medical chemistry at the Univer­sity of Lemberg, general practitioner and panel doctor in Grybow, Galicia: "I am in agreement, out of inner conviction, and with the greatest sympathy for this noble causer" (November 17, 1907)

 

Dr. Josef Ortner, general practitioner, Lambrechtshausen, Salzburg: "The abominable malpractice called vivisection, which is a sign of total mental as well as ethical depravity, must without question be abolished." (November 15, 1907)

 

Dr. Philippe Perco, general practitioner, Sitzendorf, Lower Austria: "I declare my agreement to the immediate and total abolition of scientific experiments on animals, without any exception whatever." (October 12, 1907)

 

Dr. med. Selss of Frankfurt delivered a lecture at the Palmensaal in Berne on March 21,1907. This included the following passages:

 

"The young doctors are repeatedly required to join in animal experiments. Any feeling in the hearts of the students is systematically killed. The medical world is degenerating. Compassion is systematically being taken away from the students at the universities. A certain professor has stated that he would like to lead the young people to the point where they take pleasure in vivisect­ing. Young, pushy types who want to be on top in everything use animal experi­ments in order to acquire cheap scientific fame.

 

"Vivisection is absolutely not a scientific method. The practical doctor does not need it. Many a doctor who spurned this suggestion in his youth has, in later years, or on his deathbed looked back with desperation and remorse at the atro­cities he perpetrated on animals in the past."

 

Dr. med. Ed. Berdoe:

 

"It is clear to any thinking person that there is a great difference between an operation for the purpose of a cure and vivisection for the purpose of an ex­periment. The surgeon wants his patient well, the experimenter demands of his victim the knowledge which he is looking for. In many cases anaesthesia 1) thwarts the result of the experiment; 2) endangers the life of the animal, if it is effectively administered, and; 3) can only be maintained for a short part of the time for which the pain lasts.

 

“I could fill a book; they are a great blot on the escutcheon of medical science and although they are unquestionably carried out by enthusiastic 'researchers' they are disapproved of by general medical opinion. But, from time to time, the laboratory experimenters find their way into the hospital wards and perform ex­periments on helpless patients that can only be described with very ugly words." (Katechismus der Vivisektion, p. 67 and 121)

 

Dr. Robert Koch, in Report to the Royal Commission of 1906, p. 31: "An experiment on an animal gives no certain indication of the result of the same experiment on a human being."

 

During the first decade of 1900, surgeon Stephen Smith contributed this tes­timony to the second Royal Commission Report: "The first time I saw a brutal experiment on an unanaesthetized animal I wished to leave the room, I was sickened by it. The next time I was less affected, and eventually I was able to look on at the most terrible things without my emo­tions being moved in any way...I submit that what occurred in my own case probably occurs to everybody..."

 

Dr. med. Artur Laab, Graz, in his paper Fort mit der Vivisektion! (Away with Vivisection!) (Graz, 1905):

 

"Any doctor is dishonourable who, contrary to his finer feelings as a per­son, contrary to the inner voice of his conscience and of what is right, and con­trary to his convictions as a scientist, gives approval to, defends or even mere­ly silently accepts physiological experiments on animals, otherwise known as vivisection, instead of courageously and uncompromisingly fighting against an extremely deplorable scientific aberration...

 

“Under the mask of 'science', under the protective wings of a State which is dazzled and blinded by the hypocritical lustre of a brutalized, egoistical and self­-seeking science of falsehood, thousands, whole hecatombs of mostly highly-de­veloped and sensitive animals are tortured to death every year, by the day and hour and every minute of the day and night, in a cruel and brutal manner which is hardly conceivable by the human imagination, without - as we shall hear shortly - even the very slightest actual use of any kind emerging from this bar­baric so-called 'method of enquiry'.

 

“Vivisection is unscientific, useless, misleading...Vivisection has never, ever served an actual truly incontestable scientific purpose, it is not doing so today and it will never do so, because it is incapable of doing so. But vivisection certainly has to be described and branded as un­scientific; for it has conjured up the most gross errors, it has produced the most calamitous fallacies. Vivisection has never served the purpose of true science, but in fact only the contemptible purpose of self-advancement, ambition and personal gain.

 

“Vivisectors are known to suffer from a scientific epidemic, one which is furthermore steadily on the increase: from a rampant and contagious obsession with knowledge. They are no longer fully of sound mind, no longer competent to judge."

 

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Dr. James Burnet, senior physician at the Royal Hospital in Edinburgh (extract from a letter to the Medical Times and Hospital Gazette, July, 1905): "If medical or surgical science is to make advances in the future, this will not happen through the knowledge collected on the vivisection slab, but through careful observation and comparison in the laboratory and at the sick-bed...I am firmly convinced that medical science is hindered by vivisection, and that its total abolition, not only in our country but throughout the world, would be the right thing. I have expressed myself openly and presented my views sin­cerely because I have the courage to speak up for my conviction. But I am ab­solutely sure that every one of my professional colleagues who gives thought to the matter must concede that my statements are not unjustified."

 

Dr. Lucas Hughes, M.C.R.S., L.R.S.M.: "I know that the vivisectors put on the act of chloroforming, which only suffices for light anaesthesia, but under the prevailing conditions it is practically impossible to produce real anaesthesia. The tight fetters impede the animal's struggling, and the muzzle stops it from groaning and howling with pain. It is perfectly true that the public is taken in by this illusion of the vivisected animals being chloroformed. There is no question of a dog in the vivisector's torture chamber inhaling chloroform in the same way as a patient; the convenience of the vivisector is taken into consideration, by injecting curare in order to paralyse the muscles, and so on. The statement that the animals receive chloroform is nothing but empty prattle, and the public has been totally deceived by this un­truth. It's their humane feelings that have been anaesthetised." (Letter to the English Dog Protection League, April 7, 1905)

 

Dr. G.H. Pinder:

 

"You will naturally put the question: how does it come about that the medi­cal profession as a whole defends vivisection to such an extent and that so few doctors oppose vivisection? I am firmly convinced that barely ten per cent of doctors have the slightest idea of what happens in the vivisection laboratories.

 

“...We are told by the defenders of vivisection that no cruelty arises in ani­mal experiments, because the animals are anaesthetised. As a doctor I am in the position to declare that this statement is absolutely false, and unfortunately the public does not know that this is so... It is said that doctors always become in­sensitive. I do not agree with this. I am sincerely convinced that there is no bet­ter profession than that of the doctor, but I believe that the feelings become to­tally desensitized upon continual contact with vivisection and its cruelty to ani­mals, upon which latter point we possess the confessions of the vivisectors them­selves...

 

“It is a disgrace to England that it is permitted to misuse poor dumb crea­tures in today's laboratories, as in fact happens." (From an address to the annual general meeting of the Anti-Vivisection League in Manchester, February 28, 1905)

 

Replies to a questionnaire issued by the society "Amis des Betes" in Paris: Dr. J.M. Feuillet, Paris: "As a doctor I attach great value to the advance of medicine; but I am no supporter of vivisection, and as merely reducing it would lead to many abuses I am for its abolition. I join with those in Paris and abroad who are for total aboli­tion, and will take pleasure in supporting them."

 

Dr. Jules Grand, Paris: "Vivisection must not be reduced, but totally abolished. May this scanda­lous blot on humanity disappear as soon as possible.”

 

Dr. Henri Huchard, Paris, member of the French Academy of Medicine, an authority on the heart and circulatory system: "Twenty years ago I was guilty of vivisecting a poor, harmless dog, and the impression which that made on me has since then saved me from amusing my­self again at such an anatomical feast"

 

Dr. Macgret, Paris: "No vivisection! One does not regulate a crime. One condemns it!"

 

Prof. Leon Marchand, Paris, former Professor at the Sorbonne: "The assumption that vivisection may have produced something or other that was reliable to surgery or medicine is an error. Exactly the opposite is the case. I have always found that the so-called 'scientific experiments' are not only outrageous and inhuman, but also misleading and dangerous, and I am astonished that not all my colleagues recognise the madness of the experiments made by the vivisectors."

 

On March 20, 1904, the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune pub­lished a long article that began "The assertion made by Dr. Ph. Marechal and published in these columns last week, that the antivivisectionist cause, to suc­ceed, should originate in the medical body itself, is thoroughly endorsed by a large number of eminent French physicians, as the following opinions obtained during the last few days by the Herald prove."

 

Excerpts from some of the opinions reported by the paper:

 

Dr. Salivas: "I consider that vivisection is as useless as it is immoral. The immortal Hip­pocrates never vivisected, yet he raised his art to a height that we are far from attaining today, in spite of our alleged great modem discoveries, which are the result of introducing extravagant theories which it will be most difficult to eradi­cate."

 

Dr. Paquet, formerly doctor-inspector of the Enfants Assistes de la Seine: "Vivisection is useless for the study of medical science. It is also useless for the study of physiology, for, if we are today cognizant of the functions of the organs, it is through having treated them when injured. It is in the clinique, and not in the vivisection room, that we have learned the physiological role which each organ in the human body plays. In order to study the action of me­dicinal matters, would it for a moment enter into the head of a serious practi­tioner to imagine that what passes in the body of a healthy animal would be the same as in that of a sick person?"

 

Dr. Nicol: "From the scientific point of view I consider that vivisection cannot do otherwise than divert right judgement into error. As to the moral point, no beneficial result for humanity can be obtained by such cruel and barbarous prac­tices. The only good result which could be obtained would be to vivisect human beings, and my advice to vivisectors is that they should commence by opera­ting upon each other."

 

Dr. C. Mathieu: "During my medical studies I was charged with preparing the physiologi­cal experiments in the hospitals. They are useless cruelties, which have taught me nothing."

 

Prof. Dr. Leon Marchand: "It is an error to suppose that vivisection has given any true scientific na­tions to either surgery or medicine. It is quite the contrary. I have always found what are called' scientific experiments' not only strange and inhuman, but illu­sory and dangerous."

 

Dr. Edgard Hirtz, of Necker Hospital: "I am decidedly hostile to it. It is a useless torture, and a sterile cruelty."

 

Dr. Levoisin, physician, Paris: "It is extremely urgent that vivisection disappear from the instruction given to students."

 

Dr. Alex. Dowie, M.D., M.Ch., etc.: "There seems to be no doubt about it that vivisection is inseparable from cruelty. Dr. Stephen Smith, an eyewitness, testifies to this in the columns of your newspaper; the relevant literature is full of it on both sides. The degree of suffering varies from slight pain to intense and long-lasting agony. The hardly necessary anaesthesia which is used in certain cases cannot be used in most of the other cases, which are generally the most horrible experiments. The cruelty of the practice of vivisection is absolutely proven." (Letter to Daily News. August 29,1903)

 

Dr. J.H. Thornton, London, general surgeon: "I and many others am of the opinion that vivisection operates against the interests of the people and should therefore be forbidden."

 

Dr. Stephen Smith, M.R.C.S.: "...I have published the facts about the pitiless, public and shameless ex­periments which I have seen in France, Belgium and Germany. Do such atro­cities also occur in England? Yes indeed. Ten per cent of all the cutting oper­ations in English laboratories are carried out with the use of curare. This par­alyzes the muscles but increases the sensitivity to pain. However great the pain may be, the animal cannot make the slightest movement. On the basis of my ex­perience I must state that it is practically impossible to achieve correct anaes­thesia in the case of animals who have been given curare.

 

“...With regard to the vivisection question, one point is so important that it must be given primary consideration. Do animals feel pain as intensely as we do? Since the animals usually used for vivisection - dogs, cats, etc. - possess a similar or more developed sense of sight, smell, hearing and so on than human beings do, we can take it for certain that they are just as sensitive to pain...(Daily News. London, August 19,1903)

 

Dr. med. F. Costa (Serum - Wissenschaft - Menschheit. Berlin, Hugo Ber­muehler, 1903): "He points out that the laboratory experimenters 'must all too often suffer from temporary hallucinations', and attributed their' discoveries' to what they really are: 'simply creatures of exaggerated fantasy, come into being through the maniacal desire to outstrip one another."

 

Prof. Dr. Johannes Mueller and Prof. Dr. Rudolphi. Who are these men? In the Handbook to the History of Medicine, by Neuenburger and Pagel (Ber­lin, 1903) we read on page 912: "Carl Asmund Rudolphi (1771-1832), Professor of Medicine in Greifswald, then Professor of Anatomy in Berlin, who, like Johannes Mueller (1801-1858), Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in Bonn and Berlin, assembled the entire current knowledge of physiology in a textbook and thereby passed it on to the medical world."

 

Page 370 contains the following words concerning Prof. Johannes Mueller:

 

"Johannes Mueller's great importance lies first in an unerring striving for objectivity...but also in his almost universal versatility, which mastered all the areas of biological science..."

 

Now what was the attitude of these great men to vivisection? Rudolf Virc­how gives us fuller information about this in his memorial speech on Johannes Mueller, delivered the 24th of July, 1858:

 

"He was no more an experimenter than Haller, indeed the direction which experimental physiology had already taken through Legallois and Magendie in France actually filled him with revulsion. He always backed up this revulsion with objections both to the method used by the experimenters and to the ad­missibility of the experiments themselves."

 

He said the following about Prof. Rudolphi:

 

"He saw physiological experiments as bearing no relationship at all to the certainty of anatomy; no wonder that this splendid man, who expressed his aver­sion to vivisection whenever the occasion arose, adopted a hostile attitude to all theories and badly founded physiological experiments."

 

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Dr. Arthur Guinness, M.C.E.S.: "When I reflect what dreadful cruelties the animals are subjected to by such desensitised creatures as Mr. Cyon and, to my regret I must say it, by many of my own compatriots, I am truly filled with dismay and also with disgust at how low mankind has sunk, that it is capable of such atrocities." (From a letter to the Oxford Times, October, 1902)

 

Dr. med. Voigt, Frankfurt am Main: "...But the fact of being shackled in itself means acute torture for the ani­mals. For hours and often days on end the animals are stretched out in, or on, wooden and sharp-angled frames. The individual limbs are firmly fastened with cords. Since the imagination is seldom powerful enough to accurately visualise sensations which one does not experience personally, you should just try for once to tie up one of your own limbs tightly with a cord. How quickly will sharp pains set in, and how quickly will the offending cord be removed !In the case of the poor animals, however, whose cords are NOT removed, their limbs shortly begin to swell, and the cords cut all the more tightly and painfully into these in­flamed and swollen limbs. This shackled and motionless imprisonment in one fixed position for hours and often days on end is in itself such an example of maltreatment that nothing needs to be added to arouse the disgust of any person with natural feelings...The sickening experiments, for which this maltreatment is only the preparatory stage, come on top of all this...” (Gesundheit, No. 5, Vienna, 1900)

 

"In spite of their scientific value, animal tests of medications have remained totally fruitless in the treatment of diseases, and the practicing physician hasn't learned anything useful from them for his patients that he didn't know fifty years ago." (Prof. Dr. Felix von Niemeyer, Germany's most respected medical auth­ority.at the turn of the century, in his manual, Handbuch der praktischen Medizin)

 

Dr. George Wilson, LLD (Edinburgh, DPH Cantab): “...the indiscriminate maiming and slaughtering of animal life with which these bacteriological methods of research and experimentation have been insep­arably associated cannot be proved to have saved one single human life. I accuse my profession of misleading the public as to the cruelties and horrors which are perpetrated on animal life. The animal so innocently operated on may have to live days, weeks, or months, with no anaesthetic to assuage his sufferings, and nothing but death to relieve it. (From his Presidential Address to the British Medical Association, Portsmouth, August 5, 1899)

 

Dr. George Wilson (1899):

(Memorandum to Royal Commission):

 

"And if an animal is made insensible to pain, why the 'devocalizing of dogs,' accurately described in the popular magazine 'Science,' VoI. LXIV, No. 1664? This term merely means destroying the chords of the throat so that moans and shrieks cannot attract the attention of the public. Data is at hand as to places where this is done. Recently in New York city the less troublesome means of fastening the dogs' jaws together by the winding of adhesive tape was reported.

 

"The real advance in modem medicine has depended almost entirely on clinical diagnosis, therapeutics, and pathology, guided by a careful study of natural causes, but not upon experiments on animals, which are inherently mis­leading in their application to man, and therefore, unreliable."

 

Prof. Lawson Tait, M.D., F.R.C.S. (1899): Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh; Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, England; the most distinguished surgeon of his day: ("The Cullen Jubilee Prize given 'for the greatest benefit done to practical medicine by applying surgical means for the relief of medical cases', and the 'Lister Jubilee Prize' given 'for the greatest benefit done to practice surgery in the triennial period to June, 1890,' were awarded to Prof. Lawson Tait, by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Edinburgh.")

 

"Like every member of my profession, I was brought up in the belief that almost every important fact in physiology had been obtained by vivisection and that many of our most valued means of saving life and diminishing suffering had resulted from experiments on the lower animals. I now know that nothing of the sort is true concerning the art of surgery: and not only do I not believe that vivisection has helped the surgeon one bit, but I know that it has often led him astray"

 

One of the many articles against vivisection by the celebrated Dr. WaIter R. Hadwen, M.D., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., L.S.A., etc., etc., published by the New York Anti-Vivisection Society, 456 Fourth Avenue, New York City, con­tains the following item on Lawson Tait, the most notable creator of modem surgery:

 

"Lawson Tait wrote, twelve months before he died, in a letter which I have in my possession: Vivisection has done nothing for surgery but lead to horrible bungling.

 

“In the same year that he died, Lawson Tait published a letter in the Medi­cal Press and Circular, May, 1899, as follows: ‘One day I shall have a tomb­stone put over me and an inscription upon it I want only one thing recorded upon it, to the effect that 'he laboured to divert his profession from the blunde­ring which has resulted from the performance of experiments on the sub-human groups of animal life, in the hope that they would shed light on the aberrant physiology of the human groups'. Such experiments never have succeeded and never can, and they have, as in the cases of Koch, Pasteur and Lister, not only hindered true progress but have covered our profession with ridicule.

 

“In the same year, namely, on April 26, 1899, he spoke at a great meeting in St James' Hall, London - the last meeting he ever attended, and moved the fol­lowing resolution: ‘That this meeting wholly disapproves of experimentation on living animals, as being crude in conception, unscientific in its nature and incapable of being sustained by any accurate or beneficent results applicable to man.’”

 

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At the turn of the last century, Dr. Walter R. Hadwen, one of Great Bri­tain's best known physicians, reported the following experiments in the Jour­nal of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV); experiments that are still in vogue today.

 

“Dr. Rose Bradford (later, Sir John Rose Bradford, Br., K.C.M.G., C.B., C.B.E., President, Royal College of Physicians, London, 1926-1931) con­tributed to the Journal of Physiology of February 27, 1899, an article entitled ‘The results following Partial Nephrectomy and the Influence of the Kidney on Metabolism.’ The article enumerated various operations performed upon the kidneys of dogs:

 

“Chloroform and hypodermic injections of morphia were administered dur­ing the operative procedures. The animals - female fox terriers, 33 in number - were subsequently placed in glass cases with a glazed floor for observation. One died in six days from loss of blood. Two developed blood poisoning as the result of the wounds, no time being stated, and were killed.

 

“In another case, where a wedge was cut out of the kidney and an attempt made to graft it upon the peritoneum, the animal died in four days. One animal lingered 36 days after operation, the cause of its death being unknown.

 

“Five others died from causes immediately connected with the operation, after lingering various periods. Two animals were submitted to three various mutilations of the kidneys at separate intervals.”

 

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Dr. med. E. Aenosch: "We have now arrived at another chapter of our evidence; namely, at the proof that all the bad, immoral and criminal principles upon which vivisection is based can in turn only be defended and protected by bad and immoral means The end also has to justify the means by which it is defended. Among these means, the most conspicuous is the plain, bare-faced lie.

 

“Vivisection, with all its inconceivable, hair-raising, nauseating cruelties, perpetrated without interruption day by day in countless institutions and by in­dividuals on hundreds and thousands of unfortunate animals of every kind, is portrayed by the defenders of this crime as the most innocent and harmless oc­cupation in the world.

 

“Things are not at all as bad as the opponents make them out to be, so it is stated. Even if a few isolated and unavoidable cruelties occur here and there, the great majority of experiments involve no pain or suffering at all for the ani­mals...

 

“The thoroughly dishonest statement is made that, with a few exceptions ­this keeps the loophole open - the animals are all anaesthetised and feel abso­lutely nothing of pain! The dishonesty and the most revolting hypocrisy of the vivisectors can be seen most plainly and glaringly as regards to "curare". Instead of anaesthetising the animals with chloroform or ether, they are given curare, i.e. injected with the arrow poison taken over from the savages. And what is the effect of this hel­lish poison? In fact, nobody knows the answer, although they've been "working” with it for decades in the vivisection laboratories. What we do know about it, however, is enough to make those who use it on animals in order to satisfy their curiosity - officially called "Science" - emerge as human ogres and devils. It is not anaesthesia that's achieved by administering this poison, as the advo­cates of vivisection have hypocritically endeavoured to let everyone believe, but only a paralyzing of the entire body musculature, but such a complete par­alysis that the curarized animal is not even able to perform the slightest move­ment, is not even able to breathe, and would inevitably die in the first few mo­ments had one not learnt to forestall this with artificial respiration by means of a bellows! But whilst the animal is, so to speak, turned into a rigid, motionless living corpse by the curare, all its sensory faculties are - just try to imagine the situation of the animal on the torture slab - in no way stilled, but - mark what I say - made even more acute. The animal hears, sees and feels every horrible thing that is done to him, and this much more intensely than when in its natu­ral, healthy condition, but is not able to give any expression to its immeasurable suffering by even a sound, a movement, a glance or a facial expression. And the luckless victims of devilish Science are kept for several hours in this state of in­expressible suffering, and their tormentors and torturers stand there with very learned faces, they carry on cutting, stimulating, tugging and torturing as if that is really nothing at all or something of no significance as far as humanity goes. No trace of compassion. What trace of humanity is left in these people? Must they not be seen as more despicable in many respects than the torturers and in­quisitors of the Middle Ages, whose aims at least were immeasurably more lofty than those of the modem physiological torturers, using their curare in the vain­glorious service of a fiendish Science?” (From Die Vivisektion. p. 11, Dresden 1899)

 

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Dr. Stephen Smith, a surgeon who had worked at the Pasteur Institute and at the Physiological Institute of Strasburg, wrote in his book Scientific Research: A View from Within (Elliot Stock, London, 1899): "I agree with the eminent English surgeons who have gone on record as asserting that vivisection is of no value to humanity.”

 

Dr. George Wilson, President of the British Medical Society, is quoted in the British Medical Journal as saying the following at the Annual General Meet­ing of that Society in 1899:

 

"...I say frankly that we should call a break in the practice of these cruel ex­periments, so as to gain a considered, unprejudiced overall picture of the whole position of the bacteriological procedure...I have not joined the ranks of the anti-vivisectionists, but I accuse my profession of misleading the public as re­gards the cruelties and horrors perpetrated on animals.

 

“Pasteur's anti-rabies vaccination is - I believe, and others with me - a piece of deception... The much-praised serum treatment for diphtheria does not even enjoy the general approval of the doctors in the hospital in our capital city... The whole of bacteriological theory and practice is closely tied up with commercial interests. Behring has had his diphtheria serum patented on the Continent. Koch has made a princely income from his Tuberkulin..."

 

Sir Frederick Treves, Director of London Hospital, surgeon to the Royal Family and world-renowned authority on abdominal surgery, wrote in the British Medical Journal (Nov. 5, 1898, p. 1389):

 

"Many years ago I carried out on the Continent sundry operations upon the intestines of dogs, but such are the differences between the human and the canine bowel, that when I came to operate on man I found I was much hampered by my new experience, that I had everything to unlearn, and that my experiments had done little but leave me unfit to deal with the human intestine."

 

Dr. med. van Rees, Professor Extraordinary of Histology at the University of Amsterdam: "New times bring new thinking. The constantly growing stream of people with feeling and intellect has already opened the world's eyes to the truths which were hitherto known only to a few. This stream will grow bigger and bigger and put an end to the apparently immutable dominion of vivisection, in spite of the efforts of all the biologists..." (From the Foreword to a brochure of the Dutch Anti-Vivisection Society: Is Vivisection of Use to Mankind? 1898)

 

Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, member of the British Academy of Science (1896): "Animal experiments are unnecessary for the advance of medicine; the dif­ference which exists between the human and animal organism leads to very con­tradictory results; pain also always gives rise to error and obscures the natural functions...Of all scientific work, vivisection is the one most subject to error and likely to do mental and moral harm." (From Biological Experimentation)

 

Prof. Atkinson, in a speech given at St. James' Hall, London, May 10, 1898: "I have seen a large number of vivisections...I have seen the operations of many great surgeons. I have also seen the horrifying effects of vivisection on human patients. I see these things every, day, and I say that vivisection is one of the greatest curses of our age for the scientists. I have come here only to tell you, from a scientific viewpoint, that vivisection is the greatest curse of our age...I must unfortunately say today that this terrible practice of experimentation in the hospitals - I don't want to describe what I have witnessed - is only too gruesome. When I think about it I feel disgust for all my professional col­leagues. "

 

Dr. Eduard Reich, public health specialist, Scheveningen: "...In order to prevent most diseases it is sufficient to obey the laws of rea­son and hygiene. If all people adhered to them, serum treatment and vivisection would be seen by the most simple person as outrageous nonsense of which ci­vilisation should be ashamed." (Article in the weekly newspaper De Amsterdammer. March 17, 1898)

 

Tying the ureter - On December 7,1897, Dr. Rose Bradford read "a pre­liminary note on experimental atrophy of the kidney, caused by obstruction of the ureter." The experiments were performed on dogs at the Brown Institution. The ureter was ligatured in two places near the bladder through an incision in the groin and divided between the ligatures. After an interval of 10 to 40 days, the distended ureter was brought to the surface and fluid drawn off correspond­ing to a distension of the kidney to the size of a fist The experiment was re­peated 12 times. The animals were killed by prussic acid at periods varying from 7 to 50 days. They must have been in great pain and suffering throughout the experiment. Some of the animals survived the treatment recorded in the Journal of Physiology for five or six months, confined all the time in the laboratory, where - Dr. Bradford admits - "the hygienic surroundings were not of the best." Thirst and vomiting were marked accompaniments of the operation: the passage of blood occurring sometimes for a week.

 

Starvation experiments - In other operations, where the lives of the animals were prolonged for varying periods, the Professor admits the dogs suffered from thirst, loss of appetite, great emaciation, weakness - so as to stagger and be un­able to stand - ulcerated sores, superficial ulcers, bleeding from the gums, etc., and there must, in addition to these objective signs, have been considerable sub­jective symptoms of pain.

 

Starvation experiments were performed for days together in order to detect the quantity of urea passed under such circumstances. These latter experiments, if not actually painful, were productive of suffering.

 

The "conclusions" derived from these cruel experiments have not added anything to the store of practical knowledge. Some of the theoretical deduc­tions are contested by other observers who arrived at different conclusions from similar experiments. Most of the "conclusions" were long ago established by clinical observation, and nothing has been gained by these procedures to assist in any way in the relief or cure of Bright's Disease or other kidney affections.

 

Dr. med. Anna Fischer-Duckelman: "I now come to that aspect of my medical studies which I found hardest to bear, i.e. the inhumanity in the treatment of poor, elderly patients, especially those of the female sex. Although things are said to be better in the Swiss hos­pitals than at the state hospitals in the large neighbouring countries, I have never­theless had to see a lot of bad things, and even had to go along with it Upon each new example of cruelty that I had to witness in silence, I vowed to myself that I would work ceaselessly for the reform of medical instruction, in order to free myself of the guilt which had been imposed on me. The mentality in the state hospitals is a sad one. Countless trusting patients fall victim to the modem research and operation madness. The poorest and most deprived of the people are chiefly used as instructional material for the universities. There is little scien­tific medical treatment. I was an assistant at several hospitals. I made efforts to get an insight into everything, and I learned of many things that I would pre­viously not have thought possible." (Naturarzt. No. 8, 1896)

 

"Chloroform is so toxic to dogs, especially the young, that had that anaes­thetic been first tried on them it would have been withheld for many years from the service of man. Aourens, in consequence of the fatal effects that he observed in animals, discarded chloroform altogether as an anaesthetic, and Sir Lauder Brunton's experiments on dogs led to results which were ridiculed by all the leading English anaesthetists." (Dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson, Biological Experimentation, 1896, p. 54)

 

Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson (1896): "Intellectually I do not think my classes were assisted (by vivisectional demonstrations). I am sure it limited my sphere of usefulness by leading me in the limited space of time at my command to omit some parts of physiology of a simpler, less controversial, and more useful kind."

 

Dr. med. Edward Berdoe: "...Cruelty is no less cruel because one calls it physiology or bacteriology. The matter is all the more cruel because it is carried out systematically, is drawn out and is supported in hundreds of ways; (even) butchers, cattle slaughterers and hunters do not enjoy such a privilege. No ignorant person can do a thou­sandth part of the dreadful things that are carried out daily in the laboratories of Europe and America..." (In a speech at the International Animal Welfare Congress in Budapest, July 18-21, 1896)

 

Dr. Rowland: "It is difficult to anaesthetise a cat with any certainty for even ten minutes, and in the case of dogs it doesn't last as long as with cats." (British Medical Journal, March 7,1896)

 

Dr. George Cbeverton, English veterinary surgeon, visited the French ve­terinary medical school in Alfort around 1895. Extract from his report: "...I saw how an operation was carried out on a horse without any anaes­thetic. Its four legs were bound together with a rope, one of the students sat on the horse's head, another on its throat and a third on its shoulder, while a fourth one operated on a diseased hoof, cutting away a large part of it. The poor crea­ture's groans were absolutely ghastly."

 

Dr. med. Franz Hartmann, Hallein in Tirol: "Formerly it was the lie under the guise of religion that deceived mankind; now it is the same lie under the guise of science that is deceiving the whole world, and there is no weapon against it other than reason.  Reason teaches us that the true healing of diseases and the maintenance of health consists in freeing the body of impurities and keeping it clean." (Lotusblueten, 1895)

 

Dr. Carl Gerster, Braunfels: "...Anyone who injects mice, guinea-pigs and nowadays even horses and rams year in, year out, and draws his individual conclusions from such individ­uals, will no longer be in the position to think individually, i.e. to properly ap­preciate the physical and psychological aspects of the human organism..." (Arztliche Stimmen uber und gegen das Heilserum. Stuttgart, 1895)

 

Prof. Dr. O. Rosenbach, Breslau: "...Bacteriology must arrive at false results, precisely because it treats the human being on the same level as the experimental animal and the dead soil of the breeding apparatus..."        (Aerztliche Stimmen ueber und gegen das Heilserum, edited by Dr. C. Ger­ster, Stuttgart, 1895)

 

Dr. G. Baudry and P.G. Peabody visited the French veterinary medical school in Alfort in 1895. From their report: "...We neither saw any presence or any use of any anaesthetic in the labor­atories or anywhere else. When we asked the highly intelligent gentleman about this, whose special task it is to show the visitors around and provide them with information, he replied that no anaesthetics were used there because the animals were tied up in such a way that any resistance was ruled out; therefore anaes­thetics were quite unnecessary."

 

Charles A. Gordon, C.B., Surgeon-General, Hon. Surgeon to the Queen, Officer of the Legion of Honour, in The Campaigner, Nov/Dec 1895:

 

“Why I oppose vivisection - With reference to the double function of spinal nerves, the eminent author of that discovery repeatedly stated, that in pursuing his investigations he was guided by anatomical knowledge, and that he was al­together opposed to the performance of experiments on living animals for that, or indeed any other, purpose. From the date of that Commission to the present day successive discoveries, assigned to similar experimental methods, have been either disproved on further investigation, or have been proved practicable by other means.

 

“Bedside Study versus Experiments - In relation to the physician, the art of medicine is best learned by its practice, and by experience, superadded to study and reflection - not by experiments on animals. So also with regard to practical surgery. The claims of experiments such as suggesting the operation for aneu­rism have long since been disposed of, more recently those with reference to ovariotomy, and those relating to brain surgery have been disproved.

 

“The more ‘advanced’ experimenters, as if conscious that the plea of utility for the relief of human suffering is untenable, abandon it altogether. They de­clare their only object to be the advance of knowledge, and stigmatize those who are of an opposite opinion as endeavouring to retard or prevent the advance of science. On the other hand, it is asserted that the performance of such experi­ments is calculated to lower the reputation of scientific men, and to dishonour the emblem of science; it is not science, properly so-called, that should be fet­tered, but those who, hiding themselves under the cloak of science, experiment at random on living creatures without any real advantage to physiology, proper­ly so-called, or to medicine.

 

“The effects of the drugs upon different animals vary among themselves, and with few exceptions, are all different from those on man. In man they differ ac­cording to individual conditions and peculiarities, and also to poisons. The re­sults of experiments with chloroform performed upon dogs, monkeys, and other animals, have been declared by professional anaesthetists to be worthless and misleading in their relation to man.

 

“Fallacious Experiments - For several years back I have made it my task to compare one with another the published statements of vivisectors, and so far the result has been, that I have discovered in them nothing but mutual contradiction sufficient to nullify each other. I am happy to say for the sake of the profession to which I have the honour of belonging, that this practice is confined to a rela­tively small number of its active members.”

 

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From an article, "Why I Oppose Vivisection", by John Makinson Fox, M.R.C.S. in the Animal's Friend, October 1895:

 

“The new scientists are always telling us what they have discovered, or are on the eve of discovering. Now, as a Medical Officer of Health to one of the lar­gest districts in England, I have no reason to think that there is anyone in the kingdom who has had more experience than I have had in dealing with infec­tious diseases among men and animals, and I affirm that I know of no discovery of any practical value which has assisted me in my official duties or in treating my patients. I have failed to see that the most useful science of pathology has advanced one single inch by means of vivisection. As I have always advocated, the proper school of pathology (that is, the science of disease) is the post mor­tem room, and the close observation of disease at the bedside of patients.

 

“I have been acquainted with the practice of vivisection for upwards of forty years. I well remember the experiments which I first witnessed, performed under skilful hands, but which were thought by a select audience of medical men to be cruel and without sense or use. Pigeons were shaved, and their brains frozen and twirled about in all directions. My next experience was with dogs in the la­boratory of a London hospital, where these defenceless creatures were cut about and injected with "stuffs" to their terrible pain and suffering. And after forty years - what is the result? I do not know that I have received one atom of benefit on behalf of my patients for all the cruelty which I witnessed. I maintain that no useful end has been attained by this practice, and that by far the larger number of experimental tortures are inflicted for no practical or useful purpose. They are academic, sensational, conjectural merely, and, in some cases, theatrical. Dr. Addison discovered a relationship between a certain discoloration of the skin and an affection of the suprarenal capsules (situated above the kidneys) without any assistance from vivisection. The writer of this letter had the honour to be Dr. Addison's clinical clerk when this discovery was matured in the post mortem room of Guy's Hospital, not on the vivisector's table. Nor is it clear that the connection existing between the disease known as myxoedema and atrophy (wasting away) of the thyroid gland (in the throat) owes anything to vivisection; though, after the suggestion had been made, it then became the fashion to ex­tirpate thyroid glands from all kinds of living animals.

 

“It is not by any such unnatural procedures that valuable medical discoveries in the interests of humanity have been made. What is wanted is the rare intel­ligence and foresight of the discoverer.”

 

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Dr. Charles Bell Taylor, M.D., F.R.C.S.E., Fellow of the Medical So­ciety, London, and late President Paris Medical Society, was the leading ocul­ist in Great Britain. In the September 1895 issue of the Animal' s Friend, he pub­lished a lengthy article, "Why I Oppose Vivisection", from which we excerpt:

 

“We are asked to believe that it is not cruel to torture animals, if such tortur­ing is done in the interests of science, in the interests of commerce, or if the scientific men or others "can give a rational account of what they do"; but such reasoning would warrant assassination or any other crime or atrocity. It would justify the murderer of President Carnot, and the man who skinned cats alive simply in order to preserve the gloss on their coats. We are told that chloroform, ether, or other anaesthetics are administered and that vivisected animals suffer very slightly or not at all, but this statement is not true.

 

“2486 experiments under licence were performed in this country alone in one year, upon animals who were not insensible - that is, without any anaes­thetic at all- and it is impossible to give anaesthetics in some of the most cruel of all the experiments. How is it possible to give chloroform, when chloroform would vitiate the result of the experiment, as in the most cruel operations which have been performed upon the livers of dogs, over and over again? How is it possible to give chloroform to dogs and other animals who are chased up and down a long corridor till they drop dead of fatigue? How is it possible to give chloroform to animals who are shut up in a tormenting machine and there sub­jected to every conceivable form of agony merely to ascertain how much actual pain, without serious lesion (destruction of tissue) it will take to kill them? How is it possible to give chloroform to a dog who is being slowly baked to death in an oven, who is being crushed in a machine by such an excess of atmospheric pressure that it becomes as stiff as a log and its brain runs like cream? How is it possible to give chloroform to a dog while subjected to such powerful elec­tric currents that its temperature rises to 112 degrees, and it dies, though packed in ice, after days of agony, literally seethed in its own vital fluids? How is it possible to give chloroform to a dog who is being drowned and brought round again and again, suffocated and allowed to recover, and then suffocated again; packed in ice until frozen stiff, and, if it survives, then packed again or used for other experiments; starved to death by absolute deprivation of food and water, or killed by the slow torture of inoculation with all sorts of filthy and abomin­able diseases? Again, what use can chloroform be to dogs, even if given at the start, when they are plunged into boiling water and kept for days afterwards; soaked in turpentine and then set fIre to; who survive after having their brains half sucked out; or who are skinned alive and kept alive as long as possible after­wards.

 

“We are assured that great discoveries have been made by vivisectors, but this statement is not in accordance with facts. For instance, there is not a word of truth in the oft-repeated assertion that Galvani discovered the proper­ties of electricity by vivisection. Galvani's discovery was due to accident and careful observation of the effects of electricity on a dead frog; vivisection has nothing whatever to do with it. It is not true that Harvey discovered the circu­lation of the blood by vivisection. Harvey's discovery was entirely due to his observation of the fact that the valves of the veins in the dead human body per­mitted the blood to flow only in one direction; vivisection had nothing what­ever to do with it. It is not true that Hunter was led to the adoption of his treat­ment for aneurism by experiments upon animals. Hunter was led to the adop­tion of his treatment solely by observation of the fact that the artery in close vi­cinity to the aneurism was frequently too diseased to bear a ligature, hence he thought it wise to place it further off. Vivisection had nothing whatever to do with it. It is not true that Pasteur has discovered a cure for hydrophobia. Pasteur does not cure hydrophobia; as the late Professor Peter has remarked, "he gives it", and it is a fact that the deaths from hydrophobia have increased both in France and in England ever since he adopted his supremely ridiculous system of ino­culating people with it. It is not true that Pasteur has discovered a cure for an­thrax. Pasteur does not cure anthrax, he gives it, and his system has been con­demned by the English, the German, and the Hungarian Scientific Commissions who have sat to consider it, while the loss to France is to be counted by millions ever since his system was adopted in that country. It is not true that Koch has discovered a cure for consumption; on the contrary his inoculations have lead to death from initial fever, and the infection of the whole system of patients who merely suffered from localized disease. It is not true that Sir James Simpson dis­covered the anaesthetic properties of chloroform by experiments on dogs: Sim­pson experimented upon himself. Chloroform is so fatal to dogs that if he had lried it first on these animals he would never have tried it on man. It is not true that Lister was led to the adoption of his antiseptic treatment of wounds by vi­visection. Antiseptics were used in the treatment of wounds long before his time, and his experiments were made upon the wounds, bruises and putrefying sores of patients in the hospitals of Edinburgh, Glasgow and London. It is not true that the great advances in medicine and surgery are due to experiments upon animals; they are due to the discovery of anaesthetics and to the use of antisep­tics; vivisection had nothing whatever to do with it. It is not true that we owe our knowledge of drugs to experiment" upon animals. The effect of drugs upon animals is so entirely different from their effect upon man that no safe conclu­sions can be drawn from such investigations. It is not true that Von Graefe dis­covered a cure for glaucoma by vlvlsection; his discovery was entirely the re­sult of clinical observation of hospital patients. Vivisection had nothing what­ ever to do with it. And it is not true, notwithstanding assertions to the contrary, that Ferrier has succeeded in localizing the functions of the brain by experiments on monkeys. Ferrier himself says: ‘Experiments on animals, even on apes, often lead to conclusions seriously at variance with the well-established facts of clini­cal and pathological observation.’ We are assured that it is impossible for science to advance unless experi­ments are made upon animals, but this statement is not true.”

 

-------------

 

Dr. E. Dudgeon: "I have been engaged for more than 50 years in studying the effects of me­ dicine as regards its use for simple and complicated cases of illness. I have been fed with many reports of experiments carried out on all kinds of animals, but I can state with a clear conscience that those reports have never given me a single hint that would have been of significance regarding the use of medical remedies. " (Animal's Friend. London, August 1895, p. 231)

 

Dr. Edward Haughton (1895): "I would shrink with horror from accustoming large classes of young men to the sight of animals under vivisection. Science would gain nothing, and the world would have a set of young devils let loose upon it."

 

Dr. E. Haughton: "Hygiene is not consistent with the injection of poison into the body...The occurrence of some piece of scientific foolishness may appear insignificant, for what one of us is always wise? But the constant creation of a disease through a system whose purpose is to cultivate it is no small matter, it is also no small mat­ter when market criers are engaged in turning the heads of those who have the fine task of working for the good of all mankind..." (Animals' Friend, London, July 1895, page 215)

 

Dr. med. Franz Hartmann, Hallein: "Vivisection and sex murder stand on one and the same level, they are the product of spiritual blindness and moral depravity...The alleged objective of working for the good of mankind is a lie. I know that most vivisectors are seek­ing more to satisfy their vanity than their scientific curiosity. Each of them hopes somehow to make some discovery which, even if it is worthless, is nevertheless a discovery with which one can boast before everyone and throw sand into the eyes of the stupid." (From a letter to Ludwig Fliegel, dated April 22, 1895)

 

Dr. Guardia: "The craze for operating leads many surgeons to perform foolhardy, haz­ardous and murderous operations, and it is high time to put an end to these ex­cessive operations. Too much experimental surgery is carried out in the hospi­tals. You wouldn't believe the extent to which the habit of vivisecting influen­ces all of today's operating practice." (System der Chirurgie)

 

Dr. Davies: "It is pure nonsense to say that we would not make any advance without vi­visection. We would already have got much further without it." (Letter to Miss Frances Power Cobbe, 1894)

 

Dr. G. Herring: "I would only agree to an experiment on a living animal on one single condition, namely, that the experimenter first carried out the planned experiment on his own body. Then we would see who the true friends of mankind are, and who are only feigning to be such. I believe there would be precious few of the former! " (Homeopathic World, July 2,1894)

 

Prof. Dr. Schweninger: "...We need doctors who have humane feelings and are not brutalized by the constant torture of animals; who carry on their profession humanely and are not cramped and confined by scientific blinkers..." (Hygieia. May 15, 1894)

 

From letters to the Anti-Vivisection Society in Zurich: Dr. med. Hauser, (letter dated May 13, 1894):

 

"New experiments and cruelties to animals are emerging which better serve the purpose of ambition than that of helping suffering mankind; thousands of poor animals are tormented in experiments the results of which were already es­tablished long ago, but which are carried out repeatedly for demonstration pur­poses or by unqualified students so as to convince oneself once again that they are correct. The public is too little aware of what is done under the name of vi­visection, and of the dreadful way in which great masses of animals are tor­mented with the knife, poison, heat and cold, often for weeks on end, until they perish, and it is therefore necessary to inform them about this inhuman animal cruelty by means of speeches, pamphlets and articles in newspapers...The cruelty to animals which the animal welfare society investigates year by year, and seeks to have punished, is only child's play compared with the most brutal and unbounded cruelties perpetrated by the vivisectors, and it is therefore also certainly its duty to support a campaign against vivisection in every way and as effectively as possible."

 

Dr. A. Wall: "Has vivisection eased a single pain, saved one human life? My answer is a decisive No. The danger of vivisection rests not only in false practice, it also rests in the ever-growing view that Man is the real animal on which experiments must be made." (Zoophilist, December 1893)

 

“Page 204 of the Royal Commission Report contains the description of an experiment carried out under curare (the most cruel of all poisons, which al­though it paralyses every movement, only raises sensitivity). Used as the ex­perimental animal was a small obedient dog. A few minutes after the curare was injected under its skin, the animal tottered on its four legs, staggered around on the tips of its paws until it dropped to the ground, foaming at the mouth and with much water flowing from its eyes. Its windpipe was cut open and the pipe of a bellows inserted, this being attached to a gas-pump for artificial respiration. The throat, face and front paws were cut out at the sides, as well as the interior of the belly, and the sciatic nerve and other nerves exposed and galvanically stimu­lated. No anaesthetic was applied; the agony of the poor creature must have been dreadful. Despite this the torture was continued for ten hours, until the ex­perimenters went home. But they did not release the experimental animal; it wasn't even put to sleep. They deliberately left it lying there, helpless and mu­tilated, so that the tests could be continued the next day without any loss of time. But the following day the poor dog was dead. The artificial respiration machine was still working. (I have been told that these machines are often working day and night in the laboratories, but it was pumping the air in and out of a dead body.)”   (From a speech delivered at the Medical and Surgical Society in Nottingham, 1892, and at an Anti-Vivisection Conference in 1893)

 

Dr. John H. Clarke, London (from a discourse delivered at the Church Congress in Folkestone on October 6, 1892): "I hope that our nation will cleanse itself of this meanest of all crimes (vi­

visection)."

 

In the Birmingham Daily Post (Oct 4, 1892), Lawson Tait wrote: "Some few years ago I began to deal with one of the most dreadful ca­lamities to which humanity is subject by means of an operation which had been scientifically proposed nearly 200 years ago. I mean ectopic gestation (extrau­terine gestation). The rationale of the proposed operation was fully explained about 50 years ago, but the whole physiology of the normal process, and the pa­thology of the perverted one, were obscured and misrepresented by a French physiologist's experiments on rabbits and dogs. I went outside the experimen­talists' conclusions, went back to the true science of the old pathologist and of the surgeons, and performed the operation in scores of cases with almost uni­form success. My example was immediately followed throughout the world, and during the last five or six years hundreds, if not thousands of women's lives have been saved, whilst for nearly forty years the simple road to this gigantic success was closed by the folly of a vivisector."

 

Surgeon-General Sir Charles Alexander Gordon, K.C.B. (1892): (Formerly Honorary Physician to the Queen): "I hold that the practice of performing experiments upon the lower animals with a view to benefiting humanity, is fallacious."

 

Dr. Charles Gordeon, senior military physician, personal physician to Queen Victoria, in a speech at Westminster Palace Hotel on June 22, 1892: "I am of the opinion that the practice of carrying out animal experiments for the purpose of helping man is misleading...Performing experiments on a certain species of animal so as to benefit another species of living being defies logic."

 

Prof. Theophilus Parvin, M.D. of Jefferson Medical College, Philadel­phia, Pa., U.S.A., President of the Academy (annual address to the American Medical Academy, Washington, May 4,1891):

 

"About two years ago Herbert Spencer (the English philosopher) urged the natural scientist Huxley to have a general practitioner sent for in the event of an illness, one who was familiar with experimental methods of treatment; but Hux­ley retorted 'Heaven protect me from falling into the hands of that doctor! If I were to think that any of my writings could offer the slightest excuse for the killings for which this man is responsible, that would be really painful to me...'

 

"If we take into account that: medicaments do not function the same way in humans as in animals; they can not possibly be dosed appropriately for such a function; animals differ from one another in their sensitivity to medicaments; these animals do not suffer from the illness for which the medicaments are intended in humans; in fact, in most of the experiments they are simply not ill, then it is plain that there are sources of error inherent in the method itself, and that false con­clusions can be drawn from it

 

"I believe that undue importance is attached to bacteriology in medical study and instruction... Cannot the same also be said about vivisection? In my opinion the value of this method of research with regard to surgery and thera­peutics has been exaggerated. As far as the former is concerned, we shall talk here of abdominal and brain surgery. If Lawson Tait's statement is recognised as correct - and no one can doubt his competence and skill - vivisection has harmed and not assisted abdominal surgery...

 

“Those who are involved in brain surgery refer here and there to the great advantages of the vivisection methods in localizing brain activity. Dr. Seguin, however, whose competence can be taken as read, made the following state­ment in connection with a treatise by Horsley: 'The author seems to assume that our progress in localizing the brain functions depends primarily on experiments. Here, too, we have to take a different opinion. Observation at the sick-bed and pathological facts (Broca for learning) came first; only a long time after fol­lowed the animal experiments with detailed evidence obtained by Hitzig, Fer­rier and others. The firmly-established facts upon which we base our daily 10­cational diagnoses were patiently accumulated by pathologists and would today be sufficient to support the teaching of brain localization even if not one single animal brain had been touched. In the field of the visual centre, incidentally, human pathological facts have overturned the result of animal experiments (per­rier's angular-gyrus centre), so that the contradictory results obtained by Munk and Goltz are immaterial to us as far as practical purposes are concerned. One can state with certainty that every single one of the so-called "centrea" in the human brain has been determined by means of evidence obtained through the examination of corpses, quite independently of facts derived from experimen­tation...The first centre (speech) and the last (vision) were discovered through clinical and pathological studies.

 

“Sometimes I fear that the anaesthetisation of the laboratory animals often takes place only in name rather than in reality. Were it otherwise, why so many and varied pieces of equipment in order to shackle the animal during the experi­ments? This equipment is not used for surgical operations on human beings, whose immobility is ensured by means of deep anaesthesia."

 

----------------

 

Prof. Theophilus Parvin, M.D., LLD. (1891): Jefferson Medical College; Ex President American Academy of Medicine: "...there are others who seem, seeking useless knowledge, to be blind to the writhing agony and deaf to the cry of pain of their victims, and who have been guilty of the most damnable cruelties, without the denunciation by the pub­lic and the profession that their wickedness deserves and demands. These crimi­nals are not confined to Germany or France, to England or Italy, but may be found in our own country."

 

Prof. Dr. med. Beclard, Paris: "The experiments performed on animals cannot have the same value as pa­thological observations carried out on humans, due to the disturbances caused to the blood circulation and to the entire organism by the mutilations." (From Elementary Study of Physiology, page 219)

 

Dr. med. Alt: "Many laymen believe, because the truth is naturally concealed from them, that the vivisectors are by the nature of their calling not totally brutal, and that, they do not torture the animals. But we must categorically refute this...No per­son - with the exception of the vivisectors themselves - can imagine the sorts of torture machinery that the various vivisectors have invented and constructed for their purposes. In the Middle Age frightful experiments were carried out in order to secure the confession of real or supposed criminals. But they were nothing in comparison with the truly hellish machines (for one cannot call them any­thing else) which have been dreamed up and invented to torture a living being by vivisectors, in other words by people who have spent years at university and of whom one is entitled to demand the highest level of moral education." (From Die Greuel der vollkommen nutzlosen Vivisektionen - "The atrocity of totally useless vivisection", page 11)

 

Dr. William Blackwood: "I dispute that our modem knowledge of brain disease is in any way attri­butable to the work of the vivisectors, and would say that the vivisectors are less able to deal with such diseases than ordinary intelligent doctors...The founda­tion on which vivisection is based is false, and its conclusions cannot possibly be correct." (From a speech delivered in Philadelphia, D.S.A. in 1885)

 

Dr. Owen J. Wister, said in 1885: "While vivisection has led practitioners into many errors, it has also led them away from other methods of investigation, the results of which are far less de­lusive - the microscope, post-mortem examinations, organic chemistry, and, above all, observation and thought."

 

Dr. Albert Leffingwell, U.S.A.:

 

"The learned vivisectors carry on their gruesome trade without thought and conscience, allegedly 'for the good of Mankind and Science'. One conclusion contradicts the other conclusion, one experiment contradicts the other experi­ment. Do we want to erect the Tower of Knowledge on that foundation? Vivi­section is in no way a scientific method of research, because it lacks reliability.

 

“What on earth is the use to us of all these abominable things? Have the vivisection experiments of the past quarter of a century produced such marked advances in medicine that we have some clear evidence of these in a declining death-rate for some particular disease? Can one name one single disease that was resistant to all methods of healing 30 years ago, but for which today's vi­visection-based science offers hope of a cure? The famous vivisector Claude Bemard already answered prophetically: 'Our hands are empty, but our mouth is full of promises for the future.' The countless and terrible experiments of all the many vivisectors have achieved nothing for the art of healing. That is proved by the death-rate statistics." (Extract from a speech, published in Lippincott's Magazine, 1884)

 

The name of Lawson Tait, the gynecologist from Birmingham, looms larger than any other in the period which is considered the age of giants in sur­gical progress. Several of the present-day surgical techniques originate from him. (See: Slaughter of the Innocent, p. 174-176.) In the Birmingham Daily Post, Dec. 12, 1884, he wrote:

 

"Like every other member of my profession, I was brought up in the belief that almost all of our most valued means of saving life and diminishing suffer­ing had been obtained from experiments on the lower animals. I now know that nothing of the sort is true concerning the art of surgery; and not only do I not believe that vivisection has helped the surgeon one bit, but I know that it has often led him astray."

 

The Birmingham Philosophical Society's Basic Transactions include the very long paper that Lawson Tait read to his colleagues on April 20, 1882, and irrefutably denounce vivisection on every count. The paper comprises many pages. Here are a few excerpts, by way of example:

 

"I dismiss at once the employment of experiments on living animals for the purpose of mere instruction as absolutely unnecessary, and to be put an end to by legislation without any kind of reserve whatever..."

 

And further on:

 

"It must be perfectly clear that to answer all these questions specific instan­ces must be given, and that they must be analyzed historically with great care. This has already been done in many instances, and I am bound to say, that in every case known to me, there is the utter disestablishment of the claims of vi­visection...As a method of research it has constantly led those who have employed it into altogether erroneous conclusions, and the records teem with instances in which not only have animals fruitlessly been sacrificed, but human lives have been added to the list of victims by reason of its false light."

 

Resolution passed by the Congress of the Veterinary Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, London, 1881:

 

"The veterinary surgeons of this country generally accept that, both in the­ory and in practice, all aspects of their profession can be taught and studied on the basis of the dead body, and it is with deep regret that they learn that the stu­dents on the Continent of Europe carry out practical experiments on living ani­mals during their studies. This national congress is firmly convinced that such operations are just as cruel as they are unnecessary for science and for techni­cal skill."

 

Charles Clay, M.D., according to the (British) Dictionary of National Bio­graphy (Supplement 11, p. 30) "may fairly be described as the father of ovario­tomy as far as Europe is concerned... He was also the first (1843) to employ drainage in abdominal surgery, and he brought into use the term 'ovariotomy'...President of the Manchester Medical Society and original member of the Ob­stetrical Society of London, he declared, as reported by the London Times (July 31,1880):

 

"As a surgeon, I have performed a very large number of operations, but I do not owe a particle of my knowledge or skill to vivisection. I defy any mem­ber of my profession to prove that vivisection has been of the slightest use to the progress of medical science and therapeutics."

 

And this had been clearly predicted by Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), the father of modern neurology: "Experiments on animals designed to establish the localization of cerebral functions can teach us at best the topography of that particular species - never the topography of man," said Charcot. Even Claude Bernard had realized that.

 

At the end of the nineteenth century wrote Dr. Anna Kingsford, Britain's first woman doctor: "The spiritual malady that rages in the soul of the vivisector is in itself suf­ficient to render him incapable of acquiring the highest and best knowledge. He finds it easier to propagate and multiply disease than to discover the secret of health. Seeking for the germs of life, he invents only new methods of death."

 

Dr. W. Gimson, M.R.C.S.: "The experiments performed on animals in order to determine the effects of medicaments offer a very insecure basis for drawing conclusions as to the ef­fects on humans. The results of these experiments should convince the greatest doubter that they are a source of disappointment for the experimenter." (From Vivisection and Experiments on Living Animals, London 1879, page 86)

 

Of Claude Bernard's activity, his former assistant, Dr. George Hoggan, wrote in his now famous letter that appeared in The Morning Post on Feb. 1, 1875: "After four months' experience, I am of the opinion that not one of those experiments on animals was justified or necessary." And the Report of the Royal Commission of Enquiry, appointed in 1876 by Prime Minister Disraeli to inves­tigate vivisection, included a testimony by Dr. Arthur de Noe Walker, another British doctor who had worked in Bernard's laboratory. After describing one of Bernard's experiments to the Royal Commission, Walker said:

 

"I decline myself to criticize this horrible experiment. I feel too much con­tempt for the experimenter and disgust with the experiment. I would have de­prived that man of his position as a lecturer and teacher of physiology." (par. 4888)

 

Dr. Emanuel Klein, a German physiologist who taught at London's St. Bartholomew Hospital: "Except for teaching purposes I never use anesthetics...A man who con­ducts special research has no time, so to speak, for thinking what the animal will feel or suffer." (Royal Commission Report, 3538-3540)

 

Karl von Rokitansky, Professor of Pathological Anatomy at the Univer­sity of Vienna: "In an article which appeared in the Bremer Kurier (No. 206) of July 27, 1878, it is said of this famous scholar, described in Prof. Paget's Introduction to the History of Medicine as 'the real founder of modern pathological anatomy' that he could not bring himself to see how living rabbits were cut open, how liv­ing animals' muscles were exposed, and so forth. Only with the greatest revul­sion and heavy heart did he witness those vivisection operations which he was unable to prevent. He avoided it whenever this was possible. During his life­time he dissected 30,000 corpses, but never performed a single animal experi­ment. He said: 'There are other methods of research than the experiment The history of evolution, pathological anatomy and clinical observation provide a mass of facts which are of more value than a thousand experiments." (Kritische Beitraege zur Physiologie und Pathologie. 1875)

 

Josef Hamernik, M.D., Professor of the University of Prague, Bohemia: "Some years since, some terrible cases came to light, which were falsely registered as an epidemic (epidemic of vaccino-syphilis), and which were caused by one vaccinator infecting a whole district with syphilis by vaccina­tion! In the beginning of this year a similar misfortune occurred in the neighbour­hood of Melnik, when a number of children in several districts got syphilis by vaccination, and several died of it" (Anti-Vaccinator, March 15, 1873)

 

Prof. Dr. Joseph Hyrtl, famous anatomist, professor at Vienna University:

 

"But these heartless and unfeeling bloodthirsty experimenters are joined by many much more dangerous people, who rehearse outrageous operations on do­zens of dogs with the intention - if the animals do not immediately die in their hands - of also carrying them out at the next opportunity on wretched human beings suffering from tuberculosis or cancer. The medical journals have pub­lished hair-raising reports on this subject, and learned societies have provided a platform for lectures on these atrocities without expressing their indignation at the surgical killings which are becoming more and more common in our pres­ent age." (From Lehrbuch der Anatomie des Menschen - "Textbook of Human Anat­omy", 15th and 20th edition)

 

Moreover, the anguish and sufferings of the animals, deprived of their natu­ral habitat or habitual surroundings, terrorized by what they see in the labora­tories and the brutalities they are subjected to, alter their mental balance and or­ganic reactions to such an extent that 'any' result is a priori valueless. The la­boratory animal is a monster, made so by the experimenters. Physically and mentally it has very little in common with a normal animal, and much less with man.

 

As even Claude Bernard (1813-1878), founder of the modem viviectionist method, wrote in his Physiologie operatoire (p. 152): "The experimental animal is never in a normal state. The normal state is merely a supposition, an assumption." (Une pure conception de l' esprit.)

 

Dr. Charles Bell, M.D., F.R.C.S. (1824): "The public would not tolerate vivisection for a day if they did not believe that the animals were rendered insensible, and the plain fact is that they are not rendered insensible...It is the public who are anaesthetised...No good ever came out of vivisection since the world began, and in my opinion, no good ever can..."

 

In his fundamental book, representing "a republication of the papers de­livered to the Royal Society on the subject of nerves". Charles Bell wrote: "Experiments have never been the means for discovery; and a survey of what has been attempted in recent years in physiology will prove that the open­ing of living animals has done more to perpetuate error than to confirm the just views taken from the study of anatomy and natural motions." (An Exposition of The Natural System of the Nerves of the Human Body, London, 1824, p.337)

 

 

RANDOM ADDITIONS

 

More Statements by Physicians and Surgeons

Let no one confuse the kindly physicians who are turned to in times of physi­cal suffering with hordes of so-called Research Workers who give their years to the laboratories. Some vivisection work is required from all medical students, but those whose natural tendencies (or what would better be called UN- natu­ral tendencies) do not hold them to the cruelty or curiosity to be sated in the la­boratory, desert it for what is termed "practice" and go into the world as hea­lers.

 

Mr. Charles Forward: "Quite apart from the unanswerable objections to vivisection on ethical grounds, we have always contended that, so far from contributing to human wel­fare by assisting the medical profession to heal the sick and relieve the suffer­ing, the tendency of vivisection has been to create a special profession with in­terests separate from those of the regular medical practitioner and directly con­flicting with the interests of the general public."

 

The British Medical Journal: "The great surgeons of the past have not been vivisectors. Some of the most famous surgeons such as Bigelow and Lawson Tait, expressed their opposition to and detestation of vivisectional practices."

 

Charles Richet, M.D.: (A famous French vivisector): "I do not believe that a single experimenter says to himself when he gives curare to a rabbit or cuts the spinal cord of a dog, 'Here is an experiment which will relieve or cure the disease of some men.' No, he does not think that. He says to himself, 'I will clear up an obscure point. I will seek out a new fact.'"

 

William James, M.D., LLD.: "Against any regulation whatever various medical and scientific defenders of vivisection protest. Their invariable contention, implied or expressed, is that it is no one's business what happens to an animal, so long as the individual who is handling it can plead that to increase science is his aim. The contention seems to me to flatly contradict the best conscience of our time. The rights of the helpless, even though they be brutes, must be protected by those who have superior power."

 

"The medical and scientific men who time and time again have raised their voices in opposition to all legal projects of regulation, know as well as anyone else does the unspeakable possibilities of callousness, wantonness, and mean­ness of human nature."

 

Letters from doctors to the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection and other societies:

 

Dr. James Gilroy, M.B., etc.: "I personally have always expressly disapproved of vivisection. As a stu­dent and as a practising doctor with nearly twenty years of experience I have at no time been able to see on what grounds I should alter my opposition to a method which we scientists should avoid."

 

Dr. D. Arthur Hughes, Member of the Royal Society of Medicine: "I have been an opponent of vivisection throughout my life, and as far as I know vivisection has not helped me in the slightest during my career as a doc­tor."

 

Dr. John McLachlan, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons: "As far as I can recognise, nothing good has so far been achieved through vivisection, either for humans or for other beings; and this is also not to be ex­pected. The country is full of the vivisectionists' empty and bombastic brag­gings about what they have achieved and will achieve in the future."

 

Dr. John Bowie, L.R.C.P., etc.: "For the medical profession vivisection has been a curse, as well as a hind­rance instead of an aid towards increasing our know ledge. "

 

Dr. Augustus Brown, M.R.C.S.: "In answer to your question, what I think and feel about vivisection, I can only reply that I am totally opposed to it, because I consider vivisection very cruel and unnecessary."

 

Mr. James Horsley, Bachelor of Medicine, B. S. Durham: "... Vivisection, and all that goes with it, has been of no use to mankind and can never be of use to it. The effects of vivisection on the vivisectors are as ter­rible as the effects on those who are destroyed by it I confidently look forward to the day when vivisection is totally abolished."

 

Dr. Edward Berdoe, M.R.C.S., M.R.C.P.: "I have witnessed the rise and fall of Pasteur's quackery, the failures of Koch's tuberculin and the diphtheria serum (antitoxin). Every day I become in­creasingly convinced that vivisection, which is based on cruelty, supported by lies and practised out of self-interest, is not a suitable method for furthering the merciful art of healing. It can also not be shown that any malady can be healed by a method arrived at through vivisection."

 

Dr. Alien Duke: "I do not believe that vivisection has increased our knowledge as far as the healing of disease is concerned."

 

Dr. Frederick A. Floyer, B.A., Bachelor of Medicine (Cambridge), M.R.C.S.: "I am certain that modem experimental medicine is leading us farther away from the truth, and I have already written and published a good deal to this ef­fect..."

 

Dr. A. Stoddard Kennedy, L.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.: "I have long since been a strong opponent of vivisection as it is an insane, superficial and unscientific way of fighting illness. Vivisection is absolutely un­ necessary and should be abolished."

 

Dr. E. J. H. Midwinter, L.R.C.P.S. (London Hospital): "After more than 30 years of experience in hospitals and in general prac­tice I cannot see that anything useful has been achieved through inhuman vivi­section, or that it has any beneficial influence on human life."

 

Dr. Henry Love, Bachelor of Medicine: "55 years of observation beside the sick-bed form the basis of my views. Sixty years ago, during my student days, I never saw a vivisection, but in my practice I have tested certain vaccines and sera, without, however, discovering any reasonable grounds for continuing such a form of treatment. I do not be­lieve that the orthodox medical theory, according to which a certain bacillus is the sole specific cause of a given disease, has any true basis."

 

Dr. F. M. Cann, M.R.C.S.: "How is it to be presumed that men and women, by means of cutting open and otherwise mutilating living animals, even including the removal of various organs, and by manufacturing serums in laboratories, can contribute anything at all worthwhile to saving life or treating diseases?"

 

Dr. S. A. Richards, M.R.C.P., M.R.C.S.: "More pain is inflicted on the animals than the law-makers realize. Giving chloroform during the operation does not prevent the subsequent pains from wounds caused by the knife, and it is not able to do so."

 

Dr. F. E. Vernede, M.R.C.S.: "I am pleased to inform you that a steadily growing number of members of the medical profession are entirely of the opinion that vivisection experiments on animals have not only led to mistakes in medical practice, but are absolute­ly misleading in their results."

 

Dr. C. Muthu, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.: "Artificial experiments on animals under artificial conditions cannot poss­ibly reproduce what happens to an animal in natural conditions. Even if it were possible to perform experiments on animals under natural conditions, how can one reasonably deduce that the results obtained could also be applied to human beings?"

 

Dr. F. J. F. Rooke, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., etc.: "I believe that very few doctors know what goes on under the name of re­search, otherwise we would hear more protests."

 

Dr. J. H. Deane, L.R.C.P., L.R.C.S., Edin.: "After close observation over the past 30 years I believe that vivisection has done nothing to advance the healing of disease. But it has done damage by di­verting the doctors away from the observation of disease. I do not believe that it has in any way prolonged life or reduced the suffering of mankind."

 

Dr. Francis Arnold, Bachelor of Medicine, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, etc.: "I believe that medicine and surgery have gained nothing through vivisec­tion. There is not one single 'triumph of vivisection' - such as the serum treat­ment of diphtheria, the Pasteur vaccination against anthrax and rabies, and so forth - the usefulness of which has not been energetically disputed even by emi­nent doctors and surgeons who are themselves advocates of vivisection."

 

Dr. Med. Max Bachem, Frankfurt am Main: "The fight against vivisection is a matter of what is right and of moral evol­ution, an ethical requirement, and as such a question for the entire people."

 

Dr. Med. Hoist, Denmark: "The claim that vivisection is a necessary means of training for the doctor and surgeon I must certainly deny from my thirty years of practice as a doctor. "

 

Dr. F. H. Tedd, Cleveland, Ohio: "I am anxiously concerned to help put an end to the useless, ghastly animal cruelties and tortures carried out in medical faculties and large hospitals. My experience over 40 long years of study, observation and medical practice teaches me that nothing of any practical worth that prolongs life or avoids suffering has been discovered by animal experiments. Carrying them out has, rather, hard­ened certain doctors into risking fresh experiments on humans in order to satis­fy their morbid curiosity."

 

Dr. R. N. Forster, Chicago:         "In assuming the office of President of this Society (Illinois Anti- Vivisec­tion Society), I consider it important at the outset to have a clear understanding with my members. It seems to be generally believed that doctors unanimously approve of and defend vivisection, which is no straightforward barbarity, but a reversal of scientific understanding..."

 

Letters to the "Internationaler Verein zur Bekaempfung der wissenschaf­tlichen Tierfolter" (International Association against Scientific Animal Tor­ture), Dresden:

 

Dr. med. Richard Wolf, Breslau: "Anyone who has stood a lot at the sick-bed and tried to observe his pa­tients humanely and at the same time scientifically, knows what value he can attach to the physiological experiments and their results. It is simply pathetic how everything that we have learned in the laboratory lets us down. It would be like carrying coals to Newcastle if I were to waste another word on the 'value' of animal experiments... "

 

Dr. med. Boehm, Friedrichroda in Th.: "...on top of this there is the fact that vivisection is perfectly unnecessary; for all the results that we obtain via this cruel means are available to us through surgery with its great forward strides: when operating, we see all the organs functioning, and not just in the body of an animal, but in the living human being himself."

 

Dr. med. H. v.d. Woemitz: "The vivisector...whose madness has been the fashion in 'infallible' science for decades past (and who knows for how much longer), operates with­in his field as a dangerous character, dangerous not only for the poor animals but also for our entire human race. The proof is there, and is generally known. In future times vivisection will be a subject only for the historian, and many a future lawyer and doctor will then be able to prepare his doctoral thesis on the subject: 'Witch-burning, flagellation, inquisition and vivisection seen as mass psychoses'. May that time come soon!"

 

Replies to a questionnaire from the "International Anti-Vivisection League", 90 rue Augustin Delporte, Brussels:

 

Dr. Vandenbossche, physician, Charleroi: “I am opposed to vivisection, it should be totally prohibited, because it is of no use and immoral..."

 

Dr. De Broeux, physician, Brussels: "In my opinion vivisection should be discarded, for it is useless and cruel. The use of any animal of any species as an object for experimentation is indefen­sible. "

 

Dr. Hirard, physician, Antwerp: "I reject vivisection, which is pointless and often serves stupid purposes. We should declare a ruthless war against vivisection."

 

Dr. E. Honnez, physician, Binche: "I totally disapprove of vivisection as an experimental method. It should be abolished, because other methods are available."

 

Dr. Lecomte, senior physician, Ham s. Heure: "I reject vivisection because it is a useless piece of cruelty and achieves nothing for science."

 

Dr. Duvivier, Mons, Head of Department at the Civil Hospital, professor at the Maternity Hospital: "I am a resolute opponent for the advancement of medicine, and also be­cause it is immoral due to its undisputed cruelty."

 

Dr. de Lange, physician, Brussels: "I reject and condemn vivisection, because it is useless to the advancement of medicine and offends morality."

 

Professor Albert Covin: "What have we learned (from animal experiments)? As far as I am concerned, I have never vivisected, but I can assure you that my therapeutical studies are none the worse for that fact."

 

Dr. Deswatine, physician, Paris: "Vivisection should be prohibited among all civilised peoples and those who practice it should be severely punished. It is a barbaric practice, cruel, ir­rational and unnecessary, from whatever standpoint one looks at it, from the physiological, the practical, the medical or the surgical, as well as from the ther­apeutical and toxicological. One cannot protest strongly enough against these dreadful and disgusting experiments...The vivisectors bring dishonour on us, and bring shame on Science."

 

Dr. A. M. D. Andreux, Paris, public health engineer, health superintend­ent, Pon St. Vincent: "As far as my opinion of vivisection is concerned, I have no wish to con­ceal the fact from you that I am a convinced opponent of it. I find it crude, and the doctors who call themselves intelligent, degrading. One will never achieve anything with experiments. It is shameful that our government and our times allow such things to continue."

 

Dr. Foveau de Courmelles, Paris, President of the International Society for External Medicine, medical adviser to the Education Department of the Le­gion of Honour, honoured by the French Academy of Medicine: "Both feeling and reason condemn vivisection. The only way to study physi­ology has already often been shown by both the doctors and the surgeons: it is by studying Man. But the terrible custom is to continue resorting to vivisection, this ancient procedure which has never produced a single success in 20 cen­turies. Valuable time which could have been used profitably for science in other ways has thereby been wasted. The evil, out-mooed, archaic and malevolent vi­visectionist thinking must be fought"

 

Dr. M. Petit, Brussels: "Vivisection should be done away with due to its immorality and futility. It is difficult to believe that the circulation and breathing in an injured organ­ism, whether anaesthetised or not, as well as the nervous reactions and so forth, are really functioning in their normal way."

 

Dr. Hiard, physician, Chenee (Belgium): "The cruel demonstration experiments on animals that are carried out in front of students are useless. They learn nothing from them, and stand guilty and bewildered before the bound and groaning animals. The greatest discoveries in medicine and surgery owe nothing to vivisection, which for many teachers and students has become a cruel sport rather than a necessity..."

 

Dr. GilIion, physician, Brussels: "I am a total opponent of vivisection. It must be abandoned, because it is of no use for advancing medicine...The animal experiments carried out before stu­dents are totally unnecessary. We don't need to make the journey to America in order to be sure that such a country exists"

 

Dr. Ots, Brussels, surgeon and gynaecologist: "I expressly declare the torments inflicted on the horses at veterinary col­leges to be unworthy of civilised mankind. That is no longer science, but sad­ism."

 

Dr. E. VllIers, Brussels: "I am not a supporter of vivisection. The study of medicines and their ef­fects on the organism produces results which are at variance with each other ac­cording to whether one studies on humans or on animals. The experiments car­ried out before students are pointless and barbaric demonstrations which only         lead to wretched results. "

 

Dr. Albert Salivas, physician, Avon, France: "My opinion of vivisection? Here it is, in a nutshell: it is already repulsive in itself, but has it - viewed from the medical standpoint - ever performed the, service of producing even one single piece of genuine and useful information? - No, a hundred times no! And precisely for that reason I am and remain relent­lessly opposed to it."

 

Dr. Roche, member of the Paris Academy: "Don't you see every day that vivisection's 'sure results' of the previous year are proved wrong by the next year's 'undisputable results'? These ex­periments lead to false conclusions, fill heads with doubts, litter the field of Science with contradictions and wreckage, and these alone are not in the posi­tion to produce anything whatever."

 

Dr. de Burignae de Formel, physician, Limoges: "I have great pleasure in placing my name. alongside those who protest against the inhuman and unnecessary atrocity and cruelty of vivisection..."

 

Dr. Henry Boueher, physician, Paris: "The reduction of vivisection is worthless and is nothing but a trap. Only its total abolition can satisfy the demands of morality, science and humanity. Vivisection is useless for Science, and dangerous for Mankind. "

 

Dr. Mauriee Laurent, physician, Paris: "I support the total abolition of vivisection with my entire heart and mind."

 

Dr. Daniel Makree, physician, Leuz, France, former senior physician at the Women's Hospital: "I am...an advocate of the unconditional abolition of vi­visection. I find it loathsome, unworthy of our modern civilisation and useless for the advancement of science."

 

Dr. Lecomte, physician, Ham s. Seure: "I disapprove of vivisection, because it is an unnecessary cruelty and achieves nothing for science."

 

SWISS DOCTORS AGAINST VIVISECTION

 

Prof. Ignatz Hoppe, Professor Extraordinary of pharmacology, dietetics and general therapy at the University of Basle: "These dreadful facts are an expression of brutality and arrogance…and triumph disdain for the enquiring as well as knowledgeable sections of the pub­lic...The shameful facts point to: ignorance on the part of the supervisory auth­orities, rashness on the part of the teaching profession, inadequate maturity in the teachers and lack of planning in science..." (From a letter to Ernst von Weber)

 

Dr. med. E. Constantin, Senior Consultant at the Rothschild Hospital in Geneva: "Vivisection seems to us an expression of parasitism, i.e. the tendency to live at the expense of other creatures and even to cruelly torment them. It is the opposite of the ideal aspired to by the human spirit; vivisection is therefore in­ human and deserves to be condemned." (From the leaflet Appeal to the people's conscience)

 

Dr. med. D. Simonin, Lausanne: "I am for the abolition of vivisection because it is unnecessary for progress in medicine. Why do we have these animal experiments performed before stu­dents, when the conclusions drawn from them have long since been known and proven?

 

Dr. E. Grysanowski, Doctor of Medicine and of Philosophy: "...If the physiologists really imagine, and the doctors repeat it after them, that all the 'successes' of medicine are due to physiological experimentation, then they do not know what time of the day it is. For as far as the successes of medicine are concerned, it is virtually an open secret that the public is begin­ning to grow tired of these' successes' and is, in its scepticism and desperation, threatening to cast itself into the arms of the natural and public practitioners." (From his book Gesammelte antivivisektionistische Schriften, Miinster)

 

Prof. Dr. Strausse.Diirkbeim, famous anatomist (quoted in Uitsprakenover de Vivisectie by Koloman Kaiser): "Students gain absolutely no benefit from the dreadful vivisection method. All the functions of the organs of the animals held in this terrible condition are functioning so abnormally that one can learn nothing from them. But fanaticism is a contagious disease that is spreading; vivisectors are turning up everywhere. The torture is done purely out of curiosity, out of force of habit, out of addic­tion."

 

Dr. R. H. Perks: "...The attempt to obtain knowledge about physiological and pathological processes in man by vivisecting animals is completely unscientific. All such ex­periments have led to extremely confused, contradictory and consequently worthless results, in other words they have done far more to obscure knowledge than to illuminate it. That section of the public that has so far treated this matter with selfish apathy would do well to take cognizance of the fact of vivisection on animals..." (From the work Why I condemn vivisection)

 

Dr. Frederisk D. Dyster: "I am of the opinion that neither science nor the human race would suffer if the law were to step in and strongly forbid the endless repetition of merciless cruelties, for these merely perform the purpose of demonstrating truths which are already known and recognised." (British Medical Journal, No. 734, page 126)

 

Dr. Geo Macilwain, M.R.C.S.: "Vivisection is a deceptive method of research in medicine and should be abolished." (The R.S.P.CA. and the Royal Commission of Enquiry on Vivisection, Smith, Elder & co., page 165)

 

"In my opinion, as a result of vivisection, the highest aims to which a scien­tific mind can aspire, are desecrated by the most wretched and worthless ex­perimental methods." (Vivisection, page 139, Hatchards, London)

 

G. Fleming, veterinary surgeon: "The vivisector can very well be compared with an inquisitor, who seeks to unlock the secrets of Nature by means of the most horrifying and prolonged tor­ture of his victims, whereas the executioner and the butcher feel obliged to bring about as quick a death as possible...It is an undeniable fact that thousands of dogs, cats, horses and other animals have had to succumb to inhuman cruelties which only human ingenuity can dream up, without the results having been of any use to suffering mankind or improved or increased our knowledge; on the contrary, they have shattered the moral nature of mankind, and arrested or misled human knowledge...Vivisection is not necessary to the training of a ve­terinary surgeon." (From Vivisection, is it necessary? page 31 ff.)

 

Dr. med. E. G. Hammer: "We can point out the manner in which the ignorance and gullibility of the lay public is exploited. The surgeon chloroforms his patient The operation is short; when the pa­tient regains consciousness the surgical operation is over...The physiologist also anaesthetises his animal, but only in order to make it defenceless. Once it has been tied up and fixed in the apparatus, so that it is held immobile, the chloro­form bottle is put to one side, firstly because the anaesthesia is now no longer necessary, secondly because in most cases the nature of the exercise determines full consciousness to be necessary, and thirdly because there can be absolutely no question of keeping the animal anaesthetised for hours or days on end. But if the apparatus is not sufficient to ensure the total immobility of the animal (and unfortunately this is often the case), the animal is immobilised with curare (arrow poison), although the lungs, which are also immobolised, are kept active by means of artificial respiration, i.e. by pumping in air. These two complemen­tary operations (administration of curare and artificial breathing) naturally make the use of chloroform totally dispensable." (Extract from his paper Die Verteidiger des Vivisektion und das Laienpub­likum)

 

"... But the public is fed with bait so that it will bow tamely and passively before the High Priests of Science...It is self-evident that one can paralyse, poison and wound an animal, but this does not provide one with any typical patterns of illness...”

 

Dr. med. Jatros: "...Physiological experimentation is unreliable and fallacious, like all physiology. It lacks the necessary conclusiveness possessed by experimentation in physics...When one considers that vivisection is becoming commoner every day, that hundreds of the cruelest experiments are carried out, both secretly and pub­licly, by students and by professors day by day; that these experiments often last for hours and even days; that the animals which survive the experiment do not receive a merciful death but are kept for new experiments, and that the intrin­sic uncertainty of the results spurs the researchers with their belief in the al­mightiness of Science, to think up ever newer and ever more abominable ex­perimental procedures...one feels that one is dealing here with a moral mon­strosity the existence of which can only fail to be noticed by those who no longer, or not yet, distinguish between what is monstrous and what is normal..." (From his tract Die Vivisektion, ihr wissenschaftlicher Wert und ihre ethi­sche Berechtigung)

 

Dr. med. Nagel: "The parasites are harmless to anyone who builds up his body with pure nutrients and protects it from impure foreign substances, for it is only when a foul soil has previously been prepared in the human body that parasites afterwards take up lodging as the avenging enforcers of Nature's laws. Small children, when they bump into the edge of a table, push the blame from themselves onto the table, - and grown-up children are no cleverer when it comes to the teach­ing about epidemics. It is certain that the cheese must first be stale before the maggots find it tasty, and it is certain that the human body must have already got into a foul condition before the parasites move into it while it is still alive...The only ones to gain from such theories are those doctors who remain slyly si­lent about their patients' bad living habits, or even gloss over them, and like to persuade their patients that the illnesses have descended on them from above like secret monsters which only the doctors know how to get rid of." (In his tract: Die Vivisektion, heillose Irrwege der Wissenschaft)

 

Dr. med. Heusinger: "I gladly confirm the judgement of Prof. Dr. Clams: vivisection, painful operations and mutilations carried out on living animals, for the most part give just as dubious results in scientific research as does torture in the legal field." (Encyclopaedia of Medicine, page 228)

 

Dr. Malev-Kessels of the G. Brugman Sanatorium, Alsemberg (Belgium): "The useless and immoral practice of vivisection must be abolished. I wouldn't tolerate it under the control of a commission."

 

Dr. J. Pawels, Strombeek (Belgium): "The vivisections performed before students are useless and harmful. I have noticed that vivisection gave pleasure to certain students in whom the sadistic instinct had been slumbering."

 

Dr. med. J. Hellmann: "The vivisectors are professional torturers, whose hands are smeared with the blood of countless innocent creatures, slowly murdered in unspeakable tor­ment...May the animal protection societies be on guard, and not let elements join their ranks who only come in order to divide, and not to unify, wolves in sheep's clothing...Listen, whoever has ears to hear!" (From the tract Ein Memento jar den Berner und alle in seinen Fusstapfen wandelnden Tierschutzvereine. Dedicated by the authoress to the Society against Medical Animal Torture, Berne)

 

Dr. R. Bertbon, London: "When an instrument produces false or dubious results, one stops using it. But this is not the case where vivisection is concerned, even though it has led the physiologists to make grave errors, and led both physicians and surgeons into a false conception of disease which has always been the cause of an erro­neous therapy (treatment). How many investigations were carried out concerning the secretion of the gall-bladder, and how many animals were forced to endure unspeakable suffer­ing in the process? And all the resulting theories were incorrect. Legallois per­formed countless unsuccessful experiments in order to study the influence of the nervous system on the circulation of the blood, and drew the following con­clusion: ‘After many fruitless attempts to throw light on this dark question I had to give them up, not without regret at having sacrificed such a large number of animals and wasted so much time.’" (Die Gesundheit, Vienna, No. 4, 5th Year - "Why I fight Vivisection")

 

Warren Freeman, M.D.: "As it seems so very doubtful whether vivisection has lessened human suf­fering or not, I can only go in for a complete forbidding of the practice."

 

Dr. George M. Gould: Editor of American Magazine, late Editor of the Medical News: "The practices carried on by conceited jackanapes to prove over and over again already ascertained results, to minister to egotism, for didactic purposes, are not necessary and must be forbidden."

 

Dr. William Held, internationally famous Chicago physician: "Practice on dogs probably does make a good veterinarian, if that's the kind of practitioner you want for your family. Vivisection has done little for cancer, which in animals is not the same malignant condition found in man."

 

Prof. James E. Garretson, MD: "I am without words to express my horror of vivisection, though I have been a teacher of anatomy and surgery for 30 years. It serves no purpose that is not better served in other ways."

 

Gordon Latto, MB, Ch.B.: "I consider that vivisection is unscientific. The man or woman who carries out such cruel experimentation exhibits a mind that is out of touch with the great realities. May the day hasten when vivisection will be looked upon as a great tragedy enacted principally by an un-illumined medical profession." (From Rochester League, p. 100)

 

Bertrand P. Allinson, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.: "... Orthodox medicine condones ill-conduct and seeks to restore health without rectifying it. True health cannot be attained in this manner. Vivisection has no philosophy, no ethics, and no width of vision. It will, therefore, disappear in the course of time. "

 

R. T. Bowden, M.D., M.R.C.S., L.S.A.: "What guarantee have we that by trying to protect ourselves from one disease we are not lessening our power to resist attacks from other diseases? That this danger really exists is proved by vaccination, which was extensively employed for nearly a hundred years before it was discovered that vaccination was a frequent cause of fatal encephalitis."

 

Sir Alexander Cannon, M.D., D.P.M., M.A., Ph.D., F.R.S.A., etc.: "In regard to my opinion of experiments on living animals, I entirely con­cur with the views expressed by my old friend, Lord Moynihan, in one of his speeches, as follows: 'The material of the human body is neither the same, nor subject to the same influences, as that of animals nearest to man; similar functions are not wholly discharged by precisely similar mechanisms; the pressure of environments is not comparable in the two cases; and above all, the mind of man is infinitely complex in comparison with that of the most intelligent animals."

 

R. Fielding-Gould, M.A., M.D., M.R.C.P.: "... Is vivisection cruel? We have ample evidence without giving instances here, that vivisection experiments involve the most intense and prolonged suf­fering for countless animals every year. This suffering has been admitted by the Medical Research Council, and is evidenced by the publications of the vivisec­tors themselves...In spite of the power of mass opinion in the medical profession "to quell in­dependence of mind," there have been, and are, no few medical men of distinc­tion who have had the courage to publicly condemn the practice of vivisection, as not only unnecessary and useless but, more often than not, actually mislead­ing."

 

Richard H. K. Hope, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.: "My views are simplicity itself - Man's duty is to redeem, not to exploit the creature. Therefore, even if vivisection were necessary - which I profoundly doubt - it is of all sins the most cowardly, fraudulent, subhuman and un-Chris­tian."

 

Hector W. Jordan, M.B., B.S.: "In my opinion vivisection is both unnecessary and cruel. It is unnecessary because by now there is sufficient knowledge of the causes of disease and ill­health for us, if this were put into operation, to stamp out something like 80 per cent. of disease. It has already been shown in communities like that of the Hun­zas of N.W. India that correct feeding and living, combined with a sound agri­culture, produces in the race of people a sound and healthy physique. The com­moner diseases of civilisation are completely unknown in this tribe. In my opi­nion vivisection is also cruel because there is absolutely no justification for it."

 

H. P. Kilsby, L.L.M., L.R.C.PJ., L.R.C.S.I.: “It was the spiritual determination and courage of the gallant few who fi­nally obtained the end of child-slavery, bear-baiting, cock-fighting and other abominations. Very few, if anybody, today would attempt to question the right of such legislation; yet at the time almost all, including the Church, were part of the opposition. So it is with the antivivisection movement. Its success is not to be measured by numbers of members or current achievements, however im­portant these may be, but because it is the leaven in the heavy, so very stupid, but not really wicked, public conscience and understanding, which it will one day transform to spiritual sanity."

 

Gordon Latto, M.B., Ch.B.: "I consider that vivisection is unscientific...May the day hasten when vivi­section will be looked upon as a great tragedy enacted principally by an unillumined medical profession upon whose shoulders such great responsibilities and sacred privileges rest."

 

Edward Moore, M.B., B.Ch., B.A.O.: “The practice of vivisection tends to the acceptance of the thesis that dis­ease is something natural and unavoidable, and seeks to absolve man from a sense of personal responsibility towards himself through the production of ani­mal antidotes, sera, antibiotics, and the use of suppressant drugs, thereby en­couraging escapism. Therefore it is not only degrading to man, but distinctly detrimental to his progress towards advancement. It is not only cruel to animals sacrificed to vivisectional research, but ultimately cruel to man himself. On this account it is highly immoral, and should be suppressed by law."

 

Cyril V. Pink, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.: "Quite apart from ethics and cruelty, there is another reason for condemning vivisection. I am not at all impressed by the claims of the vivisectors. In rela­tion to time, money and brains put into their work, the return has been very poor indeed. I hold that, had the same amount of attention been given to the study of personal hygiene and the way of life of the patient, as a cause of disease, me­dicine would have advanced much farther."

 

L. C. Rowans-Robinson, M.B., Ch.B. (Edin.), Surg. Comdr., R.N. (retired.): "...It is therefore a relic of a barbarous age - the age of cock-fighting and bear-baiting - to say that animals have no rights. Various forms of cruelty to animals still continue and vivisection is still unchecked. The small creatures are sensitive and suffer much through these experiments, which are often of a re­volting character..."

 

Dorothy Shepherd, M.B., Ch.B. (Edin.): "Vaccines, serums, and immunisation are extremely crude methods of prevention of disease; they are based on the wrong conception that germs are the cause of disease, while the truth is that germs are but the result of disordered states in the body. It is only by correcting the soil that you can remove the predisposition to any disease; and this can only be done by natural methods on na­ture cure lines assisted by homeopathy. The modem methods of injecting huge doses of germs and their products into the human body are disastrous and long ­lasting in their effects."

 

G. N. W. Thomas, M.B., Dh.B., D.P.M., Barrister-at-Law: As one who has had a long and wide experience and specialised in more than one branch of medical science and in association with its leading men, I feel it my bounden duty to protest, with many other doctors (supported as we are by the considered judgment of various leaders of our profession), against the cruelties to the dumb creatures which are being perpetrated not only in this country but throughout the world in the name of medical science."

 

H. Fergie Woods, M.D.(Brux.), M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.: "I have studied the question of vivisection for thirty-five years and am con­vinced that experiments on living animals are leading medicine further and fur­ther from the real cure of the patient. I know of no instance of animal experi­ment that has been necessary for the advance of medical science, still less do I know of any animal experiment that could conceivably be necessary to save human life."

 

Dr. John Elliotson: "I cannot refrain from expressing my horror at the amount of torture which Dr. Brachet inflicted...A course of experimental physiology, in which brutes are agonized to exhibit facts already established, is a disgrace to the country which permits it."

 

Arnold, M.B., B.CH., M.R.C.S.: Sir Charles Bell, discoverer of the distinct function of the nerves, said: 'Ex­periments have never been the means of discovery.' George Granville Bantock, the noted gynecologist and obstetrician, stated that he had never seen an experi­ment; Prof. Lawson Tait, the foremost surgeon of his day, said that vivisection had often led him astray; it had not helped a bit. Sir Frederick Treves found his experiments on dogs unfitted him to deal with the human intestine - such was the difference between the human and the canine bowel.

 

"I believe that medicine and surgery have gained nothing by vivisection, that it is, considered as a method of research, utterly barren and misleading and bound in the nature of things always to be so. I am, however, not putting for­ward an opinion, but stating a fact, when I say that there is not one of the 'triumphs of vivisection' such as the antitoxin of diphtheria, Pasteurian inocu­lation for anthrax, hydrophobia, etc., whose utility is not strenuously denied by eminent physicians and surgeons, who are themselves supporters of vivisection. Vivisection has produced absolutely nothing whose utility to 'suffering hu­manity' is unanimously affirmed, even by the vivisection fraternity itself."

 

Frederick M. Collins, M.D.A.M.: (Dean First National University of Na­turopathy): "Vivisection is a disgrace to modem civilization. It is horrible to the ex­treme, the suffering the animals go through for the benefit of so-called Science. With all of the vivisection and experiments on dogs, scientists have not yet dis­covered one iota of proof where it has been of any benefit to relieve the suffer­ing human race of its ills. There are over 9,000 medical hospitals in the United States, containing over 1,857,000 beds, and 153,000 physicians and surgeons, and yet there is a daily sick population of over two million. Where has vivisection been of any service to the multitude?"

 

Robert Bell, M.D., M.B., F.R.C.S.: Vice-President International Cancer Research Society: "...It is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion in regard to cancer in man by experimenting on animals...The vivisection of dogs never has, and cannot possibly in any degree prove of the remotest value to those investigating the nature and treatment of cancer. The only method of research that has yielded satisfactory results has been asso­ciated with clinical observation, and I am convinced that experiments upon ani­mals have been the means of barring the way to progress."

 

E.H. Hawkes, M.D.: "I believe that vivisection blunts the moral sense to such a degree as to

become a strong force in the production of criminals."

 

Robert H. Perks, M.D., F.R.C.S.: "Only in a very small proportion of these operations is consciousness abol­ished by the use of efficient anaesthetics, such as chloroform and ether; and even when used the convenience of the operator and not the victim is mostly con­sidered, and the anaesthesia is often only partial in character; or the victim is "quieted" by the administration of drugs, such as morphia, chloral, curare and others - in no sense true anaesthetics - by which it is rendered more or less mus­cularly inert, but with sensibility still more or less intact. In a large number of cases prolonged and often terrible suffering has to be borne by the victims with­out possibility of relief from anaesthetics, viz those in which, although the in­itial operation has been performed under anaesthesia, the animal is, after surgi­cal mutilation or with exposed vital organs, reserved for further observation for days, weeks or even months, during which period it may suffer acutely; and also in all cases of inoculation of disease in which the subsequent sufferings are often equally great."

 

Prof. Schiff: "It is nothing but hypocrisy to wish to impose on oneself and others the belief that the curarised animal does not feel pain."

 

Prof. Virchow: "I do not for a moment suggest that vivisection does not cause pain and suffering. "

 

Dr. Borel: "I have vivisected birds, horses, frogs, rabbits and above all, dogs, and I can affirm that it is almost entirely impossible to employ anaesthetics upon animals so as to render them insensible."

 

Dr. Francois Dejardin, former chief surgeon of the hospitals of Liege, Bel­gium, wrote these revealing words: "Every sane person trembles at the sight and smell of blood, and resents the sacrilegious shudder that in these individuals is a sign of delight I have seen horrible looks in their eyes, exultant and proud of the spilled blood, and in which one could read the satisfaction for the advant­ages obtained: pecuniary advantages, or of renown."

 

Hamilton Fisk Biggar: (Late Physician to Mr. John D. Rockefeller): "The statements that are going out from time to time by vivisectors, that cruelties are not inflicted, are not regarded as ttuthful, for there are hundreds of instances where cruelties of the most atrocious kinds have been inflicted...

 

"Complete and conscientious anaesthesia is seldom ever attempted. The testimony before the Royal Commission was that it is the greatest delusion to suppose that while an animal lived and was being experimented on it was in­sensible from anaesthetics or narcotics.

 

"When anaesthetics interfere with due results, which is the case about half the time, no anaesthetics are given. That it is manifest that the practice of vivisection is wrong, far-reaching in its degeneracy, may be found in persons of very high position such as physiologists. It is because these savageries are committed by men who are respected and admired that they are so utterly dangerous to our national morality. It is ,evident that this hardening of the sympathetic nature of the physician is liable 'to react upon the sick under his charge in careless and unfeeling treatment. The same mental temperament and condition that delights in experiments on sub­human animals would prompt the practitioner to experiment on a patient"

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

A perusal of the multitude of medical opinions - merely samples of a much larger collection - presented in this book might seem encouraging to anti-vivi­sectionists, insofar as it shows them that the number of experts who consider animal experimentation not merely useless but dangerously misleading, and therefore to be abolished, is much greater than they expected; on the other hand it could also be discouraging, because it shows that whatever is being said today had been said before, all the dire predictions that were made by the really com­petent, honest and courageous doctors, such as Hadwen of Gloucester, over the last century have meanwhile come tragically true, whereas all the extravagant promises made by the laboratory barkers, the venial "science" magazines and the accredited "medical correspondents" have proved to be nothing but flatu­lent boasts. And yet there has been no abolition, nor even reduction, of the mis­leading animal experiments, there hasn't been the slightest improvement, nor even reappraisal, on an official level. There have only been new tricks devised to keep the public anesthetized and misinformed through the industry beholden health authorities and mass media; tricks not designed to halt the proliferation of ever new, profitable drugs and maladies, but to increase them.

 

Particularly damaging to the abolitionist cause are the "animal rights" or­ganisations - lately ballyhooed by the press - who are either headed by incom­petent people, however honest they be, or have been taken over by the indus­trial interests, or else have been founded by them outright. They deliberately restrict any discussion about vivisection to philosophy, thereby concealing the mass of medical evidence that cries out for a quick demise of vivisection. Only scientific arguments can effect changes on a political, i.e. practical level.

 

Thus the problem that not only the anti-vivisectionists but all of humanity face, if it is to survive, is how the invisible wall of censorship built up by the evil forces that rule us, can be broken. A way has to be found.

 

The problem does not lie so much with the evil forces as with humanity it­self, whose majority traditionally lack the mental faculties to recognize the truth until it is too late. As Albert Einstein put it in a letter he wrote on April 10, 1938 from Prince­ton to a Rumanian friend, Maurice Solovine: "A fashion rules each age, with­out most people being able to see the tyrants that rule them."

 

In this book CIVIS has tried to show some of the tyrants Einstein was refer­ring to.

 

 

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

 

Sir Charles Bell (1774-1824)

 

Scottish physician, surgeon, anatomist, and physiologist, to whom medical science owes "Bell's law" on motor and sensory nerves, which is of fundamen­tal importance to medical science and practice. At the time the aberration of vi­visection began taking root in its modem form, he declared that it could only be practiced and propagated by thoroughly calloused individuals, who couldn't be expected to understand the complexities of biology, because such individuals, he maintained, suffered from a severely limited intelligence - sensibility being a component, and certainly not the least, of human intelligence. "I don't think that men capable of such cruelties have the faculties to penetrate the mysteries of nature," was the way he put it, establishing a new "Bell's law" which has proved as right as his more celebrated one. He was among the many antivivi­sectionists of his time who distinguished themselves for services to humanity, as when he traveled to Europe expressly to tend to the wounded of the battle of Waterloo. His controversy with Frenchman Magendie, who performed a long series of incredibly cruel, sadistic experiments on animals just to "demonstrate" the rightness of the physiological law that Bell had already arrived at by the sheer exercise of intelligent observation and his unadulterated intellect stand described in Slaughter of the Innocent.

 

Irwin D. J. Bross

 

Dr. Bross writes as a scientist with more than 30 years experience in pub­lic health. In 1954, as head of research design and analysis at Sloan-Kettering, the world's biggest cancer research institute, he initiated and designed the con­trolled clinical trials that led to what was believed to be the first cures of child­hood leukemia. During the same period, Dr. Bross pioneered the first statistical studies of highway special accidents investigations which led to the use of seat belts and was also a major force behind the reduction in the tar and nicotine le­vels of cigarettes. In 1959, Dr. Bross was invited by the Director of the Roswell Park Memorial Institute of Cancer research in Buffalo, New York, to head its department of biostatistics. Bross' first project was to set up the first major con­trolled clinical trial of breast cancer chemoratherapy. Using modem sophisti­cated statistical techniques, Bross has elucidated the actual hazards of such con­troversial technologies as medical x-rays and toxic waste sites. He is now Presi­dent of Biomedical Metatechnology Inc. Dr. Bross is author or co-author of over 300 published articles and reports as well as three books, including his Scien­tific Strategies to Save Your Life, a statistical monograph published by Marcel Dekker, Inc. in 1980.

 

Vernon Coleman

 

A former family doctor and former editor of the British Clinical Journal, he is acknowledged as Britain's leading medical author and journalist. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, he has written over 30 books which have sold over 1,000,000 copies and been translated into 11 languages. He has written over 4,000 published articles and regularly contributes to Britain's leading newspapers, magazines, and medical journals. He has also been a broadcaster for nearly 20 years, and his programs have sold in 26 countries. In recent times, he has become known for his anti-vivisectionist views.

 

As his immense popularity demonstrates, Dr. Coleman has mastered better than any of his colleagues the fine art of denouncing the unbelievable cruelty inherent in all vivisectionist practice without revealing its negative aspects for human health, which are responsible for turning modem medicine into the main cause of disease today. Had he also conveyed that to his public, all main ve­hicles of information would instantly have been foreclosed to him.

 

Pietro Croce

 

Prof. P. Croce, M.D., is a luminary of medical science. Born in Dalmatia in 1920, he graduated at the University of Pisa, Italy. His international curriculum includes: Fulbright Scholarship, Research Department of the National Jewish Hospital of Colorado University in Denver, Research Department of Toledo, Ohio, Scholarship Ciudad Sanatorial of Tarrasa in Barcelona, Spain. Between 1952 and 1982, head of the laboratory of microbiological- pathological anat­omy and chemo-clinical analyses at the Hospital L. Sacco of Milan, Italy. He is a member of the College of American Pathologists and author of many medi­cal books, papers and articles. Currently he is active in a laboratory at Vicenza, Northern Italy, doing medical analyses.

 

Like so many other physicians and medical researchers before him, Profes­sor Croce one day also came to realize that the much-vaunted animal experimen­tation he had been conducting for years was not only valueless but damaging to medical science and practice. Unlike most of his colleagues - defying pressure from above, the risk of professional retaliation, and the necessity of having to retract publicly everything he had for a long time taught and believed in - he one day abruptly decided to forswear all work on animals and started conduct­ing a courageous, outspoken war against this senseless old practice, by writing articles, publishing books and participating in conferences and debates in Italy and all over Europe on the subject.

 

Bruno Fedi

 

Professor Fedi qualified as doctor of medicine and surgery at Florence University in 1960. After obtaining the highest marks at the end of a specialist study of urology, he was appointed as Professor at that University in 1968. He went on specialising in the field of anatomical pathology, then in gynecology, then also in oncology (cancer treatment). To expand further his medical knowl­edge, he attended specialization courses in Paris and Barcelona.

 

Prof. Fedi was awarded a prize by the World Health Organisation for his work. He lectured at the Universities of Florence and Rome from 1961 to 1970. Since 1970 he has been a Senior Consultant for Pathological Anatomy at the City Hospital of Terni, Italy. He has directed medical courses at the Univer­sities of Perugia and Rome, and has published over a hundred scientific papers. He testified on medicine and animal experimentation at the hearings of the European Parliament in Strasbourg in December 1982.

 

Walter R. Hadwen (1854-1932)

 

Also known as "Dr. Hadwen of Gloucester", is regarded as one of the most remarkable individuals and brilliant physicians of our century. Born in Wool­wich, he showed unusual intelligence already in childhood, being able to read Latin fluently by the age of seven. He was articled to a chemist as a teenager, and achieved his pharmaceutical qualifications when he was 22. In 1878 he and his wife moved to Somerset to run his own pharmacy business, but he soon real­ized that health cannot be bought in pharmacies. Having meantime become a vegetarian, he decided to study medicine. He became First Prizeman in Physi­ology, Operative Surgery, Pathology, Forensic Medicine, and won the Clark Scholarship in 1891, awarded to the most distinguished medical student of the year. Having practiced vivisection in the course of his early studies, he soon rec­ognized that practice as a medical aberration, no less dangerous than the prac­tice of vaccination. He became famous nationwide when he delivered Glouces­ter of an epidemic of smallpox in a shorter time than any other British city, by ruling out all vaccination and introducing strict measures of hygiene and isola­tion of the infected instead; which of course won him the hatred and the abuse of the profit-oriented medical establishment. In 1910 he accepted the Presidency of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), which under his competent and flamboyant leadership quickly grew to be, up to his death in 1932, the largest and most authoritative anti-vivisection society in the world.

 

Robert S. Mendelsohn (1927-1988)

 

Dr. Mendelsohn had practiced and taught medicine for 30 years. As a fam­ily physician and pediatrician, he was Professor of Preventive Medicine at the University of lllinois (Chicago), Chairman of the Medical Licensing Board for the State of Illinois, National Director of Project Head Start's Medical Consult­ation Service, consultant to the Illinois Departments of Public Aid and Mental Health, to the Council of Aging, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the Maternal and Child Health Association, and a recipient of numerous awards for excel­lence in medicine and medical instruction. He was also a syndicated medical columnist, author of The People's Doctor Newsletter and author of the best sell­ing medical books, Confessions of a Medical Heretic, Male Practice: How Doc­tors Manipulate Women, and How to Bear a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doc­tor.

 

Robert Lawson Tait (1845-1899)

 

The gynecologist from Birmingham who performed more than 2,000 lapa­rotomies at a time when this operation was still rare, looms larger than any other in the period that is considered the age of giants in surgical progress. He is cel­ebrated as the most successful and innovative surgeon, and many of surgery's present-day techniques originate from him. He performed his first ovariotomy in 1868, when he was only 21, and by 1872 his name had gone into medical his­tory with what became known in England and America as "Tait's operation" ­the removal of the uterine appendages for chronic ovaritis. In 1877 he began to remove diseased Fallopian tubes, and in 1878 he described a new method of treating chronic inversion of the uterus. All this, before he reached the age of 35. He performed the fIrst chole-cystotomy, a gall-bladder operation, in 1879. In 1880 he was the first to successfully remove the vermiform appendix for the relief of appendicitis (in Germany credit for this "first" in surgery is usually given to Swiss surgeon Rudolf Ulrich Kronlein, who first performed it some 5 years later). In 1883, Tait performed the first successful operation in case of rup­tured tubal pregnancy. He was also a firm advocate of today's aseptic surgery, challenging Lister's method of damaging antisepsis. In 1887 he was elected President of the newly formed British Gynaecological Society. He won the Cul­len Prize "for the great benefits brought to practical medicine by surgical means", and the Lister Prize for the whole 1888-1890 period. So if anyone who ever spoke about surgery knew what he was saying, it was Lawson Tail. And everything he said and wrote about vivisection, which he had practiced in the early years of his medical studies, was a merciless indictment against it, for he considered it deleterious not only for medical practice in general but also for the medical mind. His courage and brilliance caused him to support a number of unpopular innovations like the introduction of absolute cleanliness in hospitals and asepsis rather than antisepsis in surgery, and advocating equal status for women who wanted to enter the medical profession. (More notes on Lawson Tait in Slaughter of the Innocent.)

 

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN BRITAIN

 

B. Ch., B. Chir. - Bachelor of Surgery

B.M. - Bachelor of Medicine

B.S. - Bachelor of Surgery

B.Sc. - Bachelor of Science

C.B. - Companion Order of the Bath

C.B.E - Commander Order of British Empire

Ch.B - Bachelor of Surgery

Ch.M. - Master of Surgery

C.M. - Master of Surgery

C.M.G. - Companion Order St. Michael and St. George Diploma in Anaesthetics

D.A – Diploma in Anaesthetics

D.C.H. - Diploma in Child Health

D.C.P - Diploma in Clinical Pathology

D.M. - Doctor of Medicine

D.P.H. - Diploma in Public Health

D.P.M.  - Diploma in Psychological Medicine

D.Sc. - Doctor of Science

D.S.O. - Companion Distinguished Service Order

D.T.H. - Diploma in Tropical Hygiene

D.T.M. - Diploma in Tropical Medicine

D.V.Sc. - Doctor of Veterinary Science

F.A.C.D. - Fellow American College of Dentists

F.C.O.G. - Fellow College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

F.I.C. - Fellow Institute of Chemistry

FRC.I. - Fellow Royal Colonial Institute

F.R.C.O.G. - Fellow Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

FRC.P. - Fellow Royal College of Physicians

FRC.P.E. - Fellow Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh

FRC.P.S.  - Fellow Royal College Physicians and Surgeons

FRC.S. - Fellow Royal College of Surgeons

F.R.C.V.S.  - Fellow Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons

F.R.F.P.S.  - Fellow Royal Faculty Physicians and Surgeons

F.R.F.P.S.G. - Fellow Royal Faculty Physicians and Surgeons Glasgow

F.R.I.C. - Fellow Royal Institute of Chemistry

FRS. - Fellow of the Royal Society

F.R.S.E. - Fellow of the Royal Society Edinburgh

 

K.B. - Knight Bachelor

K.B.E. - Knight Commander of British Empire

K.C.I.E.  - Knight Commander of Indian Empire

K.C.V.O - Knight Commander of Royal Victorian Order

L.D.S.  - Licentiate in Dental Surgery

L.L.B. - Bachelor of Laws

L.L.D. - Doctor of Laws

L.M.S.S.A. - Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery, Society of Apothecaries

L.R.C.P. - Licentiate Royal College of Physicians

L.R.C.P.S. - Licentiate Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons

L.R.F.P.S. - Licentiate Royal Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons Master of Arts

M.A. – Master of Arts

M.B. - Bachelor of Medicine

M.C. - Military Cross

M. Ch. - Master of Surgery

M.C.O.G. - Member College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

M.D. - Doctor of Medicine

M.D.N.U.I. - Doctor of Medicine National University of Ireland

M.P. - Member of Parliament

M.R.A.C.P - Member of Royal Australian College of Physicians

M.RC.O.G. - Member Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

M.R.C.P. - Member Royal College of Physicians

M.R.C.S. - Member Royal College of Surgeons

M.R.C.V.S. - Member Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons

M.S. - Master of Surgery

M.Sc. - Master of Science

M.V.O. -  Member of Royal Victorian Order

O.B.E. - Officer Order of British Empire

O.M. - Order of Merit

Ph. C - Pharmaceutical Chemist

Ph. D. - Doctor of Philosophy

R.A.M.C. - Royal Army Medical Corps

Sc. D. - Doctor of Science

Sc. M. - Master of Science

T.D. - Territorial Decoration

V.D. - Volunteer (Officers) Decoration