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..."
-----------
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."
-------------
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."
-----------
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.’”
---------
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.”
----------
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)
---------
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.”
-------------
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.”
-------------
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