died of spontaneous combustion, like old Krooks in "Bleak House," till I learned lately that he stuck to his colors to the last, and died from drinking the alcohol from specimens.

Such, in brief, is the history of this now somewhat venerable school, and of the many teachers associated with it.* I can count eighty-five teachers who have won their spurs in its lecture-rooms, formed here their habits of thought, style of lecturing, methods of scientific research, and gained their early fame as writers and teachers, so that twenty-seven have become professors in sixteen medical colleges, here and elsewhere, and fifty-one hospital and clinical physicians, surgeons, obstetricians, etc., of distinction. Thirty-two books have been written or edited, eleven pamphlets and not less than thirty papers of value have been published by its various teachers. Its Assistant Demonstrators are too numerous for me even to mention. Its students I cannot trace. Most of

them are personally unknown to me. But this I know, that, spread all over the world, doing faithfully their daily work, in relieving the suffering, soothing the dying, helping the poor, assuaging the pestilence that walketh in darkness, improving the public health, advancing the domain of pure and applied science, teaching earnestly its results to thousands of eager students, who, in turn, will swell their noble ranks, promoting in general the moral and material welfare of mankind, some in lofty, some in lowly station, they will confess that here they first developed their scientific tastes and aspirations; here they were taught to look beyond the lower to the highest and noblest aims of our profession; here they first caught the inspiration that has made them what they are; and that they will think kindly of the dear old school and its faithful teachers, and it may be even drop a tear of regret when they learn that the Philadelphia School of Anatomy is only a thing of the vanished past.

* Mr. F. Gutekunst, 712 Arch Street, has photographed the building for any who may desire to obtain such a memento.

OUR RECENT DEBTS TO VIVISECTION.*

[After a few introductory remarks appropriate to the special occasion the address continued as follows.]

To

10 one of these medical issues of the day I purpose to direct your attention at present-one as to which intense feeling, especially among women, has been aroused, -viz., the question of experiments upon animals.

Epithets and invective have been freely used, but, as befits the audience and the occasion, I shall endeavor to approach it in a perfectly calm and fair spirit, seeking to lay before you only one aspect of a many-sided question,-viz., the actual practical benefits it has conferred upon man and animalsa fact that is constantly denied, but which medical evidence proves to be incontestable.

I shall not consider the important older discoveries it has given us, but only those since 1850, almost all of which are within my own personal recollection. Even of these I must omit nearly all of its contributions to physiology and to pathology, though so much of our practice is based upon these, and confine myself to the advances it has enabled us to make in medical and surgical practice. I shall endeavor to state its claims with moderation, for an extravagant claim always produces a revulsion against the claimant, and is as unwise as it is unscientific.

Again it must be borne in mind that, as in nearly every other advance in civilization and in society, so in medicine, causes are rarely single, put generally multiple and inter

*The address to the graduates at the Thirty-third Commencement of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, March 11, 1885.

woven. While vivisection has been a most potent factor in medical progress, it is only one of several factors the disentanglement of which and the exact balancing of how much is due to this or to that are often difficult and sometimes impossible. Let me add one word more. All that I may say is purely upon my own responsibility. I commit the opinion of no one else to any view or any statement of fact.

Medicine in the future must either grow worse, stand still, or grow better.

To grow worse, we must forget our present knowledge— happily, an inconceivable idea.

To stand still, we must accept our present knowledge as a finality, complacently pursuing the well-worn paths; neither hoping nor trying for anything better-happily, again, an impossibility.

To grow better we must try new methods, give new drugs, perform new operations, or perform old ones in new ways; that is to say, we must make experiments. To these experiments there must be a beginning: they must be tried first on some living body, for it is often forgotten that the dead body can only teach manual dexterity. They must then be tried either on an animal or on you. Which shall it be? In many cases, of course, which involve little or no risk to life or health, it is perfectly legitimate to test probable improvements on man first, although one of the gravest and most frequent charges made against us doctors is that we are experimenting upon our patients.

man.

But in many cases they involve great risk to life or health. Here they cannot, nay, they must not, be tested first upon Must we, then, absolutely forego them, no matter how much of promise for life and health and happiness they possess? If not, the only alternative we have is to try them on the lower animals, and we would be most unwise-nay, more, we would be cruel, cruel both to man and to animals-if we

refused to pain or even to slay a few animals, that thousands, both of men and of animals, might live.

Who would think it right to put a few drops of the hydrochlorate of cocaïne (a year ago almost an unknown drug) into the eye of a man, not knowing what frightful inflammation or even loss of sight might follow? Had one dared to do it, and had the result been disastrous, would not the law have held him guilty and punished him severely, and all of us have said Amen? But so did Christison with Calabar bean, and well-nigh lost his own life. So did Toynbee with prussic acid on himself, and was found dead in his laboratory.* Accord

*I add the following striking extract from a speech in defense of vivisection, on April 4, 1883, by Sir Lyon Playfair, deputy Speaker of the House of Commons-no mean authority. The italics are my own:

"For myself, although formerly a professor of chemistry in the greatest medical school of this country, I am only responsible for the death of two rabbits by poison, and I ask the attention of the House to the case as a strong justification for experiments on animals, and yet I should have been treated as a criminal under the present act had it then existed. Sir James Simpson, who introduced chloroform-that great alleviator of animal suffering was then alive and in constant quest of new anæsthetics. He came to my laboratory one day to see if I had any new substances likely to suit his purpose. I showed him a liquid which had just been discovered by one of my assistants, and Sir James Simpson, who was bold to rashness in experimenting on himself, desired immediately to inhale it in my private room. I refused to give him any of the liquid unless was first tried upon rabbits. Two rabbits were accordingly made to inhale it; they quickly passed into anæsthesia and apparently as quickly recovered, but from an after-action of the poison they both died a few hours afterwards. Now, was not this a justifiable experiment upon animals? Was not the sacrifice of two rabbits worth saving the life of the most distinguished physician of his time? . . . Would that an experiment of a like kind on a rabbit or a guinea-pig had been used by John Hunter, who probably shortened his own noble life by experimenting on himself!

"Let me give one other instance. . . . A few years ago two young German chemists were assistants in a London laboratory. They were experimenting upon a poison which I will not even name, for its properties are so terrible. It is postponed in its action, and then produces idiocy or death. An experiment on a mouse or a rabbit would have taught them the danger of this frightful poison; but in ignorance of its subtle properties, they became its unhappy victims, for one died and the other suffered in

ingly, Koller, of Vienna, properly and wisely tried cocaïne first on animals,* and then, finding its beneficial effects, tried it upon man with like results, and one of the most remarkable drugs of modern times was thus made available. We are only on the threshold of its usefulness. It has been used in the eye, the ear, the nose, the mouth, the larynx, and all other mucous membranes, in the removal of tumors, and as an internal medicine. When its physiological action has been still more thoroughly and systematically investigated, its poisonous dose ascertained, when we know how it works, what its effects are upon the blood-pressure, the heart, the nerves, the blood-vessels-effects that can not be accurately studied upon man-its usefulness may be increased to an extent as yet but little dreamed of. Should it only soothe the last painful hours of our great hero, General Grant, a nation will bless it and the experiments which gave it effect. Moreover, had the experiments of Dr. Isaac Ott, of Easton,† on this very drug, borne their due fruit, America would have had the honor and the human race the benefits of cocaïne ten years ago ten years of needless suffering!

This is but one illustration of the value of experiments upon animals in the realm of new drugs. In fact, substitute for cocaïne other drugs, or new operations, or new methods of medical treatment, and the argument repeats itself for each. Within the last thirty years a multitude of new drugs have thus been discovered, and their effects have been either first tested upon animals, or their properties studied exhaustively in a manner impracticable upon man. I will only enu

tellectual death. Yet the promoters of this bill would not suffer us to make any experiments on the lower animals so as to protect man from such catastrophes. It is by experiments on animals that medicine has learned the benefits, but also has been taught to avoid the dangers of many potent drugs-as chloroform, chloral, and morphia."

* Archives of Ophthalmology, Sept. and Dec., 1884, p. 402; New York, Putnam's.

† Ott, Cocaine, Veratrine, and Gelsemium, Philadelphia, 1874.