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 it 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.

ds of the abdomen, especially gunshot wounds, are the most fatal injuries known to surgery. A small, at-looking, external pistol wound may cover multiple most inevitably fatal perforations of the abdominal

The recoveries from 3717 such wounds during te Civil War only numbered 444, and of those with esof the intestinal contents the recoveries, says Otis, may counted on one's fingers. The prevailing treatment as down in our text-books has been purely conservative, ing symptoms as they arise. The brilliant results eved in other abdominal operations have led a few bold its, such as our own Sims, Gross, Otis, McGuire, and ers, to advocate the opening of the abdomen and the reir of the injuries found.

In May of last year, Parkes, of Chicago, reported to the American Medical Association* a serious of systematic experiments on thirty-seven dogs, that were etherized, then shot, the abdomen opened, and the wounds of the intestines, arteries, mesentery, etc., treated by appropriate surgical methods. The results confirmed the belief awakened by earlier experiments and observations that surgery could grapple successfully with multiple and formidable wounds, by sewing them up in various ways, or even by removing a piece of the bowel and uniting the cut ends. Hard upon the heels of this important paper, and largely as its result, comes a striking improvement in practice. And remember that this is only the first fruit of a rich harvest for all future time, in all countries, in peace and in war.

November 2d, of last year, a man was brought to the Chambers Street Hospital, in New York, with a pistol-shot wound in the abdomen. Under careful antiseptic precautions, and following the indications of Parkes, the abdomen was opened

*Medical News, May 17, 1884. I shall refer readers frequently to this journal, as it is often more accessible than foreign journals, and it will refer them to the original papers.

merate some of them, since time will not allow me to enter upon each in detail. Thus have been introduced lily-of-thevalley in heart disease, yellow jasmine, in diseases of the heart and nervous system, paraldehyde and chloral hydrate, so valuable for sleep, caffeine for headache, eucalyptus as an antiseptic and in medicine, nitroglycerine for nervous maladies, Calabar bean for disease of the eye and nervous system, naphthaline and iodoform in surgery, quebracho as an antispasmodic, antipyrine and kairine in fever, jaborandi in dropsy, salicylic acid in rheumatism, nitrite of amyl in epilepsy and intermittent fever, jequirity in ophthalmic surgery, piscidia as a substitute for opium, the hypodermatic method of using drugs, and so on through a long list. And, as to the old drugs, it may be truly said that we have little exactthat is, scientific-knowledge of any one except through experiments upon animals.*

Let us now see something of what America has done in advancing practical medicine by vivisection. In passing, I may say that the assertion that America has contributed but little, so far from being an argument for the restriction of vivisection, is a strong argument for its further cultivation, in order that greater good may result from remarkable discoveries here, equal to those that I shall show have been made in Europe.

*For three hundred years digitalis, for instance, has been given as a depressant of the heart, and, when a student, I was taught to avoid it carefully when the heart was weak. But the accurate experiments of Bernard and others have shown that it is, on the contrary, actually a heart tonic and stimulant. So long as I live I shall never forget the intense joy of myself and the agonized parents, when one bright young life was brought back from the very grave, some five years ago, by the knowledge of this fact, and this is but one of many such cases. Thus have the action and dangers of our common anæsthetics been positively and accurately ascertained; thus the action of ergot on the blood-vessels, explaining alike its danger as an article of food and its wonderful use in certain tumors of the uterus and diseases of the nervous centres; thus, too, every one who gives opium in its various forms is a debtor to Bernard, and every one who gives strychnine a disciple of Magendie.