clusion is, in so universal an article of food to young and old, I need not do aught than state. The experiments of Wood and Formad on diphtheria I have already alluded to. Those of Tommasi-Crudeli also have shown that probably the poison of malaria is due to like organisms, while a large number of other diseases are being similarly investigated. As to cholera, the classic experiments of Thiersch, in 1853,* are well known. He inoculated 56 mice with cholera discharges. Of these, 44 sickened and 14 died from choleraic diseases. In the same year two water companies in London experimented on 500,000 human beings, one of them inoculating its patrons with cholera discharges through its impure water-supply. This one sickened thousands and killed 3476 human beings, most of whom might have escaped had the lessons of Thiersch's 14 mice been heeded. To ask the question, which was the more cruel, is to answer it.† At present our strenuous efforts are all in one directionviz., to study these microbes by the microscope, by clinical observation, and by experiments on animals, in order to find out their origin, causes, growth, and effects, and to discover by what means their deadly results may be avoided, or by what remedies, without harm to the patient, they may them * John Simon, Proceedings International Medical Congress, London, 1881. †The population supplied by the Southwark and Vauxhall Company, in the epidemic of 1848-49 died at the rate of 118 in each 10,000, and, in that of 1853–54, at the rate of 130 per 10,000. Those supplied by the Lambeth Company died in 1848-49 at the rate of 125 per 10,000, but having improved its water-supply meantime, the death-rate, in 1853-54, fell to 37 per 10,000. If Thiersch lived in England to-day, he would have to take out a license to kill his fourteen mice in the interests of humanity—a license possibly refused, or only to be obtained after the most vexatious delays. But any housemaid might torture and kill them with arsenic or phosphorus, or Thiersch might give them to a favorite terrier without the slightest interference, provided only it be not for a scientific or a humane object! selves be destroyed. Evidently these studies can not be tried on our patients. They must either be tried on animals or be abandoned. The inoculation experiments of modern times have recently borne rich fruit in still another pestilential disease-yellow fever-whose ravages in this country are fresh in our minds. November 10, 1884, M. Bouley reported to the Paris Academy of Sciences* that, since 1880, M. Freire, of Rio Janeiro, had experimented on guinea-pigs with the virus of yellow fever, and believed that he had been able to produce such attenuation of the virus that by vaccination he could secure immunity from this dreadful scourge. Following the experiments, he and Rabourgeon tested the results on themselves, some students of medicine, and employés. Later the Emperor Dom Pedro authorized two hundred wharf-laborers to be inoculated. All these, after a three days' mild attack, remained free from the pestilence, while their fellow-laborers, similarly exposed to the fever, were dying on every hand. If, in an epidemic, this still prove true, as there seems every probability it will, from the five hundred lives already saved, we can hardly estimate either the medical or the commercial advantages to this country alone. Is this cruelty? Let Norfolk, and Memphis, and Pensacola, and New Orleans answer.† We are all familiar now with the numerous deaths from eating pork infested with trichina. While I was in Berlin, in 1865-66, a terrible epidemic of the then new disease broke out at Hedersleben, a small town in Prussian Saxony. I well remember with what zeal Virchow and his assistants im *Medical News, Nov. 29, 1884. † Since then the brilliant researches of Major Reed, Colonel Gorgas, and other American army officers in Cuba have shown that the mosquito is the only source of propagation of yellow fever. The cause of yellow fever is still unknown, but mosquito bars have replaced these inoculations in guarding against the fever, as our knowledge has been augmented, and Cuba and the United States have been freed from this pestilence and its ravages among human beings and its commercial disasters.-(W. W. K., 1905.) mediately investigated the disease, inoculated animals with the parasitic worm, studied its natural history, found out that heat killed it, and to-day, as a result of these and other experiments, we all know how to avert its dangers by proper cooking, or to avoid it altogether by the microscope. The value of these experiments, both to human life and to commerce, you know even from the daily papers. You will find it difficult to make the non-medical public understand-nay, you yourselves as yet hardly understand -the enormous advance in medicine and surgery brought about by recent researches on inflammation, and by the use of antiseptics. My own professional life only covers twentythree years, yet in that time I have seen our knowledge of inflammation wholly changed, and the practice of surgery so revolutionized that what would have been impossible audacity in 1862 has become ordinary practice in 1885. It would seem that so old a process as inflammation would long ago have been known through and through, and that nothing new could be adduced. In 1851, however, Claude Bernard, by a slight operation, divided the sympathetic nerve in a rabbit's neck and showed its influence on the calibre of the blood-vessels. In 1858 Virchow published his "Cellular Pathology." In 1867 Cohnheim published his studies on the part that the blood-cells played in inflammation as shown in the frog, followed by further papers by Dr. Norris, of this city, Stricker, von Recklinghausen, Waldeyer, and many others. Already in my lectures I have pointed out to you in detail the advances made by these studies, both in theory and practice. They have brought about an entire reinvestigation of disease, and given us wholly new knowledge as to abscesses, ulceration, gangrene, the organization of clots in wounds, and after operations and ligature of blood-vessels for aneurism, as to thrombosis, and embolism, and paralysis, and apoplexy, and a score of other diseases through the diagnosis and treatment of which now runs the silver thread of knowledge instead of ignorance. With this the brilliant results of the antiseptic system have joined to give us a new surgery. Sir Joseph Lister, to whom we chiefly owe this knowledge, has done more to save human life and diminish human suffering than any other man of the last fifty years. Had he only made practicable the use of animal ligatures, it would have been an untold boon, the value of which can only be appreciated by doctors; but he has done far more, he has founded a new system of surgery. We may reject the spray and carbolic acid, but the surgical world, regardless of details, with few exceptions follows the principles upon which his method is founded and humanity is the gainer, by the nearly total abolition of inflammation, suppuration, secondary hæmorrhage, blood-poisoning, gangrene, and erysipelas, as sequels of accidents and operations; by the relief from suffering and death, by operations formerly impossible; by rendering amputations and compound fractures safe and simple instead of deadly. Reflect on what each one of these brief, but momentous, statements means! But we have by no means reached perfection. Lister himself, no tyro, but the great master, is still searching for further improvements. But when lately he desired to make some experiments on animals, still further to perfect our practice, so many obstructions were thrown in his way in England that he was driven to Toulouse to pursue his humane researches. I had intended also to speak of many other practical benefits to man directly, but can only mention such important matters as the surgery of the thyroid gland, the seat of goitre; the surgery of the lungs, part of which have been removed; the surgery of the nerves, removal of the entire larynx, the remarkable researches of late years as to the periosteum in the reproduction of new bone after removal of dead or diseased bone; Bernard's important observations as to diabetes; Brown-Séquard's experiments on epilepsy, the modern extraordinary advance in nearly all the diseases of the nervous system, and a number of other discoveries, as to all of which experiments upon animals have added largely to our knowledge, and therefore to our means of diminishing suffering and saving human life. For many of these, as well as for the most judicial discussion of the vivisection question I have yet seen, I must refer you to that remarkable book, "Physiological Cruelty," written, not by a man, but by a woman.* I had also intended to refer in detail to the splendid results of vivisection in relieving the sufferings of animals, and in preventing enormous pecuniary loss to man. We are only beginning to see that vivisection is as humane to animal life and suffering as it is to human, and that for financial reasons as well as humane motives it is of the utmost importance to the State that such diseases as cattle plague, splenic fever, chicken cholera, swine plague, and others, should be eradicated. Vivisection has shown us how this may be done, and has so conferred upon animals, too, the boon of life and health. For all this, however, I must refer you to the recent admirable lecture by Prof. Robert Meade Smith, of the University of Pennsylvania.† One subject, however, is so recent and of such interest, both to man and animals, that I must not pass it over-I mean that justly dreaded disease hydrophobia. Thanks to vivisection, its abolition in the near future seems no longer to be a matter of doubt. Within the last three years Pasteur has announced that, by passing the virus through the monkey, he has been able to protect dogs from hydrophobia by vaccination with this weakened virus. The French government recently appointed * See also the just issued Life and Labors of Pasteur. |
