Part 12

The agitators of the present day have by heart-rending stories, similar to those told twenty-five years ago, produced a similar excitement and a similar result, namely, a Royal Commission on Vivisection, which has been occupied for a year and a half in listening to the statements and delusions of those who declare that the law made twenty-five years ago is insufficient, and that all sorts of cruelties are committed by the physiologists and doctors. The Commission has also questioned the leading physiologists and medical men in the country, and listened to their voluntary statements. I have seen the very voluminous report of the evidence thus given on both sides. The various accusations made against the medical men in the conduct of their laboratories have been carefully gone into. It is contended, on their side, that these charges are based on misunderstanding--the misunderstanding which one would expect from an ignorant person with a strong feeling or prejudice in the direction of the misunderstanding. For instance, the fact that chloroform is administered and the animal rendered insensible when operated on, has been overlooked in some of the accounts which excited the so-called “antivivisectors”--notably in the misleading account of “the brown dog.” The whole of the evidence should be read by those who are really in doubt on the matter. Probably it will not be long before the Commission reports, and its conclusions will command the very greatest respect, not only because its members include eminent lawyers, medical men and independent representatives who were ready to give an impartial mind to the inquiry, but also because it is obvious that the very greatest care has been taken to obtain the fullest evidence from both sides.

Sir James Fletcher Moulton, one of the Lords Justices of the Court of Appeal, has made a statement to the Commission in defence of scientific experiment which is a masterpiece of persuasive reasoning and lucid exposition. It is somewhat remarkable that there have been and are persons in high judicial office who have shown active hostility to the cause of science and knowledge in this matter owing to their want of acquaintance with the facts and their readiness to be carried away by blind emotion. Lord Justice Moulton, on the other hand, is a scientific man by education and early training, and has come forward to state in a plain and reasonable way what is the view of the matter which commends itself to him. There is reason to hope that his view will be approved by those who read what he says calmly and without bias. His chief point is that many people are willing to admit that it is right to destroy animals (even by methods which inflict great pain on them) when an immediate result of a good and useful kind is to be obtained--as when we kill animals to serve as food or in order to prevent them from injuring us or destroying our crops and stores. Yet these same persons, he points out, by some defect of imagination are unable to see that the gaining of pain-saving or disease-preventing knowledge as the result of inflicting pain and death on a small number of animals justifies us in permitting that pain and death. They are unable to admit the justification because the knowledge and its practical application does not directly and at once follow upon the first commencement of the search for it, and they have not sufficient acquaintance with the matter to enable them to realise and confidently believe that the beneficent result will ensue. The knowledge has to be built up step by step, and the infliction of pain on the animals is separated by an appreciable lapse of time from the beneficent result--which is none the less the result which was aimed at, and the true consequence of the pain inflicted. Putting aside for the moment the fact that in these inquiries the pain is reduced to a minimum by the use of anæsthetics, it would seem that we ought to be able to recognise that the causing of a certain amount of pain to many hundreds of rabbits, and even dogs, is justified by the consequent removal of a far greater amount of pain from thousands of men and animals who are saved from suffering at a later date by the knowledge so gained.

Lord Justice Moulton suggests two cases of the infliction of pain on animals for comparison. Suppose, he says, a ship to arrive in port which (as might easily happen to-day) is infested by plague-stricken rats; there are, perhaps, ten or twenty thousand rats on board. If the rats escaped and landed they might (not certainly, but probably) infect a whole city, even a much larger area, with plague, and cause death and disaster to thousands of human beings. Everyone will agree that the owner of the ship would be justified in destroying all the rats on the ship by sulphur fumes, or whatever other painful method might be necessary to prevent even one from escaping. A vast amount of suffering would be inflicted on the rats in order to prevent a far greater contingent amount of suffering. Now suppose that a man, by infecting some hundreds of rats and other animals with plague, and by trying various experiments on these animals with curative drugs, and by other operations upon them, can in all probability arrive at such a knowledge of plague and how to check it as to enable us to arrest its propagation, and so to save thousands, or even millions, of human beings from this painful and deadly disease, are we to say that this investigator must not carry on his studies, must not find out how to stop plague in future because to do so he will have to give some amount of pain to a hundred or more animals? Clearly, if we justify the shipowner we must justify the inquiries and experiments of the medical discoverer. In both cases we must hold--every sane man really does hold--that it is right to inflict pain with the expectation (not a certainty in either case, but only a reasonable probability) of preventing a far larger and more serious amount of pain in the future. It is the choice of the lesser of two evils.

And thus we are led to admit that it is right that experiments and studies attended with some pain to animals should be carried on, on condition that competent and serious persons make them, for the purpose of gaining increased knowledge of the processes of life and disease. Such studies have already yielded great results--the pain in the wards of hospitals and in sick rooms is not a tenth of what it was a hundred years ago. The death-rate of great cities is a third less than it was fifty years ago. Modern medicine and modern surgery are really and demonstrably immense agencies for preventing pain and the anguish and misery which is caused by untimely death.

A Society for the Defence of Research has been established this year (1908) with the Earl of Cromer as its president. The Society has issued some valuable pamphlets showing what improvements in medical knowledge have been recently effected by means of inoculations and other experiments in which animals have been used though subjected to as little pain and discomfort as consistent with the enquiries made. Ignorant opponents of medical research assert that the scientific study of the processes of life and disease in laboratories has not helped in the great progress in medical practice which marks the last fifty years. But the medical men who are the leaders of their profession unanimously assert, and prove by detailed accounts of the discoveries made, that such study has been essential to the progress established, and is essential for further progress. Lord Lister, who by his antiseptic method of treating surgical wounds has saved more pain to present and future generations of men than all the torturers of the Inquisition ever inflicted or dreamed of inflicting, has been the leader in declaring the inestimable value to humanity--in fact, the absolute necessity--of physiological experiments on animals. Whose judgment on this question can be considered of greater value than his?

The anti-vivisection agitators, for the purpose of exciting the emotions of those who listen to them, use the word “torture” as describing the action of such men as Pasteur and Lord Lister. To torture is to inflict an ever-increasing amount of pain, with the view of “extorting” a submission, a confession, or treasure from a victim. To suggest that scientific and medical men apply pain in this way, and to spread the word “torture” among the ignorant, emotional public, in connection with their inquiries, is dishonest as well as ungrateful.

One valuable result of the work of the present Royal Commission on what is called “Vivisection,” but should be called “the use of animals in the discovery of means of controlling disease and alleviating pain,” is that it is made quite clear that there is very little pain at all inflicted in this beneficent work, owing to the fact that anæsthetics and narcotics are administered to the animals when anything which might cause pain is done. I do not hesitate to say that there is in this country less pain caused in a whole year in all the laboratories where this great work for the public good is carried on than in a single day’s rabbit-shooting.

It is important to correct, if possible, the misunderstanding which very naturally exists as to what physiologists and doctors mean by “experiment.” In ordinary language an “experiment” suggests a haphazard venture, the doing of something blindly and in ignorance, just “to see what will happen.” It is true that long ago in the eighteenth century there were men callous enough and ignorant enough to make such “fool’s experiments” on living animals. But when scientific men speak of “the experimental method” and the acquisition of knowledge by experiment, they do not allude to haphazard attempts to see what will happen when something extraordinary is done. The experiment of the experimental method is arranged so as to provide a definite answer to a definite question, and the question has been thought out by a man who knows the whole record of previous experiment and knowledge in regard to the subject which is under investigation.

Thus in the inquiry as to the possible prevention of the deadly effect of snake poison introduced into the human body by the bite of snakes, the first question asked was, “Is it true, as sometimes stated, that a poisonous snake is not poisoned by having its own poison injected into its flesh?” The experiment was tried. The answer was, “It is true.” Next it was asked, “Is this due to the action of very small doses of the poison which pass constantly from the poison gland into the snake’s blood, and so render the snake ‘immune,’ as happens in the case of other poisons?” The experiment was tried. Snakes without poison glands were found to be killed by the introduction of snake’s poison in a full dose into their blood. Then it was found that a horse could be injected with a dose of snake poison, or half the quantity necessary to cause death, and that it recovered in a few days. The question was now put, “Is the horse so treated rendered immune to snake poison, as the snake is which receives small doses of poison into its blood from its own poison gland?” Accordingly the experiment was made. The horse was given a full dose of snake poison, and did not suffer any inconvenience. At intervals of two days it was given increasing injections of snake poison without suffering in any way, until at last an injection in one dose of thirty times the deadly quantity of snake poison--that is, enough to kill thirty unprepared horses--was made into the same horse, and it did not show the smallest inconvenience. The question was thus answered: Immunity to snake-bite can be conferred by the absorption of small quantities (non-lethal doses) of snake poison. The next question was this: “If something has been formed in the horse’s blood by this process, which is an antidote to snake poison, should it not be possible, by removing some of the horse’s blood and injecting a small quantity of it into a smaller animal, to protect that animal from snake bite?” The experiment was accordingly made. Rabbits and dogs received injections of the blood of the immune horse. An hour after they received full doses of snake poison. They suffered no inconvenience at all; they were “protected,” or “rendered immune.” The next question was, “Will the antidote act on an animal after it has already been bitten by a snake?” The experiment was made. Rabbits were injected with snake poison. After a quarter of an hour they were on the point of death. A dose of the immune horse’s blood was now injected into each--in ten minutes they had completely recovered and were feeding. The means was thus found of preventing death from snake-bite. The protective horse-blood was properly prepared, and sent out at once to Cochin China and to India. It was there tried upon human beings who had been accidentally bitten by deadly snakes, and it proved absolutely effective; it saved the men’s lives. It is now used (wherever it can be obtained in time) as the sure antidote to snake-bite, though it is not at present possible to supply it whenever and wherever it is needed. That is an example, briefly told, of the experimental questioning of Nature--such as is pursued in the laboratories of medical men and physiologists. They do not perform haphazard experiments; but each experiment is so arranged as to give a definite answer to a definite question, leading to a large result. By no other process can knowledge of many things, which it is urgent for us to have, be obtained. We should have to wait centuries if we merely watched Nature, and hoped for some accidental circumstance to reveal the facts.

What, after all, do we understand and mean by “pain”? It is not merely the sharp sting, and consequent shrinking caused by wounds and violence. That, we know well enough, is a beneficent arrangement by which men as well as animals are prevented from knocking themselves to pieces, and are driven into avoiding danger to life and limb. But “pain” includes, besides this, the anguish arising from the weary, fruitless struggle against disease and starvation, from the disaster to the household caused by the untimely death of its mainstay, from the slaughter of children by poisonous foods, and from the neglect of the laws of health of body and mind.

Ignorance, the “curse of Hell,” is the cause of all suffering. Knowledge is the wing which takes us heavenward, and frees us from misery. I cannot put it better than in Shakespeare’s words. It is man’s destiny to diminish pain on this earth, and that not by timidly shrinking from and emotionally raving about the horrors of pain, but by facing them and deliberately accepting the responsibility of producing a small and brief suffering to a few animals as the price of the salvation of his fellow-creatures from the far greater pain which is the assured and fatal companion of ignorance--accursed ignorance!

A recent writer has told us that he cannot believe that good will follow from the wilful destruction by man of Nature’s greatest and most beautiful production--a living thing. He poses as a sentimentalist and seems to regard it as the indication of a superior and gentle mind to refuse to sanction the removal or even the temporary discomfort of what Nature has called into life. I, too, claim to be a sentimentalist, but the sentiment which thrills me is one of revolt against the needless and remediable suffering of all humanity--suffering which man has brought on himself by his stumbling, half-hearted resistance to Nature’s drastic method of purifying and strengthening the race, her remorseless slaughter of the unfit. It is this suffering which some would allow their fellow-men still to endure, now and for generations to come, rather than have their own tranquillity disturbed by the record of that modicum of immediate pain and sacrifice of animal life which is the price of freedom for mankind from far greater pain hereafter. We have to learn to mitigate and to minimise pain, not to run away from it. It is childish to weep over the distortion and destruction of Nature’s products by man’s violence and ignorance. What we can and should do is to see that our dealings with this fair earth and its living freight are guided not by vain regret, but by knowledge and foresight.

THE END

R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD., BREAD ST. HILL, E.C., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

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Transcriber’s Notes:

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have been corrected.