Chapter III

In the Civil War if a man was shot through the bowels, he was doomed to death; the surgeons hardly dared to open the abdomen and if they did they didn’t know how to join the ends of the bowel so that it would not leak. Of course the slightest leak meant infection and death. Then came along an experimenter who etherized about thirty dogs, shot them through the bowels, and practiced joining bowel ends until he could make a perfect joint. It is safe to say that in the World War the lives of thousands of men were saved as a result of that series of experiments.

Lockjaw, tetanus, chiefly a disease of war, that threatened to take frightful toll of soldiers wounded on the tetanus-infected battlefields of Europe, did little damage during the late war because of antitetanus serum made from the blood of immunized horses. Every wounded man received an injection of this serum at the earliest possible moment, and usually the length of time that had intervened determined whether the man would live or whether he would die a most distressing and horrible death.

The antityphoid vaccine, also worked out on mammals and tested on mammals, has practically abolished typhoid fever in soldiers’ camps. It is estimated by the Surgeon General’s office that during the World War it saved the lives of 60,000 men in the American army alone.

BENEFITS OF EXPERIMENTATION TO MAN

These are only a very few examples from the long list of benefits that have accrued to humanity through the use of living mammals for experimental purposes. I must mention only one more――the recent discovery of a specific treatment for diabetes. Less than two years ago I invited a little girl to go for a bird walk with me that I might give her the pleasure of stroking and feeding a wild bird in its nest. I was particularly eager that she should enjoy that day, because both she and I knew that she had not many days to live. She was doomed to die of diabetes within six months; as a matter of fact she died in less than three months from the date of our walk. I remember thinking that I would give anything I possessed if I could by some miracle restore that child to health. Today, less than two years later, that miracle could be performed, because Dr. F. G. Banting of the University of Toronto, by a brilliant series of experiments on dogs, has completed investigations begun on rabbits by Claude Bernard seventy-five years ago. The story of this wonderful discovery is long, but here are the outstanding facts. It was found that when the pancreas of a dog is removed, the animal at once develops acute diabetes and usually dies of that disease within three or four weeks. Under the microscope the pancreas is seen to be studded with countless little bodies, known as the islands of Langerhans, after the German scientist who discovered them. It was found that these islands secrete a substance quite different from that secreted by the rest of the pancreas, and that it is the absence of this substance, not the absence of the pancreas itself, that causes diabetes. A method was devised for obtaining an extract from these islands of Langerhans, and it was found that when this extract was injected into a dog whose pancreas has been removed it did not die, but got well and continued to be well as long as it was given injections of this extract. After these injections had been proved to be safe by repeated experiments on dogs, they were tried on human patients with startlingly beneficial results. Even when the disease is of long standing, when the patient has reached the very last stage and is in the coma that immediately precedes death, injections of this extract, now known to the world as insulin, will bring him out of the coma, snatch him from the very jaws of death, and restore him to health.

_Pacific and Atlantic_

_Not man alone, but animals also have benefited by experimental work. The best example of this is the conquest of hydrophobia._]

THE FALSE STAND OF THE ANTIVIVISECTIONISTS

We have seen that all these great advances in medicine and surgery have been made as the result of experiments on living mammals, and you will agree, I believe, that in all probability further advances in these fields must be brought about by the same means. This is the opinion of practically all eminent physicians and surgeons and veterinarians, and of all the great scientists and educators in other fields――in short, it is the opinion of all persons who have vast responsibilities for the health of men and of animals. The only persons who are opposed to these reasonable experiments are the antivivisectionists, who have no such responsibilities. Would any sane person think of going to the antivivisectionists for help if there were an epidemic of smallpox or diphtheria, or if there were an outbreak of hog cholera or of blackleg in cattle? We don’t go to them because they know nothing about such matters. Yet they boldly contradict all competent authorities and tell us that experiments on animals are useless, that they have never accomplished anything. The antivivisection societies are composed largely of well disposed but woefully misinformed persons. And those who are responsible for the misinformation are the leaders of the antivivisectionists. I have been studying these leaders for some years, and I may say, without any danger of my statements being disproved, that among them may be found many of the most dangerous of the criminal insane to be found in this country today――and I have recently visited some of our largest penitentiaries and asylums. I have found some of these leaders of the antivivisection movement to be guilty of falsehood, slander, libel, perjury, forgery, and attempted bribery. Under false pretenses they obtain money from weakminded and unthinking people and, with this money, they wilfully and perennially attempt not only to prevent the advance of medicine and surgery, but also to break down the bulwarks of preventive medicine by teaching contempt of vaccination and of the use of antitoxins.

Few of the criminals in our jails are responsible for the deaths of more than a small number of persons; few of them have attempted widespread destruction of life. But it is the opinion of eminent physicians that through the pernicious teachings of the antivivisection leaders we shall in a few years have epidemics that will destroy the lives of many thousands of children. Unless we wish for a return of the plagues and pestilences that once devastated wide areas on this world before the introduction of modern methods, we should use every means in our power to discourage these dangerous fanatics. I believe that it is the duty of all good citizens who belong to antivivisection societies to send in their resignations at once, and to stand with our government, our great physicians, surgeons, veterinarians, agriculturalists, educators, and divines in approving and supporting properly conducted animal experimentation and sane humane education generally.

After the presentation of this paper by Mr. Baynes before the
American Society of Mammalogists, at its fifth annual meeting,
May 15 to 17, 1923, in the Academy of Natural Sciences,
Philadelphia, the Society unanimously passed these resolutions:

WHEREAS, It is a fact known to all thinking people that most of
the great advances in medicine and surgery have been made as a
result of experiments on living animals, especially mammals, and

WHEREAS, It is the belief of our eminent physicians, surgeons,
and veterinarians, and all others having great responsibility
for the health of human beings and of animals, that future
advances in these fields will be made chiefly as the result of
similar experiments, and

WHEREAS, It is known that these experiments almost invariably
are conducted humanely and with a minimum of discomfort to the
animals used, and

WHEREAS, There is an organized movement being carried on by
certain misinformed and misguided individuals who seek to
prevent or seriously interfere with such experiments, be it

_Resolved_, that we, members of the American Society of
Mammalogists, in annual convention assembled in the city
of Philadelphia, on the sixteenth day of May, 1923, are of
opinion that, in the best interests of real humanity, animal
experimentation, including vivisection, as practiced in our
laboratories today, should continue unhampered.

HYGEIA

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Transcriber’s Notes:

――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.