Citizen,” of Brooklyn, of June, 7,1907.]

Human Material for Scientific

Research.

To the Editor of The Citizen—

Sir:—A recent dispatch from London announces that Ameri-
can physicians are crowding the English liospitals as never before
on account of their exceptionally good “opportunities for patho--
logical research.” The reason why these hospitals afford a better
“field for medical and surgical inquiry” than do those of the Con-
tinent is thus explained by a physician of La Grange, 111.: “The
patients in the London hospitals are, generally speaking, the most
intelligent in the world.” That is to say (presumably), the
London hospitals furnish material for scientific research that
is farther removed from unintelligent dogs and guinea pigs
than are the patients of continental hospitals. The latter class,
says this physician, “for the most part are merely passive sub-
jects in the hands of the autocratic operators,” to whom “the
patient is little more than a dog or rabbit.” Such “a sheer auto-
crat,” we are told, “regards individual life with a levity unknown
to men of Christian faith. Once a famous British physician
declared that the outcome of vivisection would be experimentation
on living human beings. I am inclined to believe this,” adds
the medical man of La Grange, “for already we hear prominent
practitioners both in America and England advocating the killing
of people who are hopelessly affected. It is no great step from
this to the sacrifice of individual sufferers for the collective good
which is presumed to inhere in the expansion of scientific
knowledge.”The dispatch referred to is headed “Human Vivisection:
Problem of the Future/’ Well might it have been entitled,
“The Problem of the Present/’ for the prediction of the famous
British physician has been fulfilled and the outcome of the vivi-
section of animals has already proved to be experiments on
living human beings.

Simultaneously with the publication of this dispatch was re-
ceived from England a pamphlet entitled “Experiments on Hos-
pital Patients,” by Mark Thornhill, late Judge of Sakarumpore.
It furnishes a striking confirmation of the La Grange physician’s
statement as to the attitude of continental doctors towards human
subjects. One of such experimenters, we are told, “induced
acute strain of the heart in perfectly strong healthy men” by
artificial means; another experimented on a group of children,
keeping them in bed for fifteen days and meanwhile administer-
ing drugs, “solely for the sake of some interesting scientific
experiment.” Other children—from new-born infants up to those
of the age of six years—were subjected to electric shocks “to
ascertain the physiological condition of the state of sleep.” One
physician explained his choice of children in a Foundling Hospital,
as material for a series of inoculation experiments lasting about a
year, by saying that “calves were hard to procure and keep on
account of the expense.” As the result of an operation on a boy
io years old, his heart was left exposed to view. This furnished
an opportunity, which was speedily seized, to observe the action
of the heart when artificially stimulated by alcohol, electricity, etc.,
with the result of “bitter fits of weeping” and fright ending in a
faint. There are chronicled other experiments, such as those
on the patients of an insane asylum who “begged and implored”
that the “painful method” be not used, and those performed on
women, while they were under chloroform, the details of which
can not here be given.Both the pamphlet referred to and another, entitled “Illustra-
tions of Human Vivisection/' printed for the Vivisection Reform
Society of America, justify the judgment of the La Grange physi-
cian that the British hospitals furnish an excellent “field for
medical and surgical inquiry/' Of many experiments made there
the following will answer as samples: Observations with various
poisons “pushed even to a fatal dose" and “confirmed by experi-
ments on man"; poisoning “healthy children" with salicine; ad-
ministering alcohol to “persons of all ages" (including “a boy
-aged io"), sometimes “poisonous doses"; poisoning “wretched
and generally ignorant creatures" with East India hemp, the
effects of which were so disturbing that “the majority of those
who took it once only did so a second time on compulsion."

While the opportunities for research may be better in Europe,
-our own institutions are not altogether lacking in such facilities.
For it was in a Baltimore hospital that experiments were made on
insane patients for the purpose of testing the poisonous quality
of a certain drug; it was a New York surgeon who, in order “to
test the efficiency of" a new instrument, operated on two women
who constituted “strictly inoperable cases from the standpoint of
cure"; it was an American vivisector who inoculated little girls
with the virus of the most awful disease known to humanity.
To quote from one American medical journal, “inoculations of
cancer from man to man" have been “done both intentionally
and successfully by an experimenter who “is discreetly silent
with regard to details"; and another has described “some experi-
mental work" upon sick and dying children in a Boston hospital.

To a New Jersey physician is to be credited a series of ex-
periments consisting in the deliberate exposing of little children to
contagion. The method adopted is thus described. The pillow on
which a scarlet fever patient had lain “was placed over the face

of the boy.........and held there some time. He was then made

to inhale the breath of the patient." It was an eminent American
physician who experimented on a “rather feeble-minded" woman3 0112 06188

473

by inserting needles into her brain and connecting them with
an electric battery, with the result of “great distress,” “acute
pain,” “spasms,” “convulsions,” “unconsciousness” and paralysis.

In reading the account of these researches, it is necessary to
keep in mind the superiority of human beings over dumb animals
as material for scientific investigation, which has long been
recognized by the most eminent physicians in this country. Dr.
Horatio C. Wood once said very plainly that “no experiments
on animals are absolutely satisfactory unless confirmed upon
man himself.” And Drs. W. W. Keen, S. Weir Mitchell and G..
R. Morehouse have made the statement that “very curious facts
could certainly not have been learned from any course of experi-
ments upon animals lower than man.”

S. R. TABER,

Secretary of Vivisection Reform Society.

532 Monadnock Block,

Chicago.

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