Excerpt from The Progress of Surgery as Influenced by Vivisection
I have been asked by the editor of "The Philadelphia Record" to write a brief resume of the influence of vivisection on the progress of modern surgery. I shall do so as briefly as I possibly can, stating only facts which are generally well known to surgeons, but of which the general public of necessity must be ignorant to a great extent. Most of the facts below stated are known to me personally, as they have occurred during my professional lifetime; and I can, therefore, vouch for their accuracy.
If a physiologist were asked to contribute a similar paper he would be able to tell a similar story as to the revelations of the functions of various organs in the human economy obtained through vivisection; if a professor of pharmacology (i. e., the action of drugs upon the living body) were to write a similar paper he would be able to show an equal debt owing to animal experimentation, first in giving us an exact knowledge of the action of drugs, and, secondly, in the introduction of a large number of new drugs. In this way cocaine was introduced into medicine and the proper use of such a powerful drug as digitalis was shown.
If a medical man were to write a similar chapter he would scarcely know where to begin. The whole life history, for example, of the trichina has been studied in animals and the results applied to man, so that if every one would heed the warning no one need die from the trichina worm in pork. This has had also an enormous commercial value, since all our hog products are exported on condition that the trichina be excluded by microscopical examination. In diphtheria the percentage of deaths has been reduced in Baltimore from about 70 per cent. to about 5 per cent.
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