The president's address : delivered at the Fifty-First Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, held at Atlantic City, N.J., June 5-8, 1900 / W.W. Keen.

  • Keen, William W. (William Williams), 1837-1932.
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The president's address : delivered at the Fifty-First Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, held at Atlantic City, N.J., June 5-8, 1900 / W.W. Keen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Among the important contributions to antivivisection literature evoked by this discussion, none is more valu- able than the letter addressed to the Chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia, in opposition to the bill, by President Eliot, of Harvard College, which I venture to read to you: Harvard University. Cambridge, - March 19, 1900. Dear Sir:—I observe that a new bill on the subject of vivisection has been introduced into the Senate, bill No.. 34. This bill is a slight improvement on its predecessor, but is still very objectionable. I beg leave to state very briefly the objection to all such legislation. 1. To interfere with or retard the progress of medical discovery is an inhuman thing. Within fifteen years med- ical research has made rapid progress, almost exclusively through the use of the lower animals, and what such re- search has done for the diagnosis and treatment of diph- theria it can probably do in time for tuberculosis, erysipelas, cerebrospinal meningitis, and cancer, to name only four hor- rible scourges of mankind which are known to be of germ origin. 2. The human race makes use of animals without the small- est compunction as articles of food and as laborers. It kills them, confines them, gelds them, and interferes in all manner of ways with their natural lives. The liberty we take with the animal creation in using utterly insignificant numbers of them for scientific researches is infinitesimal compared with the other liberties we take with animals, and it is that use of animals from which the human race has most to hope. 3. The few medical investigators can not properly be super- vised or inspected or controlled by any of the ordinary process- es of Government supervision. Neither can they properly be licensed, because there is no competent supervising or licens- ing body. The Government may properly license a plumber, because it can provide the proper examination boards for plumbers; it can properly license young men to practice med- icine, because it can provide the proper examination for that profession, and these boards can testify to the fitness of can- didates, but the Government can not provide any board of officials competent to testify to the fitness of the medical in- vestigator. 4. The advocates of antivivisection laws consider them- selves more humane and merciful than the opponents of such laws. To my thinking these unthinking advocates are really cruel to their own race. How many cats or guinea-pigs would