The inquisition of science / by Mona Caird.

  • Caird, Mona.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The inquisition of science / by Mona Caird. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    study of physiological works, or a mere reading of the Act, might make obvious, the average person lightly asserts that experiments are all performed under anaesthetics, and that no pain worth mentioning is caused by vivisection. The blessed word anaesthetics has, in fact, lulled the public to sleep. Dr. Hoggan, who commenced his career in the vivisectional laboratory, states that there is great difficulty in distinguishing insensibility from death— . . . especially in some of those classes of animals that are most generally employed as the subjects of physio- logical experimentation. Many of these die apparently before they can become insensible through chloroform, some of them, indeed, as soon as it has been administered. The practical consequence of this uncertainty is that complete and conscientious anesthesia is seldom even attempted, the animal getting at most a slight whiff of chloroform, by way of satisfying the conscience of the operator, or of enabling him to make statements of a humane character .... even where complete insensibility has been produced at the begin- ning of an operation, this effect only lasts for at most a minute or two, and during the re9t of the operation, lasting perhaps for hours, the animal must bear its torture as it best may. Continued insensibility could only be maintained by con- tinued careful administration by a special assistant. . . . This, I believe, is seldom, if ever done, .... this leaves entirely out of sight that numerous class of operations in which anesthetics cannot be used, as they would interfere with the correctness of the results : and where, if used, they would render the experiment worse than useless Personally, I may add, that the first experiments which I attempted to make as a student in my own private room, failed, because in my anxiety to produce anaesthesia, I found that the animal had died before the experiment could be commenced : this, too, at a time when I had much experience in administering chloroform in the operating theatre of the hospital. I, therefore, gave up the idea of trying such experiments, until I had had an opportunitv of seeing how