The vivisection question / by Albert Leffingwell.

  • Leffingwell, Albert, 1845-1916.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The vivisection question / by Albert Leffingwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    or statements would be at all valued in comparison with evidence based upon animal experiments. Let me call your attention there- fore, to the works of one who, perhaps, was the leading physiologist of his time, Claude Bernard of Paris. You know, of course, how France honored him while living as the foremost representative of one branch of scientific workers; how she gave him a public funeral at the expense of the State, in the draped cathedral of Notre Dame, and how to his memory, she has erected a monument on one of the public streets. It was Bernard’s custom when I saw him in Paris, to illustrate his lectures by vivisections, and by repeated demonstrations to establish his statements of fact. Let me call your attention to the following quotation from one of his lectures before the College de France to be found in his Legons sur les Anestliesiquesthe italics being mine. His opening words are significant: “Commengons par etablir les fails, et nous raisonnerons ensuite sur eux en deduire les proprietes des alcadoides de I’opium . . Void un chien qui a regu avant la seance la dose indiquee. Vous voyez qu’il reste inerte, et sans mouvements. Nous allons repetir I’experience sous vos yeux sur un autre animal. . . Vous voyez que I’animal est tombe dans un etat de stupeur qui le laisse absolument immobile, car il est evident que, s’il n’avait pas regu de la morphine, il ne resterait pas ainsi etendu sur cette table sans chercher a s’echapper. Il a done perdu la conscience du lieu ou il est; il ne reconnait plus son maitre. Cependent la sensihilite persiste. . . Toutefois, loin de supprimer completenient la sensibilite conirne le chloroforme, la morphine pro- voque, chez nos animaux une sorte d’exaggeration de I’excitabilite, ou, plutot une epece de sensibilite particuliere au bruit.” (p. 196.) In another case, Bernard experiments upon a dog which he had previously used in like manner a day or two before: “Ce chien retombe dans le meme etat de torpeur qu’il avait deja subit. Mais, je ferai remarquer que, ainsi que je I’ai deja dit, vialgre cel etat de torpeur, I’aniiiial n’est pas insensibible, coniine le serait devenu sous I’influence du chloroforme. Bien que dans un etat de torpeur, I’animal est done excitable et sensible.” (p. 222.) “Notwithstanding this condition of torpor,” says Bernard, the animal is not insensible, as he would be under the influence of chloroform,”—but on the contrary he “is excitable and sensible.” That is the answer that science, based upon experimentation, makes to your question. Over and over again, Bernard affirms this. Take, for instance, another course of lectures, comprised in his book: “Legons de