Vivisection : is it necessary or justifiable? : being two prize essays published by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

  • Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vivisection : is it necessary or justifiable? : being two prize essays published by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 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.

    18/94 (page 8)
    We will now refer to the recognized mode of carrying out these vivisections, and take our illustrations from the clinique of the Imperial School at Alfort, vouching that it is not an over- charged picture, but the veritable stereotyped programme of daily performances. It dates no farther back than the spring and summer of 1863. At this college, students in their second year’s attendance occasionally practise vivisection ; but those in their third, fourth, or subsequent years, go constantly through the fixed yearly number. These advanced pupils are told off in sections of eight, and these again into sub-sections of two— one to act as aide, while the other is operating. Mondays and Thursdays are the operation days, and eight horses are provided for this purpose on each of these days. A section of students is put to each animal, and the order in which the several operations are to be gone through, with the names of the students who are to perform them, has been already arranged. In general, each student is called upon to rehearse eight distinct operations; so that, altogether, a single animal has to submit t o sixty-four attacks of cutting instruments or burning— each attack painful, nearly all of them acutely so, and all in one day. These students are scarcely under the control of anyone— though a professor now and again makes his appearance from the forenoon up to three o clock ; consequently, they can do pretty much as they please. From six o’clock in the morning until three or four in the afternoon, is occupied in completing this long and dreary list of operations. Those performed while the house is maintained in a standing position, and by means of restraint, are chiefly as follows :— Bleeding from all the more important superficial veins which are accessible on the head, neck, body, and limbs. Each student bleeds from the jugulars on both sides of the neck; so°that these two vessels alone receive eight or more incisions, Setons of various lengths, from a few inches to upwards of two feet, are inserted over the body, and in situations in which they may or may not be usually employed in legitimate practice. Nicking and docking the tail. Opening the oesophagus. Cutting down upon, and opening the trachea. Puncturing and ligaturing the carotid and other arteries- Perforating the chest and abdomen, as in the operation of tapping for the withdrawal of fluid from these cavities. Removing the ovaries in the female ; and exposing the ureters or canals which lead from the kidneys to the bladder. When all these,