What has vivisection done for science? : a paper read before the Cheltenham Natural Science Society / by Francis Day.

  • Day, Francis, 1829-1889.
Date:
[between 1870 and 1879?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: What has vivisection done for science? : a paper read before the Cheltenham Natural Science Society / by Francis Day. 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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    that what we now know as blood-vessels, were then divided into two kinds :—those which we term veins were supposed to be the blood earners, because after death they were found to be full of blood; whereas the arteries were believed to hold the vital air or spirit of the individual, because after death they were seen to be empty. Oalen who flourished at the middle or end of the second century of the Christian era appears to have been one of the first who doubted the truth of this belief, and he ascertained by experiments on living animals, (in other words by vivisections,) that arteries during life carry blood and not air. He likened the arterial and venous circulation to two trees having their roots implanted in the lungs, their branches distributed through the body, and united by a common trunk, the heart. He became so successful in the treat- ment of some diseases that he was driven out of Eome by the persecution of the Physicians who attributed his success to magic. But subsequently he returned to that city where he appears to have enjoyed a great reputation. A long interval succeeded, and the knowledge of the circulation appears to have remained much as Galen left it. At last one arose in this country who spent his time in endeavouring to unravel the mystery. I allude, of course, to Harvey, who early in the seven- teenth century (1615) discovered the secret of the circulation of the blood. When, he writes, I first gave my mind to ^^vi- sections, as a means of discovering the motions and uses of the heart, and sought to discover these from actual inspection, and not from the writings of others, I found the task so truly arduous, so full of difficulty, that I was almost tempted to think with Fracas- torius that the motion of the heart was only to be comprehended by the Deity. JFor I could neither rightly perceive, at first, when the contraction, and when the dilatation took place. ... At length, and by using greater and daily diligence, having frequent recourse to vivisections, employing a variety of animals for the purpose, and collecting numerous observations, I thought that I had attained to the truth. And we know, or might if we cared to read, that it was due to Harvey's researches that the mode of the circulation of the blood was first ascertained, such having been entirely discovered by means of experiments made on the lower animals while living. He never found out, however, by what channel the blood got from one set of vessels to the other. This was shown by Malpighi who ascertained the existence of the inter- mediate capillaries by means of the microscope, and first in living frogs. Time went on, two centuries had elapsed since Harvey's time, but still another mystery required solving. In some diseases, more especially in acute Kheumatism, (unhappily not rare among us), the heart becomes afiected, sometimes to end in death occur- ring rapidly, in others more slowly, perhaps by dropsy, but leaving