The Reality of human vivisection : a review of a letter by William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., late president of the American Medical Association.

Date:
1901
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Reality of human vivisection : a review of a letter by William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., late president of the American Medical Association. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    19/46 (page 13)
    comments, these expressions of public opinion upon events that were the universal scandal of the time,—comments that did not purport to be proofs,—Dr. Keen has the face to bring forward in support of his charge that many (experiments) zvere so vag7ie and indefinite that I could not look them up ! What are we to think of a writer who regards such a trick as justifiable, or believes in such methods of advocacy ? In failing to condemn the men guilty of these crimes,—eminent sur- geons though they may be,—any American surgeon makes a terrible mistake. Possibly there may be in this country half a dozen persons,—certainly not more,—who dream that American women needing a surgeon's aid, would prefer to trust themselves to the skill of an operator who has no words of condemnation for the perpetrators of the foulest crimes upon unconscious womanhood. 2. Take another illustration of Dr. Keen's proof that many experiments were so vague and indefinite he could not look them up. The pamphlet on Human Vivisection gives a quota- tion from Tertullian, who lived nearly seventeen hundred years ago. The quotation certainly had nothing to do with the practices of to-day ; it was merely of historical interest. Dr. Keen looks for it, and then, referring to the volume to which it was credited, boldly asserts, that no such quotation exists on pages 430-433. Now, let us suppose, that some reader who does not care to take Dr. Keen's word as infallibly cor- rect, concludes to test this assertion. He opens the volume referred to at page 430 ; finishes the sentence at foot of the page,—and there is the very quotation on the second line of page 431, where he cannot possibly help seeing it if he reads the page to which it was ascribed !* No reader who takes the trouble to consult the volume can doubt that Dr. Keen saw it. The temptation, however, to make a printer's error (430, 433, instead of 430-433,) do service as an imputation of literary dis- * Tertullian, De Anima, Edinburgh Edition. Tran. by Holmes. Vol. II, pp. 43«-433- ■■ There is tliat Ilerophiius, the well-known surgeon, or (as I may rather call him) l>utcher, who cut up no end of persons in order to investigate the secrets of Nature, who ruthlessly handled human creatures to discover tiieir form and make. Tiie pamphlet, it is true, used the word *'physician' in place of surgeon, but we [)resunie this is hardly an error which would lead Dr. Keen to deny existence of the paragraph.