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.

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    But worse is to come. Dr. Keen says : Moreover, the end of the quotation is as follows :—' I have seen [the symp- toms of yellow fever] unrolled before my eyes, thanks to the potent influence of the yellow fever poison made in my laboratory.' This entire sentence does not occur either in the British Medical Journal or in the N'eiu England Medical Monthly. Whether it is quoted from some other source not indicated, or has been deliberately added, I leave you ... to explain. We propose to speak with great plainness in regard to this paragraph, and the disgraceful imputation which Dr. Keen has therein put forth. In the first place, this most cold-blooded sentence, (refer- ring to the yellow fever poison made in my laboratory, and the long list of symptoms unrolled before my eyes), which Dr. Keen cannot find in the medical journals named, %vas in Sanarelli s own words. We give them in the original Italian, transcribed from the volume to which Dr. Keen himself refers us.* La febbre, le congestioni, le emorragie, il vomito, la steatosi del fegato, la cefalalgia, la rachialgia, la nefrite, I'anuria, I'uremia, I'ittero, il delirio, il collapsus —infine, tutto quel complesso di elementi sintomatici ed anatomici, che nel loro apprezamento coml^inato constituiscono la base indivisible della diagnosi di febbre gialla, noi I'abbiamo visto svolgersi ai nostri occhi,—doviito alia potente influenza del veleno amarilUgeno fabricato nelle nostri culture artificiali. There are the words, translated and given to the world by the pamphlet on Human Vivisection, but garbled and sup- pressed by every medical publication in England or America ! True indeed it is, that when men attempt to defend an infamy, either the moral sense is blunted, or the truth-telling faculty is in abeyance.f But we have not finished with Dr. Keen. When he made the imputation that because these words were not in certain * Annali d' Igiene Sperimentale, 1897. Vol. VII., p. 470. f This garbling of Sanarelli's words was probably made by some one con- nected with the British Medical Journal, for the first appearance of the mutilated sentence was in this periodical.July 3, 1897. It read thus : The fever, the congestions, . . . delirium, collapse ; in short, all that complex of symptomatic and anatomical elements which in their combination, consti- tute the indivisible basis of the diagnosis of yelloiv fever. Any educated reader must see at once lliat this sentence is imperfect and in- complete ; where ir the verb? Did it not occur to Dr. Keen, that only as printed in llie pamphlet Human Vivisection, could the sentence be said to lie grammatic- ally correct? The reason for this garbling is of course evident : it was too plain a confession of human vivisection.
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