Title: Which Shall Live—Men or Animals?
Author: Baynes, Ernest Harold
Language: English
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ANIMALS? ***



                  [Illustration: Saved by Antitoxin]

                        _Which Shall Live――Men


                _Reprinted from Hygeia, October, 1923_


                           _Copyright, 1923
                     American Medical Association,
                     535 N. Dearborn St., Chicago_



                   WHICH SHALL LIVE――MEN OR ANIMALS?

                         ERNEST HAROLD BAYNES


If the United States were threatened with invasion by a foreign power,
even if we knew that the invasion would be only temporary and that
only a few thousand of our citizens would be killed, the whole country
would be aroused in an effort to prevent that invasion. If necessary,
millions of men would be drafted and trained to meet the invaders and
billions of dollars would be expended to protect those few thousand
people from the death that must otherwise overtake them. In such a
case, every real man and every real woman in the country would be doing
something to insure the defeat of that invading army. Yet such an army
is like a box of tin soldiers compared with armies that threaten us all
the time, but which cause scarcely an extra beat of the nation’s pulse.
I refer to the armies of disease. The army of bubonic plague alone, if
permitted to effect a foothold on our shores, might at any time ravage
our cities as it once ravaged the cities of Europe and Asia, leaving
scarcely enough living to bury the dead. We read in DeFoe’s “History of
the Plague” in London in 1665 of “people in the rage of their distemper
or in the torment of their swellings, which were indeed intolerable,
running out of their own government, raving and distracted, and often
times laying violent hands upon themselves, throwing themselves out of
windows, shooting themselves, mothers murdering their own children in
their lunacy.” Indeed, we do not have to go back so far to realize what
the plague can do. In 1905 in India alone there were 1,040,429 deaths
from this one disease.


                    THE CONQUEST OF BUBONIC PLAGUE

In this country no layman loses any sleep on account of bubonic
plague. Is that because it does not exist? Not at all. It comes to
our waters, even effects a landing sometimes. But we have a small
garrison of vigilant medical men on our coasts watching day and night
for that enemy, ready to give him instant combat if he comes. We sleep
in peace because we trust that garrison. Thirty years ago we did not
know what caused this terrible plague, but in 1894 the germ (_Bacillus
pestis bubonicae_) was discovered. Even then it was not known how the
disease was carried or what caused it to spread so rapidly――and before
it could be combated successfully, that must be known. A series of
experiments on living animals, chiefly rats, guinea-pigs and monkeys,
yielded the desired information and through these experiments we have
been delivered from this terrible scourge. It was known that rats were
subject to plague; consequently attempts were made to find out how
it was transmitted from one rat to another. The idea that it might be
carried by parasites occurred to several investigators. Accordingly,
healthy rats were placed in cages close to diseased rats; they remained
perfectly well until a few fleas were introduced. Then, almost
immediately, the hitherto healthy rats were stricken with plague.
Cages containing healthy monkeys were suspended over cages occupied
by diseased and flea-infested rats. At regular intervals the monkeys
were lowered nearer to the stricken rodents. The monkeys were all right
until they were brought within jumping distance of a flea, when they at
once contracted the plague. These and other experiments left no doubt
that rat fleas were the carriers among animals, and since rat fleas
also feed on man when their natural prey is not available, it was an
easy matter to show that the plague is spread by means of rat fleas.
This led to a definite program for checking the spread of the disease,
by relentless warfare on fleas and the rats that carried them. The rats
were trapped, their breeding places destroyed, and diseased rats from
infested ports were prevented from entering the country. For example,
when it was found that rats frequently come ashore along the cables
stretched between the ships and the wharves, metal cones similar to
those used to prevent rodents from climbing into corn cribs were placed
on the cables. The fact that I wish to emphasize is that it is due
to experiments on living mammals that this black death is no longer a
terror to us.


               EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF HEALTH AND DISEASE

Until the middle of the last century very little had been done in the
way of experimental study of physiology and pathology. Physicians
depended almost entirely on bedside observations. Some of these
physicians were wonderful men, and often their observations were
remarkably shrewd. But the human body is a complex machine, the
organs are so interdependent, that in the presence of any given set
of symptoms and signs of disease, it was almost impossible to be sure
just what caused them, and, consequently, what was best to do for
the patient. When the experimental method was adopted disease could
be observed systematically, conditions could be controlled, and the
phenomena that resulted could be studied intelligently because the
experimenter knew exactly what had produced them. In such experiments
mammals are the animals chiefly used, because in most respects they
most nearly resemble man, himself a mammal. Practically all the
domestic mammals have been used, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, swine,
dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea-pigs, and rats and mice; monkeys are also
used. And all have made wonderful contributions to medicine or surgery
or both.


                    TYPES OF EXPERIMENTS ON ANIMALS

                                   I

There are several classes of experiments. Some are in the field of
pure research, not having for their object any immediate benefit to
man or animals. Experiments of this nature were carried on some years
ago in work on bubonic plague among rodents in California. It was
discovered that ground squirrels have a disease similar to plague and
yet distinctly different. By a long series of experiments it was found
that monkeys are susceptible to this disease, and it was predicted
that eventually cases would be found in man. As a result of this
work a bacteriologist in Cincinnati was able to identify the disease
in persons in his own vicinity. Another investigator found it among
persons in Utah, and showed that it is carried from infected rabbits
and ground squirrels by biting insects. It also was shown that the
disease is widespread over the United States. With this knowledge of
the means of transmission of the disease it is comparatively easy to
prevent the infection of man.

                                  II

Another class of experiments is carried on by surgeons to develop
dexterity before they attempt operations on man. Such experiments are
usually carried out on dogs. The animals are invariably under complete
anesthesia and usually they are killed by added ether at the end of the
experiment.

[Illustration: _Does this dog look unhappy? Ten years ago Buster had an
operation performed on the stomach; the results have been of aid in the
study of digestion. Buster has not suffered thereby, and she has saved
much suffering to others. She is receiving a visit from the author._]

Recently I attended the clinic of a throat specialist in the east.
I saw child after child wheeled into the amphitheatre and relieved,
usually in a few moments, of foreign bodies that they had sucked into
the windpipe and that a few years ago would in many cases have caused
death, either directly or as the result of a dangerous operation.
So dextrous is this man that his little patients do not need any
anesthetic. After his work was done I had a talk with him, and he told
me that the technic of these operations had been worked out with great
care on dogs that were always under an anesthetic. He also told me that
by the use of two dogs he had trained fifty other men to do similar
work.

[Illustration: _This is Whitey, about eight months after the complete
removal of the parathyroid glands. These glands are quite often partly
and accidentally removed during operations on the thyroid gland in
man, with alarming and sometimes fatal results. Following complete
removal of the parathyroid glands, carnivorous animals, including man,
die within from four to six days. As a result of experimental work on
this dog and other animals, three effective curative measures have
been developed, which indefinitely preserve the life of such animals
in normal health. Two persons are known to have been saved and several
others have been rendered free from symptoms as a result of this
study._]

                                  III

In the Civil War if a man was shot through the bowels, he was doomed
to death; the surgeons hardly dared to open the abdomen and if they
did they didn’t know how to join the ends of the bowel so that it would
not leak. Of course the slightest leak meant infection and death. Then
came along an experimenter who etherized about thirty dogs, shot them
through the bowels, and practiced joining bowel ends until he could
make a perfect joint. It is safe to say that in the World War the
lives of thousands of men were saved as a result of that series of
experiments.

[Illustration: _These children at the Anna Durand Hospital, Chicago,
have been saved from death from diphtheria by the use of antitoxin. The
boy in the center has a squint as the result of his sickness._]

Lockjaw, tetanus, chiefly a disease of war, that threatened to
take frightful toll of soldiers wounded on the tetanus-infected
battlefields of Europe, did little damage during the late war because
of antitetanus serum made from the blood of immunized horses. Every
wounded man received an injection of this serum at the earliest
possible moment, and usually the length of time that had intervened
determined whether the man would live or whether he would die a most
distressing and horrible death.

[Illustration: _The homes of this boy and girl have to thank research
workers and animals for the lives saved by antitoxin for diphtheria.
Without antitoxin, developed by experimental work on animals, such
children would have had slim chances of recovery._]

The antityphoid vaccine, also worked out on mammals and tested on
mammals, has practically abolished typhoid fever in soldiers’ camps. It
is estimated by the Surgeon General’s office that during the World War
it saved the lives of 60,000 men in the American army alone.

[Illustration: _On the roof garden of the Home for Destitute Crippled
Children, Chicago. Suppose one of these victims of infantile paralysis
were your child? Would you hesitate to sacrifice under ether one or
more animals if through the knowledge gained the disease could have
been prevented, or your child could have recovered without being
crippled?_]


                  BENEFITS OF EXPERIMENTATION TO MAN

These are only a very few examples from the long list of benefits
that have accrued to humanity through the use of living mammals for
experimental purposes. I must mention only one more――the recent
discovery of a specific treatment for diabetes. Less than two years ago
I invited a little girl to go for a bird walk with me that I might
give her the pleasure of stroking and feeding a wild bird in its nest.
I was particularly eager that she should enjoy that day, because both
she and I knew that she had not many days to live. She was doomed to
die of diabetes within six months; as a matter of fact she died in less
than three months from the date of our walk. I remember thinking that
I would give anything I possessed if I could by some miracle restore
that child to health. Today, less than two years later, that miracle
could be performed, because Dr. F. G. Banting of the University of
Toronto, by a brilliant series of experiments on dogs, has completed
investigations begun on rabbits by Claude Bernard seventy-five years
ago. The story of this wonderful discovery is long, but here are the
outstanding facts. It was found that when the pancreas of a dog is
removed, the animal at once develops acute diabetes and usually dies
of that disease within three or four weeks. Under the microscope the
pancreas is seen to be studded with countless little bodies, known as
the islands of Langerhans, after the German scientist who discovered
them. It was found that these islands secrete a substance quite
different from that secreted by the rest of the pancreas, and that
it is the absence of this substance, not the absence of the pancreas
itself, that causes diabetes. A method was devised for obtaining an
extract from these islands of Langerhans, and it was found that when
this extract was injected into a dog whose pancreas has been removed
it did not die, but got well and continued to be well as long as it
was given injections of this extract. After these injections had been
proved to be safe by repeated experiments on dogs, they were tried
on human patients with startlingly beneficial results. Even when the
disease is of long standing, when the patient has reached the very last
stage and is in the coma that immediately precedes death, injections of
this extract, now known to the world as insulin, will bring him out of
the coma, snatch him from the very jaws of death, and restore him to
health.

[Illustration:

    _Pacific and Atlantic_

_Not man alone, but animals also have benefited by experimental work.
The best example of this is the conquest of hydrophobia._]


              THE FALSE STAND OF THE ANTIVIVISECTIONISTS

We have seen that all these great advances in medicine and surgery have
been made as the result of experiments on living mammals, and you will
agree, I believe, that in all probability further advances in these
fields must be brought about by the same means. This is the opinion of
practically all eminent physicians and surgeons and veterinarians, and
of all the great scientists and educators in other fields――in short,
it is the opinion of all persons who have vast responsibilities for
the health of men and of animals. The only persons who are opposed to
these reasonable experiments are the antivivisectionists, who have no
such responsibilities. Would any sane person think of going to the
antivivisectionists for help if there were an epidemic of smallpox or
diphtheria, or if there were an outbreak of hog cholera or of blackleg
in cattle? We don’t go to them because they know nothing about such
matters. Yet they boldly contradict all competent authorities and
tell us that experiments on animals are useless, that they have never
accomplished anything. The antivivisection societies are composed
largely of well disposed but woefully misinformed persons. And those
who are responsible for the misinformation are the leaders of the
antivivisectionists. I have been studying these leaders for some years,
and I may say, without any danger of my statements being disproved,
that among them may be found many of the most dangerous of the
criminal insane to be found in this country today――and I have recently
visited some of our largest penitentiaries and asylums. I have found
some of these leaders of the antivivisection movement to be guilty of
falsehood, slander, libel, perjury, forgery, and attempted bribery.
Under false pretenses they obtain money from weakminded and unthinking
people and, with this money, they wilfully and perennially attempt
not only to prevent the advance of medicine and surgery, but also to
break down the bulwarks of preventive medicine by teaching contempt of
vaccination and of the use of antitoxins.

Few of the criminals in our jails are responsible for the deaths
of more than a small number of persons; few of them have attempted
widespread destruction of life. But it is the opinion of eminent
physicians that through the pernicious teachings of the antivivisection
leaders we shall in a few years have epidemics that will destroy the
lives of many thousands of children. Unless we wish for a return of
the plagues and pestilences that once devastated wide areas on this
world before the introduction of modern methods, we should use every
means in our power to discourage these dangerous fanatics. I believe
that it is the duty of all good citizens who belong to antivivisection
societies to send in their resignations at once, and to stand with
our government, our great physicians, surgeons, veterinarians,
agriculturalists, educators, and divines in approving and supporting
properly conducted animal experimentation and sane humane education
generally.

    After the presentation of this paper by Mr. Baynes before the
    American Society of Mammalogists, at its fifth annual meeting,
    May 15 to 17, 1923, in the Academy of Natural Sciences,
    Philadelphia, the Society unanimously passed these resolutions:

    WHEREAS, It is a fact known to all thinking people that most of
    the great advances in medicine and surgery have been made as a
    result of experiments on living animals, especially mammals, and

    WHEREAS, It is the belief of our eminent physicians, surgeons,
    and veterinarians, and all others having great responsibility
    for the health of human beings and of animals, that future
    advances in these fields will be made chiefly as the result of
    similar experiments, and

    WHEREAS, It is known that these experiments almost invariably
    are conducted humanely and with a minimum of discomfort to the
    animals used, and

    WHEREAS, There is an organized movement being carried on by
    certain misinformed and misguided individuals who seek to
    prevent or seriously interfere with such experiments, be it

    _Resolved_, that we, members of the American Society of
    Mammalogists, in annual convention assembled in the city
    of Philadelphia, on the sixteenth day of May, 1923, are of
    opinion that, in the best interests of real humanity, animal
    experimentation, including vivisection, as practiced in our
    laboratories today, should continue unhampered.



                                HYGEIA

            _A Journal of Individual and Community Health_

              The publication through which the medical
              profession of the United States presents
              to the public interesting, instructive and
              authoritative articles about health

                          _Published Monthly_
                  _$3.00 the year――25 cents the copy_


                     AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
                  535 North Dearborn Street - CHICAGO



 Transcriber’s Notes:

 ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

 ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.



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