Saved by Antitoxin I 
 
 Which Shall Live — 
 
 Men or Animals? 
 

 Reprinted from Hygeia, October, 192: 
 
 Copyright, 1923 
 American Medical Association, 
 535 N. Dearborn St., Chicago 
 
WHICH SHALL LIVE— MEN OR ANIMALS? 
 
 ERNEST HAROLD BAYNES 
 
 F 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 some- 
 thing 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 tiine, 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 tor- 
 
ment of their swellings, which were indeed 
 intolerable, running out of their own govern- 
 ment, raving and distracted, and often times 
 laying violent hands upon themselves, throw- 
 ing themselves out of windows, shooting them- 
 selves, 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 
 hiihonitae) 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; conse- 
 
quently 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 j^lague. 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 relent- 
 less 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 experi- 
 ments 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 experi- 
 mental study of physiology and pathology. 
 Physicians depended almost entirely on bed- 
 side observations. Some of these physicians 
 were wonderful men, and often their obser- 
 vations 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 dis- 
 ease, 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 pro- 
 duced them. In such experiments mammals 
 are the animals chiefly used, because in most 
 respects they most nearly resemble man, him- 
 self 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 eventu- 
 ally cases would be found in man. As a 
 result of this work a bacteriologist in Cincin- 
 nati was able to identify the disease in per- 
 sons 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 inan. 
 
 II 
 
 Another class of experiments is carried on 
 by surgeons to develop dexterity before they 
 attempt operations on man. Such experiinents 
 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. 
 
6 
 
 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 
 
 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. 
 
 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 anes- 
 thetic. 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. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In the Civil War if a man was shot through 
 the bowels, he was doomed to death; the sur- 
 
 This is Whitey, about eight months after the com- 
 plete 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 com- 
 plete 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. 
 
8 
 
 geons 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 infec- 
 tion and death. Then caine along an experi- 
 menter who etherized about thirty dogs, shot 
 them through the bowels, and practiced join- 
 
 These children at the Anna Durand Hospital, Chi- 
 cago, 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. 
 
 ing 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. 
 
 Lockjaw, tetanus, chiefly a disease of war, 
 that threatened to take frightful toll of soldiers 
 wounded on the tetanus-infected battlefields of 
 
9 
 
 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 
 
 The homes of this boy and girl have to thank 
 research workers and animals for the lives saved by 
 antitoxin for diphtheria. Without antitoxin, devel- 
 oped by experimental work on animals, such children 
 would have had slim chances of recovery. 
 
 whether the man would live or whether he 
 would die a most distressing and horrible 
 death. 
 
 The antityphoid vaccine, also worked out on 
 mammals and tested on mammals, has prac- 
 tically abolished typhoid fever in soldiers' 
 camps. It is estimated by the Surgeon 
 
10 
 
 General's office that during the World War it 
 saved the lives of 60,000 men in the American 
 army alone. 
 
 Benefits of Experimentation to Man 
 
 These are only a very few examples from 
 the long list of benefits that have accrued 
 
 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 ani- 
 mals if through the knowledge gained the disease 
 could have been prevented, or your child could have 
 recovered without being crippled? 
 
 to humanity through the use of living mam- 
 mals for experimental purposes. I must men- 
 tion 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 
 
11 
 
 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 
 
 Pacific and Atlantic 
 
 Not man alone, but animals also have benefited by 
 experimental luork. The best example of this is the 
 conquest of hydrophobia. 
 
 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 
 
12 
 
 of experiments on dogs, has completed investi- 
 gations 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 start- 
 lingly beneficial results. Even when the dis- 
 ease 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. 
 
13 
 
 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 proba- 
 bility 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 diph- 
 theria, 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 com- 
 petent 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 danger- 
 
14 
 
 ous 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 false- 
 hood, slander, libel, perjury, forgery, and 
 attempted bribery. Under false pretenses they 
 obtain money from weakminded and unthink- 
 ing 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 anti- 
 vivisection 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, sur- 
 geons, veterinarians, agriculturalists, educators. 
 
15 
 
 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 sur- 
 gery 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 experi- 
 ments, and 
 
 Whereas, It is known that these experiments almost 
 invariably are conducted humanely and with a mini- 
 mum 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 vivisec- 
 tion, as practiced in our laboratories today, should 
 continue unhampered. 
 
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