c % c § IL U 13 6 c cr 9) I d a Q) o o -« PUBLIC LEDGER SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 7, 1917 MERCIFUL ADVANTAGES DUE TO ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION Hitherto Unpublished Letter From Lord Lister to Dr, W. W. Keen Exclaiming at Attempts to Restrict Medical Research To the Editor of Public Ledger: Sir — The following letter was found among Lord Lister's papers by his nephew, Sir Rickman J. Godlee, ex-president of the Royal College of Surgeons, England, who is about to publish the authorized life of Lord Lister. I have his kind permission to pub- lish the letter. It is a signed holograpn letter, evidently written and revised with unusual care, for there are many changes and corrections in it. It was also evi- dently copied, for "a line is drawn over it as it was copied," as Sir Rickman in- forms me. The envelope is indorsed '•Rough draft of a letter to Doctor Keen." No copy of the letter ever reached me Presumably it went astray in the mail. It is of especial interest as showing Lister's deep convictions and personal exparlence. W. W. KEEN. (COPY) 12 Park Crescent, Portland Place. London. W., April 4, 1898. Sir — I am grieved to learn that there should be even a remote chance of tlie Leg- islature of any State in the Union passing a bill regulating experiments upon animals. • It is only comparatively recently in the world's history that the gross darkness of empiricism has given place to more and more scientific practice, and this result has been mainly due to experiments upon Living animals. It was to these that Harvey was in large measure indebted for the funda- mental discovery of the circulation of the blood, and the great American triumph of general anesthesia was greatly promoted by them. Advancing knowledge has shown more and more that the bodies of the lower animals are essentially similar to our own in their intimate structure and functions ; so that lessons learned from them may be applied to human pathology and treatment. If we neglect to avail ourselves of this means of acquiring acquaintance with the working of that marvelously complex ma- chine, the animal body, we must either be content to remain at an absolute standstill or return to the fearful haphazard ways of testing new remedies upon human patients in the first instance which prevailed in the dark ages. Never was there a time when the advan- tages that may accrue to man from in- vestigation on the lower animals were more conspicuous than now. The enormous advances that have been made in our knowledge of the nature and treatment of diseases of Jate years have been essentially due to work of this kind. The importance of such investigations was fully recognized by the commissioners on whose report the act of Parliament reg- ulating experiments on animals in this country was passed, their object in recom- mending legislation being only to prevent possible abuse. In reality, as one of the commissioners, the late Mr. Erichsen, informed me, no single instance of such abuse having oc- curred in the British Islands had been brought before them at the time when I gave my evidence, and that was toward the close of their sittings. Yet, in obedience to a popular outcry, the Government of the day passed an act which went much farther than the recom- mendation of the commissioners. They had advised that the operation of the law should Lg_d to experiments upon warm- b " t «SJen the bin w^ of Commons a respected as a >rant of the sub- ject-matter, suggested that "vertebrate" should be substituted for "warm-blooded," and this amendment was accepted by a majority as ignorant as himself. The result is that, incredibie as it may seem, any one would now be liable to crimi- nal prosecution in this country who should observe the circulation of the blood in a fr.-g's foot under the microscope without having obtained a license for the experi- ment and unless he performed it in a specially licensed place. It can readily be understood that such restrictions must seriously interfere with legitimate researches. Indeed, for the private practitioner they are almost prohibitive, and no one can tell how much valuable work is thus prevented. My own first investigations of any im- portance were a study of the process of inflammation in the transparent web of the frog's foot. The experiments were very numerous, and were performed at all hours of the day at my own house. I was then a young, unknown practitioner, and if the present law had been in existence it might have Veen difficult for me to obtain the requisite licenses ; even if I had got them it would have been impossible for me to have gone to a public laboratory to work. Yet without these early researches, which the existing law would have prevented, I could not have found my way among the perplexing difficulties which beset me in developing the antiseptic system of treat- ment in surgery. In the course of my antiseptic work, at a later period, I frequently had recourse to experiments on animals. One of these oc- curs to me which yielded particularly valu- able results, but which I certainly should not have obtained if the present law had been in force. It had reference to the be- havior of a thread composed of animal tis- sue applied antiseptically for tying an ar- terial trunk. I had prepared a ligature of such material at a house where I was spend- ing a few days at a distance from home ; and it occurred to me to test it upon the carotid artery of a calf. Acting on the spur of the moment, I procured the needful animal at a neighboring market ; a lay friend gave chloroform, and another assisted at the operation. Four weeks later the calf was killed and its neck was sent to me. On my dissecting it, the beautiful truth was revealed that the dead material of the thread, instead of being thrown off by suppuration, had been replaced under the new aseptic conditions by a firm ring of living fibrous tissue, the old dangers of such an operation being completely ob- viated. I have referred thus to my personal ex- perience because asked to do so ; and these pxamiiles are perhaps sufficient to illustrate the impediments which the existing law places in the way of research by medical men engaged in practice. ..whose ideas, if developed, would often be the most fruitful in beneficent results. But even those who are specialists in psychology or pathology and have ready access to research laboratories find their work seriously hampered by the necessity of applying for licenses for all investiga- tions and the difficulty and delay often en- countered in obtaining them. Our law on this subject should never. have been passed and ought to be repealed. It serves no good purpose and interferes seriously with inquiries which are of para- " " -_"V?«";e to mankind. Believe me, ^ / LISTER. W'STOR/CAL COLLECTION! *>UKE MED. CENTER LIB. 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