Experiments on Animals. Stephen Paget

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066139797

Table of Contents

       PART I EXPERIMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY

       I THE BLOOD

       II THE LACTEALS

       III THE GASTRIC JUICE

       IV GLYCOGEN

       V THE PANCREAS

       VI THE GROWTH OF BONE

       VII THE NERVOUS SYSTEM

       PART II EXPERIMENTS IN PATHOLOGY, MATERIA MEDICA, AND THERAPEUTICS

       I INFLAMMATION, SUPPURATION, AND BLOOD-POISONING

       II ANTHRAX

       III TUBERCLE

       IV DIPHTHERIA

       V TETANUS

       VI RABIES

       VII CHOLERA

       VIII PLAGUE

       IX TYPHOID FEVER. MALTA FEVER

       X THE MOSQUITO: MALARIA, YELLOW FEVER, FILARIASIS

       XI PARASITIC DISEASES

       XII MYXŒDEMA

       XIII THE ACTION OF DRUGS

       XIV SNAKE-VENOM

       PART III THE ACT RELATING TO EXPERIMENTS ON ANIMALS IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND

       1.— An Act to Amend the Law relating to Cruelty to Animals

       II.— Anæsthetics under the Act

       III.— Latest Report (1905) of Inspectors under the Act

       PART IV THE CASE AGAINST ANTI-VIVISECTION

       1. Anti-Vivisection Societies

       II. Literature.

       III. Arguments

       IV. " Our Cause in Parliament "

       V. A Historical Parallel

       INDEX

PART I

       EXPERIMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY

       Table of Contents

      EXPERIMENTS ON ANIMALS

I

       THE BLOOD

       Table of Contents

      I.—Before Harvey

      Galen, born at Pergamos, 131 A.D., proved by experiments on animals that the brain is as warm as the heart, against the Aristotelian doctrine that the office of the brain is to keep the heart cool. He also proved that the arteries during life contain blood, not πνεῦμα (Greek: pneuma), or the breath of life:—

      "Ourselves, having tied the exposed arteries above and below, opened them between the ligatures, and showed that they were indeed full of blood."

      Though all vessels bleed when they are wounded, yet this experiment was necessary to refute the fanciful teaching of Erasistratus and his followers, of whom Galen says:—

      "Erasistratus is pleased to believe that an artery is a vessel containing the breath of life, and a vein is a vessel containing blood; and that the vessels, dividing again and again, come at last to be so small that they can close their ultimate pores, and keep the blood controlled within them; yea, though the pores of the vein and of the artery lie side by side, yet the blood remains within its proper bounds, nowhere passing into the vessels of the breath of life. But when the blood is driven with violence from the veins into the arteries, forthwith there is disease; and the blood is poured the wrong way into the arteries, and there withstands and dashes itself against the breath of life coming from the heart, and turns the course of it—and this forsooth is fever."

      For many centuries after Galen, men were content to worship his name and his doctrines, and forsook his method. They did not follow the way of experiment, and invented theories that were no help either in science or in practice. Here, in Galen's observation of living arteries, was a great opportunity for physiology; but the example that he set to those who came after him was forgotten by them, and, from the time of Galen to the time of the Renaissance, physiology remained almost where he had left it. Of the men of the Renaissance, Servetus, Cæsalpinus, Ruinius, and others, Harvey's near predecessors, this much only need be said here, that