Baltimore Evening Sun (6 September 1911): 6.

From the third canto of the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society’s polite protest against my protest against its protest against medical research:

We quote Dr. E. Lucas Hughes in part: “After many years of daily experiments, after myriads of animals have already been vivisected, we are told that the advancement of medicine is cheaply secured by the sufferings of a few animals. The vivisectors are always promising great things, but there are but few actual results. Everything that has been brought forward with a great flourish of trumpets has proved disappointing and misleading. Will the vivisectors ever give us anything of real value? I well remember the great Koch tuberculin bubble and its explosion 20 years ago. ‘Our hands are empty, but our mouths are full of promises for the future,’ said the great high priest of vivisection, Claude Bernard, more than 20 years ago. Today their hands are still empty, and their promises still abound.” Since Dr. Hughes and many more equally eminent men declare the utter uselessness of vivisection, your plain fact–that “animal experimentation has enormously widened the field of medical knowledge”–is not so plain.

It is difficult, of course, to combat such uncompromising stupidity as this. If Dr. Hughes, whoever he may be, actually believes that the use of animals has not enormously widened the field of medical knowledge–if he is unaware of the great and invaluable work done in 100 laboratories–if has never heard of the diphtheria and meningitis antitoxins, the hydrophobia vaccine, salvarsan, the Widal and Wassermann reactions, and the revolutionary work of Pfeiffer, Bordet, Ehrlich and a host of other men (all vivisectionists) in immunity–or if, having heard of these inventions and advances, he yet denies that they are “of real value” or that vivisection paved the way for them and made them possible–then I can only stand aghast before him, as before the most magnificent and awe-inspiring ignoramus in Christendom.

Such bold and ridiculous denials are constantly made by the “eminent physicians” and “great authorities” of the anti-vivisectionist crusade–by the actors, fictioneers, mental healers, vegetarians, horse docters and other such Himalayas of wisdom who give dignity to the jehad. Says Dr. James H. Payne: “No good ever came from vivisection and none ever will.” Says Dr. J. S. Harndall: “There is no proof that * * * vivisection * * * has produced the slightest benefit to science.” Says Stephen Townsend, F. R. C. S.: “From a scientific point of view * * it is worse than useless.” Says Dr. Charles Clay: “I challenge any member of my profession to prove that vivisection has in any way advanced the science of medicine or tended to improve the treatment of disease.” Says Dr. F. S. Arnold: “Vivisection is barren and misleading.”

Bold denials—but eternally nonsensical and vain! Of what value is the boldest of them beside the plain fact that the death-rate from diphtheria has decreased 20 per cant. in 10 years, and the further plain fact that the diphtheria antitoxin is responsible for nine-tenths of that gain, and the further plain fact that without the use of animals the manufacture of the antitoxin would be impossible, and the final plain fact that the knowledge which led to its invention was gained, almost wholly, from long and tedious experiments upon other animals—experiments which often showed little result and sometimes failed altogether, but which eventually came to fruit in one of the most valuable remedial agents known to medicine today? Deny it, Messieurs, if you will! Confess your ignorance, if that be your pleasure! But don’t expect sane human beings to mistake that ignorance for wisdom.

And now for Dr. Berkley and the charge that he murdered paupers at Bayview. Says the society in its letter:

In Dr. Berkley’s experiments at Bayview we have an instance of human vivisection–not the only one, by any means, but one which concerns us in Maryland very nearly. The fact that it was recorded 14 years ago in no way lessens its horror or weakens its weight as an antivivisection argument. In the intervening time there has been no legislation which would make its repetition impossible, nor have we heard of any ethical charge in the profession which would make it morally improbable. It is creditable to the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society to have kept up its protest through the intervening decade, and the society will fall far short of its duty if it does not continue to protest until all danger of such human experimentation is removed from our midst.

In regard to the specific case you cite—Case No. 2 (a printer’s error made it No. 1) we review it in brief: This patient, like the others, was dosed with thyroid extract. She grew unmistakably worse under the treatement, finally became frennzied at the end of seven weeks “died before the treatment had subsided.” Note that at the time of death the patient had not racovered from the effects of the treatment. There is no indication that she would have recovered, yet we are told that we must not conclude that she died as a result or the treatment, but must believe that the cause of exit was tuberculosis, as stated in the report. No mention is previously made of this disease in the history of the case. During the seven weeks of frenzy, nothing of its beginning or progress is recorded; it is only when the cause death is sought that we read of “acute tuberculosis.”

So be it. But let us get back to the real point, which is this: That the Maryland Anti- Vivisection Society, in its pamphlet upon this case, does not argue frankly against Dr. Berkley (as it is very careful to do here, in its letter to me) but elaborataly distorts and garnles its own words in an effort to make him convict himself. Instead of maintaining openly and sanely that he was wrong about the cause of death, it supresses the passage giving tuberculosis as that cuse and so makes it appear that thyroid extract poisoning was the cause, and that he admits it. Not a word about tuberculosis appears in its pamphlet. On the contrary, Dr. Berkley’s mentiuon of the disease is carefully stricken out, without any mark or note to indicate the fact. What remains is substantially a confession that the thyroid extract was the cause of death–a confession which Dr. Berkley specifically failed to make and even specifically repudiated.

This is the ground of my complaint against the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society. When it questions the value and morality of Dr. Berkley’s experiments it is well within its rights, and perhaps it is also within its rights when it argues that he was mistaken–that it was not tuberculosis that killed his pauper, but thyroid extract. But is it fair for it to do the thing it has done–to garble his plain words–to turn those garbled words against him–to persist in the trick for 10 years? I think not. It may be wrong, but it seems to me that the instinct of fairness inherent in every civilized man is firmly against all such oblique and cowardly attacks. If the truth is sufficient, why stoop to deliberate deception? Let the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society answer that plain question.

Tomorrow, the last canto, which deals further with Dr. Berkley.