Next, I will take this, because to me this is one of the most terrible experiments ever done in the name of vivisection. The “description of this experiment was contained in an article on the causation of eclampsia. Eclampsia, says the dictionary, “is a convulsive or epileptiform seizure occurring in women during pregnancy, labour, or the puerperium.” This is what this gentleman did:.
“The experiments were carried out on bitches, mostly pregnant, a few not. These experiments fell into four main divisions: (1) The injections of substances intravenously; (2) The operative separation of the placenta, and the injection of substances into the uterine vessels to cause local thrombosis; (3) The causing of an intestinal obstruction, usually by closing the anus; (4) The feeding of pregnant and non-pregnant dogs on a meat and water diet”.
When I describe the horror of this, it is difficult to believe that we live in 1934, in an age which prides itself on advanced civilization. To continue:.
“Solution of faeces: Faeces from a pregnant bitch were placed in a tin and covered with water in which they were stirred. The tin was allowed to stay in the sun for three days. The fluid was then boiled and filtered. On December 5th, 1927, 10cm. of this solution together with 10 c.cm. of a 2 per cent. solution of sodium oxalate were injured into a vein of a large black bitch near term. Three pups were born within twenty four hours of the injection. Two were still-born and the third died the next day”.
Now, item No.2:
“Potassium and sodium oxalate: (2) Bitch near term; 45 c.c.m. of a 4 per cent. solution of potassium oxalate were injected intravenously in three doses of 10, 15, 20 c.cm. between January 7th and 10th, 1929. The anus was closed on the 9th, and the bitch was put on a meat diet. On January 11th, the animal refused food; on the 12th it reeled around as if drunk, and on the 13th it went into convulsions. The back was extended, the eyes remained open, and there was a marked tremor of the limbs. The bitch died after the convulsions had lasted one hour, and before the pus were born”.
I do not propose to read any more of that, but it was continued over and over again. And here are the famous cases of unfortunate monkeys which were put into such a state of agony by routine injections that inside their cages they were seen to tear the flesh from their arms until the inside portions of their arms were exposed. That took place in an English laboratory.
Finally, I want for a moment, as the last example, to turn to the question of vaccination. The public has become so familiar with vaccination, and the various results on children, that it is apt to forget that involved in the practice there is the very extreme cruelty of producing the lymph which is used in this horrible rite. Therefore, before I finish with the examples which I am giving you here, I want to place before you that vaccine not only has its very dangerous side, but also its very cruel side. This is a description of how the lymph is obtained. I will give the actual words:.
“The calf is first strapped to a tilting table and placed horizontally, and, in Paris, we are told that a number of superficial incisions, each about one inch long, are then made in a direction at right angles to the long axis of the body, and about a couple of inches from one another – I want you to take that in – The incisions of the several rows are made an echelon. The lancet employed for the purpose has a spear-headed blade, this shape being specially recommended by M. Chambon.
Over each incision a drop of glycerinated lymph is allowed to fall from a glass tube, and the drop is rubbed in with the flat portion of the blade of the lancet. The process is carried out by one of the laboratory servants, and is a somewhat lengthy one. In England the cuts are made horizontally and are about thirty in number. In order to collect the lymph, the calf, after five days, is once more placed on the table, or, if material is required for immediate use only, it is usually allowed to stand.
Each vesicle (that is the lacerated portion of the incision in which the pus has now gathered) is now clamped separately, and the crust first removed with a lancet, which is then wiped on a cloth pinned to the front of the clean cotton blouse which the operator has previously donned. The vesicle is then thoroughly scraped with the edge of a somewhat blunt lancet, and the resulting mixture of lymph, epithelial tissue, and blood is transferred to a small nickel crucible, set in a wide wooden stand on a table close to the operator”.
That is one of the most terribly painful tortures which an animal could be subjected to. While you and I are gathered here, when we go home, when we sleep, this process is going on all over the world, and it is going on in your own country. A meeting such as this is held not alone to cheer those who are fighting on their way, but, in addition, to tell them what these practices mean.
“Many meet the gods, but few salute them.” Anti-vivisectionists not only meet the gods, but they hope that they are amongst those who also salute them, and it is to urge others to help in the great fight, to march beside us, that we meet here year by year. That cruelty and torture exist as they existed in the Middle Ages is without doubt. Unless we close our eyes, we cannot get away from that fact, and the plea that they are necessary is the same plea which Lecky has told us was made in the old days. But cruelty is never necessary and those who build for prosperity build on the ideal that what is morally wrong can never be scientifically right.
Obviously, we must strike against and destroy a system which allows such horrors. The fight for reform is never an easy one, and the fight for this reform is perhaps the most difficult that mankind has had to wage, because in this particular reform it is the dumb for which we fight; it is for those who have no voice to raise in their own defence; it is for those who are in our power, and who are absolutely at the mercy of our moral attitude towards their sufferings, and their tortures. We contend the greater the struggle the greater the effort required. Lecky reminds us:.
“In every prison the Crucifix and the rack stood side by side, and in almost every country the abolition of torture was at last effected by a movement which the Church opposed and by men whom she had cursed”.
So that we may be sure that when we are cursed by those who talk of so-called medical science, we are blessed indeed, for it is we, and we alone, who have the power and the privilege to sweep away the tortures of the laboratory, which again I must repeat, and with which I am sure every humane person will agree, are a lasting and living disgrace to that revolting practice called vivisection.
