BLACKWELL FAMILY
ELIZABETH BLACKWELL

Books

Scientific Method In
Biology of Elizabeth Blackwell
1898-9

Scientific Method
in 
Biology.

[*To this*]
[*From. Stephen Coleridge*]

Scientific Method 
In Biology

Dr. Elizabeth BlackwellTo Doctors
Lilian & Austin Robinson
with kind remembrance of the
day. 
From 
Dr Elizabeth Blackwell
May 10th
1898WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 

THE MORAL EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG. Longmans, 
Green and Co. Price 2s.
PIONEER WORK IN OPENING THE MEDICAL
PROFESSION TO WOMEN. Price 6s. 
CHRISTIANITY IN MEDICINE. Published in Things
to Come. Elliot Stock. 
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN SEX (Medical). J. and 
A. Churchill. Price 2s.
THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN IN MEDICINE. 
Bell and Sons. Price 1s. 
WHY HYGIENIC CONGRESSES FAIL. Price 1s.SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGYSCIENTIFIC METHOD IN
BIOLOGY.

BY
DR. ELIZABETH BLACKWELL.

LONDON:
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1898.CONTENTS.
                                                                         PAGE
INTRODUCTION       -       -       -       -         -       1
I.  THE GROWTH OF CONSCIENCE    -         -       4
II. CONSCIENCE IN MEDICINE           -         -        9
III. THE MORAL ELEMENT IN RESEARCH      -      13
IV.  RIGHT AND WRONG METHOD   -          -      17
V.  THE NECESSITY OF MEDICAL RESEARCH   -   21
VI.  RESTRICTION OF EXPERIMENT   -           -     27
VII. PRURIGO SECANDI      -           -             -      40
VIII. WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?          -      47
IX.  THE AXIOM OF SCIENCE          -             -      60
X. RATIONAL EXPERIMENT IN RESEARCH    -      64
XI. THE RANGE OF PAINLESS RESEARCH     -      69
XII.  RECAPITULATION OF PRINCIPLES         -      74
APPENDIX           -                  -                    -       77
INTRODUCTION.

A CONTROVERSY is persistently carried on
between an increasing body of the non-professional
laity and an important section of the
medical profession, in relation to the methods pursued
in investigating biological phenomena.
The criticism of medical research by non-medical
people is naturally resented by some who
are engaged in experimentation ; and it is stated
seriously that non-scientific persons will impede
progress if they interfere with, or succeed in
restricting, the efforts of those who specially
devote themselves to this branch of research.
This controversy is still going on in ever-widening
circles ; and it is bound to do so, until the
present confusion of thought which exists on this
subject is removed, and the broad distinction
between right and wrong experimentation is more
I2         SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY

fully acknowledged and more clearly defined.
Our relation to the lower animals has never yet
been brought fully into the clear light of reason
and conscience.  Yet in the order of Providential
development it must so come forward.
As advancing humanity has gradually recognised 
natural rights as existing in the various
races of mankind--is carrying on a persisten
warfare against human slavery--is slowly awakening
to the moral crime of introducing disease and
vice amongst native races ; and the rights, as well
as duties, of women and of children are being
gradually recognised ; so the time has come when
the natural rights of inferior living creatures must
be seriously studied.
This study has become obligatory, not only in
regard to the welfare of the brute creation, but 
for the sake of our own human growth as rational
and moral beings.

The common-sense of mankind recognises our
right to use the lower animals for human benefit,
whilst our superior intelligence gives us the
power to so use them.  But ' can ' and ' ought '
are different aspects of our mental constitution,

INTRODUCTION               3

which require to be harmonized.  What we can
do is not the true measure of what we ought to
do, in any department of life.
We can starve a child, or lash a horse to death,
but we have no right to do so.
The laws of our human constitution compel
us to recognise that intellect and conscience,
although essential parts, are not identical parts of
our nature.  Long experience shows us that social
progress can only become permanent when conscience
guides intelligence.
How far the guidance of conscience can extend,
with the practical results to medical research involved
in the recognition of such guidance, forms
the subject of present consideration.

I--2
I.
THE GROWTH OF CONSCIENCE.

IT is through the gradual and harmonious
development of intelligence with that element
in our nature that we name conscience
that the human race passes from lower to higher
states of civilization.  In pursuing our ideals,
conscience is our instinctive monitor of right and 
wrong.
Our great naturalist, Darwin, laid down as a
law of evolution that ' the moral sense, or conscience, 
is by far the most important of the
differences between man and the lower animals.
Duty--" ought "--is the most noble of all the 
attributes of man.'
Victor Hugo, with the prophetic insight of
genius, calls conscience ' that modicum of innate
science with which each one is born.'
The growth of human conscience, in its per-

THE GROWTH OF CONSCIENCE       5

ception of justice and in its sympathetic relation
to creation, is the surest measure of individual
and national progress.  Various intellectual
theories may be formed as to the origin and 
growth of conscience.  It may be held to be intuitive--
springing up as inevitably as the instinctive
feelings born with the natural relations of life ; or
it may be looked upon as gradually evolved--the
' result of countless experiences of fear, love,
utility, transmitted through generations.'
But however originating, conscience is a positive
and potent fact.  It is, indeed, the mightiest
factor in social life.  It is the great controller of
selfhood.  It enlarges human character and
guides human conduct.  The deepening of this 
principle through the growth of justice and sympathy
marks an advancement in the type of
humanity.  Increasing respect for life is one of
the clearest signs of growing conscience.  Our
reverence for the principle of life grows with our
enlarging intellectual perception of its universality
and its unlimited power of development.
As life is marked by activity, and cannot remain
stationary, so conscience shares this law of life.
It must inevitably advance or retrograde.6        SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY

The degradation as well as the development
of conscience may be seen amongst us in the
midst of our present civilization.  It is contrary
to the most rudimentary element of conscience to
feed upon one's kind, and cannibal tribes who
devour their captives represent the lowest type of
humanity ; even the dogs of the Arctic voyager
will endure the slow agony of starvation for day
before their human taskmasters can compel them
to eat the flesh of their companions.  The well-known
naturalist, Mr. W. H. Hudson, states that
wolves, when pressed with hunger, will sometimes
devour a fellow-wolf ; as a rule, however, rapacious
animals will starve to death rather than
prey upon one of their own kind.
Yet shipwrecked sailors, even of our own 
English race, have been known to drink the
blood, and eat the flesh of their comrades when
confronted by starvation.
We find that intelligence may exist without
conscience, but the human type changes to a
destructive force when this separation takes
place.  A lamentable example of the social
danger created by the destruction or absence of
rudimentary conscience amongst us is shown by

THE GROWTH OF CONSCIENCE     7

the betrayal and murder of the little boy Eccles,
in Liverpool, for the sake of his clothes, by his
two companions of eight and nine years old.
There was the deliberate plot to entice him to a
pond ; the throwing him three times into the 
water as he scrambled out ; the final holding him
under water until all struggle had ceased.  These
facts make a striking, but not unique, object-lesson,
showing how intelligence may exist without
conscience amongst all our appliances of
civilization, and the danger of such separation.
Examples of the social devastation produced by
official corruption and business dishonesty are too
numerous to be detailed ; they are seen in what
are called civilized countries--in London, Paris,
Rome, and across the ocean.  The lack of conscience 
in public and private transactions creates
social misery proportioned to its extent.
Recognising, therefore, that this distinctive
principle of conscience is a fact of gradual
development, that it grows by the union of the
moral with the intellectual elements in our 
nature, and that the far-reaching consequences
for good or evil of vivid or dulled conscience in
the individual and the nation are far beyond our8     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
power of foresight, a grave responsibility rests
upon us in this matter. We are bound to realize
that any custom, or method of education, or proposed
course of action, that seems to violate the
natural instincts of humanity, or is contrary to
the present enlightened conscience of any section
of our Anglo-American race, demands imperatively
the most careful consideration on our
part.

II.
CONSCIENCE IN MEDICINE.
     EVERY intelligent member of the medical
profession will certainly recognise the
special value of human conscience in the profession.
     The problems which are involved in the practice
of the beneficent art, the absolute reliance which
the anxious patient is compelled to place in his
physician, the helplessness of the poor, who form
so large a majority of those who need medical
aid, and who are without the defences of wealth
and station, show the need of keen moral sense,
as well as intelligence, in those who practise the
art of medicine.
     The very discoveries of medical science enforce
this necessity; for the possibility of abuse in the
employment of such beneficent agents as anaes-
10     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
thetics and hypnotism, by incompetent or conscienceless
operators, is a very serious fact.
     The suicides that have taken place after so-called
'successful' operations (as, for example, the production
of artificial anus), the pathetic exclamation
of poor Montagu Williams, that his brilliant
operation had ruined his constitution, and the
reckless castrations proved by Dr. Chanu in
France, are facts, to be seriously weighed by
medical conscience, showing the necessity of
restraining too eager experiment.
     This special responsibility of the medical profession
to society is  greatly increased by the fact
that the training of a very large section of our
intelligent youth during the important years of
early manhood rests upon them. The moral as
well as intellectual influence exerted by those who
guide the college, the hospital, the dispensary,
and post-graduate classes, will mould the future
action of one of the most influential portions of
the community, those, viz., on whom the health
of the nation chiefly rests.
     Now, whilst all recognise the need of the
trained and skilful care of a nations's health, and
perceive also that rightly organized medical


CONSCIENCE IN MEDICINE     11
schools and hospitals are of great value in educating
our health guardians, how is it that a profound
distrust of these institutions has grown up
in our midst; that the support of hospitals
becomes increasingly difficult, whilst at the same
time the sentiment of benevolence and desire to
help the poor is constantly extended?
     How is it that the beneficent and necessary
art of medicine no longer commands that respect
and confidence which its essential character as
part of our social institutions would seem to
demand?
     The answer to these serious questions involves
both moral and intellecutal considerations. These
problems have arisen from failure to perceive that
in education moral and intellectual activity cannot
be advantageously divorced, or that one portion
of our complex nature can be beneficially developed
whilst other portions are entirely ignored
or injured.
     Our medical schools, whilst sharpening the
intellectual faculties of their students, are not
careful that their modes of teaching bring with
them no deterioration of that important faculty of
their students, the moral sense. As conscience12 SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
or the moral sense is unequally developed in
human beings, but is indispensable to the
physician in his relations with patients, any
apathy or negligence in this respect by the
trainers of youth may become a national danger.

III.
THE MORAL ELEMENT IN RESEARCH.
MORALITY, as a guide in biological science, 
is based upon the practical distinction 
between organic and inorganic Nature.
If medical progress simply involved the investigation 
of inorganic Nature, the general public
would be only learners, gladly receiving such
information in geology, chemistry, astronomy, or
physics, as specialists in those branches of physical
science were good enough to impart to the unlearned.
But directly scientific research passes beyond 
the distinctive realm of matter, moulded and
transformed by general energy, but not affected 
by individual will, it has to deal with a very 
different principle, viz., life. This vital distinction
has been well laid down by one of our
eminent medical authorities as follows: 'During14     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
the slow growth of medical knowledge it has
become more and more plain that physics,
chemistry, and biology are distinct sciences, with
methods of their own and inductions of their
own; each of the latter terms in the series using
the results of its predecessors, and adding new
results of its own. Although life is a structure
built up of physical and chemical facts, yet to
the building, to the arrangement, to the ordering
of those facts, there goes something that neither
physics nor chemistry can explain, any more than
algebra can explain the behavior of a magnet.
To strive to interpret the series of events which
make up the life of an animal in terms of
chemical change (metabolism), or of conservation
or expenditure of energy, is an endeavour
which will fail.'
     As the brute creation, as well as human beings,
share in a physical organization which expresses
each variety of life, there is not the same sharply-dividing
line between the various categories of
animal life as there is between organic and inorganic
Nature. Biogenesis, or life generated by
life, is the distinctive feature of organic Nature.
We are linked to living creatures of higher or


THE MORAL ELEMENT IN RESEARCH      15
lower nature by the power of educating or subduing
them, and by all those varying relations
involved in the mystery of life.
     The distinctive position of man, as an animal
placed at the head of the animal world, necessarily
creates serous responsibility on the part of
the higher towards the lower creature.
     This basis of moral responsibility extends in
kind, if not in degree, to all life. It necessitates
a directing conscience, which shall guide all our
intellectual and practical relations with every
category of life.
     This moral element enters unavoidably into our
treatment of animal life from its lowest to its
highest form. Our treatment of a monkey or a 
prince contains an element of moral attitude
which does not exist in our relation to inorganic
Nature.
     It is a difference of kind as well as of degree,
which it is blindness to ignore.
     The divergence which now exists between some
biological investigators and their critics rests
upon the failure to recognise that moral error
may engender intellectual error.
     The special subject which has produced this16     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
controversy is the present method of using the
lower animals in biological research, which has
so enormously extended of late years. The
essence of the controversy is the ethical question,
viz.: Have we a right to torture?
     It must be distinctly understood that there is 
here no question of our right under certain circumstances
to put to death. Neither is there a 
doubt of the utility of rational experiment and of
research. But the right to put to death in the
most humane manner known to us, and the right
to torture to death, are two widely different
questions.
     We have no right, for any purpose whatever,
to torture a living creature to death, either by
the mutilation of the organs, the slow deprivation
of the necessary conditions of life, or the still
slower process of destroying by the inoculation of
disease.


IV.
RIGHT AND WRONG METHOD.
     IT must be carefully noted that the wrong
involved in inflicting torture upon a living
creature is the violation of a rational principle.
The employment of torture or of painful experiment
in biological research is not a question of 
the right to gain knowledge. It is a question of
how we seek to gain knowledge. It applies
directly to method.
      Thus, the fact observed by Paget, that in a 
patient who vomited all fat, the pancreas alone
was found on post-mortem examination to be
diseased, is worth more than a series of experiments
on lower animals of different constitution
from our own.
     In the slow approach towards truth-which is
the great object of science-no single method is
218     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
indispensable. The human mind is so full of
activities; Nature presents such an infinite
variety of resources, that progress in research
can never be hindered by the choice of right
instead of wrong method.
     This is well stated by one of our most experienced
investigators when he says:
     'Methods run with the manners and customs
of the ages. In science there is no one method
that can be considered indispensable. Attributes
are indispensable; observation, industry, accuracy
are indispensable; methods are not. They may
be convenient, they may be useful, they may be
expedient, but nothing more.'
     This admirable statement throws a flood of
light upon the confusion and perplexity of the
present controversy. It shows the error of both
the so-called unscientific and scientific parties. It
shows the error (not unnatural) in the former of
confounding together experiment, research, laboratory,
and scientific investigation, and classing
them under one indiscriminate ban of cruelty; it
also shows the narrow vision and false reasoning
of those who claim that right and wrong have no
meaning when applied to the investigation of


RIGHT AND WRONG METHOD     19
phenomena supposed to be revealed by the senses,
or state that the collecting of so-called facts,
named knowledge, is an end in itself, to be unrestrained
and justified in itself.
     That interesting book, 'The Naturalist in La
Plata,' in narrating the author's observation of
the natural fearlessness of all wild animals towards
man, the careful research into life-habits that can
be carried on where this fearlessness is not betrayed,
and the susceptibility to kindness which
exists amongst all the lower animals to their
sovereign, man, furnishes a striking and delightful
suggestion as to the method which future research
should take.*
     It is the distinctive moral relation existing in
the plane of animal life that makes our connection
with the organic world a different and more comprehensive
relation than that which exists with
inorganic Nature. It places research in the
biological sciences on a different plane from study
of the physical sciences.
     Therefore, whilst it would be folly for ordinary
people to criticise the methods of experts in

*This sound method is well exemplified in the writings of 
the French naturalist Le Roy.
2-220     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
physical science, it would be dastardly dereliction
of duty not to consider the methods employed in
biological science.
      The subject of experimentation upon the lower
animals having two aspects-an ethical and an
intellectual one-the medical profession will be
wise to welcome all honest and kindly criticism
and suggestion in the most difficult of all studies,
viz., the study of life. It must be recognised that
the people are absolutely in their right in refusing
to submit to dictation in what concerns their relation
to animal life, of which they are the responsible
head.




V.
THE NECESSITY OF MEDICAL RESEARCH.
     WHILST fully recognising the right of the
laity to criticise scientific method when
it deals with sentinent animals, fashioned on the
same general plan as ourselves, and capable of
fear, pain, affection, and gratitude, there is another
aspect of the subject which we are bound to consider.
     The present condition of medicine is that of an
art, not a science. It is erroneous to speak of
the science of medicine. There exists uncertainty
in diagnosis, uncertainty in the action of remedies,
ignorance of individual idiosyncrasy, and terrible
inability to meet such devasting diseases as
cancer, consumption, leprosy, etc.
     No one outside the profession can fully realize
the grave responsibility, even desperate anxiety,22     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
felt by the conscientious physician when life or
death seems to depend upon his action, and he
knows that medical resources are not equal to the
occasion. It is a noble desire for the advancement
of the beneficent art of medicine which
makes the great body of busy doctors eagerly
listen to those who are supposed to speak with
authority, and hail with hope every announcement
or supposed discovery which seems to promise
improved practical results.
     This is really a sound humane attitude of mind
in that vast body of the profession who are unable,
from the pressure of practical life, to devote themselves
to investigation-a profession which has
always had its heroes and martyrs, who have not
shrunk from risking their lives in the service and
for the advancement of their noble art.
     Those also who are in the profession can most
fully estimate the real and beneficial results, both
in surgery and medicine, derived from careful and
persistent research, notwithstanding the severe
disappointment often caused by the theoretical
error and unjustifiable practice resulting from
rivalry in erroneous methods of investigation.
The conquest of pain and diminution of nervous


THE NECESSITY OF MEDICAL RESEARCH     23
shock in necessary surgical operations*; the disappearance
of blood-poisoning, hospital gangrene,
and erysipelas, which were the scourges of our
public institutions in a former generation, are immense
gains, due to the discovery of anæsthetics,
antiseptics, and advancing sanitation. These
blessings are the direct outcome of persevering
and skilful clinical observation, of careful work in
the laboratory, of humane experiment, and of
happy accident; they are not derived from cruel
experimentation.
     The successful control of that terrible disease
—puerperal fever—which formerly destroyed such
a multitude of women, is a striking conquest of
humane method in modern medicine. When I
was a student in La Maternité of Paris in 1849,
this destructive malady of lying-in women produced
a mortality varying from 10 to 15 per
cent. But when I visited La Maternité in 1889
the mortality was reduced to a little over 1 per
cent. This was due to rigorous cleanliness,
sanitation, and the use of antiseptics, directed by
the skilful sage femme en chef Madame Henri, in

*The former horrors of the hospital operating-room are
graphically described from personal observation in Sir
B.W. Richardson's treatise, 'The Mastery of Pain.'24     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
spite of the old and unsuitable buildings and the
depressing status of many of the patients.
     A still more satisfactory result is shown in
Dr. Annie McCall's Clapham Maternity, where
not a single death occurred amongst the 760
cases first received into the institution.
     This excellent result still continues under the
same administration. In the 2,100 lying-in cases
received to date in the hospital, there has been no
death from puerperal fever. This excellent record
has been attained by scrupulous cleanliness,
absolute isolation on the occurrence of suspicious
symptoms, by excellent nursing, and constant
oversight by the doctors in charge. Even in the 
out-patient department, where the conditions of
living are not under such strict medical control,
the deaths from this frightful malady have only
amounted to 4 in 7,000 cases under the same
enlightened direction.
     This great and beneficent reform in the first
and world-wide branch of medicine, by means
of which the lives of innumerable women in all
our large centres of civilization have been saved,
is the result of scientific research. It was initiated
and successfully carried out by Semmelweis, of


THE NECESSITY OF MEDICAL RESEARCH      25
Vienna,* and is a striking instance of the value
of research carried on by the use of the comparative
method, with absolutely no resort to
experiment. The history of this reform, the
methods by which it was accomplished, the
opposition it encountered in the profession itself,
and its triumphant vindication, are well worth
serious study. An account of this valuable investigation,
as also of Pettenkofer's research in
cholera (referred to later), and other important
discoveries by justifiable methods of inquiry,
are given to English readers by the admirable
translation published by the New Sydenham
Society.
     Medical research, therefore, is not only justifiable,
but obligatory in a profession that is
specially charged with the care and advancement
of individual and national health; and, as will
be seen later, observation, induction, and rational
experiment form the essential methods of
scientific inquiry.
     These two facts, viz., the necessity of advance
*See the standard work of Hirsch on 'Geographical and
Historical Pathology,' vol. ii., pp. 416-466. The value of this
translation is greatly increased by its excellent index.26     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
in medical knowledge, and the methods of investigation
necessary for such advance, must be
distinctly recognised by sincere reformers, and
should shield the profession from that indiscriminate
reproach which is often made
against it as a whole; for such hostility tends
to strengthen that undue esprit de corps which
often hinders sound medical progress in the profession.


VI.
RESTRICTION OF EXPERIMENT.
     WHEN we investigate the popular or
ethical aspect of so-called scientific
research, made upon living animals, we are at
once met by facts which imperatively demand
both serious thought and determined action, if
we would not be participators in the degradation
of human conscience. We are confronted with
the enormous increase in such experiments which
has taken place within the last thirty years, as
well as in the severity of the sufferings inflicted.
This increase is going on in England as well as in
foreign countries.* It is growing in many  cases,
not only without any benefit to the human race,

*Thus, the authorities of Paris ordered twenty friendless
dogs to be tied to the branches of trees in a wood, and a 
shell made in the municipal laboratory exploded amongst
them, riddling and mangling them fearfully.SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
but also without reference to any supposed beneficial
result, as its attempted justification.
     The volume of facts and evidence collected by
Mr. Colam (the able Secretary of the Royal
Society for the Protection of Animals), and published
by that society in 1876, is a permanent
record of great value. It enables us to measure
the growth of experimentation in England, not
only from 1862 to 1876, when the present Cruelty
to Animals Bill was enacted, but it also forms a
point of comparison for testing the increase of
vivisectional methods since 1876 to the present
day, when these easy but often fallacious
methods of research have become universal
in medical investigation and medical instruction.
     In 1869 there were very few places where experimentation
on animals could be carried on,
such investigations being made by men of rare
ability, and for a definite object. There was no
class demonstrations, and no students encouraged
to experiment. But in 1892 there were 180
persons licensed in this country, and over 3,960
experiments performed, numbers which increase
with each year, the amount of unlicensed experi-


RESTRICTION OF EXPERIMENT.     29
ment being of course an unknown quantity,
depending on individual conscience.

     The Effect on Students and Subordinates.
     A point for serious consideration is the effect
produced upon the unformed minds of students of
medicine, by the introduction of experimentation
upon living animals into our medical schools and
hospitals.
     The employment of destructive experimentation
on living creatures is now introduced as a 
part of the ordinary instruction of medical
students in the fundamental study-physiology.
This is a novelty of the present generation.
During the whole course of my medical studies,
forty years ago, I never saw a living creature
vivisected fo the instruction of students. The
same is true of the experience of most of the able
physicians of an older generation.
     Now, however, every medical school has its
store of imprisioned living creatures awaiting their
fate-from the large frogs imported from Germany,
the mice, rabbits, cats, and dogs of home
production, to the cargoes of monkeys brought to
our foggy climate from  tropical Africa. They30     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
form an enormous mass of living creatures, kept
for the attempted demonstration of vital action
in the lecture-room, or for the study of diseased
processes in the physiological laboratory.
     It is a fallacy (although proclaimed in high
places) that the ordinary student of medicine
must be prepared for his practical work as a physician
for men by watching the opening of chest,
abdomen, brain, or cutting into the delicate vital
organs of living lower animals. Such demonstration
is a thrilling spectacle to inexperienced
students. It appeals to that love of excitement
which makes them rush to a surgical operation,
or to an extraordinary medical care which may
have no bearing whatever on their future practice,
whilst the commonplace but all-important bedside
observation seems dull in comparison. Yet
patient work in the anatomical and microscopic
rooms, and in the chemical laboratory for general
and animal chemistry, and close clinical study, all
of which involve no form of suffering, are of
primary importance. The genius of a Professor,
as an instructor, is shown by his ability to make
his pupils realize this.
     Destructive experimentation on helpless animals


RESTRICTION OF EXPERIMENT     31
—not for their own benefit—is a demoralizing
practice. The student becomes familiar with the
use of gags, straps, screws, and all the paraphernalia
of ingenious instruments invented for
overpowering the resistance of the living creature,
or for guarding the operator from injury in case
the anaesthetic, when used, should give out too
soon. He learns also how easy it is to experiment
in secret.
     By advanced instruction and post-graduate
classes the student is led on to take active part
under licensed authority in this fascinating, but
morally dangerous, method of study. Moreover,
the large body of subordinates, who are necessary
to take charge of and prepare the animals, are
trained in indifference to suffering, without any
excuse of intellectual gain; and the same injurious
influence extends in ever-widening circles—to the
traders who invent and sell instruments of torture,
and to those who supply the living material.
     Now, the natural instinct to be cherished in
human beings is protection and kindliness to
infancy and all helpless creatures, not indifference
to suffering or wilful infliction of it. As human
conscience is a thing of growth or degradation,32     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
the natural shrinking from needless pain can soon
be hardened into callousness. Conversing with
medical students, in relation to the effect made
upon them by witnessing vivisections, even under
chloroform, I have found that their experience is
always the same, viz.: first, the shock of repulsion,
then tolerance, and then, if often repeated, 
indifference.
     The moral deterioration necessarily induced in
those to whom suffering becomes a frequent
spectacle is noted by the 'Englishman in Paris,'
from personal experience. After speaking of the
inhumanity produced by the daily sight of blood,
in the originally honest bourgeois, who became
the 'Conventionnels' of the French Revolution in
1793, he writes as follows: 'I have witnessed
three executions. After Pommeraye's execution,
I was ill for a week; after Troppmann's, the effect
soon wore off in three days; after Campa's, I
ceased to think about it in twenty-four hours.
Then I made a vow that no power on earth
should draw me to the Place de la Roquette
again. But men generally regard their growing
imperviousness as a sign of mental force, and 
pride themselves upon it.'


RESTRICTION OF EXPERIMENT     33
     In Marie Bashkertseff's 'Journal' is a striking
passage which describes the effect of a Spanish
bull-fight. She says: 'I was able to maintain a
tranquil air in full view of the butchery, carried
on with the utmost refinement of cruelty. One
leaves the scene slightly intoxicated with blood,
and feeling desirous to thrust a lance into the
neck of every person one meets. I stuck my
knife into the melon I was cutting at table, as if
it were a banderilla I were planting in the hide of
a bull, and the pulp seemed like the palpitating
flesh of the wounded animal. The sight is one
that makes the knees tremble and the head
throb. It is a lesson in murder.'
     The moral distinction between heroism shown
when suffering is witnessed, for the purpose of
aiding the sufferer, and that evinced for the
selfish desire of individual gain or excitement,
was strikingly exhibited by a German nurse,
whom we sent on to the army during the Civil
War in America. This frail-looking woman
drifted on to the front, and after the Battle of
Gettysburg, donning a pair of man's boots,
wading in pools of blood and mud, spent two
days and nights on the field of slaughter, drawing
334     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
out still-breathing bodies from the heaps of slain,
binding up wounds, giving a draught of water,
placing a rough pillow under the head, in an
unselfish enthusiasm that knew neither hunger
nor fatigue. The ghastly wounds, the blood, the
shrieks and groans of that horrid scene, served
but as fuel to the fire of humanity that consumed
her.

The Effect on Teachers or Practitioners of Medicine.
  
     In considering the subject of experimentation,
reason requires that we realize the necessary
distinction between the methods employed in
training students for a practical profession, and
the exceptional position of the few geniuses who
possess the rare combination of qualities essential
to scientific investigation. In calling attention
to this distinction, we do not condone torture:
for this can be proved to be unscientific. But it
emphasized a growing and mischievous evil of the
present day, when numbers of ordinary teachers
of physiology, whose gifts are limited, and whose
especial business is to instruct students in the
knowledge which has been attained, consider
themselves capable of original scientific research,


RESTRICTION OF EXPERIMENT     35
or attempt to repeat before either students or
popular audiences so-called demonstrations on
living creatures.
     The showy plan of experimenting on animals
is undoubtedly a great temptation to teachers of
somewhat shallow intellect. Such practice readily
gains the gratifying applause of inexperienced
learners, who are misled by an appearance of conclusiveness
in the lectures, which they are quite
incompetent to gauge. But the influence thus
exercised is a harmful one, diverting the mind
from right methods of study.
     The temptation to make a display before imperfectly
informed persons is too great. If the
profession is to advance in popular esteem, it will
recognise that the unfeeling destruction of living
creatures, even the pithing of a frog or the dissection
of the salivary glands of a living mouse,
is a false method of forming the minds of students
which should be entirely abandoned.
     We must here note the demand lately made by
some leading members of the profession for increased
facilities for experimentation of animals.
Now, anyone who studies the Cruelty to Animals
Bill (30 and 40 Vict.), which in 1876, licensed vivi-
3-236     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
section in Great Britain,* will see how easy it now
is to obtain a license, and how carefully the provisions
of the Bill are arranged to give freedom to
experimentation—in fact, to protect experimenters
rather than their helpless victims. Thus, whilst
in Section 2 a penalty of £100 or three months'
imprisonment is imposed for acts of cruelty, the
Bill proceeds in Section 3 to give absolute freedom
to every licensed person to torture, to mutilate,
to disease, to any extent if he considers it advisable
to do so. In Section II it gives exceedingly
wide scope for procuring licenses. By
Sections 7-10 it makes the efficient oversight of
licensed persons almost impossible, and by the
provisions of Sections 13-15 it virtually excludes
the influence of growing humanitary conscience
in the community from being exerted on the 
persons and places licensed. In short, the Bill
would rather seem to be skillfully devised to give
a free hand to persons who may call themselves
'scientific,' than to protect living creatures who
cannot protect themselves.
     The plea put forward by the gentlemen referred

*The humane and carefully-guarded Bill drawn up by the 
Royal Society for the Protection of Animals, and introduced
by the Earl of Harrowby and Lord Carnarvon, was rejected.


RESTRICTION OF EXPERIMENT     37
to, viz., that medical progress is now hindered in
England by restrictions, is practically a justification
by them of the inhuman practices which
prevail in France, Germany, Russia, and the
United States, and in all countries where the conscience
of the people has not been aroused to the
moral and intellectual dangers involved in the 
torture of animals.*
     Surely these English physicians who demand
entire freedom for vivisection do not realize what
the result of foreign methods is. They cannot
have noted the innumerable examples of atrocious
cruelty which are occurring in the records of 
medical research, as practised on the Continent
and in America.

*The judicious remarks of Lord Farrer in relation to
municipal affairs apply equally to the subject under consideration.
He says: 'My immediate object, however, is not
to preach upon the general question, but to make a practical
suggestion. What we want to know is, Which of the two
ways of doing any particular work is the cheaper and the
better? Much experience of public departments leads me to
doubt their own reports upon their own doings; not, of course,
from any dishonesty on the part of the officials, but from a 
natural tendency in every man to make the best of what he
does. It is for this reason, as well as from want of sufficient
experience, that I cannot feel absolute confidence in the
reports made to the London County Council on the results
of their own experiments.'38     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
     They cannot have taken note of such typical
examples as the utterly useless barbarity of Senn
of Philadelphia, setting fire to a dog that he had
pumped full of hydrogen gas, before the Medical
Congress of Berlin in 1890. Nor the experiments
in massage on a series of large disjointed dogs,
performed in Professor Charles Richet's Paris
laboratory, not only with the permission, but with
the consultative advice, of that gentleman. A set
of more unjustifiable experiments were never
devised.
     Yet these are only examples of frequently occurring
atrocities, where vivisection is unchecked.
Certainly no body of honourable English physicians
who are in the habit of reading Les Archives
Générales de Médecine would fail to condemn
such fallacious experiments, where the pretence
of anæsthesia served to diminish the resistance
of the victims—not to annihilate pain. Yet such
cruelties inevitably result from free vivisection.

     Factors in Human Nature.
     It must never be forgotten that gambling excitement,
or the spirit of undue emulation, exists
in all classes of men—in biological investigators


RESTRICTION OF EXPERIMENT     39
as well as others—and it needs guidance, or
restraint.
     The German officer Reizenstein felt keen remorse
for the murder of his beautiful Irish mare
Lippespringe, yet he and his companions tortured
thirty horses to death under the  temporary
insanity of intense rivalry. But it was possible
to bring public conscience to bear on this barbarity,
and thus check the recurrence of any
similar future aberration.
     So in biological research we see the disastrous
effects of individual and national rivalry. They
are shown in the contradictory results of false
methods of observation, in the endless repetition
of similar painful experiments, in the strife of
conflicting theories, and in the practical failure
of results obtained from the lower animals when
applied to the human race.
     The moral sense of a noble profession may
well be appealed to, to create a conscience which
shall check the present grave abuses of so-called
research.VII.
PRURIGO SECANDI.
      ANOTHER serious ethical danger connected
with unrestrained experiment on the lower
animals is the enormous increase of audacious
human surgery, which tends to overpower the
slower but more natural methods of medical art,
and to divert attention from hygiene.
     This modern increase of surgery, entailing
permanent mutilation, has received a special
name, prurigo secandi, or cacoethes secandi. It
prevails in France, and in every country where
no restraint is placed on animal experimentation,*

*'Professor Leon le Fort, Professor Verneuil, Professor
Duplay, and Professor Tillaux, have been asked by a public
journal for their opinions on the operative mania (furie
operatoire), said to be prevalent at present. Professor Le
Fort says it is much more widespread in France than in
other countries, and in a long letter he protests against the
custom amongst the young French surgeons, in order to


PRURIGO SECANDI     41
or where the importance of not injuring the
moral sense of students has not been recognised.
     The great increase in ovariotomy, and its extension
to the insane, is so notable a result of
this prurigo secandi that it becomes a serious
question whether the practice of ovariotomy,
though sometimes beneficent, is not on the whole
a disastrous discovery, and whether it should
not be regarded as a confession of medical impotence,
of insanitary education and social corruption,
rather than as a satisfactory triumph of
surgical skill. The destruction of motherhood is
either a martyrdom or a degradation. In no
case can it be boasted of as 'brilliant surgery.'
     Dr. Chanu, in his carefully prepared thesis of

[Pagebreak]
bring their names before the public, "to seek out some
operation unknown in France, then seek out a victim on
whom they can perform it, in order to report it before a 
medical society, and perhaps also show the patient." Then,
says M. le Fort, they take up the operation as a speciality,
perform it on 100 or 200 patients, and thus gain a reputation.
Professor Verneuil protests against the abuse of operations
in general, and especially of gynaecological operations. He
deplores the prurigo secandi with which so many of the
French surgeons are attacked. Professor Duplay and Professor
Tillaux express the same opinions.'    See  Medical
Reprints, May, 1893.42     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
1896, in exposing the grave abuse of this branch
of surgery, estimates that there were 500,000
castrated women in France, and one in every
250 women throughout Europe. He finds the
decrease of the birth-rate to coincide with the
abuse of ovariotomy. 'Dr. Chanu affirmed,
before a jury unable to refute his assertion, that
the abuse of ovariotomy has done more harm to
France in ten years than the Prussian bullets
did in 1870, and that the causes of the depopulation
of France are closely allied to the practice
of the castration of women.'
     The prevention of disease in the organs of
generation must be sought for persistently in
improved education of the young-the male as
well as the female-and in JUST relations of the 
sexes.
     Operative surgery should excite strong suspicion
when it enables a Dr. Keppler to exalt
'marriage with a castrated woman as the ideal
of a neo-Malthusian union, the only way of securing
its object without endangering health and
happiness.'*
     Of the same nature as the prurigo secandi of

*See the Journal de Medecine de Paris.


PRURIGO SECANDI     43
medical practice is the motive or source of much
of the laboratory experimentation.
     The various ethical dangers resulting from
conscienceless or irrational experiments on animals
demand much more serious consideration
by the profession than has hitherto been given
to them. In the opinion of an increasing number
of intelligent physicians, a vast amount of what is
now presumptuously called research-experiments
disguised under learned names, but which are
really the irrational mutilating and diseasing of
sentient living creatures-are no more scientific
research than is the gratification of a child's
curiosity when it sticks a pin, with a thread,
through a cockchafer, to see how long it will fly
and how loud it will buzz. The child, when
punished for its thoughtless cruelty, might
remonstrate in learned terms that it should not
be restrained, for it was investigating the vital
endurance of the Melolontha vulgaris, and the
acoustic properties of its wing-covers, under
interesting and abnormal conditions.
     A large proportion of what is simply conscienceless
curiosity, often starting from more or less
frivolous tentative diversions of the laboratory,


44     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
though now by courtesy named research, is no
more valuable than the child's spinning of the
cockchafer, and should be as sharply checked.
     The genesis of discovery in biology, with its
necessary relations to therapeutics, has yet to be
written. Extending experience is more and more
clearly showing us, as a practical fact, that whilst
observation and rational-i.e., humanely limited-
experiment are legitimate and noble efforts for
the attainment of improved medicine, cruel and 
merely curious experiment, condemned by our
moral faculties, are misleading and mischievous.
     Men like Professor Henschel, of Upsala, and
Professor Pettenkofer, of Munich, warn our eager
young investigators against drawing conclusions
as to human beings from experiments made one
animals.
     We find, as a matter of fact, that all the permanent
advances of medicine have been gained
whilst pursuing rational and righteous methods;
whilst all the fiascoes of supposed discovery have
resulted through departing from them.
     Anaesthetics, antiseptics, and sanitation are not
the result of cruel experimentation.


PRURIGO SECANDI     45
Danger of Inoculation.
     The most serious fallacy arising from erroneous
methods of biological research is the practice of
vitiating human blood, by the introduction of the
diseased products of animals. This dangerous
method, which threatens to undermine national
health, is the necessary outcome of diseasing
animals, on the plea of seeking remedies for
human disease.
     The intellectual fallacy involved in this practice
will be considered later; but its ethical character
as affecting conscience must here be noted, as it
in this line of research which is productive of the
most extended form or cruelty to the lower
animals, viz., slow torture.
     The following extract from records of the
Belgian Academy of Medicine illustrates this
subject: 'Researches on the inoculability of
cancer ought to be encouraged. The numerous
experiments made on animals are still contradictory 
in results. Drs. Francotte and De
Rector have, in the years 1891-92, inoculated
mice under the skin of the shoulder. The inoculations
were carried on from June, 1891, to May,46     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
1892, when the following appearances were presented:
The whole region of the shoulder was
inflamed; there was necrosis of the corresponding
upper extremity, which dropped off from dry
gangrene; the stump left was indurated, hard,
and painful, whilst the lymphatic glands in connection
with the part were enlarged. The examination
of the tumour disclosed nothing very
particular. The bones were the seat of osteoperosis,
and the arteries showed arteritis. The
investigators believe the tumours were cancerous,
but this statement must be received with caution.'
     Such long-continued torture, even of a mouse,
is morally degrading, and, as if in retribution, is
doomed to be useless.
     A Chinese medical author-Tuan Mei-writing
in the last century, 1716-1797, lays down a true
medical axiom when he marks the difference
between death and torture as follows: 'Living
creatures are for our use, and we may put them
to death. But we may not make death a boon,
and then withhold it from them.'


VIII.
WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?
     THE apparent opposition between popular
and medical judgment in relation to
ceratin methods of biological research, which
claim to be scientific, necessitates a clearer knowledge
of what science is, and a recognition of the
methods of research which can alone be called
scientific.
     It is certain that knowledge of truth must
reconcile varying but honest opinions, and furnish
plans of investigation that neither shock the
humane development of our nature nor hinder
our intellectual progress towards truth.
     The terms 'science' and 'scientific' are constantly
used and abused. They are often applied to the
accumulating of facts or of phenomena; but such
accumulation is not necessarily science, and may48     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
even hinder science. For although the collecting
of facts may bring together valuable materials
essential for future use, it may also bring together
rotten or sham materials, which will interfere
with sound work. A faulty method of endeavouring
to obtain facts may seriously destroy the value
of the phenomena thus observed.
     The gratification simply of intellectual activity
or curiosity must not be confounded with genuine
research. Curiosity is the outcome of ignorance.
Now, our ignorance of much in Nature is no
reproach to anyone; but the way in which curiosity
is gratified marks the difference between the
simple child and the rational adult. In the
childish development curiosity, though useful, is
superficial and short-sighted; it is necessarily a
shallow impulse which cannot realize the wide
relations of existence, and its satisfaction has no
necessary connection with the acquisition of valuable
knowledge. But the adult rises into a higher
plane of thought. Curiosity is no longer unduly
exercised, but has grown into a love of truth. It
has become that reverential use of reason which
is the basis of truth, and which forms the true
guide to the attainment of scientific knowledge;


WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?     49
for rational method does not isolate a fact from
all its connections, but sees it in its relations, and
in due proportion. Thus only can valuable knowledge
be acquired.
     Neither is analysis science. It is only when
the observations of analysis are corrected and 
proved by synthesis that the truth of science can
be obtained.
     A clear recognition of the different use of
analysis and of synthesis is essential in any claim
of research to be called scientific. 'Although by
analysis we separate, and by synthesis we combine,
yet in the synthesis there is more than in all the
parts taken analytically. The mere synthesis
introduces something entirely new.'
     Kant, in speaking of the use of analysis and
synthesis in logic, lays down the test of all scientific
inquiry. He says: 'Analysis is the first and 
chief requirement in making our knowledge distinct.
For the more distinct our knowledge of a 
thing is, the stronger and more effective it can be;
only the analysis must not go so far that at last
the object itself disappears.'
     Truth being a unity, the science which demonstrates
it must correlate all knowledge.
4
50     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
     Science is not, therefore, an accumulation of
isolated facts, or of facts torn from their natural
relations. To know a thing scientifically is to
know it in just relation to all other things. For
science unites, and demands the exercise of our
various faculties, as well as of our senses.
     Science is proved knowledge. It is the study
of causes and their relations applied to facts; but
such proof can only be obtained by search which
is in accordance with the laws of Nature-laws
which are gradually discovered by our race.
      Natural laws is deduced from all the facts of
human experience. In searching for and collecting
which we must recognise the conditions under
which we are placed, the limitations of the present
phase of our intellectual powers, the gradual
growth of conscience.
     Science being proved truth, scientific method
requires that all the factors which concern the
subject of research shall be duly considered, in
order to arrive at correct thought respecting the
special subject of inquiry.
     The application of scientific method necessarily
varies, therefore, according to the subject under
investigation.


WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?     51
     Thus, the construction of a bridge and the
calculation of an eclipse equally involve the bases
of scientific method, viz.: observation, deduction,
and experiment; but each subject requires a 
special application of scientific method, suited to
the varying nature of the subject of study.
     Consequently, biological research, in order to
be scientific, requires a special modification of
method, because the new factors of sensation
and consciousness come into play in biology
-factors which do not exist in atronomy, or
geology, in mechanics, physics, or chemistry.
     In order to attain truth respecting biology,
therefore, the facts concerning sensation and consciousness,
and their relation with, or the way in
which these new factors modify the facts of,
physics and chemistry, must be carefully considered
in this higher state, which we call life, or
the investigation is not scientific, no matter how
interesting as an intellectual exercise.
     When first endeavouring to find a recognised
definition of the term 'science,' I consulted the
latest 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' of our public
library, thinking that from such an acknowledged
authority a correct statement could there be
4-252     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
obtained. To my surprise, I found that the
word 'science' was not included in the list of
subjects. Searching further in this record of
nineteenth-century thought, under the head of
'Biology' —that department which is ordinarily
supposed to be the science of life, as distinguished
from the consideration of non-living things—the
following principle was found to be laid down,
viz., that there was no essential difference between
organized and unorganized Nature, for life
was simply a property of matter.
     It is well to weigh the argument for this doctrine,
which necessarily destroys the essential
idea of right and wrong, and removes the foundation
of good and evil. It is set forth in the
following manner:
     'The abstract-concrete sciences are mechanics,
physics, chemistry. . . . Whilst their subject-matter
is found in a consideration of varied
concrete phenomena, they do not aim at a 
determination of certain "abstract" quantitative
relations and sequences known as "laws," which
never are manifested in a pure form, but always
are inferred, by observation and experiment upon
complex phenomena, in which the abstract laws


WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?     53
are disguised by their simultaneous interaction.
. . . These sciences of mechanics, physics, and
chemistry have for their object to explain concrete
phenomena, by reference to the properties
of matter set forth in their generalizations.'
     The following important dictum in regard to
biology is thus laid down:
     'It is the business of those occupied with that
branch to assign living  things in all their variety
to the one set of forces recognised by the physicist
and chemist . . . and its evolution' (that is, the
evolution of life) 'as the necessary outcome of 
those forces—the automatic product of those
same forces. . . . The discovery of the mechanical
principle of evolution completed the
doctrine' (of the material origin of life). '. . . It
may be said to comprise the history of man,
sociology, and psychology, viz., the survival of
the fittest in the struggle for existence.'
     This ignoring by the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica'
of any definition of the word 'science,' and
also the attempted reduction of life to a property
of matter, is, however, too limited a view of
Nature to be accepted by many thoughtful
students of the present day. Turning, therefore,54     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
to 'Chamber's Cyclopaedia,' which is the latest
expression of the views of the able thinkers of 
North Britain, an explanation of the term
'science' was found, which is far truer to advancing
thought. The comprehensive definition is
there given that science 'is the correlation of
all knowledge.'
     As science searches for causes with their
relations, and is proved knowledge, so no branch
of knowledge or method of acquiring knowledge
can be considered scientific which contradicts any
facts of Nature, or which bases its methods on
the destruction of those facts.
     Truth can only be arrived at by considering
various or apparently opposite aspects of human
problems; so biological facts, or the problems of
organized or living creatures, must be considered,
not simply from the side of 'mechanics, physics,
and chemistry, or the automatic action of the
forces of matter,' but also from the equally
positive facts of life, and the forces which
careful observation is gradually showing to be
enfolded in the fact of mind as developed through
protoplasm onward. The facts of affection, companionship,
sympathy, justice, are positive forces.



WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?     55
They exercise a powerful influence over the
physical organization of all living creatures.
     These mental forces can change the action of
the bodily functions in the most surprising
manner, arresting the heart's action, interfering
with secretion, or changing natural secretion into
poison, and destroying the normal and beneficial
controlling action of the nervous system. They
are proved by experience to be so striking that
they cannot be overlooked in any unprejudiced
investigation of natural forces.
     A fit of passion in a nursing mother has
destroyed her infant; the industrious cultivator,
seeing his field of strawberries, the products of his
toil, carried off by thieves, has fallen dead in his
vain efforts to stop the cruel depredation. But
such instances are world-wide, and corroborated
by everyone's experience. They prove that,
although the force of mechanics, physics, and
chemistry are employed in the animal economy,
there are also powers far beyond these limited
forces, which must be studied also in biological
research, if we are to learn how these physical
may be overriden by mental forces. Without
such correlation of knowledge we fail to realize56      SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
the unity of Nature, and cannot attain to true
science or proved knowledge.
     It is thus seen that, as already stated, in useful
scientific investigation, the object to be attained,
the method to be employed, and the application
to be made of the knowledge searched for, must
all be considered in determining the distinction
between genuine science and simple unguided
intellectual activity or curiosity.
     It is necessary to emphasize the fact, because
this vital distinction is often overlooked in the
claim now made for the grand term 'science.'
     In defining the meaning and scope of science
as pursued by rational beings, it must be recognised
as a fundamental principle, which cannot
be too often dwelt upon, that what we can do, is
not a measure of what we ought to do. Thus,
when Stanley attempted to excuse the infamous
action of his naturalist, Jameson,* by saying that
he was a real good fellow, but 'his science misled
him,' he degraded the term 'science' by applying
it to an act of morbid curiosity.

*This naturalist, when amongst cannibals in the Emin
Pasha Expedition, bribed the cannibal tribe to eat a young
negro girl.


WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?     57
     Again, when the Russian nobleman purchased
a child and condemned it to be brought up with a 
deaf and dumb nurse, under the unnatural condition
of deprivation of all social relations, his
action was not scientific, but a gratification of
inhuman curiosity.
     It is within our power apparently to drown an
animal, human or brute, and recover it to life
again and again, but we gain no scientific knowledge
by so doing. We torture the creature and 
violate our natural instincts, but we acquire no
practical benefit to human welfare; on the contrary,
we endanger the mental integrity of the
experimenter.
     It is a short-sighted and hopeless attempt to do
violence to Nature in a search for scientific truth.
Distinction must be made between the possible
and impossible in the conditions under which we
are placed in life. Thus, we cannot destroy the
family relation, but we can make it happy and
conducive to the welfare of the race. We cannot
change the method of human generation, but we
can spiritualize its exercise. We cannot destroy
the instinct of private property, but we can guide
and limit it. We cannot change structure, but58     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
we can educate it; nor abolish curiosity, but we
can restrain and direct it; nor check invention,
but it need not be applied to evil purposes.
Neither can we make races equal, but we can
establish justice and mercy in the relations of the
stronger to the weaker.
     This study of the natural laws, which necessarily
limit rational human action, applies with
especial force to biological research, and explains
the reason for limiting scientific method.
     Thus, the study of living creatures under unnatural
or destructive conditions, although it may
be a well-meaning attempt to acquire knowledge,
is nevertheless a dangerous one. It is intellectually
a false method, which may lead to practical
error, and produce a labyrinth of confusion and 
contradictory experience which hinders the
attainment of exact knowledge. It is morally a 
false method, because it injures those elementary
instincts of justice and mercy by whose evolution
civilization advances. Thus the progress of the
race is retarded.
     The present astounding multiplication of drugs,
of inoculations, of mutilations in the practice of
medicine, with the eager attempt to prove each


WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?     59
new invention by a formidable array of imperfect
statistics, is a striking object-lesson in the present
day, of the error into which false methods of
research have led many members of a noble and 
humane profession. It is a fallacy necessarily
proceeding from a wrong view of what science
really is.
     Although this erroneousness is by no means
solely connected with vivisectional methods, yet
if the high claim which the noble art of medicine
makes to advance our social well-being be justly
founded, a stringent obligation rests upon it not
to injure the moral sense of its members by the
methods employed in education or in practice.IX.
THE AXIOM OF SCIENCE.
     THE fundamental law, without whose observance
reliable biological investigation is
impossible, is stated as follows:
     'In studying the laws alike of organic and of
inorganic Nature, the experimenter must be careful
not to destroy the phenomenon that is being
investigated.'
     Intellectual error, as well as practical danger,
arises from the attempt to transfer to man results
supposed to be gained by fallacious experimentation
on the lower animals. The fallacy consists
in noting general resemblance of structure, but not
the far more remarkable differences of function.
If, for instance, the life-habits of two dogs of
good breed are closely studied, it will be seen
that, although certain individual differences are


THE AXIOM OF SCIENCE     61
observed between the dogs, yet they are as
nothing when compared with the enormous
variation of function between the dog and the
human being. The bones and garbage swallowed
without injury, and the licking of its body, show
the different type of digestion and assimilation,
the action of the kidneys, of the various senses,
and the possession of senses which we are unable
to appreciate; in short, its distinctive type of
existence proves the impossibility of drawing safe
inferences for man from the digestive or other
canine functions. Again, observation and rational
experiment, solely for the benefit of one species
of animal, may incidentally lead to the benefit
or other races of animals; but direct experiment
on one type, for the supposed benefit of another
kind, is unscientific.
     It is this error that vitiates the famous postulates
of Professor Koch, through the system of
'controls,' the latest exemplification of this
fallacy being the attempt to prove the existence
of cholera in man by cultivating the bacilli in
animals. The same error also produces the failure
of M. Pasteur to prevent hydrophobia in man.
     It is well known how the influence of what62     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
we term 'mind' governs the action of the bodily
functions, either promoting or disturbing their
normal condition. This is a fact of growing
importance in practical medicine. Similar influence
is exerted in varying degrees on all living
creatures. Destructive or non-natural experimentation
on living animals is always subject to
the fallacy of morbid condition.
     The established law of research stated above
exposes the error of pursuing biological investigation
(or the study of vital action) by
the process of mutilating or diseasing living
animals.
     In research the radical difference between inorganic
and organic Nature cannot be too clearly
insisted on. Whilst in the former we can resolve
compounds into their elements, and recombine
them, such process is impossible in organic
Nature. We can take a steam-engine or a watch
to pieces, examine their parts, repair them, and 
put them together again, thus proving our knowledge
in this realm of Nature. But a living thing
cannot be treated in the same way. Not only
the difference of animal type forbids destructive
method of investigation, but as the type rises in


THE AXIOM OF SCIENCE     63
the scale of creation the growing fact of individual
idiosyncrasy increases the uncertainty of erroneous
method. 
     Therefore, the law of scientific research, which
forbids the destruction of phenomena to be
studied, is profoundly true.
     If this law be not observed, intellectual activity
may be gratified, self-conceit or love of novelty
and excitement may be pandered to, the panic
of fear in human beings may be worked upon,
but the attainment of scientific truth in biology
will be impossible.
     It is thus seen that methods of biological
research which involve cruel or destructive experimentation
are both ethically unjustifiable
and intellectually fallacious. They are unscientific
methods, which will inevitably be abandoned as
we attain to clearer views of that unity of truth
in which the reconciliation of human conscious
with intellectual activity becomes alone recognised
as science.X.
RATIONAL EXPERIMENT IN RESEARCH.
     AS an illustration of legitimate and even heroic
experiment, the trial made with cholera
bacilli by Dr. Von Pettenkofer, of Munich, on
himself, during the cholera epidemic of 1891,
deserves permanent record.* It is of importance
as showing the fallacy that may be involved in the
exaggerated search for bacilli, as the chief cause
of disease, which is the favourite theory and practice
of the present day.
     Dr. Von Pettenkofer (in opposition to the com-

*The entirely negative results of all experiments made
upon the lower animals to determine if cholera is communicable,
or where the poison resides, is demonstrated by
an endless series of experiments on the lower animals made
in many countries. The extent and severity of these experiments,
as well as their inconclusiveness, is impartially
detailed in the classic work of Hirst, translated by Dr. C.
Creighton, vol. i., in the treatise on 'Asiatic Cholera.'


RATIONAL EXPERIMENT IN RESEARCH     65
mon medical belief) asserts that the diffusion of
the cholera germ or cholera bacillus is not the
chief cause of cholera. He states that there are
two other absolutely necessary conditions, without
which no outbreak of cholera is possible; and if
these conditions are not present, the cholera germ
may be breathed with no production of cholera.
     The first condition is the unhealthy state of the
soil or locality. But even this does not produce
an outbreak if the second condition does not
exist, viz., individual predisposition; and he
shows that neither the cholera germ nor the insanitary
locality, nor both combined, will produce
cholera if this individual predisposition does not
exist. He further states that no experiments
upon the lower animals can be relied on; the
only proof in relation to cholera must be from the
experience of human beings.
     The supremacy of sanitation is the lesson which
is being gradually taught by such humane scientific
experiments. Dirt in its largest sense as
matter in the wrong place, whether in air, water,
food, clothing, habitation, soil, or contact, is undoubtedly
a main physical cause of disease.
     But in all epidemic disease the emotion of fear
566     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
must be recognized as a most potent predisposing
cause. The great fact of mind or emotion is a 
powerful influence in producing in preventing, or
in curing disease.
     This psychological side of medicine is only beginning
to receive due attention. As the fallacies
which arise in animal experimentation from the
production of fear, pain, and coma have not yet
been fully recognised, so the inevitable influence of
mind in modifying physical conditions has never
yet been studied scientifically in human medicine.
Yet facts exist in unsuspected abundance which
need to be collected, verified, tabulated, and their
laws of action diligently studied.
     It is known that even that strong muscle the
heart may be ruptured by the agony of intense
emotion. At Blackburn, the daughter of a woman
charged with theft became dumb with horror at
her mother's sudden arrest. Dr. Gayet, after
vainly treating a very pronounced aneurism of
the internal carotid artery, was proceeding to
operate, when his patient suddenly recovered.
Hydrophobia, cholera, and even small-pox, appear
to have been caused by fear.
     The extent to which even the so-called microbes


RATIONAL EXPERIMENT IN RESEARCH     67
of infectious diseases may be produced by fear
acting on idiosyncrasy demands very serious investigation;
for as it is now generally conceded
that morbid micro-organisms do not exist ab
aeterno, it is essential to know by what unhealthy
conditions the micro-organisms, or living particles
that always surround us, become disease germs.
     One of our most distinguished London physicians
has full records of the following noteworthy
case, which is given not as scientifically proved,
but as indicating a line of research which it is
folly to ignore or refuse to investigate.
     This gentleman attended a patient some years
ago in an attack of confluent small-pox under
these remarkable circumstances: This patient
had always exhibited a morbid horror of the
disease, refusing to hear anything about it, or to
allow it to be referred to in his presence. A
friend on one occasion brought a very fine collection
of anatomical plates to show him, sent
over from France. Amongst them was a representation
of confluent small-pox in a woman. No
sooner had this gentleman beheld it than he cried,
'Take it away. I cannot look at it; it makes me
ill!' The next day his son sent for the doctor to
5—268     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
see his father, who had felt unwell ever since
the shock of seeing the pathological plate. He
was found suffering from the first symptoms of
an illness which proved to be an attack of confluent
small-pox. The most searching inquiry
failed to discover any traces of the disease, either
in the neighbourhood or in any connection whatever
with the patient. The cause of this illness,
one of the most sever cases the doctor had ever
met with, remained a mystery.
     It has become of vital importance to investigate
'how far the mental attitude determines or permits
the onset of infectious disease.'


XI.
THE RANGE OF PAINLESS RESEARCH.
     I AM content to let Nature do all the torturing,
and man all the relieving. . . . . The grandest
physiology and physiological discovery exist outside
every shade of painful experiment.'*
     These are the words of one of our wisest
physicians, deliberately written in the full maturity
of a live devoted to original research and its
practical application to medicine. His experience
led him to the recognition of this great truth:
that the supreme aim of the medical profession
must become more and more the advancement of
sanitation. In any comprehensive view of medical
art as a science, the cure of disease is rationally
secondary to its prevention.

*See 'Biological Experimentation,' by Sir B.W. Richardson.
Bell and Sons.70     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
This, notwithstanding the trade exigencies of
competitive living, is recognised by the established
rule of the profession, that the physician's first
duty is not to injure his patient.
     Sanitation necessarily takes into consideration
all the elements, both mental and physical, of our
complex nature.
     It is by the investigation of the laws of healthy
created life and their practical application that
progress in medicine must be looked for. By
observing 'scientifically' the method and variations
of these laws, we shall approach nearer to
the understanding of 'vital force.'
     An immense range of biological inquiry urgently
invites the genius of those who are gifted with the
rare power of original research.
     This range is practically unlimited. The collection
of all useful or suggestive facts gathered by
genuinely scientific methods from the enormous
accumulations to be found in our Government
reports, in the records of our medical periodic
literature, in the observations of hospitals, societies,
cliniques, and private practice, would, if properly
arranged and tabulated, form a most useful branch
of such a centre. If such collection and examina-


THE RANGE OF PAINLESS RESEARCH     71
tion were extended to the records of other
countries, the value as well as labour of the work
would be greatly increased.
     The observation of the dietetic and hygienic as
well as medical treatment of disease, including
climate, soil, atmospheric conditions, the distribution
of disease, the effect of occupations, prenatal
influences, and later training, are essential.
     The action of mineral waters, of compressed
and medicated air, the hydration of tissues, the
conversion of vegetable into animal tissue, the
action of the various constituents of the human
body as curative of disease, present necessary
subjects of investigation.
     A careful judicial inquiry into the claims of 
specific cures, where a sufficient case for investigation
is presented (as Echinacea angustifolia in
snake-bite, also the Russian bath as preventive of
hydrophobia), would form another valuable department.
     In fact, it is impossible to specify the full range
of important subjects which demand the devotion
of able and painstaking research, working upon
the careful study of each type of life for the benefit
and improvement of that type.72     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
     In no branch of this wide range of inquiry is
painful experiment necessary.
     Our homes, our industrial occupations, our
legislative enactments, should all be guided by
hygienic knowledge, and its diffusion should be
actively encouraged by the community. Our
hospitals and dispensaries need to promote
practical hygiene. Our medical schools should
turn the force of their learning ability and great
influence to the conversion of their students into
a vast body of sanitary missionaries. If our
thousands of medical graduates turned out every
year into practice could go forth inspired with
enthusiasm for health, convinced that the preservation
of health was their especial work, and 
that all disease must be regarded as a violation of
the laws of health, a violation which it was their
special duty to fight against; a mighty step in the
advancement of medicine would be taken. The
impulse to such progress should come from
improved instruction in our medical schools, and
in the management of our hospitals.
     We much need also an unprejudiced and exhaustive
history of the progress of biological
inquiry since the Middle Ages, with its present


THE RANGE OF PAINLESS RESEARCH     73
result in therapeutics. Such a history may be
expected to confirm the not unfounded opinion
that the most important advances in practical
medicine have been made by methods which are
not in any way at variance with our natural 
instincts of justice and mercy.XII.
RECAPITULATION OF PRINCIPLES.

I.  THE attainment of truth, not the gratification
of curiosity or of personal ends, is
the sole and distinctive aim of genuine scientific
research.
     II. It is a radical intellectual error to apply
the same methods of investigation, suitable to
inorganic facts, to the study of organic facts.
Natural law being mind ruling matter, every
method employed in research into organic Nature
must respect and take into account the inseparable
mental factor in each type of sentient life, or
it becomes unscientific, and may promote fallacy,
not truth. Destructive experiment on living
creatures, even under the partial suspension of
consciousness produced by anaesthetics, is an 
erroneous method, producing confused or contradictory
results.


RECAPITULATION OF PRINCIPLES     75

     III. Scientific research in biology must be
based upon close and extensive observation of the
varying forms of animal life, under natural conditions,
with post-mortem examination of the
records left by health and disease. Experiments,
whether for the repair of lesions or the cure of
disease, can only become scientific when made
upon the type of life to be benefited by the
experiment.
     IV. Any experimentation which creates involuntary
suffering in living creatures vitiates the
necessary conditions of scientific research, and
tends to degrade human conscience by producing
indifference to suffering.
     V. In training our future practitioners of the
healing art, the cultivation of respect for life,
and the strengthening of enlightened sympathetic
conscience in dealing with all poor or helpless
creatures, are of paramount importance. The
present system of medical education requires revision
in order to make health, not disease, the
central subject of study.
     Finally, full and generous encouragement to
those who are engaged in important painless research
is urgently needed. Such research should76     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
be carried on, if possible, in connection with the
great body of serious scientific investigations, by
persons of proved ability and clear moral sense,
and the work should be cordially open to the
observation of all earnest friends.
     Such research, reconciling by right methods
of investigation intellectual activity with human
conscience, would increase our knowledge and
advance our well-being in accordance with the
higher reason of the race. Only when thus guided
by intelligence and conscience can biological research
deserve the noble name of science.


APPENDIX
DR. VON PETTENKOFER proceeded to experiment
on himself, choosing Munich, in daily communion
with Hamburg (where the epidemic was raging),
as the place of operations, and sent to Hamburg
for the cholera germs. On October 7 he swallowed
a centimetre of fresh cholera culture in the presence
of witnesses-i.e., infintely more than
could be taken in by touching the lips with contaminated
fingers, a cubic centimetre of culture
being calculated as containing a thousand million
microbes. He in no way changed his manner of
living, eating accustomed food, including fruit,
cucumbers, and other forbidden articles of diet.
During the following week his physiological condition,
pulse, temperature, etc., were carefully
noted. Nothing unusual occurred but a little
internal rumbling and slight diarrhoea, which
passed away of itself. Two skilled bacteriologists,78     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY

MM. Peiffer and Emerich, carefully examined
the secretions during this experiment.
     M. Von Pettenkofer himself thus states the
results:
     'The comma bacilli not only prospered in my
digestive tube, but had so multiplied in it, that
it was evident they found a congenial soil. They
were found there in quantities, and in a state of 
pure culture. But on October 14 all the secretions
were normal, only containing a few isolated
microbes, which had entirely disappeared on
the 18th.
     'Now, most bacteriologists assert that the
cholera bacilli remaining in the intestines
secrete there a poison, which, being absorbed,
produces the cholera. But what a quantity of
poison must have been secreted by these milliards
of bacilli during the eight days' sojourn in my
intestines! Yet I felt perfectly well, had an
excellent appetite, felt neither indigestion nor
fever, etc., and I attended every day to my usual
occupations. Whence I conclude that the comma
bacillus, though it may cause a little diarrhoea,
produces neither European nor Asiatic cholera.
     'Now, it must not be imagined that I am the


APPENDIX     79

adversary of the cholera bacillus; but it is
erroneous to suppose that when a specific microbe
has been discovered in the secretions of an infectious
disease that the means of fighting it has
also been discovered. The discovery of the
bacillus of consumption was just as interesting
as the discovery of the cholera bacillus, but since
its discovery phthisis has destroyed neither one
man less nor one man more.
     'These (bacteriological) methods for protection
against cholera rest purely upon theory; and it
seems to be thought that henceforth cholera, etc.,
ought to behave according to the prevalent
theory, instead of theory being modified according
to the cholera. Instead of trying to catch
the comma bacillus and draw a cordon around it,
the essential thing is to make all the dwelling-places
of man healthy.'
     Such is the vigorous and genuinely-scientific
experiment of a distinguished medical investigator.
     Other experimenters have confirmed Dr. Von
Pettenkofer's observations. On October 17 Dr.
Emerich made a similar experiment on himself,
with like results.
     Since then, experiments have been made in the80     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY
Vienna Pathological Institute, with the following
results: Six persons partook of the comma
bacillus in no mean quantity, and not one of
them has had the disease. The six are two
doctors, the servant of the Institute, two medical
students, and a private gentleman. Professor
Stricker treated them all. Two did not feel their
health impaired at all; one had headache, was
slightly feverish, and could not sleep; two had
slight attacks of diarrhoea; and only one was
really ill, but recovered at the end of a week.
These experiments inspire medical men with
serious misgivings as to the theory which considers
the comma bacillus as the cause of all
cholera.
     It is by the recognition of this true method of
biological research, and by the generous support
of physiologists who honestly seek for truth,
even when opposed by temporary fashions of
medical opinion, that medicine will become a 
science.

Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London.