BLACKWELL FAMILY                                 Article                                  "A serious protest sent to the  
ELIZABETH BLACKWELL                                                                         Alumnae Assoc. of the 
                                                                                                              Woman's Medical college of 
                                                                                                              the NewYork infirmary"[*K. Barry   Aug. 1890*]

A SERIOUS PROTEST SENT TO THE 
Alumnae Association 
OF THE 
WOMAN'S MEDICAL COLLEGE
OF THE 
NEW YORK INFIRMARY.

MY DEAR DOCTORS, 

     Although it is many years since I have been able to assist 
in the management of the Infirmary and School which I helped 
to found in 1853, yet I watch its growth with steady sympathy 
and rejoice in its success.

     The last Report, which has just reached me, contains a very 
important item, viz:  the effort of the Alumnae Association to 
"Equip a Physiological Laboratory, and place it under the 
superintendence of Prof. W. Gilman Thompson." --In relation 
to this effort I desire to bring before you some grave considerations 
which are the result of my long experience in Medicine.

      These considerations refer, first to the kind of work that 
should be carried on in a Physiological Laboratory, and second 
to the special influence which women are called on to exercise in 
medicine.

         A Physiological or Pathological Laboratory is too often
used as a place for experimenting upon the lower animals, a 
method of research which is proving in several ways injurious 
to the progress of the Healing Art.2
The practice of Vivisection and unlimited experimentations
upon our humbler fellow creatures, must be considered by us 
both under its intellectual and its moral aspects. From both
these points of view, very careful observation has led me to the 
conviction that this method of investigation is an error.
Let me here state distinctly that I willingly acknowledge
the good intentions of all, and the ability of some, of the clever
physiologists of the present day, although their method is 
erroneous, and the effects of that method injurious, What I 
now say however, is directed exclusively to the instruction of 
our own medical students, and to the practice of our young
women doctors.
Consider first, the intellectual fallacy which underlies this
method of research. Its is a two-fold fallacy resulting from the 
differences of organisation in different classes of living creatures; 
and from the fact that when any organ is inured, it is a process
of destruction or death, - not life-that is exhibited
There is an ineradicable difference of physical structure
between Man and every species of lower animal. Nowhere is
there identity of structure or of function. Resemblance or
parallelism often exists, but identity never. Take the dog for
instance, whose attachment to Man furnishes us with the widest
opportunities of observation. In no single function of their
body is the action of the function the same as in Man. All the
processes of digestion, including its large group of connected
organs, differ from those of the human being. Observe carefully
the processes of healthy living animals. You will find
that their senses act in a different way to ours, a way which
is often quite unknown to us, we possessing no power even
comparable with many of their powers.  Their relations to
nature, differ in many ways from our relations. It is true that
they eat and sleep and dream: that they possess intellectual
and moral powers and are susceptible of education They
exhibit a rough sketch of our higher spiritual powers, and are

3
related to us in many ways. But the differences are so great,
their whole attitude towards external life is so different, that
they may be truly said to live in a different world from our.
So that in no possible instance can we draw a positive
conclusion respecting the lower animal nature, that can be
transferred as reliable information to guide us in relation to
the action of the human organs and functions, either in health
or disease. This misleading difference is true not only in
relation to the spontaneous working of functions but it is
also true in respect to the actions of poisons, of drugs, and the
artificial production of diseases. Animals can be rendered
scrofulous diabetic syphilitic, leprous, by forcing the poison
of diseases into their bodies Morbid action, atrophy, slow
death, can be produced by removing portions of their organs;
but no deductions drawn from these artificial conditions can be
transferred to man in order to cure human disease, or restore
lost function. The scrofula, diabetes, syphilis, or rabies, takes
on a different form when the lower animal has been artificially
poisoned by disease. In not a single instance known to
science, has the cure of any human disease resulted necessarily
from this fallacious method of research.
In 1849-50 I was a student in Paris, and with the narrow
range of thought which marks youth I was extremely
interested in the investigations respecting the liver and
gall bladder, which Claude Bernard (Majendie's successor)
was there carrying on, and lecturing upon at the College de
France and the Sorbonne. I called upon M. Bernard to ask
him where I could find some work on "Physiologie Appliquée"
which would show me how the results of these investigations
could be applied to the benefit of man. M. Bernard received
me with the utmost courtesy, but told me that there was no
such book written-the time had not come for the deductions I 
sought-they were simply accumulating facts-We are still forty
years later, vainly accumulating facts!-This present summer,
Dr Semmola, "one of the most brilliant pupils of Claude4
Bernard," lectured in Paris on Bright's disease which
he has been studying for forty years with unlimited
experimentation on the lower animals, for the purpose of
producing in them artificial inflammation and disease of the
kidneys. What is the result to the human being of all
this prolonged and ingenious suffering inflicted on helpless
creatures. - "Dr. Semmola insisted upon temperance in eating at
well as drinking, and said that the best way to preserve health
was to eat only what was needed for the nourishment of the
body." -No cure for the human malady had resulted from this
persistent experimentation. Is it not intellectual imbecility to
waste thought and ingenuity in putting animals to lingering
and painful deaths, in order to re-assert the well-proved fact,
that intemperance in eating and drinking will produce forms
of digestive and excretory disease, varying with the idiosyncracy
of the individual!
     In late discussions in the French Academy of Medicine
relative to chloroform, where Laborde and Franck exhibited
experiments on animals, Dr. Le Fort (distinguished surgeon)
says "None of these experiments give us any instruction
whatever which is useful in practical surgery. Whatever their
scientific interest may be, their deductions are in no way
applicable to man. Experimenters relate causes of death, but
nothing of the sort is generally found in the deaths of practical
surgery. The man faints when operations are begun too soon,
or is frightened by preparations-He dies because being a man,
his nervous system re-acts in a different way from that of the
dog or the rabbit.-Do not count in any way upon the
teachings of physiologists in practical matters.-Don't let your
patients see any preparations-give the chloroform slowly-
wait till he is profoundly asleep-That is all you can do."
     Again, at another discussion at the Academy, M. Verneuil
says "It is incorrect to say that laboratory experiments give
certainty to medicine, and make it scientific instead of empirical.
The fact is that experimentation has put forth as many errors

5
as truths. There is not sufficient identity, either physiologic or
pathologic, between man and the mamniferes such as the dog
and the rabbit. The different ways of dying under chloroform
have been long ago stated by surgeons. The experiments
shown by M. Laborde on the rabbit must be absolutely rejected,
as contrary to experience (in man). Maurice Perrin showed to
Vulpian in 1882 that the nervous re-actions in man differ from
those in animals, and the effects produced by chloroformisation
could not be replied on as being the same as on man. Vulpian
entirely accepted this. The experiments of physiologists have
taught us absolutely nothing in the way of preventing
chloroform accidents; surgeons have been beforehand (as was
natural) in practising artificial respiration and every other
method of recovery. However interesting these experiments on
animals may be considered, they do not explain satisfactorily
the cause of chloroform accidents in man, and in no way show
the way of avoiding them."
     I could multiply these facts by indefinite quotations of the
intellectual uselessness of a method of research which ignores
the spiritual essence of Life and hopes to surprise its secrets
by ruthless prying into the physical structure of the lower
animals; a method of research which is now being discredited
by many of the most enlightened members of our Profession.
     But what I wish especially to call your attention to, is the
educational uselessness of vivisection in training students; and
the moral danger of hardening their nature and injuring their
future usefulness as good physicians.
     It is not true that vivisection is necessary to the medical
student in order that she may attain the thorough knowledge of
human physiology, which is needed for the intelligent exercise
of the medical profession. Class demonstrations opening the
bodies of living animals to examine their organs and tissues, is
misleading in respect to the action of human organs. The
action of the human salivary glands, the action of the cavities6
of the human heart, the secretion of the gastric juice, &c., can
be more correctly realised by the careful anatomical study in connexion
with clinical observation of the effects of healthy and 
diseased action in the human being,--than by any amount of 
bloody experiment, and mutilation of still living cats and dogs.
Such demonstration may gratify that instinct of curiosity which
always exists in youthful human nature; or it may pander to
that craving for excitement which makes the spectacle of a
surgical operation so much more attractive to the undeveloped
mind, than careful clinical study--a tendency which is also seen 
in gambling, watching executions, bull fights, &c., but these are
tendencies to be repressed in serious and responsible study,--
not encouraged. The precious mental activities of the student,
need to be specially trained into observation of our human
faculties, in health and in disease. The establishment of a 
Physiological Laboratory for experimenting on living animals,
in a medical school, is not only giving a wrong direction to
intellectual activity, but is wasting the precious time of the
student, and diverting the attention of the young practitioner
from that careful and intelligent study of the human organism,
which alone can lead to practical beneficial results. This
practice must therefore be condemned as giving a false direction
to the intellectual faculties of the young.
Of the moral danger involved in such methods of study,
there can be but one opinion by thoughtful and observant
persons within the ranks of our Profession.
The exercise of our superior cunning in destroying an
animal's natural means of self defense, that we may (with
convenience to ourselves) watch changes that occur in its organs
during the slow process of a lingering death, is an exercise of
curiosity which inevitably tends to blunt the moral sense, and
injure that intelligent sympathy with suffering, which is a
fundamental quality in the good physician. The practice of
recklessly sacrificing animal life for the gratification either of
curiosity, excitement, or cruelty, tends inevitably to create a

7
habit of mind which affects injuriously all our relations with
inferior or helpless classes of creatures. It tends to make us
less scrupulous in our treatment of the sick and helpless poor.
It increases that disposition to regard the poor, as "clinical
material" which has become, alas! not without reason, a widespread
reproach to many of the young members of our most
honourable and merciful profession.
My dear friends, it is our duty and privilege, as women,
entering into the medical profession, to strengthen its humane
aspirations--to discourage its dangerous tendencies. We must
not be misled by clever or brilliant materialists, who take the
narrow view that physical life can be profitably studied without
reverencing the spiritual forces on which it depends. A physiological
and pathological laboratory, legitimately conducted for
the investigation of healthy and diseased human secretions, in
connexion with clinical observation, may be made a valuable aid
to medical advancement, and I would gladly help you in organising
such a laboratory. But to allow such a laboratory to be 
converted into a torture chamber of the lower animals, is an
intellectual error, and a moral crime.
The possible results of slow deterioration in the moral
nature, when we violate in any degree our christian standard of
justice and mercy, may be most strongly realised in living
examples of diseased inherited tendencies. Such a fearful
example now in the State Prison of Charlestown, Mass.,
who has spent his life in penal servitude, expiating his
atrocious murders of outraged little girls, committed when
he was a lad of 15. The father of this lad was a butcher. [*this refers Jesse Pomeroy*]
His mother during the gestation of this child, took a persistent
and morbid delight in watching the sufferings of the animals
slaughtered by her husband. We see in the atrocities committed
by her young son, a terrible example in gigantic form,
of the evil effect which the mind can exercise in deteriorating
individual character and in extending its evil influence to others.8
     I earnestly ask you, my valued fellow workers, and 
members of the Alumnae Association, to consider the facts now
presented, and to join with me in a persistent effort to raise the
character of medical education.
     Let us endeavour in the first place to abolish entirely in
our own college the injurious practice of vivisection. Then let
us prove the possibility of organising such a Physiological
Laboratory as shall advance medical knowledge, by methods
worthy of the noble humanity which distinguishes the Medical
Profession.
     Believe me with great respect and sympathy,
Very sincerely yours,
ELIZABETH BLACKWELL.

Rock House, Hastings,
1890
J.F. Nock, Printer, Bookbinder and Stationer, 7, Silchester Road, St. Leonards.


1890
TO THE
Alumnae Association
OF THE
WOMAN'S MEDICAL COLLEGE
OF THE 
NEW YORK INFIRMARY.

MY DEAR DOCTORS,
     Although it is many years since I have been able to assist
in the management of the Infirmary and School which I helped
to found in 1853, yet I watch its growth with steady sympathy
and rejoice in its success.
     The last Report, which has just reached me, contains a very
important item, viz: the effort of the Alumnae Association to
"Equip a Physiological Laboratory, and place it under the
superintendence of Prof. W. Gilmam Thompson." -In relation
to this effort I desire to bring before you some grave considerations
which are the result of my long experience in Medicine.
     These considerations refer, first to the kind of work that
should be carried on in a Physiological Laboratory, and second
to the special influence which women are called on to exercise in
medicine.
     A Physiological or Pathological Laboratory is too often
used as a place for experimenting upon the lower animals, a
method of research which is proving in several ways injurious
to the progress of the Healing Art.

2
The practice of Vivisection and unlimited experimentations
upon our humbler fellow creatures, must be considered by us
both under its intellectual and its moral aspects. From both
these points of view, very careful observation has led me to the
conviction that this method of investigation is an error.
Let me here state distinctly that I willingly acknowledge
the good intentions of all, and the ability of some, of the clever
physiologists of the present day, although their method is
erroneous, and the effects of that method injurious. What I
now say however, is directed exclusively to the instruction of
our own medical students, and to the practice of our young
women doctors. 
Consider first, the intellectual fallacy which underlies this
method of research. It is a two-fold fallacy resulting from the
differences of organisation in different classes of living creatures;
and from the fact that when any organ is injured, it is a process
of destruction or death,--not life--that is exhibited.
There is an ineradicable difference of physical structure
between Man and every species of lower animal. Nowhere is
there identity of structure or of function. Resemblance or
parallelism often exists, but identity never. Take the dog for
instance, whose attachment to Man furnishes us with the widest
opportunities of observation. In no single function of their
body is the action of the function the same as in Man. All the
processes of digestion, including its large group of connected
organs, differ from those of the human being. Observe carefully
the processes of healthy living animals. You will find
that their senses act in a different way to ours, a way which
is often quite unknown to us, we possessing no power even
comparable with many of their powers. Their relations to
nature, differ in many ways from our relations. It is true that
they eat and sleep and dream: that they possess intellectual
and moral powers and are susceptible of education. They 
exhibit a rough sketch of our higher spiritual powers, and are

3
related to us in many ways. But the differences are so great,
their whole attitude towards external life is so different, that
they may be truly said to live in a different world from ours.
So that in no possible instance can we draw a positive
conclusion respecting the lower animal nature, that can be
transferred as reliable information to guide us in relation to
the action of the human organs and functions, either in health
or disease. This misleading difference is true not only in
relation to the spontaneous working of functions but it is
also true in respect to the actions of poisons, of drugs, and the
artificial production of diseases. Animals can be rendered
scrofulous, diabetic, syphilitic, leprous, by forcing the poison
of diseases into their bodies. Morbid action, atrophy, slow
death, can be produced by removing portions of their organs;
but no deductions drawn from these artificial conditions can be
transferred to man in order to cure human disease, or restore
lost function. The scrofula, diabetes, syphilis, or rabies, takes
on a different form when the lower animal has been artificially
poisoned by disease. In not a single instance known to
science, has the cure of any human disease resulted necessarily
from this fallacious method of research.
In 1849-1850 I was a student in Paris, and with the narrow
range of thought which marks youth, I was extremely
interested in the investigations respecting the liver and
gall bladder, which Claude Bernard (Majendie's successor)
was there carrying on, and lecturing upon at the College de
France and the Sorbonne. I called upon M. Bernard to ask
him where I could find some work on "Physiologie Appliquée"
which would show me how the results of these investigations
could be applied to the benefit of man. M. Bernard received
me with the utmost courtesy, but told me that there was no
such book written--the time had not come for the deductions I
sought--they were simply accumulating facts--We are still forty
years later, vainly accumulating facts!--This present summer,
Dr. Semmola, "one of the most brilliant pupils of Claude4
Bernard," lectured in Paris on Bright's disease which
he has been studying for forty years with unlimited
experimentation on the lower animals, for the purpose of
producing in them artificial inflammation and disease of the
kidneys. What is the result to the human being of all
this prolonged and ingenious suffering inflicted on helpless
creatures.--"Dr. Semmola insisted upon temperance in eating as
well as drinking, and said that the best way to preserve health
was to eat only what was needed for the nourishment of the
body."--No cure for the human malady had resulted from this
persistent experimentation. Is it not intellectual imbecility to
waste thought and ingenuity in putting animals to lingering
and painful deaths, in order to re-assert the well-proved fact,
that intemperance in eating and drinking will produce forms
of digestive and excretory disease, varying with the idiosyncracy
of the individual!
In late discussions in the French Academy of Medicine
relative to chloroform, where Laborde and Franck exhibited
experiments on animals, Dr. Le Fort (distinguished surgeon)
says "None of these experiments give us any instruction
whatever which is useful in practical surgery. Whatever their
scientific interest may be, their deductions are in no way
applicable to man. Experimenters relate causes of death, but
nothing of the sort is generally found in the deaths of practical
surgery. The man faints when operations are begun too soon,
or is frightened by preparations--He dies because being a man,
his nervous system re-acts in a different way from that of the
dog or the rabbit.--Do not count in any way upon the 
teachings of physiologists in practical matters.--Don't let your
patients see any preparations--give the chloroform slowly--
wait till he is profoundly asleep--That is all you can do."
Again, at another discussion at the Academy, M. Verneuil
says "It is incorrect to say that laboratory experiments give
certainty to medicine, and make it scientific instead of empirical. 
The fact is that experimentation has put forth as many errors

5
as truths. There is not sufficient identity, either physiologic or
pathologic, between man and the mamnifères such as the dog
and the rabbit. The different ways of dying under chloroform
have been long ago stated by surgeons. The experiments
shewn by M. Laborde on the rabbit must be absolutely rejected,
as contrary to experience (in man). Maurice Perrin showed to
Vulpian in 1882 that the nervous re-actions in man differ from
those in animals, and the effects produced by chloroformisation
could not be relied on as being the same as on man. Vulpian
entirely accepted this. The experiments of physiologists have
taught us absolutely nothing in the way of preventing
chloroform accidents; surgeons have been beforehand (as was
natural) in practising artificial respiration and every other
method of recovery. However interesting these experiments on 
animals may be considered, they do not explain satisfactorily
the cause of chloroform accidents in man, and in no way show
the way of avoiding them."
I could multiply these facts by indefinitely quotations of the
intellectual uselessness of a method of research which ignores
the spiritual essence of Life and hopes to surprise its secrets
by ruthless prying into the physical structure of the lower
animals; a method of research which is now being discredited
by many of the most enlightened members of our Profession.
But what I wish especially to call your attention to, is the
education uselessness of vivisection in training students; and
the moral danger of hardening their nature and injuring their
future usefulness as good physicians.
It is not true that vivisection is necessary to the medical
student in order that she may attain the thorough knowledge of
human physiology, which is needed for the intelligent exercise
of the medical profession. Class demonstrations opening the
bodies of living animals to examine their organs and tissues, is
misleading in respect to the action of human organs. The
action of the human salivary glands, the action of the cavities6
of the human heart, the secretion of the gastric juice, &c., can 
be more correctly realised by careful anatomical study in connexion
with clinical observation of the effects of healthy and
diseased action in the human being,--than by any amount of
bloody experiment, and mutilation of still living cats and dogs.
Such demonstration may gratify that instinct of curiosity which
always exists to youthful human nature; or it may pander to
that craving for excitement which makes the spectacle of a 
surgical operation so much more attractive to the undeveloped
mind, than careful clinical study--a tendency which is also seen
in gambling, watching executions, bull fights &c., but these are
tendencies to be repressed in serious and responsible study,--
not encouraged. The precious mental activities of the student,
need to be specially trained into observation of our human
faculties, in health and in disease. The establishment of a 
Physiological Laboratory for experimenting on living animals,
in a medical school, is not only giving a wrong direction to
intellectual activity, but is wasting the precious time of the
student, and diverting the attention of the young practitioner
from that careful and intelligent study of the human organism,
which alone can lead to practical beneficial results. This
practice must therefore be condemned as giving a false direction
to the intellectual faculties of the young.
Of the moral danger involved in such methods of study,
there can be but one opinion by thoughtful and observant
persons within the ranks of our Profession.
The exercise of our superior cunning in destroying an
animal's natural means of self defense, that we may (with
convenience to ourselves) watch changes that occur in its organs
during the slow process of a lingering death, is an exercise of
curiosity which inevitably tends to blunt the moral sense, and
injure that intelligent sympathy with suffering, which is a 
fundamental quality in the good physician. The practice of
recklessly sacrificing animal life for the gratification either of
curiosity, excitement, or cruelty, tends inevitably to create a 

7
habit of mind which affects injuriously all our relations with
inferior or helpless classes of creatures. It tends to make us
less scrupulous in our treatment of the sick and helpless poor. 
It increases that disposition to regard to poor, as "clinical
material" which has become, alas! not without reason, a widespread
reproach to many of the young members of our most
honourable and merciful profession.
My dear friends, it is our duty and privilege, as women,
entering into the medical profession, to strengthen its humane
aspirations--to discourage its dangerous tendencies. We must
not be misled by clever or brilliant materialists, who take the
narrow view that physical life can be profitably studied without
reverencing the spiritual forces on which it depends. A physiological
and pathological laboratory, legitimately conducted for
the investigation of healthy and diseases human secretions, in 
connexion with clinical observation, may be made a valuable aid
to medical advancement, and I would gladly help you in organising
such a laboratory. But to allow such a laboratory to be
converted into a torture chamber of the lower animals, is an
intellectual error, and a moral crime.
The possible results of slow deterioration in the moral
nature, when we violate in any degree our christian standard of
justice and mercy, may be most strongly realised in living
examples of diseased inherited tendencies. Such a fearful
example is before us, in the life history of the elderly
criminal now in the State Prison of Charlestown, Mass.,
who has spent his life in penal servitude, expiating his
atrocious murders of outraged little girls, committed when
he was a lad of 15. The father of his lad was a butcher.
His mother during the gestation of this child, took a persistent
and morbid delight in watching the sufferings of the animals
slaughtered by her husband. We see in the atrocities committed
by her young son, a terrible example in gigantic form,
of the evil effect which the mind can exercise in deteriorating
individual character and in extending its evil influence to others.8
I earnestly ask you, my valued fellow workers, and
members of the Alumnae Association, to consider the facts now
presented, and to join with me in a persistent effort to raise the
character of medical education.
Let us endeavor in the first place to abolish entirely in
our own college the injurious practice of vivisection. Then let
us prove the possibility of organising such a Physiological
Laboratory as shall advance medical knowledge, by methods
worthy of the nobel humanity with distinguishes the Medical
Profession. 
Believe me with great respect and sympathy,
Very sincerely yours,
ELIZABETH BLACKWELL.
Rock House, Hastings,
1890.
J.F. Nock, Printer, Bookbinder and Stationer, 7, Silchester Road, St. Leonards.