Human vivisection : A statement and an inquiry.

  • American Humane Association.
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Human vivisection : A statement and an inquiry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    5. November 14th, 1553.—Marguerita, wife of Biajio d'Antinoro, condemned to be beheaded for infanticide. . . . December 20th, 'she was released from the fetters and consigned to a familiar, who took her to Pisa to the Commissario, who gave her, as usual, to the anatomist, to make anatomy of her; which was done accordingly' ('che la consegni, secondo il solito, al notomista, per fame notomia come fu fatto.') Several other cases, from 1554 to 1570, are recorded, with equally unmistakable exactitude. Two unfortunate thieves, Paoli di Giovanni and Vestrino d'Agnolo, were sent together by the Council of Eight to be anatomised; the Duke having written to say 'that they wanted in Pisa a subject for anatomy.' After the date 1570 no more cases occur in the Archives. In all, thirteen unhappy beings were delivered over for scientific research. And it seems quite certain that Vesalius and his pupil Fallopius were lecturing on Anatomy at Pisa during some of the years when these victims were being sacrificed. Do we stand appalled at this vision of the horrors, once enacted in the name of Science? Across the gulf of centuries, do we seem to hear the screams of women beseeching mercy, the groans of dying men? Let us be just to the Past. The human vivisection of Alexandria and of Pisa was doubtless practised upon criminals condemned for the worst of crimes. There is no record, that three centuries before Christ, the scientists of Alexandria took as material for research, the incurable and helpless invalid, the orphaned or deserted child, the new-born infant, the young mother who had just passed through maternal pangs. For this phase of Human Vivisection, we must come to the present time,—to the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century. Inoculation with Cancer. On June 23, 1891, before the Academy of Medicine in Paris, a paper on the subject of Cancer-grafting was read by Professor Cornil. Therein, he stated that a surgeon whom he did not wish to name, while operating upon a woman, took occasion, after removing a cancer of the breast, to engraft a por- tion of the cancer upon the other breast,—at that time perfectly healthy;—and that some months later, the graft developed into a tumor which presented every cancerous characteristic. The experiment was repeated upon another patient with identi- cal results.