947

THE DOGS’ PROTECTION BILL:

MEMORANDUM BY THE MEDICAL RESEARCHCOMMITTEE.

THE Medical Research Committee have addressed to theChairman of the National Health Insurance Committee an

important Memorandum upon the Dogs’ Protection Bill. TheCommittee, speaking with first-hand and intimate knowledgeof the mass of suffering among men, women, children, andanimals, protest against the inhumanity of hindering thosewho are working for the diminution of this volume of humanand animal pain.

An Insuperable Barrier to Progress.In the first three sections of the Memorandum the Com-

mittee allude to their responsibility for the application ofthe Medical Research Fund so as most effectively to assistthe increase of medical knowledge, bv which alone healthcan be maintained and disease and suffering diminished inhuman beings and no less in animals. They at once statethat the proposals of the Dogs’ Protection Bill would " placean insuperable and permanent barrier across some of thechief paths of progress in this work." They do not discussthe general moral question of using animals or takinganimal lifa for experiment or for other human uses or

pleasures, but go straight to the indisputable fact that thepresent science and art of the physician and surgeon havebeen founded in a large part upon the experimental use ofdogs. The Committee point out that by the use of dogs thechief foundations of our knowledge of the processes of

digestion, circulation of lymph, work of the heart and circu-lation of the blood have been laid, and they add thatessential parts of our knowledge of the physiology of feedingare based on trials made in the feeding of dogs. Muchsurgical work on the brain, spinal cord, intestine, and chesthas been made possible by experiments on dogs, they add,and methods of life-saving, such as the transfusion of bloodand the resuscitation of the drowned, have been worked outchiefly by trials with dogs, from whom also an experimentalknowledge of anaesthesia and the activities of many drugshas been gained.

The Bill and the Abandonment of Investigations.The fourth section states the well-known general reasons

which render dogs invaluable for certain experimentalwork-namely, their long domestication, their size andstructure of body, which cause the study of diet and ofexcreta to be applicable alike to dog, man, and child. Forthe better and more rapid diminution of suffering anddisease it is plain that the selection of the animal mostfitted for the special purpose in view should be left to thediscretion and skilled knowledge of the worker in medicalscience. The Memorandum continues :-The Committee think it their duty to explain the nature

of the experiments upon dogs which, as, it happens, are

now being, or have recently been, supported on their recom-mendation by grants from the Medical Research Fund.The work now to be mentioned would necessarily beabandoned if the proposals of the Dogs’ Protection Billshould be adopted by Parliament, and it would pass toworkers in other countries.

Rickets.

(a) Rickets is a disorder of growth in infants leading to deformationof the bones (seen, for instance, in "bandy legs") and to other gravesecondary results. It is very common in our large cities, and it isknown indeed on the continent as the " English disease." It is alsofound among confined animals at the Zoological Gardens, for instance,and sometimes among foxhound puppies. Its causation has neverbeen satisfactorily determined, but has been hitherto attributed un-certainly to errors of diet or to improper environ ment.During the past three years a Jarge number of experiments upon

young dogs have been made with the support of the Committee. Thedogs, though receiving abundant food. have been deprived of one orother particular constituent of diet.l It has been discovered by thiswork for the first time that, in the absence of a certain type of con-stituent hardly appreciable in amouut, and with food otherwiseabundant, typical " rickets " may be produced in a puppy, correspond-ing exactly with that found in thousands of our Infants. The disorder,when pronounced, can, moreover, be cured completely by the restora-tion of the missing constituent of the diet. and a discovery of this kindmust be of the utmost value in preventing rickets among humaninfants.The disorder itself in the puppy, as in the child, is quite painless.

Each feeding experiment has been done in a place licensed andinspected by the Home Office under Home Office licence, and with theadditional Certificate A + E, allowing anaesthetics to be dispensed

1 THE LANCET, March 15th, 1919, p. 407.

with. Bach has appeared in the annual Home 0’Oce returns underthat heading, and these experiments have sometimes been quotedaccordingly with technical but misleading accuracy as experiments, oreven as " vivisections." d me without anaes’ hetics.The supporters of the D8gs’ Protection Bill would forbid any further

progress in this work.progress in this work. Disorders ol the Teeth.

(b) A wholly unexpected outcome of the experiments just describedhas been to show that the absence of a particular and mmutefactor from the diet may prevent the formation of the hard enamelcovering of the teeth as these are being developed. and thatdeficiency of this factor at the time of tooth formar,ion (as duringweaning) causes the enamel to be thin and imperfect. There canbe no doubt that this is a piece of knowledge fundamental in its im-portance for the prevention of that undue subsequent decay of the teethwhich is one of the gravest and commonest phynical defects amongpeople of the United Kingdom and one of the m03t fertile caiis-8 ofsecondary illness.2 These studies are quite new and are heinll activelyfollowed up, but they must be abandoned if the Dogs’ Protection Hillbecomes enacted ; it is uncertain whether by the use of other animalsfurther progress can be made even though by the help of the dog thekey to the problem seems to have been obtained.

The Effects of Alcohol.(c) For the assistance of the Liquor Control Board the Committee

have supported some experiments upon dogs in which the intoxicat-ing actions of alcohol have been studied, as well as the rate ofdisappearance from the blood of alcohol taken into the systemunder different conditions, as when different dilutions are used, ordifferent forms of beverage, or various foods taken, and so on. Theseexperiments have not been painful to the dogs used. In most c asessmail samples of blood have been taken for examination at differenttimes by a tiny cut made at the edge of the ear. All have beenreturned as experiments upon dogs done without anaesthetics. The resultsobtained have been regarded by the. Liquor Control Board as useful tothem in their work. and they have incidentally given much new andvaluable knowledge to guide the medicinal uses of alcohol in man.

The Study of Diseases of the Heart and Circulation.(d) Dr. Thomas Lewis, in the whole-time service of the Committee, has

given in a letter published in the Times of April 7th. 1919, the reasons forsaying that our knowledge of the heart and blood circulation in man hasbeen grounded in the results of experiments upon the dog. These resultshave been and are now being applied on behalf of the Committee byDr. Lewis for the assistance of the Army Medical Service and of theMinistry of Pensions, and no fresh experiments upon dogs haverecently been made. The chief progress in this part ot medicine hasby universal admission been made in this country, and probably thegreater part of the necessary experimental work with dogs has beenfinally done. But new experiments must be expect’d to be necessaryfrom time to time for the solution of accessory p oblems. and theCommittee would view with dismay any legislation blocking furtheradvances in this subject, in which such lasting benefits to mankindhave been brought already by experiments upon dogs.

It should be added here that much of the work which was done toaid the saving of life amonn the seriously wounded during the war.by the introduction of improved methods of blood transfusion and ofother modes of treatment in the dangerous states of wound shock,was made easy or possible only by experiments upon dogs.

Tetany in Children.(e) The experiments so far named have all been painless or have

at the most only involved a painless death. The Committee woulddraw attention, however, to another class of experiment of whichsome examples have been recently performed, ith their support,upon dogs. Of all rickety children in our great cities man- unGlasgow about one-thhd) suffer from a condition of localised mus-cular cramps known as tetany. These fixations of the muscles aregenerally painless, and tetanv is not to be confused with the pamfulcramps of tetanus (lockjaw); but the state of tetany is di-figurlllg, andto a human subject distressing. By a surgical operation madepainless by anaesthetics, a certain small gtaod (the para’hyroid)can be removed from the neck of a dog. The healing of ’ hesmall skin wound after the operation is obviously paini ssenough to make no change in the comfort or usual spirits of the dog.It has been discovered that the absence of this gland mav producelater a condition of the muscles apparently identical with that intetany. Further experiments in dogs and other animals gave theinformation that this gland controls the health of the muscles, not bynervous influences directly, but through control, by way of the blood,of their chemical changes. Knowledge of this kind plaiul,y could notbe gained except by sucn experimenrs, and withour, new knowledge ofthis disorder our treatment of innumerable afflicted children mustremain as imperfect and ineffective as it has hitherto been. Closelysimilar experiments upon another gland in the neck (the thyroid) ofdogs and other animals long ago gave us for the first time the m answhich are now successfully used for curing the idiocv and deformitiesof "cretin" children in whom the thyroid gland is congentta’ly absentor deficient.Further progress along this path would be greatly hamDered, and

might be barred, by the provisions of the Dogs’ Protection Bill.

Non-infliction of Pain.The Committee, in conclusion, state that their ability to

speak with knowledge and, in the case of most of theirmembers, with intimate knowledge, of the actual conditionsin which experiments are performed in this country, andthey assert confidently that in the vast majority of expe)i-ments upon dogs "out of the few score alto,-ether u.,ed

annually for the purpose " no pain at all is inflicted. They

say :-The experiment or the observation is either made wholly

under an anaesthetic and death produced without awaken-ing, or the experiment is a feeding experiment as in studies

2 THE LANCET, Dec. 7th, 1918, p. 767.

948

of the kind described above. In the small minority of cases,when for special reasons and under a special certificaterecovery after operation is allowed, there is rarely any condi-tion of pain as distinguished from discomfort. The workerin medical science knows too well that pain as such of itselfwould vitiate the results of an animal experiment by itsdisturbing influence, even if he had no other reason to usehis skill for avoiding it. By the present law he is underbond moreover to destroy the animal painlessly and at onceif severe pain that is likely to endure is present, and whetherthe experiment is complete or not.The Memorandum concludes with an appendix containing

the views upon the Dogs’ Protection Bill, already publishedin THE LANCET, which have been expressed by the RoyalCollege of Physicians of London, the Royal College ofSurgeons of England, the Royal Society of Medicine, andthe combined sections of pathology and preventive medicineat the Special Clinical Meeting of the British MedicalAssociation. It is signed by Lord Goschen, Mr. C. J. Bond,Professor William Bulloch, Dr. Henry Head, Professor F. G.Hopkins, Sir William Leishman, Professor Noel Paton, andSir Walter Fletcher, secretary of the Medical ResearchCommittee. ’

’ i

MEDICINE AND THE LAW.

The PossessMn of Cocaine.THE hearing of a charge against a man called Toose was

concluded recently, having for its end the binding over ofthe defendant under the Probation of Offenders Act. Hehad been charged with being an unauthorised person havingin his possession cocaine at certain places and timesnamed in the summons. He was also an alien who hadfailed to notify a change of address, and with regard to thisofeence he was ordered to pay a fine of £10.The defendant had been entrusted by Lionel Belcher, one

of the persons recently made prominent in connexion withthe death of the actress "Billie Carleton," with a quantityof cocaine. Belcher was stated to have given the cocaineto Toose in order that he might destroy it, though whyBelcher did not destroy it himself remained a mystery.Toose instead of sending the drug down the nearest drainor otherwise getting rid of it, chose the extraordinary courseof leaving it in a parcel at the office of Belcher’s solicitor,where it was handed to the police.

It was not very surprising that Mr. Mead, the magistrateat Marlborough-street, was unable to arrive at a definiteconclusion with regard to the motives and intentions whichactuated Toose, and if the cocaine has now been destroyed,or handed to persons by whom it can be usefully andlegitimately made use of, the fact that the defendant hasmerely been bound over may at all events keep him out ofmischief in future. It is to be hoped that no more will beheard of the unfortunate young woman mentioned aboveand her circle of undesirable friends.On the same day that Toose’s case was concluded a soldier

named Draper was the subject of a serious charge of

attempting to administer cocaine, and though Mr. Gill,sitting at Tower Bridge police-court, found the evidence asto this was insufficient, he sentenced the defendant to threemonths’ imprisonment with hard labour for being in

possession of the drug. How a sapper in the Royal Engineerscame to possess a bottle containing 200 gr. of cocaine wasnot proved. His story was that he bought it 1, by accident

"

in German East Africa under a label of boric acid. At anyrate, he seems to have become aware of the nature and valueof what he had got, and there was some evidence that hewas making inquiries with a view to selling it. A womanwith whom he had had several drinks at several public-houses " informed the police that she had seen Drapertrying, or pretending, to drop some of the cocaine into herbeer, and the charge, which broke down as stated, arose outof this.

It is possible, if not probable, that Draper’s story as tohow he got the cocaine may be true. Other cases have shownthat cocaine during the past few years has been in demandat a high price, and that it has been found in thehands of persons who would hardly have been entrustedwith it by traders desiring to make a profit by an

illicit trade conducted through agents. No ordinarilyprudent trader, however unscrupulous, would entrust hisgoods to persons who at any moment might endanger his

safety by their ignorance and recklessness. It seems atleast possible that much of the cocaine which finds its wayinto police-courts, after having been offered for sale in publichouses and similar resorts, has originally been stolen bythieves, who have felt themselves incapable of reaping thefull profits of their dishonesty by selling directly to theconsumers.

An Inconclusive Inquest.At a recent inquest at Trowbridge, Wilts, it was proved

that the deceased, who was a painter by trade and53 years of age, after taking part in the family supper ofbread and cheese and beer, went to bed apparently in goodhealth and died in the night. Dr. R. M. Wright was calledand found nothing inconsistent with this story. Theman was lying dead when Dr. Wright first saw him, andhad never at any time been his patient. Dr. Wright inthese circumstances naturally and rightly declined to give anopinion as to the cause of death, and when pressed by thecoroner explained that it was impossible for a medical man,after merely seeing the body, to say why any person haddied. He enumerated several causes of death, any one ofwhich might, or might not, have been responsible in thecase under consideration, stating that of these the ruptureof an aneurysm was the most probable. He explained thatwithout a post-mortem examination it was impossible to statewith exactness the cause of death, and that it was merely asa matter of relative probability that he had suggested ananeurysm. Whereon the coroner, sitting without a jury, madea speech in which he said that from the evidence it seemedclear that death was from natural causes, and that of thesethe most probable was the rupture of an internal aneurysm.He saw no reason why a post-mortem examination should beheld. The case was quite a simple one, and he had hadhundreds, and his father before him thousands, of similarcases, and it had not been their practice to order post-mortemexaminations. He concluded by saying that from theevidence he found that the deceased came by his deathfrom the rupture of an aortic aneurysm. If the coroner’sobservations in this case have been correctly reported, it isimpossible not to differ from him in almost every detail; andwhether he actually expressed himself thus or no, such viewsmay be held by himself and others and prove very dangerousto the community. There can have been no evidence thatdeath was due to natural causes, as there was no evidence as towhat was the cause of death. There was merely an absenceof evidence of any unnatural cause. There was no evidencethat the deceased died from an aortic aneurysm, but merelya suggestion from a medical man that such a cause of death,with others, was consistent with the appearance of the body,and with the account given by the relatives. There was noevidence that the deceased ever had an aneurysm.

It is the duty of a coroner to inquire into a case of suddendeath of which the cause is unknown ; and even thoughmurder or manslaughter may be eliminated at the inquest, itis still the duty of his jury, where there is one, to find theparticulars for the time being required to be registered con-cerning the death. This obviously cannot be done byrecording as a fact a suggestion made by medical men as towhat may have happened. If the coroner is correct in

saying, as he apparently did, that hundreds of cases havebeen treated by him as he did the case under discussion, theonly conclusion to be arrived at is that in hundreds of casesof death in Wiltshire the records of the cause of death arenot to be relied upon.

,

The Notification of Ovhtkalmia Neonatorum.At Newcastle-on-Tyne police-court recently Mr. G. R.

Fortune was ordered to pay a fine of .650 for failing to notifya case under Article 5 of the Public Health (OphthalmiaNeonatorum) Regulations, 1914. The defendant pleadedguilty and did not appear. It was stated that the childin respect of whom the proceedings were taken was a littlegirl born prematurely in the early part of the year, the birthbeing attended by a midwife. The defendant was called in,according to a letter written subsequently by him to themedical officer of health, on account of the child having beenprematurely born, and therefore did not regard her as hispatient. The midwife, however, had observed a discharge fromthe eyes of the infant, and called Mr. Fortune’s attention to it,upon which he ordered treatment. Later, when the dischargehad become worse he advised that she should be taken to the

Eye Infirmary. She was there found to be suffering from