38H.P. Blavatsky & Annie Besant, editors - Lucifer Vol. VII, No. 38 October, 1890

We may now consider specially the cases in which useful discoveries in detail can be traced to experimental physiology. We find as a question of authority that the older leaders of the medical profession denounced the practice of vivisection, while the present generation of equally eminent men pronounce in its favour. We have Sir William Ferguson contrasted with Sir James Paget, and the battle rages with other great names arrayed on either side.

I can only say that I have carefully looked into the literature of the subject, and that the conclusion which I formed was that it was a matter of special pleading on each side and that the process of minimising the value of results was a most prominent one. For example, Mr. Lawson Tait, who is probably the most eminent surgeon amongst those arrayed against the physiologists, disputes Sir James Paget's conclusions as to Surgery and Dr. Brunton’s as to Pharmacology. It is next to impossible for the lay-reader to judge fairly on these questions, for it requires not only a knowledge of special detail but also that the judge should have seen for himself the various matters in dispute. I can only add that according to my judgment the various processes of repair—amongst others those of the union of bones, tendons, and nerves, of the grafting of pieces of skin on intractable ulcers to promote their healing—are deeply indebted to experimental physiology for the accurate knowledge which places them within the reach of practical surgery. As regards drugs, Dr. Brunton puts forward a long list of those discovered in more recent years. He urges the discovery of antiseptic surgery and the use of carbolic acid and its congeners as the greatest discovery of modern times. He further urges the increase in our knowledge of the disorders of the circulation, of fevers, and the drugs which enable medical men in an increasing number of cases to successfully combat these disorders. True, Mr. Tait disputes the value of carbolic acid in his own special branch of surgery, but he is certainly largely indebted to the principles of treatment inculcated by its discoverer, Sir Joseph Lister, for his success in his operations. He does not dispute the discovery of the use of chloral, but says that owing to the abuse of it by ignorant people, the world would have been better without it. Pasteur’s discoveries are also in dispute as to their value to men, but we are indebted to him and his fellow-workers for the way in which we can treat and, better still, prevent many of the zymotic diseases. Most certainly his previous discoveries have been of the greatest value to animals themselves, and this fact there is no one who has ventured in writing to dispute.

Thus while I have not space, and, therefore, no inclination to detain your attention with all the pros and cons of the dispute as to the utility to man of the results of experimental physiology I can only lay before you the conclusion to which I personally have come after an attentive study of the literature of the subject. The conclusion is this. In many instances man is indebted to experimental physiology for a knowledge of physiology and pathology which enables him to