to the construction of this sentence, for it
implies that experiments are not now performed except with
anaesthetics--a meaning its author never could have intended to convey.
Every medical student in New York knows that experiments involving
pain are repeatedly performed to illustrate teaching. It is no secret;
one need not go beyond the frank admissions of our later text-books on
physiology for abundant proof, not only of this, but of the extent to
which experimentation is now carried in this country. "We have long
been in the habit, in class demonstrations, of removing the optic lobe
on one side from a pigeon," says Professor Flint, of Bellevue Hospital
Medical College, in his excellent work on Physiology.[A] "The
experiment of dividing the sympathetic in the neck, especially in
rabbits, is so easily performed that the phenomena observed by Bernard
and Brown-Sequard have been repeatedly verified. _We have often done
this in class demonstrations._"[B] "The cerebral lobes were removed
from a young pigeon in the usual way, an operation * * _which we
practice yearly as a class demonstration_."[C] Referring to the
removal of the cerebellum, the same authority states: "Our own
experiments, which have been very numerous during the last fifteen
years, are _simply repetitions of those of Flourens, and the results
have been the same without exception."[D] We have frequently removed
both kidneys_ from dogs, and when the operation is carefully performed
the animals live for from three to five days. * * Death always takes
place with symptoms of blood poisoning."[E] In the same work we are
given precise details for making a pancreatic fistula, after the
method of Claude Bernard--"one we have repeatedly employed with
success." "In performing the above experiment it is generally better
_not_ to employ an anaesthetic,"[F] but ether is sometimes used. In the
same work is given a picture of a dog, muzzled and with a biliary
fistula, as it appeared the fourteenth day after the operation, which,
with details of the experiment, is quite suggestive.[G] Bernard was
the first to succeed in following the spinal accessory nerve back to
the jugular foramen, seizing it here with a strong pair of forceps and
drawing it out by the roots. This experiment is practiced in our own
country. "We have found this result (loss of voice) to follow in the
cat after the spinal accessory nerves have been torn out by the
roots," says Professor John C. Dalton, i