Life — May 23, 1895 — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

-LIFE- A DROP IN WHEAT. WHAT IT REALLY IS. HE following extracts are from a letter by Mr. Carol B. Turvey in the Philadelphia C7ty /tem. Mr. Turvey gets so many truths in so few words that LiFe takes pleas- ure in reprinting it : Editor the Item: Now that the subject of vivisection is being mooted, why not discuss the subject sensibly and quietly, to discover just what vivi- section really is. Most people connect the word with great opera- tions, in which an animal life is sacrificed to save a man's, or experiments made by skillful physicians to discover some great cure. It is quite excusable that people knowing only this should be inclined to support vivisection : I did so once myself. The facts of the case are these: It is nota matter of an oc- casional sacrifice of an animal for a man, but thousands of animals are needlessly tortured for experiments that are always doubtful for this reason: It is a great source of fallacy to argue from animal to man; our poisons are not poison to all animals, Horses are not hurt by antimony, nor dogs by mercury ; goats are not injured by tobacco, nor mice by hemlock; rabbits can eat belladonna, while domestic parsley is poison to a parrot. Of what use can it be to try a drug on a dog, whose gastric juice contains six times as much pepsin and nearly twice as much free hydrochloric acid as that of man, and expect the result to be anything but misleading? What is the difference between the ox, dog or horse, and the mule, the ass that makes the bite of the tsetse fly fatal to the former and powerless against man and the latter group of animals. The difference is acknowledged to be such an inseparable ob- stacle that a bill has been before the Ohio Legislature providing for the vivisection of criminals on these very grounds ! Experiments on hospital patients are also of frequent occurrence. * * * * Nine out of ten physicians inwardly disapproving of vivisection will outwardly support it for the sake of ‘* professional courtesy.” CAUTIOUS. OCTOR: Take a stated amount of exercise daily. PATIENT: Will it be enough if I walk twice around my wife's theatre hat every day ? Doctor: You'd better not risk over-exerting yourself at first. Begin with once and increase the laps as you feel able. HAT'S the use of telling the sluggard to go to the ant unless you send a cab for him ? “MA, THAT LITTLE BABY ACROSS THE STREET HASN'T ANY TEETH,” “OF COURSE NoT, Tomy, WERE THAT SMALL.” ‘ BUT THAT BABY’S PA IS A DENTIST.” You DIDN'T HAVE ANY WHEN YOU comicbooks. 0 m