What has experimental physiology done for the advancement of the practice of surgery? : an address delivered before the Surgical Society of Ireland, at the opening meeting, 23rd November, 1877 / by Robert McDonnell.

  • McDonnell, Robert, 1828-1889.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: What has experimental physiology done for the advancement of the practice of surgery? : an address delivered before the Surgical Society of Ireland, at the opening meeting, 23rd November, 1877 / by Robert McDonnell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    to mankind were enormously great in proportion to the labour and suffering thus inflicted on the brute creation. It is also argued—mark the words—that the experimental physiologist is not so bad as the sportsman, or as those who mutilate animals for the table, and for other reasons. To such an argument the so-called humanitarian justly replies : True,, the physiologist is not so bad, but the work of the physiologist,, the sportsman, and the mutilator are all objectionable; and we, he adds, commence our attack where we have the best prospect of success; we shall by degrees advance against the others as time goes on. You see, therefore, that I repudiate the argument that the physiologist is not so bad as the others. I assert that he stands on wholly different ground. There is no more just comparison between the sportsman and the experimental physiologist, than there is between the man who goes to take a plunge into the sea on a warm summer day, and one who springs in, clothes and all, in mid-winter to endeavour to save the life of a drowning fellow-creature. The experimental physiologist derives no pleasure from the infliction of pain; he shrinks from it with that repugnance which is natural to most men ; he overcomes these feelings from a sense of duty; with firmness and fortitude he subdues his natural selfish instinct; he, as it were, dashes aside his repugnance to the ice- cold water, and makes at least an effort to do good. That he is scorned and scoffed at by a certain class of by- standers ; that a timid, cowardly crowd, too ignorant to see through the mist of prejudice which surrounds them, to the future good, sneer at him, and attribute to him base and unworthy motives, does not make his conduct the less admirable. It is as puerile as it is false to assert that it is mere love of scientific notoriety which urges on the physiologist. The motives of mankind are mixed. Love of fame—of such honour- able fame as forms a halo round the name of Haller. or Hunter, or Harvey—may well actuate the physiologist; but to say that desire for notoriety is the true mainspring of his conduct is as ridiculously false as though one were to assert that the heroic actions performed yearly by many of our countrymen, chiefly