The Caucasian

EXTREMELY REVOLTING
The Vivisection of Orphan Babies—Is There no Law, no Penalty to Reach the Monsters?

New Orleans Picayune: Many good people whose hearts are full of pity for the sufferings of the lower animals rise up and denounce the dissection and other scientific and surgical experimentation of living animals in order to study the effects of human disease upon them. This is known as "vivisection and is loudly and widely condemned by voice and press.

But few persons have undertaken to characterize as it deserves the brutality the atrocious inhumanity of those medical men of Philadelphia who vivisected and inoculated with tuberculin 160 children from infants in arms up to 6 or 7 years of age.

Apparently little or no attention was paid to this outrage until the New York Herald, which is an active opponent of vivisection when practiced on rabbits, guinea pigs and dogs, took it up and denounced it.

According to the Herald, the children were helpless orphans in the public asylums and were regarded as proper subjects for scientific exploitation, while the physicians were all leading practitioners of Philadelphia, skin specialists and experts in eye and children's diseases from the William Pepper Clinical Laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania.

The experimental work for which 160 orphans and dependent children were used consisted of inoculating or "instilling" into the babies Koch's tuberculin, in order to observe whether there would result a "reaction," which, according to one of the latest theories, would determine whether the patient was suffering from tuberculosis.

These tests were applied in four ways. Tuberculin was instilled into the eyes, was rubbed on the flesh of the child in the form of ointment, injected subcutaneously, and in the fourth, or scarification test, both human and bovine supercullin were used.

It was only on the publication recently in the Herald of a comment on the inoculation tests that for the first time it came to the knowledge of citizens of Philadelphia that experimental medicine had been practiced upon helpless wards of the community, fatherless and motherless babies.

The medical men engaged in such outrageous exploitation of helpless babies were highly indignant at the interference of the New York newspaper with what they claim they have an absolute right to do in the investigation of diseases, and it does not appear that they can legally be prevented from such practices, since the orphans are under public control, and being paupers and unable to resist, are proper subjects of vivisection and experiment that may give the little ones great and in many cases permanent suffering, when not costing their lives.

From this point of view it may be considered fortunate that the orphan children in Louisiana are in privately supported asylums, and the government can claim no authority over them. Regrets have been expressed professionally that the Charity Hospital, which is a State institution, is not sufficiently under the control of the medical profession, so that its inmates may be made the subjects of professional exploitation. Let us hope that it will be a long time before the vivisection of human beings will be allowed in New Orleans, as it is in Philadelphia.