Medical Research and its Method.

Hokitika Guardian, 14 August 1920, Page 4

Medical Research and its Method.

THREE MEANS OF STUDY

(By Dr Thomas Lewis, F. 11.5., Physician of the Staff of the Medical liesearch Council, and of University College Hospital). In tne present article an attempt will be made to bring home to the reader a gdncral idea of tbe methods and dinicuities of the research worker. Take to a mechanic a clock which has ceased to keep good time; ask him to toll you if it will over again serve you as a timekeeper; ask him how long, if regularly wound, it will continue to run; ask him if he can effect repairs. ■ Before he can answer you he must study clocks. He requires to know how 1 clocks arc built, what is the function of eaoli of the clock’s many parts; what parts become worn, corroded, or I broken; how repairs can be effected. Where are your mechanics to get that knowledge? From others who have i gone before them. I Some small fragments of knowledge • they may win themselves. Ultimately they will have obtained knowledge by j the seeing of clocks, sound and unsound, at work by looking at their out- | sides and at the wheels as they go round. There are no other ways. The more your mechanic knows of these things, the more fit is he to give you answers and his help. Is the task of a doctor very different in its quality? It is not, though it is often much harder in degree. Advice is not given, cure is not wrought by intuition ; sound practice is founded on hard study and close observation. The doctor must know how a man is built; that is anatomy. He must know the functions of each organ; that is physiology. He must know the appearances of diseased organs; that is morbidr He must know how disease comes and how the functions of tbe organs are disturbed by it; that is pathology. He must kjnow how the body may be helped in its struggle witn disease; that is therapeutics. These branches of knowledge, all essential to him, are closely interwoven; all are built up by the research worker . During historic times this research has been going forward; for .hundreds of years knowledge has been gathered and stored; generally it is collected as isolated facts which sifted ami sorted, are at last brought together, often after many years, and welded to ,orm part of a single picture. Little by little the picture is built up, growing always but growing slowly; growing often to an unseen end, but always usefully. How is the gathering done? id has been done in three ways: 1. —By studying the living body o’ man, in health and in disease. 2. By studying his dead body. 3. —By studying during life the healthy or diseased bodies of the. lower animals. These are the methods which Lave been used ; they are the methods which will continue to he used ,r |. , -fc. , vss is to be maintained ; there are no others available. The medical sciences are built up—nay, consist —of these studies. Each, branch of work has brought, each continues to bring, a rich harvest of new discovery. But knowledge gaineit from one source cannot be divoieetl from that gained by another ;uil is related knowledge and becomes in the end inextricably woven into a whole. It is like a jig-saw puzzle, whore the picture is built from three piles of pieces; a piece from one pile serves as the foundation for a piece from anothejr. The conclusions of medical science as they stand, to-day are based not on one method but/ upon the- three. The. .three meilfods.iorm ,a,. tripod on which .our.knowledge, rests; knock out one leg and the whole falls to the ground. - In articles which are to follow these three methods of research will each receive brief consideration. .

EXPERIMENTS ON ANIMALS.

Tlie object of experiments on animaie is t no-fold—to investigate the normal functions or organs by observing them while they are still at work; to reproduce and study in animals disease or disturbances similar to those from which human beings suffer. Return to our illustration of the clock. The mechanic to whom it goes for repairs will require to know the functions of its parts; something of this lie may gather from its structure; something lie may learn from the movements of the hands and from the sound of the ticking ;but most he will learn by taking off the case and seeing the wheels working. If the mechanic may not remove the case, may never see the wheels turn, you can readily appreciate his quandary. lie cannot learn the purposfe ol each part. Me may guess at it, and ho will often guess wrong. If he may not see the movement, lie will not see what hinders true and good movement; lie will be crippled in his task of putting matters right. It is a similar task to that of the mechanic which Is set for the medical rosearch worker; though the task is much harder, in that the human body is infinitely more complex than any clock. The research worker may not look inside the human body ; be cannot study directly the living organs of man which lie buried. He turns, therefore, to the similar organs of the lower animals. Me sees these work, lie gets to know their meaning; from them lie learns the functions of the human organs. In the animal body lie interferes with the working of the organs and hatches the effects; lie creates disturbances and studies how this displays itself at the body’s surface. Thereby lie helps to build up the science of diagnosis. When he disturbs the working of an organ, signs appear on the surface of tbo animal identical with those witnessed in the sick man. The mechanic mav put a little grit on the axle of a clock wheel or may strain a spring; i he does, he will see the hands hesitate in their movements. When a clock is now brought for repair and the hands of this clock show the same hesitating movement, the. mechanic, may not need to take the clock from its case to kno»\ what is wrong. To know where the mischief lies and to know what that mischief is are the first steps towards repair. To disturb, to find out what will disturb, and to seek further what will counteract that

disturbance onpe produced, is one method of study, and it .has gained for medical science u prodigious amount of useful knowledge. „ Wore it not for the use of this method no doctor would today know the meaning of the pulse or understand what he hears when he sounds a patient.

The method is called vivisection. Its usefulness is entirely beyond question; it is one of the chief pillars upon which inodeni medicine and surgery .have been built. But research workers know full well the prejudice which exists against this method; it is not a method they themselves like to employ, but they see no other way to the knowledge which it brings. It is irreplaceable. On the merits of the method, which, curiously, has formed the chief battleground of controversy, there is no room for two opinions. Those who oppose it from this standpoint have long ago lost their case, and each year their case becomes worse, for eacli year tbe method brings valuable new discoveries to light.

In the future the vivisection question will not be fought on this ground. Tbe question which the general public .have to decide is a different one. Is the race justified in killing the lower animals for its own purposes? That is the whole case in a nutshell. It is not a question of cruelty; painful experiments ceased at tbe same time as painful operations on man ceased—namely, when anaesthetics were introduced. Animals in our laboratories are as fully protected against pain as are patients in our. hospitals. Modern surgery is almost always painless; the surgery of vivisection is always quite painless. May we kill? That is the whole point; but tlie point is no longer confined to vivisection. May wo kill lor food to clothe our feet in leather, for sport, to protect our property from animal pests or our lives from savage beasts. Answer one of these questions: “Yos, wo have tbe right,” and you answer: “We have tbe right to vivisect”! For it is no more vital to the race to kill for tbe first purposes than it' is to kill that wc may protect ourselves against disease.