Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 207, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1910 — Value of Vivisection. [ARTICLE]

Value of Vivisection.

Success in nerve surgery has led to a desire to accomplish similar results with the blood vessel?. Until recently no one attempted to do more than cut diseased or injured blood vessels out of the general circulation; even this required a vast amount of preliminary work on animals, especially with regard to the testing of ligature material, such as catgut and silk, for strength, absorbability and capacity for being rendered absolutely sterile, the last being exceedingly difficult of determination. The effect of these operations on the local blood supply also required investigation, for the cutting out of a very large blood vessel might Involve the death of an entire limb. Vqry recent work on dogs seems to promise that the cutting out of blood vessels may be largely replaced by splicing and grafting, it is evident that, with the aid of such new methods, the last-mentioned risk may be avoided, and many a limb saved from gangrene and amputation. Most marvelous of all, our surgeons are now venturing to attack the heart Itself; wounds of that most important of all organs have been sutured, hitherto, to be sure, with only partial success; however, we may justly expect to perfect this operation by giving it a thorough trial on the lower animals.—Atlantic Monthly.