SOME 
WHO HAVE SUFFERED 
FOR 
PATHOLOGY'S SAKE 
BY 
HENRY W. CATTELL, A.M., M.D., 
Demonstrator of Gross Morbid Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania ; 
Prosector to the American Anthropometric Society ; Pathologist 
to the Presbyterian Hospital, etc. 
Reprinted from the 
University Medical Magazine, 
March, 1893. SOME WHO HAVE SUFFERED FOR PATHOLOGY'S SAKE.1 
I 
By Henry W. Cattell, A.M., M.D., 
Demonstrator of Gross Morbid Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania : Prosector to the 
American Anthropometric Society ; Pathologist to the Presbyterian Hospital, etc. 
It is not my intention to-night to dwell long upon those persons 
who, in the performance of their pathological duties, have lost either 
life or limb, but to briefly refer to some who while performing experi- 
mental inoculations upon themselves or the lower animals have been 
willing to risk their lives, their health and their happiness in order 
that science might be advanced. 
While I, personally, have never had occasion to inoculate a single 
animal, or to perform vivisection in any manner, I cannot help but feel 
that the array of cases where human inoculation has been practiced, 
a few of which I shall present, is a complete refutal of all arguments 
brought forward by those who are opposed to experimentation upon 
the lower animals. At a meeting of the Convention of the American 
Humane Society, held October 26, 27, 1892, Mrs. Caroline Earle White 
delivered an address against vivisection. While she admitted the right 
to kill animals for food, provided it be done quickly and humanely, she 
emphatically denied that any important discovery has ever been made 
by the practice of vivisection. I would reply, how is it possible that 
men of learning and of mature judgment are willing to perform experi- 
ments which may endanger their lives or health unless they think that 
our store of knowledge may thus be increased ? 
I shall cite you in this connection the example of Robert Cory2 
who, knowing the fact that the lower animals are not subject to 
syphilis, was willing to contract that most dreaded disease in order 
that he might show to the countless ages to come the danger of 
taking even the clear lymph of vaccine for purposes of future vaccina- 
tion from a syphilitic child. The experiment which he performed 
upon himself has called the attention of the medical profession to this 
important subject, and has caused the establishment of hundreds of 
1 An address delivered before the Stille Medical Society of the University of Pennsylvania 
on Novembers, 1892. 
2 Keating, Vol. I, p. 747. 2 
Henry W. Cat tell. 
cow vaccine farms throughout the world. How much better it would 
have been if he could have performed these experiments upon one of 
the lower animals, instead of perhaps sacrificing his future usefulness 
to the dreaded ravages of tertiary syphilis. 
The subject of immunity from disease, which is now receiving the 
attention of the ablest scholars and writers of this country and abroad, 
is based upon human and animal inoculation, in order that it may be 
put on as firm a foundation as is the science of antiseptic surgery at 
the present time. Deprive mankind of the right to inoculate in one 
state or country and the doors of another land, though distant, will be 
thrown open, and will become the goal which the true seeker after 
knowledge in all its forms will strive to reach. The benefits thus 
derived from experiments upon the lower animals will be freely given 
to the relief of mankind, whether they be vivisectionists in theory or 
practice or anti-vivisectionists in deed or spirit. 
I have had in the course of my life three friends whose deaths can 
be directly or indirectly traced to their great interest in pathology. Dr. 
H. B. Taylor had finished a post-mortem, and, entrusting the sewing 
up of the body to a medical student, received a stab in the wrist 
which gave rise to a serious wound, from which he died some months 
later on. Another case was one,in which a physician had started 
upon a career with everything in the future looking exceedingly 
bright. He had been chosen resident physician at Blockley, and 
while there, both with Dr. William Osler and myself, had been very 
regular in his attendance at the post-mortem room. Having been 
chosen to the Insane Department, he had more leisure to carry out 
his pathological studies, and we had taken up a course of reading in 
German. We had come to the interesting subject of pneumonia. It 
was at the time when the pneumococcus of Frankel was receiving much 
attention, and my friend Dr. Charles Walter-a very thorough student 
-did not deem it sufficient to merely study the subject from the book 
standpoint, but decided to make cultures of the diplococcus himself. 
One evening we waited for him at my office in vain, and wondered, as 
he was such a punctual man, that he did not at least send us word of 
his being unable to keep his engagement. The next day I learned 
that he had been, after exposure to cold, attacked with the disease 
germs he was cultivating. His death took place a few days later. The 
lamented death of Dr. Henry F. Formad was no doubt hastened by the 
post-mortem wound which he received last December, though his 
kidneys were in a poor condition to withstand any extra strain which 
might be made upon them. Of the great number of persons whom I 
have known and who have suffered from wounds or diseases gotten in 
the post-mortem rooms in this city three examples will suffice. Our Some Who Have Suffered for Pathology's Sake. 
3 
own honored Provost of the University, who has always shown such 
marked zeal in the performance of his duty, and such an intense desire 
to master the minutest detail, relates that he dates an attack of typhus 
fever from the time at which he assisted at a post-mortem of a patient 
dead from that disease. A resident physician at Blockley who received 
a post-mortem wound suffered from innumerable abscesses for several 
years, his life often seeming to hang by a thread, but is now, I am 
happy to state, hale and hearty. Another resident physician in the 
same hospital lost the little finger from a post-mortem wound; he was 
a fine violinist and this interfered seriously with his playing. 
The history of medicine tells us of the achievements of Jenner in 
vaccination, of Pasteur in rabies, swine plague and fowl cholera, of 
Koch in cholera and tuberculosis, of the writings of Kroner, Magnant, 
Bonahard, Tizzoni, Buchner, Fligge, Brieger, Waasarman, Nissen, 
Gelderblom, Thompson, Crivelli, Salmon, Robertson, Neudorfer, Jan- 
son, Schmit, Peyraud, Bonehard, Behrens, Foa, di Mattei, Roux, de 
Blusi, Maguire, Klein, Hamer and Kbrbsi on preventive inoculation, of 
the work of Frankel and the Klemperer brothers in pneumonia, of the 
labors of Sternberg with vaccine in cows, of the experiments of Freire in 
Brazil and Carmona in Mexico in yellow fever ; of the inoculation trials 
of Ferran in Spain in cholera ; of the mass of material brought forward 
by Cantani, Nicolarer and Kitassato on tetanus; of the laboratory 
researches of Pollander and Greenfeld, of England, and Toussant, of 
France, on anthrax ; of the discovery of a pathogenic microorganism 
in leprosy by Hanson ; by Neisser in gonorrhea ; by Shiitz and Lbffler 
in glanders; and by Pfeiffer in influenza; of the contributions of 
Klebs, Ebffler and Welch on diphtheria ; of the especial workers in 
England on the soluble products obtained from pure cultures of micro- 
organisms - J. Burdon Sanderson, Sidney Martin, Brunton and 
McFadyean, R. W. Philip, Hankin, Ruffer, Crookshank and Herroun, 
William Hunter, Cartwright Wood, William Aitken, G. Sims Wood- 
head ; of a host of earnest workers in our own country, such as 
Prudden, Skakespeare, Billings, Simon, Jacobi, Abbott, Dixon, 
Gibbes, Vaughan, Councilman, Osler and Guiteras, and of which 
hundreds of others might be added to the list if we had time to tell 
about them and their writings. 
Three laborers in the domain of scarlet fever and cholera will illus- 
trate the work that is going on in this field, which is now by far the 
most active one in the domain of medicine. The Japanese as a race 
are supposed by many to be immune against scarlet fever. Knowing 
this fact, A. S. Ashmead inoculated several Japanese in order that he 
might obtain an anti-vaccine from their lymph which, by inoculation, 
would prevent scarlatina in Caucasians. His researches are still being 4 
Henry W. Cattell. 
carried on in this country, and we hope that they will be crowned with 
success.1 
Haffkine2 inoculated first himself and then seven others with 
Pfeiffer's Nos. i and 2 anti-cholera vaccine. It is his hope that by 
these inoculations a person can be rendered immune from cholera in 
th£ course of six days. E. H. Hankin,3 one of those recently inocu- 
lated by Haffkine, graphically describes his experience. His tempera- 
ture in the first inoculation never reached more than 100 degrees 
Fahrenheit, though he suffered from headache, malaise, loss of appetite 
and general lassitude. The edematous swelling at the point of injection 
developed with startling rapidity, but as the vibrio of cholera does not 
produce pus, but little attention was paid to this fact. A nodule at 
the point of injection remained at the time of writing. After the first 
inoculation there appears to be a temporary diminution in the power of 
resisting the entry of the cholera microbes; therefore, in epidemics of 
cholera great care should be exercised in making the inoculations. 
Time has permitted me but to name the work that has been carried 
on by a few in the warfare against diseases of bacteriological origin by 
means of inoculation. Here it is literally fighting a man, or rather a 
microbe, with its own weapons, for the very bacillus which is causing 
the harm may have called into existence a substance which, if properly 
used, may contribute to the microorganism's own destruction. 
George H. Sternberg4 truly says in a late address: " Recent experi- 
mental evidence has been obtained which gives us reason to believe that 
in a number of infectious diseases, at least, the toxic bacterial products 
which give rise to the morbid phenomena characterizing these diseases 
may be neutralized in the infected individuals by the administration of 
anti-toxines obtained from the blood of immune animals. 
1 Medical Record, i3gi, Vol. XL, p. 270. 
2 Munch. Med. Woch., Aug. 9, 1892. 
3 Medical and Surgical Reporter, Oct. 8, 1892, copied from British Medical Journal. 
4 Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, June 16, 1892.