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Experiments on Criminals.
EXPERIMENTS ON CRIMINALS.
97
their funds on the actual erection of other such ’from tuberculosis has been since a sanatoriums as well as for the treatment of their members inamong the people of hygienic habits.
to
spend
them. The
more
general adoption
6
present project is intended to be the beginning of a large movement, it being hoped that before long it may be
Experiments
on
Criminals.
WE publish this week a letter from Dr. PRESTON KiKG possible to secure for a considerable proportion at least of early cases of tuberculosis among our labouring on a subject which may not be wholly new to the classes a period of treatment under the best conditions.majority of our readers. Dr. KrxG discusses the Bat it must be remembered that the erection of sanatoriums possibility of turning to account, for the purposes is not thought by anyone to be the last word that can be of physiological or toxicological experiment, the waste said in the treatment of tuberculosis. They are frankly human material which is placed at the disposal of the stop-gaps-they supply the hygienic environment which all community by death sentences ; but before reaching medical men desire to see in the working man’s home as a this portion of his argument he returns to the question matter of course. And viewed in this way they represent lately mooted by our correspondent "ENQUIRER"with a reasonable effort which all medical men must support, regard to the instantaneousness of death by hanging. premising that there is no need for such sanatoriums The controversy on this subject appears to us to derive to be built upon expensive lines and no economical its main interest from the fact that some persons use justification for their unlimited multiplication, to the neglect the term death" in its somatic sense while others of other factors in the prevention of tuberculosis. It was use it in its molecular sense. It is said in old perhaps necessary that the KING’S Sanatorium should be books on physiology that the two can be rendered coerected on the most elaborate scale with everything of the incident by an injury of sufficient suddenness and severity, best in the way of building and equipment, but this as by crushing the brain of a frog upon an anvil by a blow institution cannot be taken as a model for all others. from a hammer, but it is perfectly well known to most Simple inexpensive buildings on the so-called "chalet" people that they are not coincident as a rule. Besides the system will be found in many situations quite adequate case of the frog’s heart mentioned by Dr. KiNG, it is well and by adopting this plan accommodation can be provided known that a small, warm-blooded animal may be poisoned for a much greater number of patients than if more sub- by letting a few drops of hydrocyanic acid fall into the stantial buildings are demanded. The very early cases derive trap in which it is confined and may be taken out to the chief benefit from sanatorium treatment and much care all intents and purposes dead. It exhibits no sign of might well be spent in finding them out and persuading these consciousness, it makes no voluntary or involuntary movepatients to undergo the course. In some chronic cases, how- ments, its limbs are flaccid, it would not recover if left ever, even when the disease is fairly advanced, it is possible, alone in pure air, and it is speedily deserted by its temporarily at least, to arrest it and to render the tleas and other parasites. But the action ot its heart may. patient again, for a time, capable of earning his own living, be watched for a considerable time, the separate conbut the return from the sanatorium to the workshop too tractions of the auricles and ventricles being rhythmical and often heralds a recrudescence of the mischief. The advanced distinct and the arterial, venous, and capillary circulations, In such a condition we have not of course, continuing. cases are quite unsuitable for sanatoriums, though they must be dealt with if we are to prevent them from acting as seen any evidence of continuing respiration; and in the case foci for spreading the disease. Something can be done of hanging it is manifest that the circulation would be by instruction in the need for care in the disposal arrested above the noose. Is there the slightest reason to of the sputum and such instruction can be given to suppose that cerebral activity and consciousness could be (
"
printed directions distributed maintained without a continually renewed supply of arterial hospitals and dispensaries. There blood or that their maintenance would be conditioned by the patients will always remain many patients who from weakness, state of the cord in the cervical region ? We think not; and from lack of intelligence, or from other causes, will not should presume that in the case of hanging any impressions be adequately dealt with by such means alone. For these transmitted through an uninjured cord to the brain would isolation is requisite and we might aim at the establish- be thrown away if the brain itself were not in a state to ment of special wards in our Poor-law infirmaries or of receive and to react upon them. On these grounds we think special institutions for their maintenance. Popular atten- it very unlikely that a hanged criminal is capable of sensation has been attracted to the danger in these cases, but tion after the fall of the drop, even although the beating of it is to be hoped that it will not be misdirected into wrong the heart may continue for a brief period of time. In the channels whereby any sort of scare may result and greater great majority of death sentences it is probable that the difficulty be experienced in finding suitable work for tuber- period spent in the condemned cell is one of such mental culous patients after their discharge from sanatoriums. The suffering, suffering far greater than the pain which any problem of tuberculosis is a very difficult one but it must be bodily injury would be likely to inflict, that even if it were faced as a whole if we intend to secure lasting results. All established that in other circumstances the shock of hangin g the stages of the disease must be provided for : preventive is physically painful it would remain at least probable that and curative measures must be duly coordinated. Only by the victim of justice would not be sensible of any additional some comprehensive scheme can the white fiend " be kept agony. At any rate, there is not one among us who does in check but we may well be sanguine as to ultimate victory not desire to believe that judicial hanging is a comparawhen we remember how great the decline in the death-rate tively merciful death.
some
to
extent
by
at
means
our
of
A STORY OF SANITARY INEPTITUDE.
976 To
that the con. demned criminal might be utilised for the purposes of physiological or therapeutical experiment, this will certainly appear startling to some modern readers, although it is by It is said that no means new in the history of mankind. HEROPHILUS, who flourished at Alexandria in the fourth century B.c. and whose name is preserved to us by the Torcular," was accustomed to dissect living criminals, supplied to him for the purpose by the State ; and some of our daily and weekly non-medical contemporaries have lately contained long accounts, more or less veracious, of a Parisian lady who is said to have secured a handsome competence by letting out her body to surgeons and physio. logists for experimental purposes. In the Middle Ages -criminals were certainly handed over to medical men as subjects upon whom experiments might be tried with poisons and reputed remedies. But it may be doubted whether either the customs of Alexandria, in the fourth century before the Christian era, or those of the contemporaries of the BORGIAS, would be accepted as of authority in the present da,y; and it is certain that any attempt to obtain legal authority for carrying into practice Dr. KING’S suggestion would arouse a most reasonable storm of disapproval. We know perfectly well what many of the most sensible, well-informed, and humane men in the world will be found saying in support of experiments upon condemned criminals who, be it understood, place themselves voluntarily in the physician’s or surgeon’s hands in return for some slight hopes of cheating the gallows. It will be pointed out that a man condemned to death is civilly dead to all intents and purposes, save for the possible intervention of the Crown on his behalf; apart from that intervention the sheriff and his assistants are legally bound to kill the convict at a stated time and would be liable to punishment if they failed to do so. The Crown is superior to the law and may either pardon the convict or may direct that instead o° being killed he shall be subjected to a long, and perhaps life-long, term of painful and degrading slavery. Dr. KING’S suggestion is that he should be permitted to ransom himself from the death come
now
to Dr. KING’S
suggestion
submission to experiments of a kind calculated to increase knowledge with regard to the causes of disease and the operation of preventives or of remedies ; or, in other words, that instead of being regarded as merely useless carrion, his body should be rendered of as much value to mankind as that of a guinea-pig or a rabbit. It might even be of considerably more value, because it would admit of a more accurate reproduction of the morbid conditions against which men have to contend. It would be necessary for the securing of perfect justice that the atonement should bear some due proportion to the offence and that the pain suffered or the risks incurred by the criminal, or the mutilations or disabilities inflicted upon him, should bear some proportion to what he himself had done to others. This point having been attended to-though what legal machinery could be devised for the purpose we are at a lofs to guess-the criminal might be asked, in eturn for possible safety, to submit to dangers to which some of the noblest of mankind have submitted themselves with no hope of rewarl. Nothing more would be asked - of him than was done by the American soldiers who, in full confidence in their medical officers,
penalty by voluntary
consented to sleep in the beds and bedding vac1ted by the deceased victims of yellow fever, or permitted themselves to be bitten by infected specimens of stegomyia in order to afford conclusive evidence of the manner in A criminal who was which the disease was conveyed. repentant would even be likely, apart from any question of pardon or of reprieve, to embrace, as these brave men did,
opportunity of rendering signal service to mankind ; and ordinary criminal, who is only repentant in the presence of the chaplain, would, as a rule, be only too willing to follow their example because of the slender chance that it offered of saving his life. an
the
We do not think that on the part of the criminal population there would be any hesitation to avail themselves of such a provision of the law as Dr. KING suggests, so that the outcry that would follow in "humanitarian" circles upon any support of Dr. KING’S ideas would probably be directed against the cruelty of a scheme which the sufferers under the scheme would not themselves call cruel. We have, as we have said, broached the question purely as an academic one, but if it should ever become a practical one we should, for once at all events, find ourselves ranged on the side of the professional " humanitarians as well as of most thoughtful citizens. The sanctity of human life is more recognised to day than it was in the times of HEROPHILUS, while the respectful treatment of the bodily structure is more intimately a part of the natural religion of all men. Because life is sacred those who have deprived others of life pay the corresponding forfeit-the law is designed to be preventive and deterrent rather than purely punitive. To give the convicted murderer another chance by inviting him to undergo scientific experiment would be to remove a safeguard with which society cannot yet dispense ; to practise deliberate mutilation upon the human body would be utterly repugnant to those whose official duty it would become, under a legalisation of Dr. KING’S views, to mete out to the convicted criminal his physiological or pathological sentence. "
A
Story
of
Sanitary Ineptitude.
MUCH eloquence by many writers has been expended upon the Victorian era, so much that the sanitary progress the numerous instances of sanitary neglect with which the annals of public health administration abound, which continued throughout the reign of Queen VICTORIA and which flourish still, hardly meet with the attention that they merit. Instances of sanitary default tend to come before the public notice when there takes place what may be termed a frontier nuisance, in which two adjoining local authorities, each anxious to attribute the blame to the other and each equally anxious to avoid any expenditure in connexion with the matter, indulge in an exchange of courtesies. It is then that we learn in what manner certain local authorities interpret and neglect their responsibilities as well as how very difficult it is under the present Public Health Act to deal with situations which may constitute a disgrace to local government. The latest example of what must be called a travesty of local government comes to us from Brecon in the principality of Wales, where, apparently, one urban district council, that of Brynmawr, has been accused of poisoning
of
97
their funds on the actual erection of other such ’from tuberculosis has been since a sanatoriums as well as for the treatment of their members inamong the people of hygienic habits.
to
spend
them. The
more
general adoption
6
present project is intended to be the beginning of a large movement, it being hoped that before long it may be
Experiments
on
Criminals.
WE publish this week a letter from Dr. PRESTON KiKG possible to secure for a considerable proportion at least of early cases of tuberculosis among our labouring on a subject which may not be wholly new to the classes a period of treatment under the best conditions.majority of our readers. Dr. KrxG discusses the Bat it must be remembered that the erection of sanatoriums possibility of turning to account, for the purposes is not thought by anyone to be the last word that can be of physiological or toxicological experiment, the waste said in the treatment of tuberculosis. They are frankly human material which is placed at the disposal of the stop-gaps-they supply the hygienic environment which all community by death sentences ; but before reaching medical men desire to see in the working man’s home as a this portion of his argument he returns to the question matter of course. And viewed in this way they represent lately mooted by our correspondent "ENQUIRER"with a reasonable effort which all medical men must support, regard to the instantaneousness of death by hanging. premising that there is no need for such sanatoriums The controversy on this subject appears to us to derive to be built upon expensive lines and no economical its main interest from the fact that some persons use justification for their unlimited multiplication, to the neglect the term death" in its somatic sense while others of other factors in the prevention of tuberculosis. It was use it in its molecular sense. It is said in old perhaps necessary that the KING’S Sanatorium should be books on physiology that the two can be rendered coerected on the most elaborate scale with everything of the incident by an injury of sufficient suddenness and severity, best in the way of building and equipment, but this as by crushing the brain of a frog upon an anvil by a blow institution cannot be taken as a model for all others. from a hammer, but it is perfectly well known to most Simple inexpensive buildings on the so-called "chalet" people that they are not coincident as a rule. Besides the system will be found in many situations quite adequate case of the frog’s heart mentioned by Dr. KiNG, it is well and by adopting this plan accommodation can be provided known that a small, warm-blooded animal may be poisoned for a much greater number of patients than if more sub- by letting a few drops of hydrocyanic acid fall into the stantial buildings are demanded. The very early cases derive trap in which it is confined and may be taken out to the chief benefit from sanatorium treatment and much care all intents and purposes dead. It exhibits no sign of might well be spent in finding them out and persuading these consciousness, it makes no voluntary or involuntary movepatients to undergo the course. In some chronic cases, how- ments, its limbs are flaccid, it would not recover if left ever, even when the disease is fairly advanced, it is possible, alone in pure air, and it is speedily deserted by its temporarily at least, to arrest it and to render the tleas and other parasites. But the action ot its heart may. patient again, for a time, capable of earning his own living, be watched for a considerable time, the separate conbut the return from the sanatorium to the workshop too tractions of the auricles and ventricles being rhythmical and often heralds a recrudescence of the mischief. The advanced distinct and the arterial, venous, and capillary circulations, In such a condition we have not of course, continuing. cases are quite unsuitable for sanatoriums, though they must be dealt with if we are to prevent them from acting as seen any evidence of continuing respiration; and in the case foci for spreading the disease. Something can be done of hanging it is manifest that the circulation would be by instruction in the need for care in the disposal arrested above the noose. Is there the slightest reason to of the sputum and such instruction can be given to suppose that cerebral activity and consciousness could be (
"
printed directions distributed maintained without a continually renewed supply of arterial hospitals and dispensaries. There blood or that their maintenance would be conditioned by the patients will always remain many patients who from weakness, state of the cord in the cervical region ? We think not; and from lack of intelligence, or from other causes, will not should presume that in the case of hanging any impressions be adequately dealt with by such means alone. For these transmitted through an uninjured cord to the brain would isolation is requisite and we might aim at the establish- be thrown away if the brain itself were not in a state to ment of special wards in our Poor-law infirmaries or of receive and to react upon them. On these grounds we think special institutions for their maintenance. Popular atten- it very unlikely that a hanged criminal is capable of sensation has been attracted to the danger in these cases, but tion after the fall of the drop, even although the beating of it is to be hoped that it will not be misdirected into wrong the heart may continue for a brief period of time. In the channels whereby any sort of scare may result and greater great majority of death sentences it is probable that the difficulty be experienced in finding suitable work for tuber- period spent in the condemned cell is one of such mental culous patients after their discharge from sanatoriums. The suffering, suffering far greater than the pain which any problem of tuberculosis is a very difficult one but it must be bodily injury would be likely to inflict, that even if it were faced as a whole if we intend to secure lasting results. All established that in other circumstances the shock of hangin g the stages of the disease must be provided for : preventive is physically painful it would remain at least probable that and curative measures must be duly coordinated. Only by the victim of justice would not be sensible of any additional some comprehensive scheme can the white fiend " be kept agony. At any rate, there is not one among us who does in check but we may well be sanguine as to ultimate victory not desire to believe that judicial hanging is a comparawhen we remember how great the decline in the death-rate tively merciful death.
some
to
extent
by
at
means
our
of
A STORY OF SANITARY INEPTITUDE.
976 To
that the con. demned criminal might be utilised for the purposes of physiological or therapeutical experiment, this will certainly appear startling to some modern readers, although it is by It is said that no means new in the history of mankind. HEROPHILUS, who flourished at Alexandria in the fourth century B.c. and whose name is preserved to us by the Torcular," was accustomed to dissect living criminals, supplied to him for the purpose by the State ; and some of our daily and weekly non-medical contemporaries have lately contained long accounts, more or less veracious, of a Parisian lady who is said to have secured a handsome competence by letting out her body to surgeons and physio. logists for experimental purposes. In the Middle Ages -criminals were certainly handed over to medical men as subjects upon whom experiments might be tried with poisons and reputed remedies. But it may be doubted whether either the customs of Alexandria, in the fourth century before the Christian era, or those of the contemporaries of the BORGIAS, would be accepted as of authority in the present da,y; and it is certain that any attempt to obtain legal authority for carrying into practice Dr. KING’S suggestion would arouse a most reasonable storm of disapproval. We know perfectly well what many of the most sensible, well-informed, and humane men in the world will be found saying in support of experiments upon condemned criminals who, be it understood, place themselves voluntarily in the physician’s or surgeon’s hands in return for some slight hopes of cheating the gallows. It will be pointed out that a man condemned to death is civilly dead to all intents and purposes, save for the possible intervention of the Crown on his behalf; apart from that intervention the sheriff and his assistants are legally bound to kill the convict at a stated time and would be liable to punishment if they failed to do so. The Crown is superior to the law and may either pardon the convict or may direct that instead o° being killed he shall be subjected to a long, and perhaps life-long, term of painful and degrading slavery. Dr. KING’S suggestion is that he should be permitted to ransom himself from the death come
now
to Dr. KING’S
suggestion
submission to experiments of a kind calculated to increase knowledge with regard to the causes of disease and the operation of preventives or of remedies ; or, in other words, that instead of being regarded as merely useless carrion, his body should be rendered of as much value to mankind as that of a guinea-pig or a rabbit. It might even be of considerably more value, because it would admit of a more accurate reproduction of the morbid conditions against which men have to contend. It would be necessary for the securing of perfect justice that the atonement should bear some due proportion to the offence and that the pain suffered or the risks incurred by the criminal, or the mutilations or disabilities inflicted upon him, should bear some proportion to what he himself had done to others. This point having been attended to-though what legal machinery could be devised for the purpose we are at a lofs to guess-the criminal might be asked, in eturn for possible safety, to submit to dangers to which some of the noblest of mankind have submitted themselves with no hope of rewarl. Nothing more would be asked - of him than was done by the American soldiers who, in full confidence in their medical officers,
penalty by voluntary
consented to sleep in the beds and bedding vac1ted by the deceased victims of yellow fever, or permitted themselves to be bitten by infected specimens of stegomyia in order to afford conclusive evidence of the manner in A criminal who was which the disease was conveyed. repentant would even be likely, apart from any question of pardon or of reprieve, to embrace, as these brave men did,
opportunity of rendering signal service to mankind ; and ordinary criminal, who is only repentant in the presence of the chaplain, would, as a rule, be only too willing to follow their example because of the slender chance that it offered of saving his life. an
the
We do not think that on the part of the criminal population there would be any hesitation to avail themselves of such a provision of the law as Dr. KING suggests, so that the outcry that would follow in "humanitarian" circles upon any support of Dr. KING’S ideas would probably be directed against the cruelty of a scheme which the sufferers under the scheme would not themselves call cruel. We have, as we have said, broached the question purely as an academic one, but if it should ever become a practical one we should, for once at all events, find ourselves ranged on the side of the professional " humanitarians as well as of most thoughtful citizens. The sanctity of human life is more recognised to day than it was in the times of HEROPHILUS, while the respectful treatment of the bodily structure is more intimately a part of the natural religion of all men. Because life is sacred those who have deprived others of life pay the corresponding forfeit-the law is designed to be preventive and deterrent rather than purely punitive. To give the convicted murderer another chance by inviting him to undergo scientific experiment would be to remove a safeguard with which society cannot yet dispense ; to practise deliberate mutilation upon the human body would be utterly repugnant to those whose official duty it would become, under a legalisation of Dr. KING’S views, to mete out to the convicted criminal his physiological or pathological sentence. "
A
Story
of
Sanitary Ineptitude.
MUCH eloquence by many writers has been expended upon the Victorian era, so much that the sanitary progress the numerous instances of sanitary neglect with which the annals of public health administration abound, which continued throughout the reign of Queen VICTORIA and which flourish still, hardly meet with the attention that they merit. Instances of sanitary default tend to come before the public notice when there takes place what may be termed a frontier nuisance, in which two adjoining local authorities, each anxious to attribute the blame to the other and each equally anxious to avoid any expenditure in connexion with the matter, indulge in an exchange of courtesies. It is then that we learn in what manner certain local authorities interpret and neglect their responsibilities as well as how very difficult it is under the present Public Health Act to deal with situations which may constitute a disgrace to local government. The latest example of what must be called a travesty of local government comes to us from Brecon in the principality of Wales, where, apparently, one urban district council, that of Brynmawr, has been accused of poisoning
of