“Confessions of a Physician,” by V. Veresaeff, is a Russian work, first published in 1901, the writer of which exposes with the utmost frankness the secrets of the medical profession—the doubts, difficulties, dangers, scruples, failures, and even homicides, that fall to the lot of the practitioner. It is not that Veresaeff is disloyal to his colleagues; but his judgment is drawn in two opposite directions by his sense of duty to Science on the one side, and to Morality on the other, and is exercised by the problem of how to reconcile the “necessities,” as he conceives them, of medical research with the “rights,” as he cannot but admit them to be, of its human and non-human victims. Hence, though Veresaeff is himself only in part a humanitarian, his book has considerable interest for humanitarian readers.
In a dissertation on the English anti-vivisection movement, from which the Russian movement originated, Veresaeff, while not stifling his misgivings, falls back on the assertion that vivisection is necessary, because it is impossible without it to know the living organism. He is very contemptuous of the “clergymen, society ladies, statesmen, persons entirely unassociated with science,” who seek to refute the scientists; but then, veering to the moral side of the question, he makes the following reference to this book on “Animals’ Rights”:
“However, we must give them their due; for not all the anti-vivisectionists base their opinions upon such crude and ignorant tenets. A number of them seek to base the whole question upon foundations of pure principle; thus, for instance, the author of ‘Animals’ Rights, Considered in relation to Social Progress,’ says: ‘Let us assume that the progress of surgical science is [109]assisted by the experiments of the vivisector. What then? Before rushing to the conclusion that vivisection is justifiable on that account, a wise man will take into full consideration the other—the moral side of the question—the hideous injustice of torturing an innocent animal.’ This is the only possible and fitting position for the anti-vivisectionist to take up; whether science can dispense with vivisection or not, does not concern him; animals are made to suffer, and that settles everything. The question is plainly put, and there can be no room for any equivocation. I repeat, we ought not to ridicule the pretensions of the anti-vivisectionists—the sufferings of animals are truly horrible—and sympathy with them is not sentimentality; but we must bear in mind that there is no ‘way round,’ where the building up of scientific medicine—its goal—the healing of mankind—is at stake.”[56]
While welcoming this statement, I must point out that in the passage of “Animals’ Rights” (p. 71) to which Dr. Veresaeff refers, I did not for a moment admit that vivisection is necessary to surgical science; I merely assumed it for purposes of argument, and I added the important qualifying words which are omitted in the Russian quotation: “A large assumption certainly, controverted as it is by some most weighty medical testimony.” It is necessary to point this out, because we humanitarians do not share Dr. Veresaeff’s perplexity, swayed as he is between the demands of a vivisecting science and the protests of a suffering humanity; on the contrary, we are convinced that the painful contradiction between conflicting duties, by which his mind is troubled, is a phantom of his own creation. No doubt if he assumes that one particular science, that of medicine, must pursue its course regardless of any other science, such as that of morals, he will find himself confronted by problems and contradictions innumerable, to which no direct answer can be given; but[110] that very assumption is one which no clear-headed thinker will grant. No single science can make true progress at the expense of another science; and when such conflicts arise they are a sign that there is something wrong, and that it is time to pause and to reflect. Medical problems, like all others, can only be solved in the solution of the social question as a whole, and there is no royal road to the achievement of medical aspirations.