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VII.
PRURIGO SECANDI.
ANOTHER serious ethical danger connected with unrestrained experiment on the lower animals is the enormous increase of audacious human surgery, which tends to overpower the slower but more natural methods of medical art, and to divert attention from hygiene.
This modern increase of surgery, entailing permanent mutilation, has received a special name, prurigo secandi, or cacoethes secandi. It prevails in France, and in every country where no restraint is placed on animal experimentation,[1]
- ↑ 'Professor Leon le Fort, Professor Verneuil, Professor Duplay, and Professor Tillaux, have been asked by a public journal for their opinions on the operative mania (furie opératoire), said to be prevalent at present. Professor Le Fort says it is much more widespread in France than in other countries, and in a long letter he protests against the custom amongst the young French surgeons, in order to
