702 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
death-rate has been reduced more than 50 per cent, since the discovery of antitoxin by experiments within the last few years) , satisfactory serums for these deadly diseases in men are still a matter of uncertainty, if not unknown. And why? Simply because there are no human beings on whom systematic scien- tific experiments can be made to discover the remedy or to test supposed remedies ; for all new remedies should be rigidly tested before being applied to the generality of mankind. New remedies must be tried on someone, and the state owes it to itself that it provide subjects for experimentation, so that there shall be least loss in case of failure, on the one hand, and, on the other, that generations should not be permitted to die while doctors are disputing the utility of remedies which only a few have had the opportunity of testing. Humanity demands that the failure or success of new methods of relieving human ills should be made known at the earliest possible date.
All remedies, from castor oil to antiseptic surgery, are the result of experiment, unless discovered by accident. If experi- ments are prohibited, medical science must remain forever prac- tically at a standstill. Shall the state encourage progress in the increase of knowledge and the relief of human ills by providing subjects for experiment in using what is now wasted, or worse than wasted ? Or shall the state continue to outlaw such prog- ress by failing to provide investigators with proper subjects for experiment ? At the present time the progress of medical science is interfered with continually by the lack of human sub- jects for experimentation. It is of more vital importance for the state to provide subjects for accredited investigators than it is to provide our medical colleges with subjects for dissection in the study of anatomy. So long as living subjects are not provided by the state, study for the discovery of relief of human ills is outlawed, just as the study of anatomy was outlawed when it was neces- sary to rob graveyards in order to get subjects for the use of students in the dissecting room. The modern investigator along these lines, as a rule, first tries his experiments on animals, and if a number of these prove successful, in fear and trembling he usually tries them on some hopeless case, under unfavorable
