ANIMALS, RESEARCH AND MEDICINE William C. Gibson* in 1876 was entitled, "The Relation of Animals to Man." When Osler investigated an epidemic of what was then called "verminous bronchitis" in the kennels of the Hunt Club of Montreal, he undertook the laborious task of performing numerous autopsies, and from this work he described a new nematode, since called by Cobbold Filaria Osleri. A year later he investigated an epidemic of "hog cholera" in 300 animals in Quebec and showed by inoculation experiments that it was neither anthrax nor typhoid. When the safety of the meat supply of Montreal came into question, Osler studied 1037 hogs in the local abbattoirs for cysticercus, trichina and Echinococcus parasites. It was this project that was to lead him to the Surgeon General's library in Washington, D.C., where he met the famous Dr. John Shaw Billings, and it is possible that this meeting was responsible for his being offered the chair of medicine at Johns Hopkins University six years later. The medical school of Johns Hopkins had, in the years prior to 1905 when Osler left for Oxford, twenty-five student researchers who published original contributions in the veterinary field. Foremost, of course,. was his Canadian prodigy (trained in the classics!) W. G. MacCallum, who discovered the full sexual cycle of the malarial parasite in birds. The eosinophilia found in patients suffering from trichinosis was first described by T. R. Brown of the class of 1897. Eugene Opie described the hematozoa, W. J. Calvert the problem of peritonitis in dogs, Dorothy Reed described the cell now named after her, Benjamin Schenck described the causal agent in sporotrichosis, and Louise Taylor-Jones the kidney worm of swine. There was never a time when veterinary and human medicine needed to be closer together than they do today. The reciprocity of knowledge is extremely important between both of these vital disciplines. Just as many animals have played a part in research to advance the understanding of the human body and disease, so have developments in human research aided animals. Nearly every drug that man uses is also given to animals, particularly the antibiotics, steroids and ataraxics. Thus this partnership in medical research promises to be long and mutually rewarding.

Claude Bernard paid tribute to the frog for its contribution to medical science a century ago and we should rightfully foliow his example by acknowledging our debt to all research animals, from the smallest of the bacteria to the largest of the apes, for research workers today rely heavily on them in their experimental studies. It is an interesting fact that indirectly veterinary medicine has benefited from the use of animals in laboratories, since some of the knowledge gained can be applied by veterinarians in treating and curing many diverse diseases in their patients. Although the partnership between man and animals in medicine is more intensified at the present time, throughout history the paths of human beings and animals have intertwined or at the very least run parallel. Early physicians had to rely on animals for their knowledge of anatomy, because of the strict laws in regard to autopsy and the limitations of surgery. The data collected were extrapolated to the human being, often with disastrous results. Thus Galen in the second century A.D. fell into the bottomless pit by believing that what he saw in animals was what existed in human anatomy. As Sherrington put it: "Galen's eminence and the subsequent conspiracy of the ages to maintain and exalt it, carried this teaching not only unchallenged but hardened into dogma, century after century." It required a 28 year old firebrand, in the person of Andreas Vesalius of Padua, to break the seal of Galenic authority. Vesalius knew the anatomy of the lower animals, but he was a comparative anatomist in the best sense, for he knew human anatomy as none before him, which we can fully appreciate every time we look at engravings in his magnum opus, the Fabrica. Little known is the work done by William Osler in veterinary medicine. In this regard Dr. Maude Abbott labeled him a comparative pathologist. Osler's Canadian period produced nineteen contributions in this field. He was connected with the Montreal Veterinary College and his inaugural address to the students

*Editor, MD of Canada. Reprinted from MD of Canada, December 1975. (

Copyright 1975 MD Publications, Inc. .44

CAN. VEr. JOUR., vol. 17, no. 5, May, 1976