The President’s Case [excerpt]

     We hoped to publish in this issue a ringing editorial on the victory of modern surgery in gunshot wounds of the abdomen; but alas! the hoped for victory turned to defeat. In our exultancy we expected to go rather fully into the experiments upon dogs in the development of modern surgical treatment of gunshot wounds of the abdomen, and then, without taking into account the many ordinary (but valuable) lives that have been and will be saved by operativ [sic] treatment developt [sic] by these experiments, ask our antivivisectionist friends: How many dogs is a president’s life worth? How many dogs would it be justifiable to sacrifice in order to save President McKinley’s life? This, we hoped, would bring the question to them in a new and perhaps startling light; and might prove to them that those who experiment on the lower animals in order to find ways for saving human life and mitigating human suffering, are really humane; while those who object are not humane. But alas! Our opportunity did not come this time. While all that we have intimated concerning the progress in the surgical treatment of gunshot wounds of the abdomen is true, [405][406] we cannot take President McKinley’s case as a text, as we hoped to do.