Chicago Dogfight

Chicago's anti-vivisectionists were at it again last week. This time the stew began with the usual alarms in the Hearst press and swung into the usual argument between Irene Castle McLaughlin and the city's scientists. One zealot wrote an anonymous letter to the University of Chicago's distinguished professor emeritus of physiology, Dr. Anton Julius Carlson, head of the Illinois Society for the Protection of Medical Research. The letter called him a "butcher" and said that "as surely as there are skies above, we will get you. . . . The police can't watch over you always. So, until we meet, Death." The Hearst Herald-American had directed fire at the universities by calling Chicago a city where "rich universities ... get pound dogs for nothing (at the rate of 10,000 a year), while a youngster seeking a pet must shell out $8.40." After about a week of this, the City Council called a public hearing on a measure to forbid giving more dogs to laboratories.

Minks Are Different. The capacity crowd at the hearing included Mrs. McLaughlin, in a flaming red dress and huge silver bracelets; a dozen McLaughlinites; 1,500 medical students in military uniform ; a troop of irritated professors and doctors; about 500 hopeful spectators.

Mrs. McLaughlin suggested that there might be great fear on the part of "a man going into service and leaving his dog behind." The medical students laughed. Dr. Josiah John Moore, president of Chicago's Medical Society, observed: "A parade of human beings who have been saved from diseases by work done on dogs . . . would take a week ... to pass down Michigan Avenue." Dr. Moore was then beset by hecklers. Up spoke Dr. Italo Frederick Volini, professor of medicine at Loyola University Medical School: "If this is a question of suffering and needless pain, do ... the ladies who have come here with furs on their backs . . . consider the suffering of some little animal, caught between the steel teeth of a cruel trap and left to die?" Mrs. McLaughlin retorted that she did not make pets of minks and muskrats.

After a performing dog named Teddy had gone through his act, the Council ended the hearing by referring the question of pound-dog disposal to a committee. At week's end, the Council decided to continue letting hospitals and universities have unclaimed dogs, but reduced the cost of recovering a pet from the pound to $3. Vote: 41-to-2.

Peak?

There were 1,683 new polio cases in the U.S. for the week ending Sept. 2, a new high bringing the total for the year to 9,474. Doctors hoped that the peak had been reached. Total cases reported for 1916, the worst polio year: 27,621.

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