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Vivisection 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT LEFFINGWELL, M. D. 
 
 ' OF THE 
 
 1JSIVBR3ITY ; 
 
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 NEW YORK : 
 
 JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY, 
 14 and 16 Vesey Street. 
 
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 21 iHemorg of Jruntoljtp. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 To the Century Company of New York, in the pages 
 of whose magazine, then known as " Scribners 
 Monthly" the first of the following essays originally- 
 appeared in July, 1880, the thanks of the writer are 
 due for permission to re-publish in the present form. 
 For a like courtesy on the part of the proprietors of 
 Lippincott's Magazine, in which the second paper was 
 first published [Aug., 1884], the writer desires to make 
 due acknowledgment. 
 
 
 OF TH 
 
 TJNIVEn IT 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The first of the Essays following- appeared in 
 "Scribner's Monthly," in July, 1880; and imme- 
 diately became honored by the attention of the 
 Medical Press throughout the country. The aggres- 
 sive title of the paper, justified, in great measure, 
 perhaps, the vigor of the criticism bestowed. Again 
 and again the point was raised by reviewers that the 
 problem presented by the title, was not solved or 
 answered by the article itself. 
 
 At this day, it perhaps may be mentioned that the 
 question "Does Vivisection Pay?" was never 
 raised by the writer, who selected as his title the 
 single word "Vivisection." The more taking head- 
 line was affixed by the editor of the magazine as more 
 apt to arrest attention and arouse professional pug- 
 nacity. That in this latter respect it was eminent- 
 ly successful, the author had the best reason to re- 
 member. With this explanation which is made 
 simply to prevent future criticism on the same point 
 the old title is retained. If the present reader con- 
 
 pI7E -71 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tinues the inquiry here presented, he will learn 
 wherein the writer believes in the utility of vivisec- 
 tion, and on the other hand, in what respects and 
 under what conditions he very seriously questions 
 whether any gains can possibly compensate the 
 infinitely great cost. 
 
 "What do you hope for or expect as the result of 
 agitation in regard to vivisection ? " recently inquired 
 a friend ; "its legal abolition ? " 
 
 ' ' Certainly not, " was the reply. 
 
 "Would you then expect its restriction during the 
 present century ? " 
 
 " Hardly even so soon as that. It will take longer 
 than a dozen years to awaken recognition of any 
 evil which touches neither the purse nor personal 
 comfort of an American citizen. All that can be hoped 
 in the immediate future is education. Action will 
 perhaps follow when its necessity is recognized gen- 
 erally ; but not before." 
 
 For myself, I believe no permanent or effective 
 reform of present practices is probable until the 
 Medical Profession generally concede as dangerous 
 and unnecessary that freedom of unlimited experi- 
 mentation in pain, which is claimed and practiced 
 to-day. That legislative reform is otherwise un- 
 attainable, one would hesitate to affirm ; but it 
 assuredly would be vastly less effective. You must 
 convince men of the justice and reasonableness of a 
 
INTRODUCTION. j 
 
 law before you can secure a willing obedience. 
 Yielding to none in loyalty to the science, and 
 enthusiam for the Art of Healing, what standpoint 
 may be taken by those of the Medical Profession who 
 desire to reform evils which confessedly exist ? 
 
 I. We need not seek the total abolition of all ex- 
 periments upon living animals. I do not forget that 
 just such abolition is energetically demanded by 
 a large number of earnest men and women, who 
 have lost all faith in the possibility of restricting an 
 abuse, if it be favored by scientific enthusiasm. 
 ''Let us take/' they say, "the upright and conscien- 
 tious ground of refusing all compromise with sin 
 and evil, and maintaining our position unflinchingly, 
 leave the rest to God." * This is almost precisely the 
 ground taken by the Prohibitionists in national poli- 
 tics ; it is the only ground one can occupy, provided 
 the taking of a glass of wine, or the performance of 
 any experiment, painless or otherwise, is of itself 
 an " evil and a sin. " There are those, however, who 
 believe it possible to oppose and restrain intemperance 
 by other methods than legislative prohibition. So 
 with the prohibition of vivisection. Admitting the 
 abuses of the practice, I cannot yet see that they are 
 so intrinsic and essential as to make necessary the 
 entire abolition of all physiological experiments 
 whatsoever. 
 
 * Report of American Anti-Vivisection Society, Jan'y 30, 1888. 
 
8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 II. We may advocate (and I believe we should 
 advocate) the total abolition, by law, of all mutilating 
 or destructive experiments upon lower animals, involving 
 pain, when such experiments are made for the purpose 
 of public or private demonstration of already known 
 and accepted physiological facts. 
 
 This is the ground of compromise unacceptable, 
 as yet, to either party. Nevertheless it is asking 
 simply for those limitations and restrictions which 
 have always been conceded as prudent and fair by 
 the medical profession of Great Britain. Speaking of 
 a certain experiment upon the spinal nerves, Dr. M. 
 Foster, of Cambridge University, one of the leading 
 physiological teachers of England, says : "I have 
 not performed it and have never seen it done, " partly 
 because of horror at the pain necessary. And yet 
 this experiment has been performed before classes 
 of young men and young women in the Medical 
 Schools of this country ! Absolutely no legal restriction 
 here exists to the repetition, over and over again, of 
 the most atrocious tortures of Mantegazza, Bert and 
 Schiff. 
 
 * * * 
 
 This is the vivisection which does not "pay," 
 even if we dismiss altogether from our calculation the 
 interests of the animals sacrificed to the demand for 
 mnemonic aid. For the great and perilous outcome 
 of such methods will be finally an atrophy of the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 sense of sympathy for human suffering. It is seen 
 to-day in certain hospitals in Europe. Can other 
 result be expected to follow the deliberate inflic- 
 tion of prolonged pain without other object than to 
 see or demonstrate what will happen therefrom? 
 Will any assistance to memory, counterweigh the 
 annihilation or benumbing of the instinct of pity ? 
 
 Upon this subject of utility of painful experiments 
 in class demonstrations or private study, I would 
 like to appeal for judgment to the physician of the 
 future, who then shall review the experience of 
 the medical student of to-day. In his course of 
 physiological training, heorshe maybe invited to see 
 living animals cut and mutilated in various ways, 
 eviscerated, poisoned, frozen, starved, and by ingen- 
 ious devices of science subjected to the exhibition of 
 pain. On the first occasion such a scene generally 
 induces in the young man or young woman a signifi- 
 cant subjective phenomenon of physiological interest ; 
 an involuntary, creeping, tremulous sense of horror 
 emerges into consciousness, and is speedily re- 
 pressed. "This feeling," he whispers to himself, 
 "is altogether unworthy the scientific spirit in which 
 I am now to be educated ; it needs to be subdued. 
 The sight of this inarticulate agony, this prolonged 
 anguish is not presented to me for amusement. I 
 must steel myself to witness it, to assist in it, for the 
 
I o INTRO D UCTION. 
 
 sake of the good I shall be helped thereby to accom- 
 plish, some day, for suffering humanity." 
 
 Praiseworthy sentiments, these are, indeed. Are 
 they founded in reality ? No. The student who 
 thus conquers " squeamishness " will not see one fact 
 thus demonstrated at the cost of pain which was un- 
 known to science before ; not one fact which he 
 might not have been made to remember without this 
 demonstrative illustration ; not one fact saddest truth 
 of all that is likely to be of the slightest practical 
 service to him or to her in the multiplied and various 
 duties of future professional life. Why, then, are 
 they shown ? To help him to remember his lesson ! 
 Admit the value to the student, but what of the cost? 
 
 In one of the great cities of China, I was shown, 
 leaning against the high wall of the execution ground, 
 a rude, wooden frame-work or cross, old, hacked, and 
 smeared with recent blood-stains. It was used, I was 
 told, in the punishment of extreme offenses ; the crim- 
 inal being bound thereto, and flayed and cut in every 
 way human ingenuity could devise for inflicting tor- 
 ture before giving an immediately mortal wound. 
 Only the week before, such an execution had taken 
 place ; the victim being a woman who had poisoned 
 her husband. A young and enthusiastic physician 
 whom I met, told me he had secured the privilege of 
 being an eye witness to the awful tragedy, that he 
 might verify a theory he had formed on the influence 
 
INTRODUCTION. 1 1 
 
 of pain ; a theory perhaps like that which led to Man- 
 tegazza's crucifixion of pregnant rabbits with dolori 
 atrocissimi* Science here caught her profit from the 
 punishment of crime, but the gain would have been 
 the same had her interest alone been the object. 
 There is always gain, always some aid to memory ; 
 but what of the cost ? 
 
 It cannot be expected that any Medical College, of 
 its own accord and without outside pressure, will re- 
 strict or hamper its freedom of action. As a con- 
 dition of prosperity and success it cannot show less 
 than is exhibited by other medical schools ; it must 
 keep abreast of "advanced thought," and do and 
 demonstrate in every way what its rivals demon- 
 strate and do. There can be no question but that 
 there is to-day a strong public demand for continental 
 methods of physiological instruction. Who make this 
 demand ? You, gentlemen, students of medicine, 
 and they who follow in your pathway. This year it is 
 you who silently request this aid to your memory of 
 the physiological statements of your text books ; 
 another year, another class of young men and young 
 women, occupying the same benches, or filling the 
 same laboratory, repeats the demand for the same 
 series of illustrations. You, perhaps, will have gone 
 forward to take your places in active life, to assume 
 the real burdens of the medical profession. To those 
 
 * See Appendix, page 83. 
 
1 2 INTRO D UCTION. 
 
 succeeding years of thought, reflection and useful- 
 ness, let me appeal, respecting the absolute necessity 
 of all class demonstrations and laboratory work in- 
 volving pain. Postpone if you please, the ready 
 decision which, fresh from your class-room, you are 
 perhaps only too willing to give me to-day ; I do not 
 wish it. But some time in the future, after years have 
 gone by, remembering all you have seen and aided 
 in the doing, tell us if you can, exactly wherein you 
 received, in added potency for helping human suf- 
 ering and for the treatment of human ills, the equiva- 
 lent of that awful expenditure of pain which you 
 are now demanding, and which by unprotesting ac- 
 quiescence, you are to-day helping to inflict. 
 
 Boston, Mass., 
 March, i88g. 
 
[From Scribner's Monthly, July, 1880. ) 
 
 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 The question of vivisection is again push- 
 ing itself to the front. A distinguished 
 American physiologist has lately come for- 
 ward in defense of the French experimenter, 
 Magendie, and, parenthetically, of his meth- 
 ods of investigation in the study of vital 
 phenomena. On the other hand, the Soci- 
 ety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 
 made an unsuccessful attempt, in the New 
 York Legislature last winter, to secure the 
 passage of a law which would entirely abol- 
 ish the practice as now in vogue in our 
 medical schools, or cause it to be secretly 
 
1 6 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 carried on, in defiance of legal enactments. 
 In support of this bill it was claimed that 
 physiologists, for the sake of " demonstrating 
 to medical students certain physiological 
 phenomena connected with the functions of 
 life, are constantly and habitually in the 
 practice of cutting up alive, torturing and 
 tormenting divers of the unoffending brute 
 creation to illustrate their theories and 
 lectures, but without any practical or bene- 
 ficial result either to themselves or to the stu- 
 dents, which practice is demoralizing to both 
 and engenders in the future medical practi- 
 tioners a want of humanity and sympathy for 
 physical pain and suffering." How far these 
 statements are true will be hereafter discussed ; 
 but one assertion is so evidently erroneous 
 that it may be at once indicated. No experi- 
 ment, however atrocious, cruel and, therefore, 
 on the whole, unjustifiable, if performed to 
 illustrate some scientific point, was ever with- 
 out "any beneficial result." The benefit 
 may have been infinitesimal, but every scien- 
 tific fact is of some value. To assert the 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 17 
 
 contrary is to weaken one's case by over- 
 statement. 
 
 Leaving out the brute creation, there are 
 three parties interested in this discussion. 
 In the first place, there are the professors 
 and teachers of physiology in the medical 
 colleges. Naturally, these desire no inter- 
 ference with either their work or their 
 methods. They claim that were the know- 
 ledge acquired by experiments upon living 
 organisms swept out of existence, in many 
 respects the science of physiology would be 
 little more than guesswork to-day. The 
 subject of vivisection, they declare, is one 
 which does not concern the general public, 
 but belongs exclusively to scientists and es- 
 pecially to physiologists. That the present cen- 
 tury should permit sentimentalists to interfere 
 with scientific investigations is preposterous. 
 
 Behind these stand the majority of men 
 belonging to the medical profession- Hold- 
 ing, as they do, the most important and inti- 
 mate relations to society, it is manifestly 
 desirable that they should enjoy the best 
 ^y OF Tl 
 
1 8 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 facilities for the acquirement of knowledge 
 necessary to their art. To most, the question 
 is merely one of professional privilege against 
 sentiment, and they cannot hesitate which 
 side to prefer. In this, as in other professions 
 or trades, the feeling of esprit de corps is ex- 
 ceedingly strong ; and no class of men likes 
 interference on the part of outsiders. To 
 most physicians it is wholly a scientific 
 question. It is a matter, they think, with 
 which the public has no concern ; if society 
 can trust to the profession its sick and dying, 
 they surely can leave to its feeling of humanity 
 a few worthless brutes. 
 
 The opinion of the general public is there- 
 fore, divided and confused. On the one 
 hand, it is profoundly desirous to make > 
 systematic and needless cruelty impossible ; 
 yet, on the other, it cannot but hesitate to 
 take any step which shall hinder medical 
 education, impede scientific discovery, or re- 
 strict search for new methods of treating 
 disease. What are the sufferings of an ani- 
 mal, however acute or prolonged, compared 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 19 
 
 with the gain to humanity which would re- 
 sult from the knowledge thereby acquired of 
 a single curative agent? Public opinion 
 hesitates. A leading newspaper, commenting 
 on the introduction of the Bergh bill, doubt- 
 less expressed the sentiment of most people 
 when it deprecated prevention of experiments 
 " by which original investigators seek to es- 
 tablish or verify conclusions which may be of 
 priceless value to the preservation of life and 
 health among human beings." 
 
 The question nevertheless confronts soci- 
 ety, and in such shape, too, that society 
 cannot escape, even if it would, the responsi- 
 bility of a decision. Either by action or in- 
 action the State must decide whether the 
 practice of vivisection shall be wholly abolish- 
 ed, as desired by some ; whether it shall be 
 restricted by law within certain limits and 
 for certain definite objects, as in Great Brit- 
 ain ; or whether we are to continue in this 
 country to follow the example of France and 
 Germany, in permitting the practice of phys- 
 iological experimentation to any extent de- 
 
20 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 vised or desired by the experimentalist him- 
 self. Any information tending to indicate 
 which of these courses is best cannot be in- 
 opportune. Having witnessed experiments 
 by some of the most distinguished European 
 physiologists, such as Claude Bernard (the 
 successor of Magendie), Milne-Edwards and 
 Brown-Sequard ; and, still better (or worse, 
 as the reader may think), having performed 
 some experiments in this direction for pur- 
 poses of investigation and for the instruction 
 of others, the present writer believes himself 
 justified in holding and stating a pronounced 
 opinion on this subject, even if it be to some 
 extent, opposed to the one prevailing in the 
 profession. Suppose, therefore, we review 
 briefly the arguments to be adduced both in 
 favor of the practice and against it. 
 
 Two principal arguments may be advanced 
 in its favor. 
 
 i. It is undeniable that to the practice of 
 vivisection we are indebted for very much of 
 our present knowledge of physiology. This 
 is the fortress of the advocates of vivisection, 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 21 
 
 and a certain refuge when other arguments 
 are of no avail. 
 
 11. As a means of teaching physiological 
 facts, vivisection is unsurpassed. No teacher 
 of science needs to be told the vast supe- 
 riority of demonstration over affirmation. 
 Take for instance, the circulation of the 
 blood. The student who displays but a lan- 
 guid interest in statements of fact, or even in 
 the best delineations and charts obtainable, 
 will be thoroughly aroused by seeing the pro- 
 cess actually before his eyes. A week's study 
 upon the book will less certainly be retained 
 in his memory than a single view of the 
 opened thorax of a frog or dog. There be- 
 fore him is the throbbing heart; he sees its 
 relations to adjoining structures, and marks, 
 with a wonder he never before knew, that 
 mystery of life by which the heart, even 
 though excised from the body, does not cease 
 for a time its rhythmic beat. To imagine, 
 then, that teachers of physiology find mere 
 amusement in these operations is the greatest 
 of ignorant mistakes. They deem it desira- 
 
2 2 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 ble that certain facts be accurately fixed in 
 memory, and they know that no system of 
 mnemonics equals for such purpose the dem- 
 onstration of the function itself. 
 
 Just here, however, arises a very important 
 question. Admitting the benefit of the dem- 
 onstration of scientific facts, how far may one 
 justifiably subject an animal to pain for the 
 purpose of illustrating a point already known? 
 It is merely a question of cost. For instance, 
 it is an undisputed statement in physical 
 science that the diamond is nothing more 
 than a form of crystallized carbon, and, like 
 other forms of carbon, under certain con- 
 ditions, may be made to burn. Now most of 
 us are entirely willing to accept this, as we 
 do the majority of truths, upon the testimony 
 of scientific men, without making demon- 
 stration a requisite of assent. In a certain 
 private school, however, it has long been the 
 custom once a year, to burn in oxygen a 
 small diamond, worth perhaps $30, so as ac- 
 tually to prove to the pupils the assertion of 
 their text-books. The experiment is a bril- 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 2 $ 
 
 liant one ; no one can doubt its entire success. 
 Nevertheless, we do not furnish diamonds to 
 our public schools for this purpose. Exactly 
 similar to this is one aspect of vivisection it 
 is a question of cost. Granting all the ad- 
 vantages which follow demonstration of cer- 
 tain physiological facts, the cost is pain pain 
 sometimes amounting to prolonged and ex- 
 cruciating torture. Is the gain worth this ? 
 Let me mention an instance. Not long 
 ago, in a certain medical college in the State 
 of New York, I saw what Doctor Sharpey, 
 for thirty years the professor of physiology 
 in the University Medical College, London, 
 once characterized by antithesis as " Magen- 
 die's infamous experiment," it having been 
 first performed by that eminent physiologist. 
 It was designed to prove that the stomach, 
 although supplied with muscular coats, is 
 during the act of vomiting for the most part 
 passive ; and that expulsion of its contents 
 is due to the action of the diaphragm and the 
 larger abdominal muscles. The professor to 
 whom I refer did not propose to have even 
 
24 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 Magendie's word accepted as an authority 
 on the subject: the fact should be demon- 
 strated again. So an incision in the abdomen 
 of a dog was made ; its stomach was cut out ; 
 a pig's bladder containing colored water was 
 inserted in its place, an emetic was injected 
 into the veins, and vomiting ensued. Long 
 before the conclusion of the experiment the 
 animal became conscious, and its cries of 
 suffering were exceedingly painful to hear. 
 Now, granting that this experiment impressed 
 an abstract scientific fact upon the memories 
 of all who saw it, nevertheless it remains 
 significantly true that the fact thus demon- 
 strated had no conceivable relation to the 
 treatment of disease. It is not to-day re- 
 garded as conclusive of the theory which, 
 after nearly two hundred repetitions of his 
 experiment, was doubtless considered by Ma- 
 gendie as established beyond question. Doc- 
 tor Sharpey, a strong advocate of vivisection, 
 by the way, condemned it as a perfectly 
 unjustifiable experiment, since "besides its 
 atrocity, it was really purposeless." Was 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 25 
 
 this repetition of the experiment which I 
 have described worth its cost ? Was the gain 
 worth the pain ? 
 
 Let me instance another and more recent 
 case. Being in Paris a year ago, I went one 
 morning to the College de France, to hear 
 Brown-Sequard, the most eminent experi- 
 menter in vivisection now living one who, 
 Doctor Carpenter tells us, has probably in- 
 flicted more animal suffering than any other 
 man in his time. The lecturer stated that 
 injury to certain nervous centers near the 
 base of the brain would produce peculiar and 
 curious phenomena in the animal operated 
 upon, causing it, for example, to keep turning 
 to one side in a circular manner, instead of 
 walking in a straightforward direction. A 
 Guinea-pig was produced a little creature, 
 about the size of a half-grown kitten and 
 the operation was effected, accompanied by a 
 series of piercing little squeaks. As foretold, 
 the creature thus injured did immediately 
 perform a " circular " movement. A rabbit 
 was then operated upon with similar results. 
 
26 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 Lastly, an unfortunate poodle was introduced, 
 its muzzle tied with stout whip-cord, wound 
 round and round so tightly that it must 
 necessarily have caused severe pain. It was 
 forced to walk back and forth on the long 
 table, during which it cast looks on every 
 side, as though seeking a possible avenue of 
 escape. Being fastened in the operating 
 trough, an incision was made to the bone, 
 flaps turned back, an opening made in the 
 skull, and enlarged by breaking away some 
 portions with forceps. During these various 
 processes no attempt whatever was made to 
 cause unconsciousness by means of anaesthet- 
 ics, and the half-articulate, half-smothered 
 cries of the creature in its agony were terrible 
 to hear, even to one not unaccustomed to 
 vivisections. The experiment was a " suc- 
 cess " ; the animal after its mutilation did 
 describe certain circular movements. But 
 I cannot help questioning in regard to these 
 demonstrations, did they pay ? This experi- 
 ment had not the slightest relation whatever 
 to the cure of disease. More than this : it 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 2 J 
 
 teaches us little or nothing in physiology. 
 The most eminent physiologist in this coun- 
 try, Doctor Austin Flint, Jr., admits that ex- 
 periments of this kind " do not seem to have 
 advanced our positive knowledge of the func- 
 tions of the nerve centers," and that similar 
 experiments " have been very indefinite in 
 their results." On this occasion, therefore, 
 three animals were subjected to torture to 
 demonstrate an abstract fact, which probably 
 not a single one of the two dozen spectators 
 would have hesitated to take for granted on 
 the word of so great a pathologist as Doctor 
 Brown-Sequard. Was the gain worth the 
 cost ? 
 
 This, then, is the great question that must 
 eventually be decided by the public. Do 
 humanity and science here indicate diverging 
 roads ? On the contrary, I believe it to be 
 an undeniable fact that the highest scientific 
 and medical opinion is against the repetition 
 of painful experiments for class teaching. In 
 1875, a Royal Commission was appointed in 
 Great Britain to investigate the subject of 
 
 
28 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 vivisection, with a view to subsequent legis- 
 lation. The interests of science were repre- 
 sented by the appointment of Professor Hux- 
 ley as a member of this commission. Its 
 meetings continued over several months, and 
 the report constitutes a large volume of 
 valuable testimony. The opinions of many 
 of these witnesses are worthy of special at- 
 tention, from the eminent position to the 
 men who hold them. The physician to the 
 Queen, Sir Thomas Watson, with whose 
 " Lectures on Physic " every medical practi- 
 tioner in this country is familiar, says : " I 
 hold that no teacher or man of science who 
 by his own previous experiments, * * * 
 has thoroughly satisfied himself of the so- 
 lution of any physiological problem, is justi- 
 fied in repeating the experiments, however 
 mercifully, to appease the natural curiosity 
 of a class of students or of scientific friends." 
 Sir George Burroughs, President of the Royal 
 College of Physicians, says : " I do not think 
 that an experiment should be repeated over 
 and over again in our medical schools to 
 
 *% 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 29 
 
 illustrate what is already established.'' * Sir 
 James Paget, Surgeon Extraordinary to the 
 Queen, said before the commission that " ex- 
 periments for the purpose of repeating any- 
 thing already ascertained ought never to be 
 shown to classes." [363.] Sir William Fer- 
 gusson, F. R. S., also Surgeon to her Majesty, 
 asserted that " sufferings incidental to such 
 operations are protracted in a very shocking 
 manner"; that of such experiments there is 
 " useless repetition," and that " when once a 
 fact which involves cruelty to animals has 
 been fairly recognized and accepted, there is 
 no necessity for a continued repetition.' , 
 [1019.] Even physiologists some of them 
 practical experimenters in vivisection join 
 in condemning these class demonstrations. 
 Dr. William Sharpey, before referred to as a 
 teacher of physiology for over thirty years in 
 University College, says : " Once such facts 
 
 * ' ' Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Sub- 
 jecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes." 
 Question No, 175. Reference to this volume will hereafter be 
 made in this article by inserting in brackets, immediately after the 
 authority quoted, the number of the question in this report from 
 which the extract is made. 
 
3 o DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 fully established, I do not think it justi- 
 fiable to repeat experiments causing pain 
 to animals." [405.] Dr. Rolleston, Profes- 
 sor of Physiology at Oxford, said that " for 
 class demonstrations limitations should un- 
 doubtedly be imposed, and those limitations 
 should render illegal painful experiments be- 
 fore classes'" [129 1.] Charles Darwin, the 
 greatest of living naturalists, stated that he 
 had never either directly or indirectly experi- 
 mented on animals, and that he regarded 
 a painful experiment without anaesthetics 
 which might be made w 7 ith anaesthetics as de- 
 serving " detestation and abhorrence." [4672.] 
 And finally the report of this commission, to 
 which is attached the name of Professor 
 Huxley, says : " With respect to medical 
 schools, we accept the resolution of the Brit- 
 ish Association in i87i,that experimentation 
 without the use of anaesthetics is not a fitting 
 exhibition for teaching purposes." 
 
 It must be noted that hardly any of these 
 opinions touch the question of vivisection so 
 far as it is done without the infliction of pain, 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PA Y? 3 1 
 
 nor object to it as a method of original re- 
 search ; they relate simply to the practice of 
 repeating painful experiments for purposes 
 of physiological teaching. We cannot dis- 
 miss them as " sentimental " or unimportant. 
 If painful experiments are necessary for the 
 education of the young physician, how hap- 
 pens it that Watson and Burroughs are igno- 
 rant of the fact ? If indispensable to the 
 proper training of the surgeon, why are they 
 condemned by Fergusson and Paget ? If 
 requisite even to physiology, why denounced 
 by the physiologists of Oxford and London ? 
 If necessary to science, why viewed " with ab- 
 horrence " by the greatest of modern scientists ? 
 Another objection to vivisection, when 
 practiced as at present without supervision 
 or control, is the undeniable fact that habit- 
 ual familiarity with the infliction of pain upon 
 animals has a decided tendency to engender 
 a sort of careless indifference regarding suffer- 
 ing. " Vivisection," says Professor Rolleston 
 of Oxford, " is very liable to abuse. * * * 
 It is specially liable to tempt a man into cer- 
 
32 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 tain carelessness ; the passive impressions 
 produced by the sight of suffering growing 
 weaker, while the habit and pleasure of ex- 
 perimenting grows stronger by repetition." 
 [1287.] Says Doctor Elliotson : "I cannot 
 refrain from expressing my horror at the 
 amount of torture which Doctor Brachet in- 
 flicted. / hardly think knowledge is worth 
 having at such a purchased * A very strik- 
 ing example of this tendency was brought out 
 in the testimony of a witness before the 
 Royal Commission, Doctor Klein, a prac- 
 tical physiologist. He admitted frankly that 
 as an investigator he held as entirely indiffer- 
 ent the sufferings of animals subjected to his 
 experiments , that, except for teaching pur- 
 poses, he never used anaesthetics unless neces- 
 sary for his own convenience. Some mem- 
 bers of the Commission could hardly realize 
 the possibility of such a confession. 
 
 Do you mean you have no regard at all 
 to the sufferings of the lower animals ? " 
 
 * "Human Physiology," by John Elliotson, M. D., F. R. S. 
 (page 448). 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 33 
 
 " No regard at all" was the strange reply ; 
 and, after a little further questioning, the wit- 
 ness explained : 
 
 " I think that, with regard to an experi- 
 menter a man who conducts special re- 
 search and performs an experiment he has 
 no time, so to speak, for thinking what the 
 animal will feel or suffer ! " 
 
 Of Magendie's cruel disposition there 
 seems only too abundant evidence. Says 
 Doctor Elliotson : " Dr. Magendie, in one 
 of his barbarous experiments, which I am 
 ashamed to say I witnessed, began by coolly 
 cutting out a large round piece from the 
 back of a beautiful little puppy, as he would 
 from an apple dumpling ! " " It is not to be 
 doubted that inhumanity may be found in 
 persons of very high position as physiolo- 
 gists. We have seen that it was so in Magen- 
 die." This is the language of the report on 
 vivisection, to which is attached the name of 
 Professor Huxley. 
 
 But the fact which, in my own mind, con- 
 stitutes by far the strongest objection to 
 
34 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 unrestrained experiments in pain, is their 
 questionable utility as regards therapeutics. 
 Probably most readers are aware that physi- 
 ology is that science which treats of the vari- 
 ous functions of life, such as digestion, res- 
 piration and the circulation of the blood, while 
 therapeutics is that department of medicine 
 which relates to the discovery and application 
 of remedies for disease. Now I venture to 
 assert that, during the last quarter of a cen- 
 tury, infliction of intense torture upon un- 
 known myriads of sentient, living creatures, 
 has not resulted in the discovery of a single 
 remedy of acknowledged and generally accepted 
 value in the cure of disease. This is not known 
 to the general public, but it is a fact essential 
 to any just decision regarding the expediency 
 of unrestrained liberty of vivisection. It is 
 by no means intended to deny the value to 
 therapeutics of well-known physiological facts 
 acquired thus in the past such, for instance, 
 as the more complete knowledge we possess 
 regarding the circulation of the blood, or the 
 distinction between motor and sensory nerves, 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 35 
 
 nor can original investigation be pronounced 
 absolutely valueless as respects remote possi- 
 bility of future gain. /What the public has a 
 right to ask of those who would indefinitely 
 prolong these experiments without State 
 supervision or control is, " What good have 
 your painful experiments accomplished during 
 the past thirty years not in ascertaining facts 
 in physiology or causes of rare or incurable 
 complaints, but in the discovery of improved 
 methods for ameliorating human suffering, 
 and for the cure of disease? "/ If pain could 
 be estimated in money, no corporation ever 
 existed which would be satisfied with such 
 waste of capital in experiments so futile ; no 
 mining company would permit a quarter- 
 century of " prospecting " in such barren 
 regions. The usual answer to this inquiry is 
 to bring forward facts in physiology thus 
 acquired in the past, in place of facts in thera- 
 peutics. Thus, in a recent article on Magen- 
 die to which reference has been made, we are 
 furnished with a long list of such additions 
 to our knowledge. It may be questioned, 
 
36 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 however, whether the writer is quite scientifi- 
 cally accurate in asserting that, were our past 
 experience in vivisection abolished, " it would 
 blot out #//that we know to-day in regard to 
 the circulation of the blood, * * the growth 
 and regeneration of bone, * * * the origin 
 of many parasitic diseases, * * * the com- 
 municability of certain contagious and infec- 
 tious diseases, and, to make the list complete, 
 it would be requisite * * to take a wide 
 range in addition through the domains of path- 
 ology and therapeutics" Surely somewhat 
 about these subjects has been acquired other- 
 wise than by experiments upon animals ? 
 For example, an inquiring critic might wish 
 to know a few of the " many parasitic dis- 
 eases " thus discovered ; or what contagious 
 and infectious diseases, whose communica- 
 bility was previously unknown, have had this 
 quality demonstrated solely by experiments 
 on animals ? And what, too, prevented that 
 * wide range into therapeutics " necessary to 
 make complete the list of benefits due to 
 vivisection ? In urging the utility of a prac- 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 37 
 
 tice so fraught with danger, the utmost pre- 
 caution against the slightest error of over- 
 statement becomes an imperative duty. Even 
 so distinguished a scientist as Sir John Lub- 
 bock once rashly asserted in Parliament that, 
 " without experiments on living animals, we 
 should never have had the use of ether " ! 
 Nearly every American school-boy knows 
 that the contrary is true that the use of 
 ether as an anaesthetic the grandest discov- 
 ery of modern times had no origin in the 
 torture of animals. 
 
 I confess that, until very recently, I shared 
 the common impression regarding the utility 
 of vivisection in therapeutics. It is a belief 
 still widely prevalent in the medical profes- 
 sion. Nevertheless, is it not a mistake ? The 
 therapeutical results of nearly half a century 
 of painful experiments we seek them in 
 vain. Do we ask surgery ? Sir William Fer- 
 guson, surgeon to the Queen, tells us : " In 
 surgery I am not aware of any of these ex- 
 periments on the lower animals having led to 
 the mitigation of pain or to improvement as 
 
38 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 regards surgical details." [1049.] Have 
 antidotes to poisons been discovered thereby ? 
 Says Doctor Taylor, lecturer on Toxicology 
 for nearly half a century in the chief London 
 Medical School (a writer whose work on Poi- 
 sons is a recognized authority) : " I do not 
 know that we have as yet learned anything, 
 so far as treatment is concerned, from our 
 experiments with them (i. e, poisons) on ani- 
 mals." [1204.] Doctor Anthony, speaking 
 of Magendie's experiments, says : " I never 
 gained one single fact by seeing these cruel 
 experiments in Paris. / know nothing more 
 from them than I could have read." [2450.] 
 Even physiologists admit the paucity of thera- 
 peutic results. Doctor Sharpey says : " I 
 should lay less stress on the direct application 
 of the results of vivisection to improvement in 
 the art of healing, than upon the value of 
 these experiments in the promotion of phys- 
 iology." [394.] The Oxford professor of 
 Physiology admitted that Etiology, the science 
 which treats of the causes of disease, had, by 
 these experiments, been the gainer, rather 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 39 
 
 than therapeutics. [1302.] " Experiments on 
 animals," says Doctor Thorowgood, " already- 
 extensive and numerous, cannot be said to 
 have advanced therapeutics much."* Sir 
 William Gull, M. D., was questioned before 
 the commission whether he could enumerate 
 any therapeutic remedies which have been 
 discovered by vivisection, and he replied with 
 fervor : " The cases bristle around us every- 
 where ! " Yet, excepting Hall's experiments 
 on the nervous system, he could enumerate 
 only various forms of disease, our knowledge 
 of which is due to Harvey's discovery, two 
 hundred and fifty years ago ! The question 
 was pushed closer, and so brought to the 
 necessity of a definite reply, he answered : 
 " I do not say at present our therapeutics are 
 much, but there are lines of experiment 
 which seem to promise great help in thera- 
 peutics." [5529.] The results of two centuries 
 of experiments, so far as therapeutics are 
 concerned, reduced to a seeming promise ! 
 On two points, then, the evidence of the 
 
 * " Medical Times and Gazette," October 5, 1872. 
 
4 o DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 highest scientific authorities in Great Britain 
 seems conclusive first, that experiments 
 upon living animals conduce chiefly to the 
 benefit of the science of physiology, and little, 
 if at all, at the present day, to the treatment 
 of disease or the amelioration of human suf- 
 fering ; and, secondly, that repetition of pain- 
 ful experiments for class-teaching in medical 
 schools is both unnecessary and unjustifiable. 
 Do these conclusions affect the practice of 
 vivisection in this country ? Is it true that 
 experiments are habitually performed in some 
 of our medical schools, often causing extreme 
 pain, to illustrate well-known and accepted 
 facts experiments which English physiolo- 
 gists pronounce " infamous " and " atrocious," 
 which English physicians and surgeons stig- 
 matize as purposeless cruelty and unjustifia- 
 ble which even Huxley regards as unfit- 
 ting for teaching purposes, and Darwin de- 
 nounces as worthy of detestation and abhor- 
 rence ? I confess I see no occasion for 
 any over-delicate reticence in this matter. 
 Science needs no secrecy either for her 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 41 
 
 methods or results ; her function is to re- 
 veal, not to hide, facts. The reply to these 
 questions must be in the affirmative. In 
 this country our physiologists are rather fol- 
 lowers of Magendie and Bernard, after the 
 methods in vogue at Paris and Leipsic, than 
 governed by the cautious and sensitive 
 conservatism in this respect which generally 
 characterizes the physiological teaching of 
 London and Oxford. In making this state- 
 ment, no criticism is intended on the mo- 
 tives of those responsible for ingrafting con- 
 tinental methods upon our medical schools. 
 If any opprobrium shall be inferred for the 
 past performance of experiments herein con- 
 demned, the present writer asks a share in it. 
 It is the future that we hope to change. Now, 
 what are the facts ? A recent contributor to 
 the " International Review," referring to Mr. 
 Bergh, says that " he assails physiological ex- 
 periments with the same blind extravagance 
 of denunciation as if they were still performed 
 without anaesthetics, as in the time of Magen- 
 die." In the interests of scientific, accuracy 
 
42 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 one would wish more care had been given to 
 the construction of this sentence, for it im- 
 plies that experiments are not now performed 
 except with anaesthetics a meaning its au- 
 thor never could have intended to convey. 
 Every medical student in New York knows 
 that experiments involving pain are repeated- 
 ly performed to illustrate teaching. It is no 
 secret ; one need not go beyond the frank 
 admissions of our later text-books on physi- 
 ology for abundant proof, not only of this, but 
 of the extent to which experimentation is 
 now carried in this country. " We have long 
 been in the habit, in class demonstrations, of 
 removing the optic lobe on one side from a 
 pigeon," says Professor Flint, of Bellevue 
 Hospital Medical College, in his excellent 
 work on Physiology.* " The experiment of 
 dividing the sympathetic in the neck, es- 
 pecially in rabbits, is so easily performed that 
 the phenomena observed by Bernard and 
 Brown-Sequard have been repeatedly verified. 
 
 * A Text-book of Human Physiology, designed for the use of 
 Practitioners and Students of Medicine, by Austin Flint, Jr., M. D. 
 D. Appleton & Co. New York : 1876 (page 722). 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 43 
 
 We have often done this in class demonstra- 
 tions!' * " The cerebral lobes were removed 
 from a young pigeon in the usual way, an 
 operation * * which we practice yearly as 
 a class demonstration!" t Referring to the 
 removal of the cerebellum, the same authority 
 states : " Our own experiments, which have 
 been very numerous during the last fifteen 
 years, are simply repetitions of those of Flour- 
 ens, and the results have been the same without 
 exception!' % We have frequently removed both 
 kidneys from dogs, and when the operation is 
 carefully performed the animals live for from 
 three to five days. * * Death always takes 
 place with symptoms of blood poisoning." 
 In the same work we are given precise details 
 for making a pancreatic fistula, after the 
 method of Claude Bernard "one we have 
 repeatedly employed with success." " In per- 
 forming the above experiment it is generally 
 better not to employ an anaesthetic," || but 
 ether is sometimes used. In the same work 
 
 * Page 738. f Page 585. | Page 710. 
 
 Page 403. || Pages 269-70. 
 
44 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 is given a picture of a dog, muzzled and with 
 a biliary fistula, as it appeared the fourteenth 
 day after the operation, which, with details of 
 the experiment, is quite suggestive. * Bernard 
 was the first to succeed in following the 
 spinal accessory nerve back to the jugular 
 foramen, seizing it here with a strong pair of 
 forceps and drawing it out by the roots. This 
 experiment is practiced in our own country. 
 " We have found this result (loss of voice) to 
 follow in the cat after the spinal accessory 
 nerves have been torn out by the roots," says 
 Professor John C. Dal ton, in his Treatise on 
 Human Physiology, f " This operation is 
 difficult," writes Professor Flint, " but we have 
 several times performed it with entire suc- 
 cess ; " and his assistant at Bellevue Medi- 
 cal College has succeeded " in extirpating 
 these nerves for class demonstrations."^ In 
 withdrawal of blood from the hepatic veins of 
 a dog, "avoiding the administration of an 
 anaesthetic " is one of the steps recommend- 
 ed. The curious experiment of Bernard, 
 
 *Page 282. | Page 489. % Page 629. Page 463. 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 45 
 
 in which artificial diabetes is produced by 
 irritating the floor of the fourth ventricle of 
 the brain, is carefully described, and illustra- 
 tions afforded both of the instrument and the 
 animal undergoing the operation. The in- 
 experienced experimenter is here taught to 
 hold the head of the rabbit " firmly in the left 
 hand," and to bore through its skull " by a 
 few lateral movements of the instrument.' , 
 It is not a difficult operation ; it is one which 
 the author has " often repeated." He tell us 
 " it is not desirable to administer an anczs- 
 thetic" as it would prevent success ; and a 
 little further we are told that "we should 
 avoid the administration of anaesthetics in all 
 accurate experiments on the glycogenic func- 
 tion." * It is true the pleasing assurance is 
 given that " this experiment is almost pain- 
 less " ; but on this point, could the rabbit 
 speak during the operation, its opinion might 
 not accord with that of the physiologist. 
 
 There is one experiment in regard to which 
 the severe characterization of English scien- 
 
 * Pages 470-71. 
 
46 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 tists is especially applicable, from the pain 
 necessarily attending it. Numerous investi- 
 gators have long established the fact that the 
 great sensory nerve of the head and face is 
 endowed with an exquisite degree of sensi- 
 bility. More than half a century ago, both 
 Magendie and Sir Charles Bell pointed out 
 that merely exposing and touching this fifth 
 nerve gave signs of most acute pain. " All 
 who have divided this root in living animals 
 must have recognized, not only that it is sen- 
 sitive, but that its sensibility is far more acute 
 than that of any other nervous trunk in the 
 body." * " The fifth pair," says Professor 
 John C. Dalton, " is the most acutely sensi- 
 tive nerve in the whole body. Its irritation 
 by mechanical means always causes intense 
 pain, and even though the animal be nearly 
 unconscious from the influence of ether, any 
 severe injury to its large root is almost invar- 
 iably followed by cries." t Testimony on 
 this point is uniform and abundant. If 
 
 * Flint : " Text Book on Human Physiology" (page 641). 
 f Dalton's " Human Physiology " (page 466) 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 47 
 
 science speaks anywhere with assurance, it is 
 in regard to the properties of this nerve. Yet 
 every year the experiment is repeated before 
 medical classes, simply to demonstrate ac- 
 cepted facts. " This is an operation," says 
 Professor Flint, referring to the division of 
 this nerve, " that we have frequently per- 
 formed with success." He adds that " it is 
 difficult from the fact that one is working in 
 the dark, and it requires a certain amount of 
 dexterity, to be acquired only by practice." 
 Minute directions are therefore laid down for 
 the operative procedure, and illustrations 
 given both of the instrument to be used, and 
 of the head of a rabbit with the blade of the 
 instrument in its cranial cavity.* Holding 
 the head of our rabbit firmly in the left hand, 
 we are directed to penetrate the cranium in a 
 particular manner. " Soon the operator feels 
 at a certain depth that the bony resistance 
 ceases ; he is then on the fifth pair, and the 
 cries of the animal give evidence that the 
 nerve is pressed upon." This is one of 
 
 * Flint (pages 639-40). 
 
48 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 Magendie's celebrated experiments ; perhaps 
 the reader fancies that in its modern repeti- 
 tions the animal suffers nothing, being ren- 
 dered insensible by anaethetics ? ' // is much 
 more satisfactory to divide the nerve without 
 etherizing the animal, as the evidence of pain 
 is an important guide in this delicate opera- 
 tion"" Anaesthetics, however, are sometimes 
 used, but not so as wholly to overcome the 
 pain. 
 
 Testimony of individuals, indicating the 
 extent to which vivisection is at present prac- 
 ticed in this country might be given ; but it 
 seems better to submit proof within the reach 
 of every reader, and the accuracy of which is 
 beyond cavil. No legal restrictions whatever 
 exist, preventing the performance of any ex- 
 periment desired. Indeed, I think it may 
 safely be asserted that, in the city of New 
 York, in a single medical school, more pain 
 is inflicted upon living animals as a means of 
 teaching well-known facts, than is permitted 
 to be done for the same purpose in all the 
 medical schools of Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
DOES VIVISECTION- PAY? 49 
 
 And cui bono ? " I can truly say," writes a 
 physician who has seen all these experiments, 
 " that not only have I never seen any results 
 at all commensurate with the suffering in- 
 flicted, but I cannot recall a single experi- 
 ment which, in the slightest degree, has in- 
 creased my ability to relieve pain, or in any 
 way fitted me to cope better with disease." 
 
 In respect to this practice, therefore, evi- 
 dence abounds indicating the necessity for 
 that State supervision which obtains in Great 
 Britain. We cannot abolish it any more than 
 we can repress dissection ; to attempt it would 
 be equally unwise. Within certain limita- 
 tions, dictated both by a regard for the in- 
 terest of science and by that sympathy for 
 everything that lives and suffers which is the 
 highest attribute of humanity, it seems to me 
 that the practice of vivisection should be 
 allowed. What are these restrictions ? 
 
 The following conclusions are suggested 
 as a basis for future legislation: 
 
 /. Any experiment or operation whatever 
 upon a living animal^ during which by recog- 
 
5 o DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 nized ancesthetics it is made completely insen- 
 sible to pain, should be permitted. 
 
 This does not necessarily imply the taking 
 of life. Should a surgeon, for example, de- 
 sire to cause a fracture or tie an artery, and 
 then permit the animal to recover so as to 
 note subsequent effects, there is no reason 
 why the privilege should be refused. The 
 discomfort following such an operation would 
 be inconsiderable. This permission should 
 not extend to experiments purely physiologi- 
 cal and having no definite relation to surgery ; 
 nor to mutilation from which recovery is im- 
 possible, and prolonged pain certain as a se- 
 quence. 
 
 77. Any experiment performed thus, under 
 complete anesthesia, though involving any de- 
 gree of mutilation, if concluded by the extinc- 
 tion of life before consciousness is regained 
 should also be permitted. 
 
 To object to killing animals for scientific 
 purposes while we continue to demand their 
 sacrifice for food, is to seek for the appetite a 
 privilege we refuse the mind. It is equally 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 51 
 
 absurd to object to vivisection because it dis- 
 sects, or " cuts up." If no pain be felt, why- 
 is it worse to cut up a dog, than a sheep or 
 an ox? Such experiments as the foregoing 
 might be permitted to any extent desired in 
 our medical schools. 
 
 Far more difficult is the question of painful 
 experimentation. Unfortunately, it so hap- 
 pens that the most attractive original investi- 
 gations are largely upon the nervous system, 
 involving the consciousness of pain as a re- 
 quisite to success. Toward this class of ex- 
 periments the State should act with caution 
 and firmness. It seems to me that the fol- 
 lowing restrictions are only just. 
 
 Ill In view of the great cost in suffering, 
 as compared with the slight profit gained by 
 the student, the repetition, for purposes of class 
 instruction of any experiment involving pain 
 to a vertebrate animal should be forbidden by 
 law, 
 
 IV, In view of the slight gain to practical 
 medicine resulting from innumerable past ex- 
 periments of this kind, a painful experiment 
 
52 DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 
 
 upon a living vertebrate animal should be per- 
 mitted solely for purposes of original investiga- 
 tion, and then only under the most rigid sur- 
 veillance, arid preceded by the strictest precau- 
 tions. For every experiment of this kind the 
 physiologist should be required to obtain spe- 
 cial permission from a State board, specifying 
 on application (i) the object of the proposed 
 investigation, (2) the nature and method of 
 the operation, (3) the species of animal to be 
 sacrificed, and (4) the shortest period during 
 which pain will probably be felt. An officer 
 of the State should be given an opportunity 
 to be present ; and a report made, both of the 
 length of time occupied, and the knowledge, 
 if any, gained thereby. If these restrictions 
 are made obligatory by statute, and their vio- 
 lation made punishable by a heavy fine, such 
 experiments will be generally performed only 
 when absolutely necessary for purposes of 
 scientific research. 
 
 In few matters is there greater necessity 
 for careful discrimination than in everything 
 pertaining to this subject. The attempt has 
 
DOES VIVISECTION PAY? 53 
 
 been made in this paper to indicate how far 
 the State leaning to mercy's side may- 
 sanction a practice often so necessary and 
 useful, always so dangerous in its tendencies. 
 That is a worthy ideal of conduct which seeks 
 
 "Never to blend our pleasure or our pride 
 With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." 
 
 Is not this a sentiment in which even science 
 may fitly share ? Are we justified in neglecting 
 the evidence she offers, purchased in the past 
 at such immeasurable agonies, and in demand- 
 ing that year after year new victims shall be 
 subjected to torture, only to demonstrate what 
 none of us doubt ? That is the chief question. 
 For, if all compromise be persistently rejected 
 by physiologists, there is danger that some 
 day, impelled by the advancing growth of 
 humane sentiment, society may confound in 
 one common condemnation all experiments 
 of this nature, and make the whole practice 
 impossible, except in secret and as a crime. 
 
[From Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1884.] 
 
 VIVISECTION. . 
 
 Omitting entirely any consideration of the 
 ethics of vivisection, the only points to which 
 in the present article the attention of the 
 reader is invited are those in which scientific 
 inquirers may be supposed to have a common 
 interest. 
 
 I. One danger to which scientific truth 
 seems to be exposed is a peculiar tendency 
 to underestimate the numberless uncertain- 
 ties and contradictions created by experimen- 
 tation upon living beings. Judging from the 
 enthusiasm of its advocates, one would think 
 that by this method of interrogating nature 
 all fallacies can be detected, all doubts deter- 
 mined. But, on the contrary, the result of 
 
5 6 VIVISECTION. 
 
 experimentation, in many directions, is to 
 plunge the observer into the abyss of uncer- 
 tainty. Take, for example, one of the simplest 
 and yet most important questions possible, 
 the degree of sensibility in the lower ani- 
 mals. Has an infinite number of experiments 
 enabled physiologists to determine for us the 
 mere question of pain ? Suppose an amateur 
 experimenter in London, desirous of perform- 
 ing some severe operations upon frogs, to 
 hesitate because of the extreme painfulness 
 of his methods, what replies would he be likely 
 to obtain from the highest scientific authori- 
 ties of England as to the sensibility of these 
 creatures ? We may fairly judge their prob- 
 able answers to such inquiries from their 
 evidence already given before a royal com- 
 
 mission.* 
 
 Dr. Carpenter w r ould doubtless repeat his 
 opinion that " frogs have extremely little per- 
 ception of pain ;" and in the evidence of that 
 
 * The contradictory opinions ascribed to most of the authorities 
 quoted in this article are taken directly from the " Report of the 
 Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to 
 Experiments for Scientific Purposes," a Blue-Book Parliamentary 
 Report. 
 
VIVISECTION. 57 
 
 experienced physiologist George Henry- 
 Lewes, he would find the cheerful assurance, 
 " I do not believe that frogs suffer pain at 
 all." Our friend applies, let us suppose, to 
 Dr. Klein, of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 
 who despises the sentimentality which regards 
 animal suffering as of the least consequence ; 
 and this enthusiastic vivisector informs him 
 that, in his English experience, the experi- 
 ment which caused the greatest pain without 
 anaesthetics was the cauterization of the cor- 
 nea of a frog. Somewhat confused at finding 
 that a most painful experiment can be per- 
 formed upon an animal that does not suffer 
 he relates this to Dr. Swaine Taylor, of Guy's 
 Hospital, who does not think that Klein's ex- 
 periment would cause severe suffering; but 
 of another placing a frog in cold water 
 and raising the temperature to about ioo 
 " that," says Doctor Taylor, " would be a 
 cruel experiment : I cannot see what pur- 
 pose it can answer." Before leaving Guy's 
 Hospital, our inquiring friend meets Dr. 
 Pavy, one of the most celebrated physiologists 
 
58 VIVISECTION. 
 
 in England, who tells him that in this experi- 
 ment, stigmatized by his colleague as " cruel," 
 the frog would in reality suffer very little ; 
 that if we ourselves were treated to a bath 
 gradually raised from a medium temperature 
 to the boiling point, " I think we should not 
 feel any pain ; " that were we plunged at 
 once into boiling water, "even then," says the 
 enthusiastic and scientific Dr. Pavy, " I do 
 not think pain would be experienced ! " Our 
 friend goes then to Dr. Sibson, of St. Mary's 
 Hospital, who as a physiologist of many 
 years' standing, sees no objection to freezing, 
 starving, or baking animals alive ; but he de- 
 clares of boiling a frog, " That is a horrible 
 idea, and I certainly am not going to defend 
 it." Perplexed more than ever, he goes to 
 Dr. Lister, of King's College, and is astonished 
 upon being told " that the mere holding of a 
 frog in your warm hand is about as painful 
 as any experiment probably that you would 
 perform." Finally, one of the strongest ad- 
 vocates of vivisections, Dr. Anthony, pupil of 
 Sir Charles Bell, would exclaim, if a mere 
 
VIVISECTION. 59 
 
 exposition of the lungs of the frog were re- 
 ferred to, " Fond as I am of physiology, I 
 would not do that for the world ! ' 
 
 Now, what has our inquirer learned by his 
 appeal to science ? Has he gained any clear 
 and absolute knowledge ? Hardly two of 
 the experimenters named agree upon one 
 simple yet most important preliminary of 
 research^ the sensibility to pain of a single 
 species of animals. 
 
 Let us interrogate scientific opinion a little 
 further on this question of sensibility. Is there 
 any difference in animals as regards suscep- 
 tibility to pain ? Dr. Anthony says that we 
 may take the amount of intelligence in ani- 
 mals as a fair measure of their sensibility 
 that the pain one would suffer would be in 
 proportion to its intelligence. Dr. Ruther- 
 ford, Edinburgh, never performs an experi- 
 ment upon a cat or a spaniel if he can help it, 
 because they are so exceedingly sensitive ; 
 and Dr. Horatio Wood, of Philadelphia, tells 
 us that the nervous system of a cat is far 
 more sensitive than that of the rabbit. On 
 
60 VIVISECTION. 
 
 the other hand, Dr. Lister, of King's College, 
 is not aware of any such difference in sensi- 
 bility in animals, and Dr. Brunton, of St. 
 Bartholomew's, finds cats such very good 
 animals to operate with that he on one oc- 
 casion used ninety in making a single ex- 
 periment. 
 
 Sir William Gull thinks " there are but few 
 experiments performed on living creatures 
 where sensation is not removed," yet Dr. 
 Rutherford admits " about half " his experi- 
 ments to have been made upon animals sensi- 
 tive to pain. Professor Rolleston, of Oxford 
 University, tells us " the whole question of 
 anaesthetizing animals has an element of un- 
 certainty " ; and Professor Rutherford declares 
 it " impossible to say " whether even artificial 
 respiration is painful or not, " unless the ani- 
 mal can speak." Dr. Brunton, of St. Barthol- 
 omew's, says of that most painful experi- 
 ment, poisoning by strychnine, that it cannot 
 be efficiently shown if the animal be under 
 chloroform. Dr. Davy, of Guy's, on the con- 
 trary, always gives chloroform, and finds it no 
 
VIVISECTION. 6 1 
 
 impediment to successful demonstration, Is 
 opium an anaesthetic? Claude Bernard de- 
 clares that sensibility exists even though the 
 animal be motionless : " // sent la douleur, 
 mais il a, pour ainsi dire, perdu Fidee de la 
 defense!" But Dr. Brunton, of St. Bartholo- 
 mew's hospital, London, has no hesitation 
 whatever in contradicting this statement " em- 
 phatically, however high an authority it may 
 be." 
 
 Curare, a poison invented by South Ameri- 
 can Indians for their arrows, is much used in 
 physiological laboratories to paralyze the 
 motor nerves, rendering an animal absolutely 
 incapable of the slightest disturbing move- 
 ment. Does it at the same time destroy sen- 
 sation, or is the creature conscious of every 
 pang? Claude Bernard, of Paris, Sharpey, 
 of London, and Flint, of New Yorkt all 
 agree that sensation is not abolished ; on the 
 other hand, Rutherford regards curare as a 
 partial anaesthetic, and Huxley strongly inti- 
 
 * ' ' He feels the pain, but has lost, so to speak, the idea of self 
 defense." Lecons de Physiologie operatoire, 1879, p. 1 15. 
 f Text-Book of Human Physiology, p. 595. 
 
62 VIVISECTION. 
 
 mates that Bernard in thus deciding from ex- 
 periments that it does not affect the cerebral 
 hemispheres or consciousness, "jumped at a 
 conclusion for which neither he nor anybody 
 else had any scientific justification." This is 
 extraordinary language for one experimental- 
 ist to use regarding others ! If it is possible 
 that such men as Claude Bernard and Profes- 
 sor Flint have " jumped at " one utterly un- 
 scientific conclusion, notwithstanding the 
 most painstaking of vivisections, what security 
 have we that other of our theories in physiol- 
 ogy now regarded as absolutely established 
 may not be one day as severely ridiculed by 
 succeeding investigators ? Is it, after all, true, 
 that the absolute certainty of our most im- 
 portant deductions must remain forever hid- 
 den " unless the animal can speak " ? 
 
 II. Between advocating State supervision 
 of painful vivisection, and proposing with 
 Mr. Bergh the total suppression of all experi- 
 ments, painful or otherwise, there is manifestly 
 a very wide distinction. Unfortunately, the 
 suggestion of any interference whatever in- 
 
VIVISECTION. 63 
 
 variably rouses the anger of those most inter- 
 ested an indignation as unreasonable, to say 
 the least, as that of the merchant who refuses 
 a receipt for money just paid to him, on the 
 ground that a request for a written acknowl- 
 edgement is a reflection upon his honesty. 
 I cannot see how otherwise than by State 
 supervision we are to reach abuses which con- 
 fessedly exist. Can we trust the sensitiveness 
 and conscience of every experimenter ? No- 
 body claims this. One of the leading physiol- 
 ogists in this country, Dr. John C. Dalton, 
 admits "that vivisection may be, and has 
 been, abused by reckless, unfeeling, or un- 
 skillful persons ; " that he himself has witness- 
 ed abroad, in a veterinary institution, opera- 
 tions than which " nothing could be more 
 shocking." And yet the unspeakable atro- 
 cities at Alfort, to which, apparently, Dr. 
 Dalton alludes, were defended upon the very 
 ground he occupies to-day in advocating ex- 
 periments of the modern laboratory and class- 
 room ; for the Academie des Sciences decided 
 that there was " no occasion to take any 
 
64 VIVISECTION. 
 
 notice of complaints ; that in the future, as 
 in the past, vivisectional experiments must be 
 left entirely to the judgment of scientific men." 
 What seemed " atrocious " to the more tender- 
 hearted Anglo-Saxon was pronounced entirely 
 justifiable by the French Academy of Science. 
 A curious question suggests itself in con- 
 nection with this point. There can be little 
 doubt, I think, that the sentiment of com- 
 passion and of sympathy with suffering is 
 more generally diffused among all classes of 
 Great Britain than elsewhere in Europe ; 
 and one cannot help wondering what our 
 place might be, were it possible to institute 
 any reliable comparison of national humanity. 
 Should we be found in all respects as sensi- 
 tive as the English people ? Would indigna- 
 tion and protest be as quickly and spontane- 
 ously evoked among us by a cruel act ? The 
 question may appear an ungracious one, yet 
 it seems to me there exists some reason why 
 it should be plainly asked. There is a certain 
 experiment one of the most excruciating 
 
VIVISECTION. 65 
 
 that can be performed which consists in ex- 
 posing the spinal cord of the dog for the pur- 
 pose of demonstrating the functions of the 
 spinal nerves. It is one, by the way, which 
 Dr. Wilder forgot to enumerate in his sum- 
 mary of the " four kinds of experiments/' 
 since it is not the " cutting operation " which 
 forms its chief peculiarity or to which special 
 objection would be made. At present all this 
 preliminary process is generally performed 
 under anaesthetics : it is an hour or two later, 
 when the animal has partly recovered from 
 the severe shock of the operation, that the 
 wound is reopened and the experiment be- 
 gins. It was during a class demonstration 
 of this kind by Magendie, before the in- 
 troduction of ether, that the circumstance 
 occurred which one hesitates to think pos- 
 sible in a person retaining a single spark 
 of humanity or pity. " I recall to mind," 
 says Dr. Latour, who was present at the 
 time, " a poor dog, the roots of whose 
 vertebral nerves Magendie desired to lay bare 
 
 '*>>* OF THS X > 
 
66 VIVISECTION. 
 
 to demonstrate Bell's theory, which he claimed 
 as his own. The dog, mutilated and bleeding 
 twice escaped from under the implacable 
 knife, and threw its front paws around 
 Magendie's neck, licking, as if to soften his 
 murderer and ask for mercy ! I confess I was 
 unable to endure that heartrending spectacle." 
 
 It was probably in reference to this experi- 
 ment that Sir Charles Bell, the greatest Eng- 
 lish physiologist of our century, writing to 
 his brother in 1822, informs him that he hesi- 
 tates to go on with his investigations. " You 
 may think me silly," he adds, " but I cannot per- 
 fectly convince myself that I am authorized 
 in nature or religion to do these cruelties." 
 Now, what do English physiologists and vivi- 
 sectors of the present day think of the repe- 
 tition of this experiment solely as a class de- 
 monstration ? 
 
 They have candidly expressed their opinions 
 before a royal commission. Dr. David Fer- 
 rier, of King's college, noted for his experi- 
 ments upon the brain of monkeys, affirms his 
 
VIVISECTION. 67 
 
 belief that " students would rebel " at the 
 sight of a painful experiment. Dr. Ruther- 
 ford, who certainly dared do all that may be- 
 come a physiologist, confesses mournfully, 
 11 / dare not show an experiment upon a dog 
 or rabbit before students, when the animal is 
 not anaesthetized." Dr. Pavy, of Guy's Hos- 
 pital, asserts that a painful experiment intro- 
 duced before a class " would not be tolerated 
 for a moment." Sir William Gull, M. D., be- 
 lieves that the repetition of an operation like 
 this upon the spinal nerves would excite the 
 reprobation alike of teacher, pupils, and the 
 public at large. Michael Foster, of Cam- 
 bridge University, who minutely describes all 
 the details of the experiment on recurrent 
 sensibility in the " Handbook for the Physio- 
 logical Laboratory," nevertheless tells us, " I 
 have not performed it, and have never 
 seen it done," partly, as he confesses, "from 
 horror at the pain." And finally Dr. Burdon- 
 Sanderson, physiologist at University Col- 
 lege, London, states with the utmost em- 
 
6 8 VI VISE C TION. 
 
 phasis, in regard to the performance of 
 this demonstration on the spinal cord, " I 
 am perfectly certain that no physiologist 
 none of the leading men in Germany, for ex- 
 ample would exhibit an experiment of that 
 kind." 
 
 Now mark the contrast. This experiment 
 which we are told passes even the callous- 
 ness of Germany to repeat; which every lead- 
 ing champion of vivisection in Great Britain 
 reprobates for medical teaching ; which some 
 of them shrink even from seeing, themselves, 
 from horror at the tortures necessarily inflicted ; 
 which the most ruthless among them dare not 
 exhibit to the young men of England, this 
 experiment has been performed publicly again 
 and again in American medical colleges, 
 without exciting, so far as we know, even a 
 whisper of protest or the faintest murmur of 
 remonstrance ! The proof is to be found in 
 the published statements of the experimenter 
 himself. In his " Text-Book of Physiology," 
 Professor Flint says, " Magendie showed very 
 
VIVISECTION. 69 
 
 satisfactorily that the posterior roots (of the 
 spinal cord) were exclusively sensory, and 
 this fact has been confirmed by more recent 
 observations upon the higher classes of ani- 
 mals. We have ourselves frequently exposed 
 and irritated the roots of the nerves in dogs, 
 in public demonstrations in experiments on 
 the recurrent sensibility, . . . and in an- 
 other series of observations." * 
 
 This is the experience of a single profes- 
 sional teacher; but it is improbable that this 
 experiment has been shown only to the stu- 
 dents of a single medical college in the United 
 States ; it has doubtless been repeated again 
 and again in different colleges throughout 
 the country. If Englishmen are, then, so ex- 
 tremely sensitive as Ferrier, Gull, and Bur- 
 don-Sanderson would have us believe, we 
 must necessarily conclude that the sentiment 
 of compassion is far greater in Britain than 
 in America. Have we drifted backward in 
 
 * " A Text-Book of Human Physiology." By Austin Flint, Jr. 
 M, D. New York, 1876. Page 589 ; see also page 674, 
 
70 VIVISECTION. 
 
 humanity ? Have American students learned 
 to witness, without protest, tortures at the 
 sight of which English students would rebel ? 
 We are told that there is no need of any pub- 
 lic sensitiveness on this subject. We should 
 trust entirely, as they do in France, at Al- 
 fort, for example, " to the judgment of the 
 investigator." There must be no lifting of 
 the veil to the outside multitude ; for the 
 priests of this unpitying science there must 
 be as absolute immunity from criticism or in- 
 quiry as was ever demanded before the shrine 
 of Delphi or the altars of Baal. " Let them 
 exercise their solemn office," demands Dr. 
 Wilder, " not only unrestrained by law, but 
 upheld by public sentiment." 
 
 For myself, I cannot believe this position 
 is tenable. Nothing seems to me more cer- 
 tain than the results that must follow if popu- 
 lar sentiment in this country shall knowingly 
 sustain the public demonstration of an ex- 
 periments in pain, which can find no defender 
 among the physiologists of Great Britain. It 
 
VIVISECTION. 7l 
 
 has been my fortune to know something of 
 the large hospitals of Europe ; and I confess 
 I do not know a single one in countries where 
 painful vivisection flourishes, unchecked by 
 law, wherein the poor and needy sick are 
 treated with the sympathy, the delicacy, or 
 even the decency, which so universally char- 
 acterize the hospitals of England. When 
 Magendie, operating for cataract, plunged his 
 needle to the bottom of his patient's eye, that 
 he might note upon a human being the effect 
 produced by mechanical irritation of the re- 
 tina, he demonstrated how greatly the zeal of 
 the enthusiast may impair the responsibility 
 of the physician and the sympathy of man for 
 man. 
 
 III. The utility of vivisection in advancing 
 therapeutics, despite much argument, still re- 
 mains an open question. No one is so foolish 
 as to deny the possibility of future usefulness 
 to any discovery whatever ; but there is a 
 distinction, very easily slurred over in the 
 eagerness of debate, between present applic- 
 
72 VIVISECTION. 
 
 ability and remotely potential service. If 
 the pains inflicted on animals are absolutely 
 necessary to the protection of human life and 
 the advancement of practical skill in medi- 
 cine, should sentiment be permitted to check 
 investigation ? An English prelate, the Bishop 
 of Peterborough, speaking in Parliament on 
 this subject, once told the House of Lords 
 that " it was very difficult to decide what was 
 unnecessary pain," and as an example of the 
 perplexities which arose in his own mind he 
 mentioned " the case of the wretched man 
 who was convicted of skinning cats alive, be- 
 cause their skins were more valuable when 
 taken from the living animal than from the 
 dead one. The extra money," added the 
 Bishop, " got the man a dinner ! " * Whether 
 in this particular case the excuse was well 
 received by the judge, the reverend prelate 
 neglected to inform us ; but it is certain that 
 the plea for painful experimentation rests 
 substantially on the same basis. Out of the 
 
 * See Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, June 20, 1876. 
 
VIVISECTION, 7$ 
 
 agonies of sentient brutes we are to pluck the 
 secret of longer living and the art of surer 
 triumph over intractable disease. 
 
 But has this hope been fulfilled ? Pasteur, 
 we are told, has claimed the discovery of a 
 cure for hydrophobia through experiments on 
 animals. It may be well worth its cost 
 if only true; but we cannot forget that its 
 practical value is by no means yet demon- 
 strated. Aside from this, has physiological 
 experimentation during the last quarter of a 
 century contributed such marked improve- 
 ments in therapeutic methods that we find 
 certain and tangible evidence thereof in the 
 diminishing fatality of any disease ? Can one 
 mention a single malady which thirty years 
 ago resisted every remedial effort, to which 
 the more enlightened science of to-day can 
 offer hopes of recovery ? These seem to me 
 perfectly legitimate and fair questions, and, 
 fortunately, in one respect, capable of a scien- 
 tific reply. I suppose the opinion of the late 
 Claude Bernard, of Paris, would be generally 
 
74 VIVISECTION. 
 
 accepted as that of the highest scientific au- 
 thority on the utility of vivisection in " prac- 
 tical medicine ; " but he tells us that it is 
 hardly worth while to make the inquiry. 
 " Without doubt," he confessed, " our hands 
 are empty to-day, although our mouths are 
 full of legitimate promises for the future." 
 
 Was Claude Bernard correct in this opin- 
 ion as to the " empty hands ? " If scientific 
 evidence is worth anything, it points to the 
 appalling conclusion that, notwithstanding 
 all the researches of physiology, the chief forms 
 of chronic disease exhibit to-day in England a 
 greater fatality than thirty years ago. In the 
 following table I have indicated the average 
 annual mortality, per million inhabitants, of 
 certain diseases, first, for the period of five 
 years from 1850 to 1854, and secondly, for the 
 period twenty-five years later, from 1875 to 
 1879. The authority is beyond question ; 
 the facts are collected from the report to 
 Parliament of the Registrar-general of Eng- 
 land : 
 
VIVISECTION. 
 
 75 
 
 Average Annual Rate of Mortality in England, from 
 Causes of Death, per One Million Inhabitants. 
 
 
 
 
 During 
 
 During 
 
 NAME OF DISEASE. 
 
 Five Years, 
 
 Five Years, 
 
 
 1850-54. 
 
 1875-79, 
 
 Gout. .... 
 
 12 
 
 25 
 
 Aneurism, . 
 
 
 
 l6 
 
 32 
 
 Diabetes, . 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 41 
 
 Insanity, . 
 
 
 
 29 
 
 57 
 
 Syphilis, . 
 
 
 
 37 
 
 86 
 
 Epilepsy, . 
 
 
 
 105 
 
 119 
 
 Bright's disease, 
 
 
 
 3 2 
 
 182 
 
 Kidney disease, 
 
 
 
 94 
 
 114 
 
 Brain disease, 
 
 
 
 192 
 
 281 
 
 Liver disease, 
 
 
 
 215 
 
 291 
 
 Heart disease, . 
 
 
 
 651 
 
 1,335 
 
 Cancer, 
 
 
 
 302 
 
 492 
 
 Paralysis, . 
 
 
 
 440 
 
 501 
 
 Apoplexy, 
 
 
 
 454 
 
 552 
 
 Tubercular diseases and dis- 
 
 
 
 eases of the Respiratory Or- 
 
 
 
 gans, .... 
 
 6,424 
 
 6,886 
 
 Mortality from above 
 
 dise? 
 
 ises : 
 
 9,026 
 
 10,994 
 
 This is certainly a most startling exhibit, 
 when we remember that from only these few 
 causes about half of all the deaths in Eng- 
 land annually occur, and that from them re- 
 sult the deaths of two-thirds of the persons, 
 of both sexes, who reach the age of twenty 
 years.* What are the effects here discern- 
 
 * In 1879 the total mortality in England, above the age of 
 
7 6 VIUISECTION. 
 
 ible of Bernard's experiments upon diabetes ? 
 of Brown-Sequard's upon epilepsy and paraly- 
 sis ? of Flint's and Pavy's on diseases of the 
 liver ? of Ferrier's researches upon the func- 
 tions of the brain ? Let us appeal from the 
 heated enthusiasm of the experimenter to the 
 stern facts of the statistician. Why, so far 
 from having obtained the least mastery over 
 those malignant forces which seem forever to 
 elude and baffle our art, they are actually 
 gaining upon us ; every one of these forms of 
 disease is more fatal to-day in England than 
 thirty years ago; during 1879 over sixty 
 thousand more deaths resulted from these 
 maladies alone than would have occurred had 
 the rate of mortality from them been simply 
 that which prevailed during the benighted 
 period of 1850 to 1854 ! True, during later 
 years there has been a diminished mortality 
 in England, but it is from the lesser preval- 
 ence of zymotic diseases, which no one to- 
 day pretends to cure ; while the organic 
 
 twenty, from all causes whatsoever, was 287,093. Of these deaths, 
 the number occasioned by the sixteen causes above named, was 
 191,706, or almost exactly two-thirds. 
 
VIVISECTION. 77 
 
 diseases show a constant tendency to increase. 
 Part of this may be due to more accurate 
 diagnosis and clearer definition of mortality 
 causes : but this will not explain a phenome- 
 non which is too evident to be overlooked. 
 
 " It is a fact," says the Registrar-general, in 
 his report for 1879, " that while mortality in 
 early life has been very notably diminished, 
 tke mortality of persons in middle or advanced 
 life has bee7i steadily rising for a long period 
 of years"' It is probable that the same story 
 would be told by the records of France, Ger- 
 many, and other European countries ; it is 
 useless, of course, to refer to America, since 
 in regard to statistical information we still 
 lag behind every country which pretends to 
 be civilized. * Undoubtedly it would be a 
 false assumption which from these facts should 
 deduce retrogression in medical art or deny 
 advance and improvement ; but they cer- 
 tainly indicate that the boasted superiority of 
 modern medicine over the skill of our fathers, 
 
 * Even Japan, a country we are apt to consider as somewhat 
 benighted, has far better statistical information at hand than the 
 United States of America. 
 
78 VIVISECTION. 
 
 due to physiological researches, is not sus- 
 tained by the only impartial authority to 
 which science can appeal for evidence of 
 
 results. 
 
 * # * 
 
 What then is the substance of the whole 
 matter ? It seems to me the following con- 
 clusions are justified by the facts presented. 
 
 I. All experiments upon living animals 
 may be divided into two general classes ; ist 
 those which produce pain, slight, brief, severe 
 or atrociously acute and prolonged; and 2nd, 
 those experiments which are performed under 
 complete anaesthesia from which either death 
 ensues during unconsciousness, or entire re- 
 covery may follow. 
 
 II. The majority of vivisections requisite 
 for purposes of teaching physiological facts 
 may be so carried on as to take life with less 
 pain or inconvenience to the animal than is ab- 
 solutely necessary in order to furnish meat for 
 our tables. Those who would make it a penal 
 offense to submit to a class of college students 
 the unconscious and painless demonstration 
 
VIVISECTION. 79 
 
 of functional activity of the heart, for example, 
 and yet demand for the gratification of appe- 
 tite the daily slaughter of oxen and sheep 
 without anaesthetics, and without any attempt 
 to minimize the agony of terror, fear and pain 
 may not be inconsistent. But it is a view 
 the writer cannot share. 
 
 III. Prohibition of all experiments may be 
 fairly demanded by those who believe that 
 the enthusiastic ardor of the scientific experi- 
 menter or lecturer, will outweigh all con- 
 siderations of good faith, provided success or 
 failure of his experiment depend on the con- 
 sciousness of pain. In other words, that the 
 experimenter himself, as a rule, cannot be 
 trusted to obey the law, should the law re- 
 strict. 
 
 This also is an extreme position. 
 
 IV. Absolute liberty in the matter of pain- 
 ful experiments has produced admitted abuses 
 by physiologists of Germany, France and 
 Italy. In America it has led to the repetition 
 before classes of students of Magendie's ex- 
 treme cruelties, demonstrations which have 
 
80 VIVISECTION. 
 
 been condemned by every leading English 
 physiologist. 
 
 V. In view of the dangerous impulses not 
 unfrequently awakened by the sight of pain 
 intentionally inflicted, experiments of this 
 kind should be by legal enactment absolutely 
 forbidden before classes of students, especially 
 in our Public Schools. 
 
 VI. It is not in accord with scientific ac- 
 curacy to contend for unlimited freedom of 
 painful experimentation, on the ground of its 
 vast utility to humanity in the discovery of 
 new methods for the cure of disease. On the 
 contrary, so far as can be discovered by a 
 careful study of English mortality statistics, 
 physiological experiments upon living ani- 
 mals for fifty years back have in no single 
 instance lessened the fatality of any disease 
 below its average of thirty-five years ago. 
 
 VII. Vivisection, involving the infliction 
 of pain is, even in its best possible aspect, a 
 necessary evil, and ought at once to be re- 
 stricted within the narrowest limits, and 
 placed under the supervision of the State. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 For reasons sufficiently stated in the preceding 
 pages, the writer does not advocate the total abolition 
 of all experimentation. It is only fair to acknowl- 
 edge, however, that very strong and weighty argu- 
 ments in favor of legal repression have been advanced 
 both in this country and abroad, some of which are 
 herewith presented, as the other side of the question. 
 
 The cause of abolition has no more earnest and 
 eloquent advocate than Miss Frances Power Cobbe 
 of England. Through innumerable controversies 
 with scientific men in the public journals, magazines 
 and reviews, she has presented in awful array, the 
 abuses of unlimited and uncontrolled experimenta- 
 tion on the continent of Europe, and the arguments 
 in favor of total repression. The following letters, 
 extracts from her public correspondence, will indicate 
 her position. 
 
82 APPENDIX. 
 
 TENDER VIVISECTION. 
 (To the Editor of the ' ' Scotsman. ") 
 
 i, Victoria Street, London, S. W., 
 January 10, 1881. 
 Sir. An Italian pamphlet, DelVAzione del Dolore 
 sulla Respirazione (The Action of Pain on Respiration), 
 has just reached my hands, and as it is, I think, 
 quite unknown in this country, I will beg you to 
 grant me space for a few extracts from its pages. 
 The pamphlet is by the eminent physiologist, Man- 
 tegazza, and was published by Chiusi, of Milan. 
 Having explained the object of his investigations 
 to be the effects of pain on the respiratory organs, 
 the Professor describes (p. 20) the methods he de- 
 vised for the production of such pain. He found the 
 best to consist in "planting nails, sharp and numer- 
 ous, through the feet of the animal in such a manner 
 as to render the creature almost motionless, because 
 in every movement it would have felt its torment 
 more acutely *' (piantando chiodi acuti e numerosi at- 
 traverso le piante dei piedi in modo da render e immo- 
 bile o quasi Fa?iimale, per che ad ogni movimento avrebbe 
 sentito molto piu acuto il suo tormento). Further on he 
 mentions that, to produce still more intense pain 
 {dolore in/enso) he was obliged to employ lesions, 
 followed by inflammation. An ingenious machine, 
 constructed by ' ' our " Tecnomasio, of Milan, en- 
 abled him likewise to grip any part of an animal with 
 
APPENDIX. 83 
 
 pincers with iron teeth, and to crush, or tear, or lift 
 up the victim, "soas to produce pain in every pos- 
 sible way." A drawing of this instrument is ap- 
 pended. The first series of his experiments, Signor 
 Mantegazza informs us, were tried on twelve animals, 
 chiefly rabbits and guinea pigs, of which several 
 were pregnant. One poor little creature, ' ' far ad- 
 vanced in pregnancy," was made to endure dolori 
 atrocissimi, so that it was impossible to make any 
 observations in consequence of its convulsions. 
 
 In the second series of experiments twenty-eight 
 animals were sacrificed, some of them taken from 
 nursing their young, exposed to torture for an hour 
 or two, then allowed to rest an hour, and usually re- 
 placed in the machine to be crushed or torn by the 
 Professor for periods of from two to six hours more. 
 In the table wherein these experiments are summed 
 up, the terms motto do/ore and crudeli dolori are deli- 
 cately distinguished, the latter being apparently re- 
 served for the cases when the victims were, as the 
 Professor expresses it, lardellati di Modi ("larded 
 with nails "). 
 
 In conclusion, the author informs us (p. 25) that 
 these experiments were all conducted "con motto amor e 
 e pazienzaf" with much zeal and patience. 
 I am, etc., 
 
 Frances Power Cobbe. 
 
84 APPENDIX. 
 
 In a controversy with Dr. Pye-Smith, who had 
 read a paper before the British Association, Miss 
 Cobbe writes as follows to one of the public journals : 
 
 "Dr. Pye-Smith is reported to have said : 'Hap- 
 pily, the neccessary experiments were comparatively 
 few.' Few! What are a "few" experiments? 
 Professor Schiff in ten years experimented on 14,000 
 dogs, given over to him by the Municipality of 
 Florence, and returned their carcases so mangled 
 that the man who had contracted for their skins 
 found them useless. He also experimented on 
 pigeons, cats, and rabbits to the number, it is calcu- 
 lated, of 70,000 creatures ; and he now asks for ten 
 dogs a week in Geneva. All over Germany and 
 France there are laboratories ' ' using " (as the horri- 
 ble phrase is) numberless animals, inasmuch as I 
 have just received a letter stating that dogs are 
 actually becoming scarce in Lyons, and it is pro- 
 posed to breed them for the purpose of Vivisection. 
 Be this true or not, I invite any of your readers to visit 
 the office of the Victoria Street Society, and examine 
 the volumes of splendid plates of vivisecting instru- 
 ments, which will there be shown them, and then judge 
 for themselves whether it be for a few experiments that 
 those elaborate and costly inventions have become a 
 regular branch of manufacture. Let them examine 
 the volume of the English handbook of the physiol- 
 ogical laboratory, the volume of Cyon's magnificent 
 
APPENDIX. 85 
 
 atlas, with its 54 plates, the Archives de Physiologie, 
 with its 191 plates, the Physiologische Methodik, or 
 Claude Bernard's Lecons sur la Chaleur Animate, with 
 its pictures of the stoves wherein he baked dogs and 
 rabbits alive ; and after these sights of disgust and 
 horror they will know how to understand the word 
 "few "in the vocabulary of a physiologist. I am 
 glad to hear that a German opponent of Vivisection 
 recently entering a shop devoted to the sale of these 
 tools of torture, was greeted by the proprietor with a 
 volley of abuse: 'It is you and your friends,' he 
 said, ' who are destroying my trade. I used to sell 
 a hundred of Czermak's tables and other instruments 
 for one I sell now. 
 
 "Dr. Pye-Smith said : 'Many of the experiments 
 inflicted no pain or injury whatever^and the great ma- 
 jority of the rest were rendered painless by the use of 
 those beneficial agents which abolished pain and had 
 themselves been discovered by experiments upon 
 living animals.' As to the use of anaesthetics in 
 annulling the agonies of mutilated animals, the 
 audience ought to have asked Dr. Pye-Smith to 
 explain whether he intended to refer to chloroform, or 
 the narcotic morphia, or, lastly, to the drug curare. 
 If he referred to chloroform, Dr. Hoggan tells from 
 his own experience (Anceslhetics, p. 1), that 'nothing 
 can be more uncertain than its influence on the 
 lower animals ; many of them die before they become 
 
$6 APPENDIX. 
 
 insensible. Complete and conscientious anaesthesia 
 is seldom even attempted, the animal getting at most 
 a slight whiff of chloroform by way of satisfying the 
 conscience of the operator, or enabling him to make 
 statements of a humane character.' Even if it were 
 conscientiously administered at the beginning of an 
 experiment, how little would chloroform diminish 
 the misery of Rutherford's dogs or Brunton's ninety 
 cats, whose long-drawn agonies extended over many 
 days? How little could it affect in any way the 
 cases of starving, poisoning, baking, stewing to 
 death, or burning, like the twenty-five dogs over 
 which Professor Wertheim poured turpentine and 
 then set them on fire, leaving them afterwards slowly 
 to perish? If Dr. Pye-Smith was thinking of 
 morphia, the reader may refer to Claude Bernard's 
 Lemons de Physiologie Operatoire, where he will find 
 that great physiologists recommends its use ; but at 
 the same time mentions (as of no particular conse- 
 quence) that the animal subjected to its influence 
 still 'suffers pain.' I can hardly suppose, lastly, that 
 Dr. Pye-Smith was secretly thinking of curare, and 
 that he is one of those whom Tennyson says would 
 
 ' ' Mangle the living dog which loved him and fawned at his knee, 
 Drenched with the hellish oorali." 
 
 It is bad enough to "mangle" a loving and intelli- 
 gent creature without adding to its agonies the 
 paralysis of the powers of motion, and the increased 
 
APPENDIX. $7 
 
 sensibility to pain occasioned by this horrible drug, 
 which nevertheless Bernard, in the work above 
 quoted, says is in such common use among physiol- 
 ogists, that when an experiment is not otherwise 
 described, it may always be "taken for granted it has 
 been performed on a curarized dog." 
 
 Finally, Dr. Pye-Smith says, "It was remarkable 
 that the small residue of experiments in which some 
 amount of pain was necessary were chiefly those in 
 which the direct and immediate benefit to mankind 
 was more obvious. He referred to the trying of 
 drugs on animals, to discovering antidotes to poisons, " 
 etc, The bribe here offered to human selfishness 
 is an ingenious one. " Let us," the physiologists 
 say, "retain the right to put animals to torture, for 
 it is very ' remarkable ' that when we do so it is 
 always in your interest ! " Unluckily for this appeal 
 to the meaner feelings of human nature, which 
 these modern instructors of our young men are 
 not ashamed to put forward, it is difficult for them 
 to hit on any one instance wherein out of their " few " 
 (million) experiments any good to mankind has been, 
 even apparently, achieved. As Claude Bernard hon- 
 estly said, at least as regards any benefit for suffering 
 humanity, " Nbs mains sont vides." As to the trying 
 of drugs on animals, Dr. Pritchard, who is, I believe, 
 the best living authority on the subject, told the 
 Royal Commission (Minutes, 908), "I do not think 
 
88 APPENDIX. 
 
 that the use of drugs on animals can be taken as a 
 guide to the doses or to the action of the same drugs 
 on the human subjects." As to the discovery of an- 
 tidotes to poison, the only man who seems on the 
 verge of any success is the brave and noble fellow 
 who has been trying such experiments not on 
 animals but on himself. 
 
 In conclusion, I must add one word on Dr. Pye- 
 Smith's last sentence, namely, "that legislation 
 against vivisection is injurious to the best interests 
 of the community. " Sir, I know not what vivisectors 
 deem to be the best interests of the community. For 
 my part I do not reckon them to be the influence of 
 drugs, nor yet susceptible of being carved out with 
 surgical instruments. I do not think that they con- 
 sist in escape from physical pain, nor even in the 
 prolongation for a few years of our little earthly life. 
 I hold that the best interests of the community are 
 the moral and immortal interests of every soul in such 
 community, namely, the conquest of selfishness, 
 cowardice, and cruelty, and the development of the 
 god-like sense of justice and love the growth of the 
 divinest thing in human nature, the faculty of sym- 
 pathizing with the joys and sorrows of all God's 
 creatures. Believing these to be "the best interests 
 of the community, " I ask, without hesitation, for the 
 suppression of this abominable trade, which can best 
 be described as " Pitilessness practised as a profes- 
 
APPENDIX. 89 
 
 sion." If vivisection be indeed the true method of 
 studying physiology, if physiology cannot be ad- 
 vanced except by vivisection, if chemical observation 
 and microscopic research be useless for the purpose, 
 and nothing but the torture of animals and the de- 
 moralization of men will suffice for its progress then, 
 in God's name, I say, let physiology stop at the 
 point it has reached, even till the day of doom.^-I 
 am, Sir, with apologies for the length of this letter, 
 
 yours, etc. 
 
 Frances Power Cobbe 
 
 Certainly, as regards the ethics of vivisection, 
 nothing more eloquent has ever been written than 
 this closing paragraph. 
 
 In a letter to the London Times in December, 1884, 
 Miss Cobbe writes as follows : 
 
 TO THE EDITOR. 
 
 Sir, In your article on this subject on Saturday 
 last you called upon the opponents of vivisection to 
 answer certain questions. As I have been intrusted 
 for many years with the hon. secretaryship of the 
 leading anti-vivisectionist society, I beg to offer you 
 the following replies to those questions : 
 
 You ask first, Do we "deny 'that vivisection is 
 capable of yielding knowledge of service to man ? " 
 We are not so rash as to deny that any practice, even 
 the most immoral conceivable, might possibly yield 
 
90 APPENDIX. 
 
 knowledge of service to man ; and, in particular, we 
 do not deny that the vivisection of human beings by 
 the surgeons of classic times, and again by the great 
 anatomists of Italy in the 15th century, may very 
 possibly have yielded knowledge to man, and be 
 capable, if revived, of yielding still more. We have, 
 however, for a long time back called on the advo- 
 cates of the vivisection of dogs, monkeys, &c. , to 
 furnish evidence of the beneficial results of their work, 
 not as setting at rest the question of its morality, but 
 as an indispensable preliminary to justify them in 
 coming into the court of public opinion as defendants 
 of a practice obviously (as the Royal Commissioners 
 reported) "liable from its very nature to great abuse. " 
 
 We must be excused if we now hold it to be de- 
 monstrated that, whether vivisection be or be not 
 "capable of yielding useful knowledge," it certainly 
 yields only a scanty crop of it. Were there any- 
 thing like an abundant harvest, such a sample as this 
 would not have been produced with so much pomp 
 for public scrutiny. In short, we think with Dr. 
 Leffingwell that, "if pain could be measured by 
 money, there is no mining company in the world 
 which would sanction prospecting in such barren 
 regions. " 
 
 You ask us, Sir, secondly, "Do we affirm that the 
 benefit of mankind is not an adequate or sufficient 
 justification for the infliction of pain on animals?" 
 We have two answers to this question. 
 
APPENDIX. 9I 
 
 Assuming that by vivisection benefits might be 
 obtained for human bodies, we hold that the evil 
 results of the practice on human minds would more 
 than counterbalance any such benefits. The cow- 
 ardice and pitilessness involved in tying down a dog 
 on a table and slowly mangling its brain, its eyes, 
 its entrails; the sin committed against love and 
 fidelity themselves when a creature capable of dying 
 of grief on his master's grave is dealt with as a mere 
 parcel of material tissues, "valuable for purposes of 
 research " these are basenesses for which no physi- 
 cal advantages would compensate, and the prevalence 
 of such a heart-hardening process among our young 
 men would, we are convinced, detract more from the 
 moral interests of our nation than a thousand cases 
 of recovery from disease would serve those of a 
 lower kind. Even life itself ought not to be saved by 
 such methods, any more than by the cannibalism of 
 the men of the "Mignonette." 
 
 Our second answer is yet more brief. We do not 
 " deny that the benefit of man is a sufficient justifica- 
 tion for inflicting pain upon animals," provided that 
 pain is kept within moderate bounds, nor yet to tak- 
 ing life from them in a quick and careful manner. But 
 we do deny the right of man to inflict torture upon 
 brutes, and thus convert their lives from a blessing 
 into a curse. Such torture has been inflicted upon 
 tens of thousands of animals by vivisection ; and no 
 
92 APPENDIX. 
 
 legislation that ingenuity can devise will, we believe, 
 suffice to guard against the repetition of it so long as 
 it is sanctioned in any way as a method of research. 
 The use of vivisection if it have any use is practi- 
 cally inseparable from abuse. We therefore call 
 upon our countrymen to forego the poor bribes of 
 possible use which are offered to them, and of which 
 we have now seen a "unique and impressive " ex- 
 ample, and generously and manfully to say of vivi- 
 section as they once said of slavery "We will have 
 
 none of it" 
 
 I am, Sir, yours, etc., 
 
 Frances Power Cobbe. 
 
 Hengwrt, Dolgelly, Dec. 28, 1884. 
 
APPENDIX. Q 3 
 
 II. 
 
 [Report of American Anti vivisection Society, Jan. iSSS.] 
 There remain two grounds to adopt : one the total 
 abolition of all experiments ; the other the total aboli- 
 tion of all painful experiments. This latter position, 
 which is the one that Dr. Bigelow of Boston and Dr. 
 Leffingwell have assumed, has engaged our attention 
 for a long time ; but, after bestowing upon it careful 
 consideration, we feel that we must give it up as im- 
 practicable. To secure immunity from pain there 
 must be absolutely perfect anaesthesia. This can be 
 only obtained in two ways : one is by trusting to the 
 experimenter himself to give sufficient of the anaes- 
 thetic ; the other to insist that an assistant shall be 
 present for the express purpose of keeping the animal 
 under perfect anaesthesia. Now is it anyway likely 
 that either of these conditions would be observed ? " 
 
 III. 
 
 [From the ''Therapeutic Gazette," Detroit, Aug., 1SS0.] 
 '* Vivisection is grossly abused in the United States. 
 * * We would add our condemnation of the 
 ruthless barbarity which is every winter perpetrated 
 
94 APPENDIX. 
 
 in the Medical Schools of this country. History 
 records some frightful atrocities perpetrated in the 
 name of Religion ; but it has remained for the 
 enlightenment and humaneness of this century to 
 stultify themselves by tolerating the abuses of the 
 average physiological laboratory all conducted in 
 the name of Science. There is only one way to pro- 
 gress in Therapeutics ; and that is by clinical obser- 
 vation ; the noting of the action of individual drugs 
 under particular diseased conditions. He who has 
 the largest practice and is the keenest observer, and 
 the most systematic recorder of v/hat he sees, does 
 the most to advance Medicine." 
 
 IV. 
 
 [From editorial in "The Spectator^ London, July if, iggo.] 
 
 1 ' A memorial for the absolute abolition of vivisec- 
 tion has been presented to Mr. Gladstone with a great 
 many most influential signatures attached. For our 
 own part, were the experiments on the inoculation of 
 animal diseases excepted, experiments which, we 
 venture to say, have sometimes proved of the greatest 
 ^alue to animals themselves, we should, on the 
 whole, be content to go with the abolitionists, not 
 because we think all experiments, especially when 
 conducted under strict anaesthetics, wrong, but be- 
 cause when they are permitted at all it is so extremely 
 
APPENDIX. 95 
 
 difficult to enforce properly and fully humane con- 
 ditions. Dr. A. Leffingwell has sufficiently shown 
 in the able paper in the July Scribner 's Magazine, how 
 extremely few remedies of value have resulted from 
 this awfully costly expenditure of anguish. 'If pain 
 could be estimated in money' he justly says, 'no 
 corporation would be satisfied with such a waste of 
 capital.' Take, as the single illustration of this most 
 weighty sentence, Dr. Leffingwell's statement that 
 what the late Dr. Sharpey called ' Magen die's 
 infamous experiment' on the stomach of the dog, 
 has been repeated 200 times without establishing to 
 the satisfaction of scientific physiologists the theory 
 for which that act of wickedness was first committed. 
 No wonder the society for the Protection of Animals 
 from Vivisection eoes to extremes." 
 
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