CHAPTER XII 



VIVISECTION AND MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS 



I. VIVISECTION, 1875 1882 



To Lord Play fair. Letter 766 



A Bill was introduced to the House of Commons by Messrs. Lyon 

 Playfair, Walpole and Ashley, in the spring of 1875, but was withdrawn 

 on the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the whole 

 question. Some account of the Anti-Vivisection agitation, the intro- 

 duction of bills, and the appointment of a Royal Commission is given in 

 the Life and Letters, III., p. 201, where the more interesting of Darwin's 

 letters on the question are published. 



Down, May 26th, 1875. 



I hope that you will excuse my troubling you once again. 

 I received some days ago a letter from Prof. Huxley, in 

 Edinburgh, who says with respect to your Bill : " the pro- 

 fessors here are all in arms about it, and as the papers have 

 associated my name with the Bill, I shall have to repudiate it 

 publicly, unless something can be done. But what in the 

 world is to be done ? " 1 Dr. Burdon Sanderson is in nearly 

 the same frame of mind about it. The newspapers take 

 different views of the purport of the Bill, but it seems 

 generally supposed that it would prevent demonstrations on 

 animals rendered insensible, and this seems to me a mon- 

 strous provision. It would, moreover, probably defeat the 

 end desired ; for Dr. B. Sanderson, who demonstrates to 

 his class on animals rendered insensible, told me that some 

 of his students had declared to him that unless he had shown 

 them what he had, they would have experimented on live 

 animals for themselves. Certainly I do not believe that any 

 one could thoroughly understand the action of the heart with- 

 out having seen it in action. I do not doubt that you wish 

 to aid the progress of Physiology, and at the same time save 



1 The letter is published in full in Mr. L. Huxley's interesting chapter 

 on the vivisection question in his father's Life, I., p. 438. 



435 



