i88i.] VIVISECTION. 387 



Allow me to demur to your calling your conjoint article a 

 " symposium " strictly a '' drinking party." This seems to me 

 very bad taste, and I do hope every one of you will avoid any 

 semblance of a joke on the subject. I know that words, like 

 a joke, on this subject have quite disgusted some persons not 

 at all inimical to physiology. One person lamented to me 

 that Mr. Simon, in his truly admirable Address at the Medi- 

 cal Congress (by far the best thing which I have read), spoke 

 of the fantastic sensuality * (or some such term) of the many 

 mistaken, but honest men and women who are half mad on 

 the subject. . . . 



[To Dr. Lauder Brunton my father wrote in February 

 1882 :— 



*' Have you read Mr. [Edmund] Gurney's articles in the 

 * Fortnightly ' f and ' Cornhill .? ' \ They seem to me very 

 clever, though obscurely written, and I agree with almost 

 everything he says, except with some passages which appear 

 to imply that no experiments should be tried unless some im- 

 mediate good can be predicted, and this is a gigantic mistake 

 contradicted by the whole history of science."] 



* ' Transactions of the International Medical Congress,' 188 1, vol. iv. 

 p. 413. The expression "lackadaisical" (not fantastic), and "feeble sen- 

 suality," are used with regard to the feelings of the anti-vivisectionists. 



f " A chapter in the Ethics of Pain," * Fortnightly Review,' 1881, vol. 

 XXX. p. 778. 



:|: "An Epilogue on Vivisection," 'Cornhill Magazine,' 1882, vol. xlv. 

 p. 191. 



