WILLIAM T. SEDGWICK 



PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF 

 TECHNOLOGY, AND FORMERLY BIOLOGIST TO THE 

 STATE BOARD OF HEALTH 



THE bill is wrongly named. It is really designed to restrict 

 rather than to regulate, as is shown by line three. (The 

 bill will be found in the closing statement by Dr. Ernst.) 



Painful experiments are to be subject to restriction, but 

 not painful operations, such as are employed in agriculture, 

 in gunning, fishing, opening oysters, robbing cows of their 

 calves, etc. 



An experiment is not something blundered into or 

 carelessly undertaken, but a careful and painstaking in- 

 vestigation. It is interrogating nature under carefully 

 prearranged conditions. Under this bill such experimen- 

 tation cannot be done except for the discovery of unknown 

 or uncertain phenomena likely to be useful for human life 

 or to alleviate human suffering. No room is left for teach- 

 ing; no place for painless vivisection for the benefit of 

 learners and students or for the welfare of animals. All 

 this must cease. Experimental physics, chemistry, me- 

 chanics, hydraulics, and even experimental botany may 

 go on, but experimental biology, experiments upon even 

 unconscious animals for teaching purposes, must cease. 

 Against this I earnestly protest, for it is a monstrous in- 

 terference with the freedom of teaching ; a denial of the 

 right to use modern methods in an important department 

 of education. 



Against the allegation that physiology may be taught 

 adequately from text-books, I give my personal experience 



