HENRY P. WALCOTT 



ACTING PRESIDENT OF HARVARD COLLEGE 



(at the time the hearings were held in 1901). 



CAMBRIDGE, March 23, 1901. 



DEAR DOCTOR, I am afraid that I cannot recall any- 

 thing of the talk I gave the other day, for I was entirely 

 upset by an accident to one of my eyes, which put me in 

 much pain, and this has not yet left me. 



What I meant to say was on these lines : 



The University has entire confidence in those of its 

 teachers who have occasion to use vivisection. 



It therefore protests against any unnecessary interference 

 with the freedom of teaching. 



Interference is not necessary, because the Corporation 

 and Board of Overseers have a numerically small repre- 

 sentation of medical men. Out of thirty-seven members, 

 five only are physicians; the rest are lawyers, judges, 

 philanthropists, clergymen, and business men. 



No question has ever been raised in these bodies, to my 

 knowledge, upon the subject of vivisection. 



The limitation of vivisection to medical men would have 

 shut out Pasteur, a chemist, the great benefactor of his 

 generation. 



Some of the best work of the State Board of Health is 

 founded on the practice, and has been fostered by ap- 

 propriations of money from the legislature year after year ; 

 no objection has ever been made to this work, which in- 

 cludes the production of antitoxin, through men employed 

 by the State and paid by the State. 



