70 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



out. I do not see what I can do beyond this, or how 

 I can give Mr. Forster any better guarantee than is 

 given in my assurance that my dislike to the infliction 

 of pain both as a matter of principle and of feeling is 

 quite as strong as his own can be. 



" If Mr. Forster is not satisfied with this assurance, 

 and with its practical result that our experiments are 

 made only on non-sentient animals, then I am afraid 

 that my position as teacher of physiology must come 

 to an end. 



" If I am to act in that capacity I cannot consent to 

 be prohibited from showing the circulation in a frog's 

 foot because the frog is made slightly uncomfortable by 

 being tied up for that purpose ; nor from showing the 

 fundamental properties of nerves, because extirpating 

 the brain of the same animal inflicts one-thousandth 

 part of the prolonged suffering which it undergoes 

 when it makes its natural exit from the world by being 

 slowly forced down the throat of a duck, and crushed 

 and asphyxiated in that creature's stomach." (Letter 

 to Sir J. Donnelly.) 



Another illustration of the working of the English law, 

 as well as of the spirit in which the warfare against med- 

 ical science is conducted, is afforded by the following 

 extract from a pamphlet issued by the Society for the 

 Abolition of Vivisection: 



" THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 



" The succeeding advertisement, publishing abroad 

 a fact so important and encouraging to the cause, and 

 so striking a proof of the success of our crusade, was 

 inserted in the Afoming Post of September 13, 14, and 

 15, 1 88 1 ; Nature of September 15; the Standard of 

 September 15, 16, and 17; the Athcmcum of Septem- 



