82 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



are not very unlike those of thirty years ago. Then 

 the talk was of dissection, and the disgusting folly which 

 forced tender youths to despoil the dead in order to learn 

 facts already set down in books. To-day those bitter 

 attacks are known only to the curious. The cry now is 

 against vivisection. In this sober and educated Common- 

 wealth of Massachusetts eminent citizens have been pub- 

 licly accused of torturing animals behind bolted doors 

 in our foremost institutions of learning. Thousands of 

 pamphlets have been circulated to prove that the pro- 

 fessors and governing boards of our leading universities 

 have conspired to suppress the facts. It is asserted that 

 the medical profession may sink to the vivisection of 

 human beings, unless its doings be inspected regularly by 

 the writers of these pamphlets and their friends. 



This clamor in turn will pass away. All men will learn 

 that as we go to Nature to study the structure of a dead 

 body, so must we go to Nature to study the action of a 

 living one. The agitation against animal experimentation 

 will be forgotten, as that against dissection has been for- 

 gotten. Its place will be taken by some new cry; for the 

 public feeling against the professions is based upon lasting 

 causes, deep in human nature. A learned profession, such 

 as medicine or the law, is a powerful combination of 

 selected minds trained in a like way and bound together 

 by like aims. Its power excites a slight distrust, and this 

 distrust is strengthened by the layman's consciousness of 

 ignorance and his feeling o f unavoidable dependence. 

 With rare exceptions, the law is sealed to all but lawyers, 

 and medicine is a book which cannot be read by amateurs, 

 though they love to thumb the leaves. No professions 

 are more honored, but none are so much feared. Anti- 

 dissection, anti-vaccination, anti-vivisection, and other at- 

 tacks upon the medical profession are born of this vague 

 distrust and traditional fear. 



