152 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



kept occupied by a bit of sugar held before it; and it 

 will undergo even much more pain without discom- 

 posure, if well amused. But when that child is three 

 or four years older, he will understand that something 

 is going to be done to him ; he will be terrified at the 

 preparations ; neither sugar nor anything else will 

 divert his mind ; and he will be conscious of all the 

 pain given, and probably exaggerate it from terror. 

 If pain can thus be a secondary thought in the minds 

 of infants, it can be still more so in that of animals. 



" A house-dog met with an accident, by which a 

 large piece of the skin and flesh above the eyebrow 

 was cut and hung loose over the eye. His master (a 

 surgeon, who furnishes the anecdote) determined to 

 stitch it. Now, it is well known that the skin being 

 extremely sensitive stitching is one of the most 

 painful parts even of serious operations. The dog 

 was taken into a shed, muzzled for the safety of the 

 operator, and the cut stitched up. All the time that 

 it was being done, he was straining and struggling to 

 get away, though never whining nor crying. The 

 instant he was released, he dashed into a corner of 

 the shed, and seized a bone which he had had his eye 

 upon, and which had possessed his soul while he had 

 been undergoing operation without anesthetics, and 

 proceeded to enjoy it. 



" A horse, whose leg was badly broken, was sen- 

 tenced to be shot, but there was considerable delay 

 before the execution could take place. The bones 

 were completely broken through, so that the leg hung 

 loose, a state of things during which the least motion 

 causes a human patient most exquisite agony. No 

 suffering is worse than that from a broken bone, and 

 the only way to prevent its becoming intolerable is to 

 avoid the slightest jar which can grate the fragments 



