HENRY P. BOWDITCH 



PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, HARVARD MEDICAL 



SCHOOL 



(Opening for the remonstrants.) 



IT is part of the price we have to pay for our free institu- 

 tions that we must at all times be ready to defend the 

 things we most cherish. " Eternal vigilance is the price 

 of .liberty; " and the saying seems to be as true of the 

 liberty to study and investigate as of the political liberty 

 with regard to which the saying originated. That the 

 medical profession and the higher educational institutions 

 of the State should be called upon to defend before a legis- 

 lative committee their right to study and teach does not, 

 therefore, surprise any one, least of all one who has watched 

 the progress of the so-called anti-vivisection agitation dur- 

 ing the last quarter of a century. The efforts of misguided 

 benevolence have, at various times within this period, been 

 directed to checking the progress of medical science by 

 interfering with one of the most important methods by 

 which advances can be made. Fortunately for humanity 

 these efforts have in nearly all cases been rendered futile 

 by the sound common sense of the community. In Eng- 

 land alone of all civilized countries has a certain measure 

 of success crowned the efforts of fanatical agitators, and by 

 a restrictive law a serious blow has been inflicted upon 

 English physiology. As this law has been freely quoted 

 and recommended for imitation here in Massachusetts it 

 may be well to consider the way in which it was passed 



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