72 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



"The Restrictive Act, in England, after a trial of 

 nineteen years, has failed to restrict according to 

 official returns. There is no reason to doubt it would 

 be the same in America. The seventy-four societies 

 of the world are demanding Total Abolition." 



Testimony to the same effect has been offered at this 

 hearing by several of the witnesses for the petitioners : 

 they have advocated this bill because " half a loaf is 

 better than no bread," and because it is " satisfactory 

 for the present." 



This is what the movement means, and its result, if 

 successful, means the plunging of medical science into 

 darkness worse than mediaeval. To show that the blow is 

 aimed at the practice of medicine as well as at medical 

 science, let me quote from an address 1 of Henry Bergh, 

 formerly president of the N. Y. S. P. C. A. and an ardent 

 opponent of vivisection : 



" As another proof of the profane extremes to 

 which these dissectors of living animals will go, 

 Robert McDonald, M.D., on being questioned, de- 

 clared that he had opened the veins of a dying person, 

 remember, and had injected the blood of an animal 

 into them, many times, and had met with brilliant 

 success. In other words, this potentate has discovered 

 the means of thwarting the decrees of Providence, 

 where a person was dying, and snatching away from 

 its Maker a soul which He had called away from 

 earth ! " 



It seems to me that this blasphemous denunciation of 

 a physician for saving a human life needs absolutely no 

 comment. 



1 Delivered before a joint committee of both Houses of the N. V. Legis- 

 lature, Albany, Feb. lo, 



