78 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



estimates, which have never been disputed) of the possibly 

 painful experiments on animals 



Seventy-five per cent are rendered painless by anes- 

 thetics. 



Twenty per cent are about as painful as vaccination. 



Four per cent are about as painful as the healing of a 

 wound. 



One per cent are about as painful as an ordinary surgical 

 operation performed without anesthetics. 



In inquiring how far this infliction of pain is justified by 

 the benefits to the human race, we are struck by the fact 

 that when the suffering of an animal has as a result an 

 increase of human knowledge, the disproportion between 

 the suffering and the benefit becomes practically infinite, 

 for the suffering remains a constant quantity, while the 

 benefit, since it accrues to the whole human race and 

 through all time, is multiplied by an infinite factor. 



It is hardly necessary, even were it possible, to enumerate 

 all the discoveries that have been made in physiology by 

 means of experiments on animals, for there is hardly a 

 single organ of the body whose functions have not been 

 investigated and explained in this way. It will suffice to 

 quote the words of Dr. Loomis, who in his presidential 

 address before the third Congress of American Physicians 

 and Surgeons held in Washington in 1894, spoke as 

 follows : 



" Every distinct advance, every established principle, 

 and every universally accepted law of medical science 

 has been in the past, and will be in the future, the indi- 

 rect if not the direct result of animal experimentation." 



With reference to this petition for the restriction of vivi- 

 section I desire to remind the committee that vivisection 

 is already restricted. It is restricted in the first place by 

 the general law against cruelty to animals, and in the second 



