WILLIAM TOWNSEND PORTER 83 



The otherwise amiable citizens who make these attacks 

 cry to the doctors : " You torture dumb animals in your 

 laboratories ! " 



Astonished at all this heat without visible fuel, the doc- 

 tors reply : " You are mistaken. Most of our experiments 

 are painless. The few exceptions are cases in which the 

 ultimate purpose of the experiment, namely, the relief of 

 suffering in men and animals, would be defeated by the 

 use of anesthetics." 



" We do not believe you," is the prompt retort. " Doc- 

 tors cannot be trusted to speak ill of their colleagues." 



" But you forget," the doctors answer, " that medical 

 schools are university departments. The professors in the 

 Harvard Medical School, for example, are appointed and 

 controlled by the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard 

 University. These are not medical bodies. You have 

 asked three Massachusetts legislatures for police powers to 

 enable you to enter Harvard laboratories at any time upon 

 suspicion. Do you then believe that the President and 

 Fellows of Harvard, or the governing board of any other 

 university in Massachusetts, could fail to hear of atrocities 

 committed in their own schools, or would fail to make the 

 repetition of such atrocities impossible? Have you not 

 been unable to produce at the legislative hearings any evi- 

 dence whatever of the abuse of animal experimentation in 

 Massachusetts? " 



" Yes," is the reply, " it is true that we have thus far 

 received from three committees of the legislature nothing 

 but unanimous leave to withdraw; but we are sure that 

 there would be evidence in plenty, if only we could get into 

 the laboratories some day when we were not expected." 



This is no imaginary sketch, but a faithful transcript of 

 statements actually made. These attacks upon the liberty 

 of research would never take place except for unmerited 

 distrust of the universities and of the medical profession. 



