154 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



law, it is pretty important to know what the law is now. 

 \Ye have ] a law against cruelty: 



" Whoever overloads, overdrives or overworks, or 

 deprives of necessary sustenance, or cruelly beats or 

 mutilates'* an animal, or procures this to be done to any 

 animal; or having charge or being in custody of any 

 animal, inflicts unnecessary cruelty upon it, etc., is 

 punishable by imprisonment in a jail for a period not 

 exceeding one year, or by a fine not exceeding two 

 hundred and fifty dollars, or both." [A punishment 

 more severe than expressed in the bill before you.] 



" A corporation which violates this provision is punishable 

 by fine and is responsible for the knowledge and acts of 

 its agents or servants. Officers are authorized to arrest, 

 without a warrant, persons who are suspected of being 

 guilty of this act, and, finally, there is a most stringent 

 and unusual provision to the effect that when a complaint 

 is made to a court or magistrate, and when the complainant 

 believes, and has reasonable cause for believing, that this 

 law is being violated in any particular building or place, 

 and the magistrate or court is satisfied that there is rea- 

 sonable cause, he may issue a search warrant to search the 

 building. There is, therefore, in Massachusetts a law, 

 applicable to vivisection, of the most extreme kind, which 

 would enable any person who could satisfy a court that he 

 has reasonable cause to suspect that cruelty was being 

 practised in a Massachusetts medical school, or elsewhere, 

 to procure a search warrant to search the premises and 

 discover the animal and the parties cruelly treating it, and 

 to cause the arrest without a warrant of the persons who 

 are suspected of practising the cruelty. There is also a 

 later act, passed in 1894, which absolutely prohibits the 



1 Public Statutes, Chap. 207, paragraph 52. 



2 Italics mine. 



