CONCLUSIONS 



destroying the unclaimed, stray dogs, as all 

 civilized cities must, a "Society for the Pre- 

 vention of Cruelty to Animals" protested 

 against it, but it had no solution of the problem 

 to offer. Its only solution was to leave the 

 dogs at large.* 



unskillful, in such complete violation of all the principles of 

 modern aseptic surgery, that the attainment by them of any 

 kind or degree of success would be quite out of the question. 



"As it happens, however, men have already won world- 

 wide recognition for their repeated achievements in both 

 preventative and curative medicine, and their triumphs are 

 acclaimed by their professional brethren as those naturally to 

 be expected when experts of the highest rank have been en- 

 abled to pursue their studies with the best of facilities and in 

 the best of conditions. The story told by the woman who 

 'went there cleaning in the afternoons' is, indeed, sufficiently 

 horrifying, for those who can accept it as true, but in its 

 essential features it is much such a story as might be told by 

 an equally ignorant and sentimental observer who watched what 

 goes on daily in the operating theatre of any big hospital 

 with men, women, and children substituted for dogs and cats 

 to make the tale of torture and mutilation the more dreadful. 

 In the hospitals as in the Rockefeller Institute, the use of knives 

 and saws on living tissue is a frightful spectacle if viewed out 

 of relation to purpose and consequence. But in both cases, 

 when viewed in that relation, the cutting, and even the moans 

 of fright or pain, take on an entirely different aspect. One 

 sees no longer a revival of the mediaeval torture chamber, but 

 the application of beneficient knowledge as it guides practiced 

 hands in the alleviation of suffering and the conquering of disease. 



1 ' The testimony of this new witness may not be intentionally 

 false, but false much of it certainly and obviously is, and its 

 similarity to that given, and conclusively refuted, in England 

 concerning the famous brown dog, will instantly strike anybody 

 familiar with the details of the case which resulted so dis- 

 astrously for Mr. Coleridge and Miss Lind-ap-Hageby. " 



*At the same time, the official in charge of clear- 

 ing the streets of these stray animals, received a letter 

 threatening him with death if the killing by the city of un- 

 muzzled and unleashed dogs was not immediately discontinued. 



157 



