VIVISECTION IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 169 



that, coincidently with these meteorological disturbances, huge spots 

 and other evidences of commotion have appeared in the sun. Here 

 is a splendid field for investigation. 



-4^*- 



VIVISECTION IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 



Br BURT G. WILDEE, M. D. 



" I know that physiology can not possibly progress except by means of experiments 

 on living animals, and I feel the deepest conviction that he who retards the progress of 

 physiology commits a crime against mankind." Charles Darwin.* 



THE objects of this article are 1. To enlarge the slender store 

 of published facts respecting vivisection in the United States. 

 2. To discuss briefly certain general aspects of the question. 3. To 

 examine the existing and proposed laws concerning it. 4. To con- 

 sider Mr. Henry Bergh's fitness to initiate such legislation. 5. To 

 express what seems to be the sentiment of most well-informed, hu- 

 mane persons regarding experimentation upon animals. 



I. Aside from editorial articles and resolutions of medical socie- 

 ties, public discussion of vivisection in this, the State in which it is 

 already somewhat limited by law, has been nearly confined to four 

 gentlemen besides the present writer. Mr. Bergh's single contribu- 

 tion will be more conveniently considered later. Professor J. C. 

 Dalton has contented himself hitherto with the general statement f 

 that " the exhibition of pain in an experimental laboratory is an 

 exceptional occurrence. As a rule, all the cutting operations are 

 performed under the influence of ether. . . . This is because the in- 

 fliction of pain is generally no part of the experimenter's object, and 

 on every account it is preferable for him to avoid it." The foregoing 

 refers directly only to laboratory investigations, and it may undoubt- 

 edly be inferred that, among the experiments before classes in the 

 lecture-room, the painful constitute a still smaller minority. J What 

 they have been is shown by Dr. A. J. Leffingwell* in quotations from 

 the larger physiological treatises of Professors Dalton and Flint. 

 Among the numerous illustrative operations mentioned as performed 

 by these teachers in two of the largest medical schools in the coun- 



* From a letter to Professor Holmgren, April, 1, 1881, published in "Nature," April 

 21, 1881, p. 583. 



f "Experimentation upon Animals," etc., New York, 1875, p. 8. 



\ In a letter to the writer, dated January 11, 1S83, Professor Austin Flint, Jr., says, 

 " In my class demonstrations, I do not make experiments upon animals involving more 

 pain than is caused, for example, by pithing to kill, or injecting an anaesthetic subcuta- 

 neously." 



* "Does Vivisection pay?" "Scribner's Monthly," July, 1880, pp. 391-399. 



