VIVISECTION IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 173 



1882 : "Pardon me for saying that 'if tbe rose would smell as sweet 

 by any other name,' surely the blood of tortured animals would also 

 retain its repulsive odor under any other designation." Perhaps Mr. 

 Bergh and Miss Cobbe vaguely apprehend that, should the intelligent 

 people of their respective lands once realize that three fourths or more 

 of what are indiscriminately stigmatized as vivisections are absolutely 

 painless, their denunciations would have little weight, their occupa- 

 tions would be gone. 



Specific repressive legislation is commonly directed against the 

 ignorant or the vicious. Laws for the suppression of vivisection stand 

 almost alone as aimed against those who are charged with the mental 

 and physical welfare of the community, and whose official positions 

 and social relations would enable them to further materially the gen- 

 eral objects of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 

 I am not aware of any action upon the part of the teachers of this 

 State respecting Mr. Bergh's efforts to deprive them of the most effect- 

 ive means of illustrating physiology, but the sentiment of the medical 

 profession has been clearly expressed. As stated by Dr. Dalton,* and 

 in the " Medical Record " for February 28, 1880, and February 10, 

 1883, Resolutions affirming the value of experiments upon animals, and 

 deprecating legislative interference therewith, have been adopted by 

 seven medical schools of the State, by the State Medical Society, and by 

 sixteen organizations representing various localities or special branches 

 of the science. It is hardly to be expected that many physicians f or 

 teachers will enroll themselves under the banner of humanity to ani- 

 mals so long as the same staff carries the black flag of anti-vivisection, 

 which in their eyes is inhumanity to man. 



Few educated persons doubt that experimental physiology has prac- 

 tically contributed something to human welfare, and the probability 

 or even possibility that knowledge so gained might save the life or the 

 health of a single child must be felt, at least by the parents of that 

 child, to justify the sacrifice of " a wilderness of monkeys," not to 

 mention lower forms. Naturally, therefore, among the writers in 

 favor of vivisection, nearly all have confined their arguments to the 

 medical and surgical advances which have been made or aided thereby. 

 Some (Dalton, Foster, Leffingwell, and Yeo) have implied, perhaps unin- 

 tentionally, that physiology appertains only to medical science ; while 

 others (Owen, Tait, etc.), J defenders as well as opposers of vivisec- 



* " Experimentation upon Animals," chapter iv. 



f According to the Report for 1882, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty 

 to .Animals contains four hundred and two members or donors. Four of them are phy- 

 sicians. 



\ Richard Owen, "Experimental Physiology, its Benefits to Mankind," etc., London, 

 1882; Lawson Tait, "The Uselessness of Vivisection upon Animals as a Means of Sci- 

 entific Research," " Transactions of the Birmingham Philosophical Society," April 20, 

 1882; G. F. Yeo, " Vivisection and Practical Medicine," " Popular Science Monthly," 

 March, 1883. 



