2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



care and wise instruction we can prevent much of the sickness and 

 sorrow of the race, and bid back the Angel of Death. 



Hygiene well named after Hygeia, the goddess of good health- 

 must be one of your principal future studies, and its lessons ever on 

 your lips ; line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, and there 

 a great deal. The greatest need of our College to-day is a Professor- 

 ship of Hygiene. Would that in this vast audience some one could 

 be found who would endow such a chair in the Woman's Medical Col- 

 lege of Pennsylvania ! 



You must also direct public opinion, and especially the opinion of 

 your own sex, in reference to medical questions ; for your information 

 and studies will fit you to be their instructors in all such technical 

 questions. 



It is to one of these medical issues of the day that I purpose to 

 direct your attention at present one as to which intense feeling, espe- 

 cially among women, has been aroused viz., the question of experi- 

 ments upon animals. 



Epithets and invective have been freely used, but, as befits the audi- 

 ence and the occasion, I shall endeavor to approach it in a perfectly 

 calm and fair spirit, seeking to lay before you only one aspect of a 

 many-sided question, viz., the actual practical benefits it has conferred 

 upon man and animals a fact that is constantly denied, but which 

 medical evidence proves to be incontestable. 



I shall not consider the important older discoveries it has given us, 

 but only those since 1850, almost all of which are within my own per- 

 sonal recollection. Even of these I must omit nearly all of its con- 

 tributions to physiology and to pathology, though so much of our 

 practice is based upon these, and confine myself to the advances it has 

 enabled us to make in medical and surgical practice. I shall endeavor 

 to state its claims with moderation, for an extravagant claim always 

 produces a revulsion against the claimant, and is as unwise as it is 

 unscientific. 



Again, it must be borne in mind that, as in nearly every other ad- 

 vance in civilization and in society, so in medicine, causes are rarely 

 single, but generally multiple and interwoven. While vivisection has 

 been a most potent factor in medical progress, it is only one of several 

 factors the disentanglement of which and the exact balancing of how 

 much is due to this or to that are often difficult and sometimes impos- 

 sible. Let me add one word more. All that I may say is purely upon 

 my own responsibility. I commit the opinion of no one else to any 

 view or any statement of fact. 



Medicine in the future must either grow worse, stand still, or grow 

 better. 



To grow worse, we must forget our present knowledge happily, 

 an inconceivable idea. 



