Dr Drummond on Humanity to Animals, 173^ 



calves are drained of their blood, and made to feel, by repeated 

 operations, all the miseries of exhaustion, merely to make the 

 veal of a whiter colour. Lobsters are brought to market with 

 pegs of wood thrust into one of their claw-joints to keep them 

 from opening, which, though it must produce continued and 

 dreadful pain, saves the slight trouble of tying them with a bit 

 of cord ; and that is enough. 



Your own recollection will recall but too many other examples 

 of cruelty ; but if you have not read of the experiments made 

 by anatomists on living animals, you will still have an imperfect 

 idea of the horrible excesses which are committed. The slightest 

 matter of the merest curiosity is made the pretext for mangling 

 living animals in the most dreadful way that can be imagined. 

 It is not always, I must observe, in consequence of a theory be- 

 ing formed, and a belief that if proved true it might be of im- 

 portance to our species, that experiments are made to determine 

 its correctness or fallacy. In France, especially, the most bar- 

 barous cutting up of living animals is pursued with a savage and 

 reckless enthusiasm, not for the purpose of verifying a probable, 

 and, if true, important conjecture, but to ascertain what effects 

 are produced by such butchery ; — I hesitate not to use the word, 

 for it is the fittest that could be selected. Experiments of this 

 description are unhallowed in their nature, and they will, almost 

 always, be unsatisfactory in their result to a rigid investigator of 

 truth ; for a conclusion can seldom be depended on, which is 

 derived from observation of a mangled suffering creature bleed- 

 ing under the dissecting-knife. 



That experiments have sometimes led to a little increase of 

 certain knowledge, I know ; but their frequent repetitionj after 

 all has been proved by them that is necessary, every humane 

 man must deprecate ; and still more is it to be regretted, that 

 the prosecution of experiments on living animals is recom- 

 mended to students, to boys, as a useful mode of employing 

 their time and improving their minds. I can find no excuse for 

 any man, who will dissect living dogs, rip up their bellies (or, as 

 the softened phrase is, lay open their abdomen), cut out their 

 stomach, or spleen, or kidneys, or perform other dreadful muti- 

 lations, merely to satisfy a feeling of curiosity ; and still less do 

 I think that he can be excused for recommending such practices 

 to his pupils. 



