224 LOUIS PASTEUR 



callous owners of live stock. On the other hand, 

 no one with the least knowledge of modern biology 

 and medicine can deny that the information gained 

 by animal experimentation has resulted in an 

 enormous saving of human and animal life, and 

 the prevention of untold suffering through dis- 

 ease. 



Even the giving of anesthetics, incredible as it 

 may now seem, met with violent opposition from 

 fanatical persons who thought it was wrong to 

 check pain which the Creator had designed to 

 inflict. The opponents of animal experimentation 

 are analogous to those who, for humanitarian rea- 

 sons, would spare a child the discomfort of a sur- 

 gical operation only to condemn him to a life of 

 suffering afterward for want of the relief which 

 the operation would bring. They would allow ani- 

 mals and human beings to go on suffering and 

 dying of lingering and painful diseases as they 

 have done in the past, rather than employ a rela- 

 tively few animals for the increase of our knowl- 

 edge. A humanity that would sacrifice the many 

 to save the few is no humanity at all, and those 

 who are guilty of the real cruelty to animals and 

 human beings alike are not the investigators, who 

 are laboring to reduce the field of useless suffering, 



