MAN'S RIGHT OVER ANIMALS. 763 



with the medical properties of cinchona, mercury, opium, and chloro- 

 form. The great physiological discoveries, though interesting as curi- 

 osities, have not been for our good. What has come from the knowl- 

 edge of the circulation of the blood ? Are we any more able to cure 

 affections of the spinal marrow because we know now, what we did 

 not know a hundred years ago, that there are motor cords and sensi- 

 tive cords in it ? If mortality is less now than formerly, it is not in 

 consequence of the progress of medicine, but of general hygiene. 

 Now, as much as three hundred years ago, doctors are impotent to 

 cure diseases, and all the improvements in modern medicine are due 

 to the attentive observation of the sick, not to experiments on ani- 

 mals." This reasoning finds credit with the ignorant, for it artfully 

 mingles a little truth with much error. The physician is, alas ! too 

 often powerless to contend against the ills that are raging around us. 

 But, really, we can not expect physiology to cure incurable diseases 

 and make men immortal ; its mission is to discover the truth, and it is 

 for the physician to apply the lessons of the new truth to the treat- 

 ment of diseases. Who can say seriously that modern medicine, en- 

 lightened by the great physiological discoveries of this and former 

 centuries, is not superior to the medicine of the middle ages ? The 

 circulation of the blood was discovered by vivisection. Can we form 

 a practical conception of a doctor who does not believe in the circula- 

 tion of the blood ? Is there a man among the members of the Society 

 for the Protection of Animals that would commit himself to the care of 

 such a doctor ? To be consistent, they should banish from therapeu- 

 tics all of it that is the result of experiment, and accept only that 

 which is due to chance or empiricism ; there would be very little left ! 

 We should not have galvanic electricity, for all our knowledge of this 

 is due to the experiments of vivisectors. We should possess, in the 

 way of medicines, only a few simples, and should have to employ them 

 empirically, without being permitted to obtain a clear idea of their 

 dangers or their advantages. We should not have chloral, or injec- 

 tions of morphine, or bromide of potassium. We should be reduced 

 to prescribe decoctions of cinchona, or that old theriac compounded of 

 nearly two hundred plants of different properties. 



It may be that the number of those whom modern medicine, rely- 

 ing upon experiment, has cured, is not large ; but certainly the num- 

 ber whom it has relieved is immense. If it can not cure disease, it can 

 at least prevent pain. Why, then, should so much account be taken 

 of a few pains of animals in the face of the thousands of men we have 

 saved from suffering ? We should not be indignant, that a dog may 

 be sacrificed every day in the thirty physiological laboratories that are 

 scattered over the whole world ; for the thirty dogs that suffer bear 

 no sort of proportion to the thousands of cases of pain through the 

 whole civilized world which medicine abbreviates or diminishes in a 

 single day. If the sick thus relieved could give their testimony and 



