52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



men wlio in this, as in other matters, consistently refuse to give up to 

 argument the notions which were formed by prejudice. 



This sentiment is, I admit, the degradation of just feeling. To 

 many unaffectedly compassionate hearts there is a peculiar pang in 

 thinking of suffering which is deliberately inflicted, with only the jus- 

 tification of duty, instead of the excuse of ignorance or passion. They 

 see in the helplessness of the dumb animals an appeal for pity, almost 

 like that of childhood, and are justly indignant with the selfish cruelty 

 so often exercised upon them. All honor to the efforts which have 

 banished so many cruel sports from England ; all honor to the society 

 which seeks to prevent cruelty to animals ! If it can point to any ad- 

 ditional means by which the sufferings of animals in the cause of sci- 

 ence can be diminished, we shall be anxious to adopt them. If it can 

 point to any abuse in one of our laboratories, we will hasten to correct 

 it. This society has honorably declared that they know of none. 

 That physiologists have been heedless, or even callous, in their experi- 

 ments upon animals in past times, when men were strangely insensible 

 even to human suffering, or in countries where a healthy result of 

 Christian civilization has not yet been seen in habitual gentleness to 

 animals, I need not deny. Such cases have been eagerly sought and 

 sometimes most unfairly judged. Only lately a learned body felt 

 itself not strong enough to retain the admittedly invaluable services of 

 an eminent foreigner, who had once admitted that when absorbed in 

 scientific and beneficent researches he lost sight of any pain that might 

 be inflicted.* Is not this the very excuse which is held valid in the case 

 of sport ? Doubtless we ought to be ever mindful of every branch of 

 duty, but such occasional forgetfulness does not show hardness of 

 heart. It is an excusable weakness for a student of medicine to shud- 

 der or to faint at the sight of blood, but he learns that this merely 

 physical sensibility becomes selfish and mischievous if indulged : he is 

 taught to suppress all such exhibition of emotion, and to let it stimu- 

 late without j^aralyzing his efforts to relieve. But no one surely would 

 think the hysterical youth more truly humane than the surgeon whose 

 compassion is shown in the very firmness with which he inflicts a tem- 

 porary pain for an ultimate good, 



I have hitherto rested the whole argument upon the lawfulness of 

 inflicting pain and death iipon the lower animals for the sake of sci- 

 ence and humanity, but as a matter of fact I may again assure those 

 who, while assenting to the justice of the plea, yet shrink from what it 

 may involve, that the great majority of experiments upon animals are 

 rendered painless, and that the remainder are mostly those experiments 

 which are most immediately and directly subservient to medical art, 



* Fortunately, Dr. Klein, whose researches in raicroscopic anatomy and pathology are 

 so well known and appreciated, knows that he retains the confidence and respect of his 

 scientific brethren, and we hope that his honorable connection with the largest school 

 of medicine in London will strengthen other and closer ties in binding him to England. 



