THE STUDY OF PHYSIOLOGY. 53 



and happily even these are generally productive rather of discomfort 

 than of pain. Let me give you an example of such a vivisection, far 

 more painful than the immense majority of those of the laboratory. 

 Suppose a country surgeon were sent for late at night to some case of 

 urgent peril ; knowing that his ride is for life or death, and unsparing 

 of himself or his horse, he rides him to the utmost limits of endurance, 

 and beyond: who would not applaud the action ? Those only who ap- 

 pear deliberately to believe that our life is worth less than that of many 

 sparrows, those legislators only who look forward to the time when 

 wars will cease, not because of human slaughter, of devastated homes, 

 of all the horrors which the world has endured for centuries, but be- 

 cause of the cruelties to which the horses in the artillery are subjected. 

 TVe, who are familiar with human suffering and sorrow, which our 

 knowledge is all too feeble to prevent, best understand how, in testing 

 some new remedy on a less precious fellow creature than a man, one 

 who is truly humane may be tempted to forget the comparatively 

 trivial suffering of a rabbit or a frog. 



But some enthusiastic opponent will say : " I can not pretend to 

 doubt that these experiments are in every sense of the word useful ; 

 but we ought not to purchase the benefit they confer by inflicting 

 pain upon innocent creatures. I would sign a petition to-morrow to 

 put down all field sj^orts by law, I would allow no operation upon 

 domestic animals, and I will abstain from all animal food until I am 

 certain that I can eat creatures which have been killed without suffer- 

 ing pain. But if I were lying at the point of death, and you brought 

 an animal to my bedside and assured me that by putting it to pain my 

 life would be saved, I would refuse to j^urchase it on such cruel 

 terms." We may hope that the excellent person who made this heroic 

 profession would, in the hour of trial, be better advised, but if not we 

 may surely reply: "Eight reverend sir, you are the best judge of the 

 value of your own life, and, if you think proper to sacrifice it to the 

 comfort of a Guinea-pig, we must submit to the loss with such resigna- 

 tion as we can muster ; but when you say that in obedience to this 

 silly whim you will let your dearest friend suffer, allow the sacrifice 

 of the most important life, and forbid those studies which have already 

 rescued multitudes from deformity and misery and death, then those 

 of us who have to do with the real responsibilities of life, and on whom 

 presses the awful sense of impotence to which our defective science 

 too often leaves us, answer that we too have duties to fulfill, and to 

 the best of our power we mean conscientiously to fulfill them." 



There is, I fear, another reason which animates much of the oppo- 

 sition to physiological experiments. It is nothing else than aversion 

 from the methods and the results of science. It may be that an excuse 

 for this dislike has been furnished by the pretense of false science, 

 and the arrogance of much even which is true. But surely no reason- 

 able creature, from such trivial irritation, can deliberately wish to 



