- 
Monthly Microscopical 
( 226 ) soul Oct. 1, 1870. 
‘PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 
Performance of Vivisection—Two papers of considerable import- 
ance were read at the British Association by Dr. Brown-Sequard ; but 
they were the more so because they led to the following remarks from 
Professor Huxley, who is especially and very properly desirous of re- 
moving experiment from unnecessary bans :—Professor Huxley said, 
the great theoretical problem they had now to determine was what effect 
artificial modifications and external conditions had upon living organ- 
isms—whether they produced changes which, being transmitted here- 
ditarily, became the basis of new races. Referring to a resolution 
which had been brought forward at a former meeting, which endeavoured 
to pledge the association to abstain from making grants of money to 
persons engaged in experiments which involved vivisection, he said 
they had before them that day one of the most experienced physiolo- 
gists and vivisectors of his day, and he had only to ask the audience 
to form their own judgment as to whether Dr. Brown-Sequard was 
likely to inflict one particle of pain upon any creature whatever without 
having a plain and definite purpose in view. For himself he might say 
that nothing was more grievous to him than to think of the existence 
of pain in anything whatever. Neither Dr. Brown-Sequard nor himself 
was indifferent to pain, and he hoped that in no sense were they cruel. 
He thought that the gentleman who brought forward the resolution to 
which he had referred, and the gentleman who supported him, hardly 
knew what they were dealing with. If his friend Dr. Brown-Sequard 
would pardon his referring to a matter personal to him, he would re- 
mind the meeting that that great experimental physiologist, and that 
accomplished vivisector, who had, he supposed, performed as many 
vivisections as any man in the world, some years ago thought it ad- 
visable to turn the vast knowledge of the diagnosis of disease which 
he had obtained by this means into actual practice, and he (Professor 
Huxley) could assure them, from what he knew, that before long his 
wonderful mastery over symptoms caused his consulting rooms to be 
absolutely crowded by human beings suffering under multiform varieties 
of nervous disorders, who sought at his hands and from his knowledge 
that relief which they could not obtain elsewhere. The prevention of 
cruelty to animals, when understood in its proper sense, was as good an 
object as men could devote themselves to, but when they confounded 
the brutal violence of the carter or the wife-beater with an experiment 
carried out by a man of science, gently and for the purpose of relieving 
misery, the enthusiasts in that cause should change their name, and 
convert themselves into a society for the promotion of cruelty to man- 
kind. If that question came before the Association again, and he hoped 
it would, he trusted they would recollect that the order of nature was 
such that certain kinds of truth were only attainable by experiments 
upon living animals, and that when they might result to the welfare 
of thousands and thousands of untold human beings who might other- 
