334 CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
jectors we have known those “ whose house on that aspect was one 
pane of glass.” Some such folk have viewed without heart-break- 
ing a horse-race—a bull bait—a boxing match—a cocking—and a 
dog fight—nay, have voluntarily beheld a military flogging and an 
execution! some with indifference, others with pleasure even to par- 
ticipation, but none of which have they spoken of with the repro- 
bation to which they consign the anatomist who, for the highest and 
most useful purposes, is the instrument of pain to an animal less 
than is usually apprehended, and the sufferings of which are not 
augmented by the vague terrors and undefined fears which, it is 
known, are generally the severest portion of many indispensable and 
alarm-creating surgical operations.* The worthy persons we allude 
to also, we believe, ride in cabs when in haste, a contingency which 
it is on all hands agreed is not conducive to the natural benevolence 
of the drivér, nor to the ease and convenience of the horse; they 
have but few sorrows for factory children and hand-loom weavers ; 
they eat oysters alive ; they hunt the hare, the deer, and the fox ; 
and, with equal consistency and complacency, fish with live bait for 
perch and pike; none of which acts have the plea of necessity, nor 
all, the excuse of ‘‘ lawful pleasure,” the last being restricted to its 
severest signification. Their concern for the subjects of physiologi- 
cal experiments we would not denounce as pseudo-humanity, nor 
can we admit it to be quite genuine; it is an affair of mixed mo- 
tives, a sort of compromise between things they love but ought not, 
and things they love not. We fear that one grave charge could be 
substantiated against some experiments, namely, an unnecessary 
frequency of repetition, for verification: surely the results of many 
experiments are sufficiently proved to be uniform and genuine to 
deserve assent on authority, dispensing with reiterated proof not de- 
manded by scepticism ; and which are cruel, because not justified by 
necessity. That certain poisons are fatal to animal life in very. 
small doses is a fact no longer needing the proof to be exhibited ; yet 
we have seen in chemical lectures a cruel and unnecessary waste of 
animal life, a cruel and unnecessary infliction of pain, to demon- 
strate what is not doubtful, nor required to be seen in order to its 
belief: as that strychnia and hydrocyanic acid are deadly substances. 
* Miiller says that some animals, rabbits especially, are so frightened by 
the first steps of experiment, before they have suffered any considerable in- 
jury, that the skin has become apparently insensible to pain from cutting and 
pinching. This must, however, be considered unproved; for there are 
many examples of the endurance of suffering without the ordinary manifes- 
tations of sensibility. Another circumstance may be worth considering ; it 
is highly probable that the effects of terror on animals may somewhat vary 
from those in man, in whom the imagination plays so conspicuous a part, 
brutes having no analogous faculty. Fear, alone and indefinite, is less 
torturing than when it is combined with the uncertainty of ignorance of the 
evil to come, and which is supplied, and mostly magnified, by the imagina- 
tion ; and it may be that a slighter stimulus would produce proofs of sensi- 
bility—as tickling, which we well know excites peculiar sensibility when a 
ruder contact fails. 
