34 



ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



Think of a ship infected with plague and also infested with 

 rats — the carriers of plague — about to enter port. 



Do you prefer to kill the rats and so prevent them, and the 

 disease from entering the port, causing the dissemination of 

 plague, or save the rats because .the slaughter of them would 

 be a painful procedure. 



The captain who says spare the rats, is guilty of the crim- 

 inal act of causing the death of many innocent human be- 

 ings. So it is with the anti-vivisectionists. They see only 

 the pain inflicted and do not heed the pain prevented. On 

 this score they are in a sense logical when they call Lord 

 Lister, discoverer of antiseptics, a brute, although he, of all 

 men, has been the means of preventing the greatest amount of 

 surgical suffering. They see only the pain which he deliber- 

 ately inflicted on a few rats and rabbits, they cannot see or they 

 refuse to see the measureless amount of misery he has pre- 

 vented. 



The slight pain animal experimentation causes in the world 

 is trivial when we consider that in the universe thousands and 

 thousands of pains, of fierce incessant struggles between liv- 

 ing animals, are going on constantly. Every rock and every 

 tree shelters ferocious combats and is the constant scene of 

 painful death agonies. 



Consider that in the entire world only 200,000 animals are 

 sacrificed annually for experimentation; and that two thous- 

 and million mammals die every year from natural causes. 



By giving an experimental disease to a rabbit, one scarce- 

 ly changes its lot. Surely the lot of a street dog is improved 

 when it enters an experimental laboratory. 



Many anti-vivisectionists amuse themselves by hunting and 

 fishing, while a physiologist is tremendously concerned every 

 time he causes blood to flow or inoculates an animal with 

 disease. I know the thoughts that animate him. The experi- 

 menter feels the responsibility of these animal lives. 



These men pass their lives in nauseous rooms, amidst pois- 

 on and virus, receiving no other compensation for long labors 

 than the satisfaction of duty accomplished. It is not in the 

 laboratories of the physiologist that a man grows rich. 



Let us consider whether the efforts of experimenters and 

 the sacrifice of animals has paid. 



In 1906, Dr. Flexner at Rockefeller Institute, developed a 

 serum for meningitis and sacrificed 25 monkeys and 100 



