1 32 FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



not unusual for a country cousin on a visit to London 

 to be taken as a treat to see half a dozen men and boys 

 hanged at Newgate, and then to complete the happy 

 day by a visit to Bedlam to see the madmen flogged ! 

 Fortunately, public opinion and education seem to have 

 been able actually to alter the operation of the emotions 

 excited by these brutalities so that to-day practically 

 everyone in the Western States of Europe regards the 

 unnecessary infliction of pain with horror and indigna- 

 tion, and is anxious to avoid witnessing pain, even in 

 cases where it is a necessary evil. 



It is a mistake to suppose that there is any tendency 

 on the part of scientific men or medical men to be cal- 

 lous or indifferent to the infliction of pain. The surgeon 

 sometimes has to inflict pain in order to prevent greater 

 future pain or death but he is not indifferent to the 

 pain he causes. He is not even " cruel only to be kind " 

 but appears cruel to the unthinking because he has to 

 give pain which he knows will save his patient from far 

 greater pain, and he has to maintain a calm and deter- 

 mined attitude in order to help those around him to 

 exercise self-control. The medical art is, above all 

 things, an art of removing and abolishing pain, and its 

 practitioners are all the more sensitive concerning pain 

 because they know more and see more of it than other 

 people, and make it their chief business to alleviate 

 suffering. 



Charles Darwin took a prominent part twenty-five 

 years ago in urging the Government of the day not to 

 make a law which would prevent physiologists and 

 medical men from obtaining knowledge as to animal 

 life and disease by experiment. The great naturalist 

 was a great lover of animals and a most gentle and 

 tender-hearted man. He wrote to me in 1870 : " Experi- 

 ment must, of course, be allowed for the progress of 

 physiology and medicine, but not for damnable and 

 detestable curiosity. I will write no more about it, or 



