CHARLES DARWIN ON VIVISECTION 133 



I shall not sleep to-night." Mr. Darwin was alluding 

 to horrible so-called " experiments " which in former 

 days especially in the latter part of the eighteenth 

 century were made by utterly irresponsible and igno- 

 rant amateurs, witnessed by fashionable ladies, and 

 reported in the newspapers and letters of the day. It 

 is these reckless and useless " experiments " which rightly 

 excited horror and opposition a century ago, and were 

 described by the name " vivisection." We have to thank 

 these blundering philosophers of the salons of a past 

 age for the mistaken feeling with which some people 

 regard the really valuable and careful investigations 

 which are made by medical men at the present day, with 

 the use of every precaution to prevent pain to the 

 animals used. 



The testing of drugs, the inoculation of parasitic 

 disease, and the trial of different modes of removing or 

 controlling the disease so inoculated, carried on by 

 highly trained and learned men, who thoroughly know 

 what they are about, and who communicate with one 

 another from all parts of the world as to the progress 

 they are making in curing or even abolishing diseases, 

 sucn as diphtheria, cholera, sleeping sickness, and phthisis 

 are very different from the impudent unscientific " ex- 

 periments" of the days of Horace Walpole. The 

 inquiries carried on in the modern laboratories of our 

 great universities should not for a moment be confused 

 with the horrors performed to glorify and show the 

 superior cold-bloodedness of drawing-room pretenders 

 to science, in those strange times. 



I believe that most sensible people feel as Mr. Darwin 

 felt, and I myself would certainly subscribe to what he 

 wrote to me in the letter which I have quoted above. 

 Amongst those who feel thus strongly on the subject 

 there are some who can control their emotion and calmly 

 consider whether the pain inflicted under any given cir- 

 cumstances is justifiable as leading to a great ultimate 



