136 FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



now to the effect that medical students perform horri- 

 ble and painful operations (vivisections, as the agitators 

 term them,) on live animals in secret or with the con- 

 nivance of their teachers. It was proved twenty-five 

 years ago that these stories were false. At the same 

 time an elaborate law was passed to satisfy the emotional 

 persons misled by the agitators, which made it necessary 

 for an experimenter (1) to have a licence (dependent on a 

 certificate as to his competency) ; (2) that he should use 

 anaesthetics ; and (3) that experiments should only be 

 carried out in licensed laboratories. 



The agitators of the present day have by heart-rend- 

 ing stories, similar to those told twenty-five years ago, 

 produced a similar excitement and a similar result, 

 namely, a Royal Commission on Vivisection, which has 

 been occupied for a year and a half in listening to the 

 statements and delusions of those who declare that the 

 law made twenty-five years ago is insufficient, and that 

 all sorts of cruelties are committed by the physiologists 

 and doctors. The Commission has also questioned the 

 leading physiologists and medical men in the country, 

 and listened to their voluntary statements. I have seen 

 the very voluminous report of the evidence thus given 

 on both sides. The various accusations made against 

 the medical men in the conduct of their laboratories 

 have been carefully gone into. It is contended, on their 

 side, that these charges are based on misunderstanding 

 the misunderstanding which one would expect from an 

 ignorant person with a strong feeling or prejudice in the 

 direction of the misunderstanding. For instance, the 

 fact that chloroform is administered and the animal 

 rendered insensible when operated on, has been over- 

 looked in some of the accounts which excited the so- 

 called " antivivisectors " notably in the misleading 

 account of " the brown dog." The whole of the evidence 

 should be read by those who are really in doubt on the 

 matter. Probably it will not be long before the Com- 



