THE DIMINUTION OF PAIN 139 



deadly disease, are we to say that this investigator must 

 not carry on his studies, must not find out how to stop 

 plague in future because to do so he will have to give 

 some amount of pain to a hundred or more animals ? 

 Clearly, if we justify the shipowner we must justify the 

 inquiries and experiments of the medical discoverer. In 

 both cases we must hold every sane man really does 

 hold that it is right to inflict pain with the expectation 

 (not a certainty in either case, but only a reasonable 

 probability) of preventing a far larger and more serious 

 amount of pain in the future. It is the choice of the 

 lesser of two evils. 



And thus we are led to admit bhat it is right that 

 experiments and studies attended with some pain to 

 animals should be carried on, on condition that compe- 

 tent and serious persons make them, for the purpose of 

 gaining increased knowledge of the processes of life and 

 disease. Such studies have already yielded great results 

 the pain in the wards of hospitals and in sick rooms 

 is not a tenth of what it was a hundred years ago. The 

 death-rate of great cities is a third less than it was fifty 

 years ago. Modern medicine and modern surgery are 

 really and demonstrably immense agencies for preventing 

 pain and the anguish and misery which is caused by 

 untimely death. 



A Society for the Defence of Research has been 

 established this year (1908) with the Earl of Cromer as 

 its president. The Society has issued some valuable 

 pamphlets showing what improvements in medical 

 Knowledge have been recently effected by means of 

 inoculations and other experiments in which animals 

 have been used though subjected to as little pain and 

 discomfort as consistent with the enquiries made. 

 Ignorant opponents of medical research assert that the 

 scientific study of the processes of life and disease in 

 laboratories has not helped in the great progress in 

 medical practice which marks the last fifty years. But 



