NA TURE 



65 



THURSDAY, MAY 25, 1876 



LORD CARNARVON'S VIVISECTION BILL 



THE Report of the Royal Commission appointed to 

 consider the question of Vivisection has led to 

 the introduction of a bill into Parliament, the clauses 

 of which restrict the practice of experiments upon living 

 animals to a very great extent. According to the act — 



(i) Experiments must be performed with a view only to 

 the advancement, by new discovery, of knowledge which 

 will be useful for saving or prolonging human life, or 

 alleviating human suffering. 



(2) In a registered place. 



(3) By a person holding a licence from one of her 

 Majesty's principal Secretaries of State. 



(4) The animal must, during the whole experiment, be 

 under the complete influence of some anassthetic, [not 

 urari ; and, 



(5) Must be killed before it recovers from the influence 

 of the anaesthetic. 



(6) The experiment shall not be performed for demon- 

 strational purposes ; nor, 



(7) For the purpose of attaining manual skill. 



It is but natural to suppose that concomitantly with 

 the rapid advances which have, within the last century or 

 so, been made in our knowledge of scientific method, 

 similar progress has occurred in the theory of legislation. 

 And yet our leading politicians, in introducing the above 

 quoted Bill, are bold enough to advance, as a motive for 

 the legal machinery they are endeavouring to enforce, 

 the idea that there is any real substantiality in the 

 notion that the lengthening of human life and the allevia- 

 tion of human suffering can form any direct stimulation 

 to physiological work. In so doing they show how 

 little they are capable of appreciating the spirit of the 

 higher philosopher, whose thoughts and temptations to 

 investigate, however much they may be disguised by 

 secondary motives, are but the involuntary secretion, as 

 it may be termed, of his individual brain. They do 

 not even seem to know that one of the most fundamental 

 of the data of scientific method precludes the possibility 

 of preconceived ideas of any kind forming part of a 

 correctly stated problem. 



Next with reference to the licence which must, accord- 

 ing to the Bill, be held by all who desire to practice vivi- 

 section, we cannot help feeling that any legislation which 

 at all interferes with higher mental work is cumbersome 

 in the extreme ; for it appears to us to be quite unjustifi- 

 able to trammel in the least, the genuine and honourable 

 exercise of original power, whatever way it tends to show 

 itself. There can be no doubt that the genuine student 

 of biology, in as far as he is a pure student, should be 

 in no way restricted in his researches. The Duke of 

 Somerset's objection also deserves special notice, for 

 "important discoveries are often made by comparatively 

 unknown men, rather than by the most prominent physi- 

 cians and surgeons, and yet such students were to be 

 prevented from prosecuting their researches." 



With regard to educational physiology, quite a'different 

 influence is at work. We are among those who think 

 that for the purpose of demonstrating physiological facts 

 Vou xiv.— No. 343 



I to students, vivlsectional experiments are, notwithstand- 

 I ing the opinion of Sir James Paget and others to the con- 

 trary, not absolutely necessary. One of the physiologists 

 examined before the Commission brought forward the 

 case of the teaching of surgery in our medical schools, in 

 which science the opportunities for obtaining independent 

 practical skill on the living body are ttil; and yet we 

 cannot believe that many serious mistakes occur from the 

 want of it. 



Such being the case, the supervision of public institu- 

 tions where physiology is taught is quite in accordance 

 with our views, as are the restrictions with reference to 

 the employment of anaesthetics, and the destruction of 

 the subjects of experiment before they have recovered 

 consciousness. 



As to the exemption of Cats and Dogs, we never 

 heard anything more ludicrous, and we are glad that 

 Lord Winmarleigh — as a member of the Royal Commis- 

 sion his opinion is weighty — objected to the restriction 

 as unnecessary. It may be true, as Lord Carnarvon 

 remarked in the House last Monday night, that the em- 

 ployment of these animals has slightly encouraged theft 

 in their direction ; but that this should be, by sober men, 

 accepted as a reason for taxing physiologists to purchase 

 more expensive animals, when a few more stringent sen- 

 tences in the police courts would remove the evil, seems 

 feeble in the extreme. 



Looking at the Bill from a general point of view, 

 its great defect is, in our estimation, its separate exis- 

 tence. The genuine spirit which actuates our nation, 

 if we are not mistaken, is one which looks with disgust 

 at the infliction of pain when unattended with the 

 highest advantages. That this is not the case in some 

 foreign countries we know, and can more fully realise 

 since Dr. Klein has given his evidence before the 

 Royal Commission. No doubt, as Lord Carnarvon 

 remarked, " students are more and more in the habit 

 of frequenting foreign Schools and returning to this 

 country with the traditions and modes of these Schools." 

 Would not a clause or so attached to the previously existing 

 Cruelty to Animals' Act, however, cover all the require- 

 ments of the case by enabling an inspector, or a 

 private individual, to prosecute any one performing a 

 vivisection for simple demonstration purposes, or if he 

 publishes results which show that due precaution has not 

 been taken to reduce pain to a minimum in the animal 

 operated on ? 



WILSON'S " PREHISTORIC * MAN " 



Prehistoric Man : Researches into the Origin of Civilisa- 

 tion in the Old and the New World. By Daniel 

 Wilson, LL.D. Third Edition. (Macmillan and Co., 

 1876.) 



DR. DANIEL WILSON claims the merit of having 

 introduced the useful term prehistoric, first em- 

 ployed (he says) in 185 1, in his "Prehistoric Annals of 

 Scotland." There its meaning was limited to races 

 preceding the oldest historical nations of Northern 

 Europe. But in the first edition of his " Prehistoric 

 Man," published in 1862, it had become a general term 

 for tribes ancient or modem in chronology, as to whom 



