March 2, 1876] 



NATURE 



343 



the Commission as tend to justify the position taken up 

 by the Society, leaving the advocates of vivisection, as it 

 tells us in a prefatory note, to give publicity to such parts 

 of the evidence as favour their views. We have selected 

 the witnesses quoted by this Society as giving evidence 

 upon the extension and abuses of vivisection, in order that 

 we might not run the risk of being misled by partial 

 statements and of under-estimating the extent to which 

 the practice prevails in this country. 



The first of these, Dr. Acland, observes that the number 

 of persons in this and other countries who are becoming 

 biologists without being medical men is very much in- 

 creasing ; but beyond this statement, in which he appears 

 to have in view professional physiologists rather than 

 occasional experimenters, there is nothing in his evidence 

 to lead to the belief that vivisection is practised to any 

 extent by the latter class. Mr. G. H. Lewes tells us that 

 so far from ignorant people exercising their fancy in 

 cutting up live animals, even medical students are ex- 

 tremely reluctant to perform experiments at all on 

 account of the trouble involved in doing so. Sir 

 William Ferguson states that the impression on his 

 mind is that experiments are done very frequently 

 in a most reckless manner ; but when we look for 

 the grounds of this belief we cannot find anything 

 except the accounts given by students of experiments 

 they had seen during lectures. We should have 

 thought a man of Sir William's experience would not have 

 trusted to such hearsay evidence without farther inves- 

 tigation, knowing, as he must do, how students delight to 

 exaggerate and to tell frightful stories of the dissecting- 

 room for the pleasure of seeing their mother's or sister's 

 eyes grow wide with horror at the tale. The evidence of 

 other witnesses shows that such exaggeration must have 

 been practised here, and that no such experiments as Sir 

 William describes have been performed in any medical 

 school in this country. But this witness is of opinion that 

 it is only in laboratories and schools that vivisection is 

 carried on, as in this country surgeons do not employ it 

 for the purpose of acquiring dexterity, and he thinks there 

 is not much amateur physiology. Such evidence from an 

 active opponent of vivisection goes far to show that the 

 number of occasional experimenters cannot be great, 

 and that the practice of vivisection is almost entirely con- 

 fined to the fifteen or twenty persons alluded to by the 

 Commissioners. Small as this number is, we would have 

 considered it right to legislate if anything like wanton cruelty 

 had been shown to be practised by them ; but the Secretary 

 of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 

 Animals admits that he does not know a single case of 

 the sort, and that in general English physiologists have 

 used anaesthetics where they think they can do so with 

 safety to the experiment. Such being the case, it seems 

 to us that the objections raised to legislative interference 

 by several witnesses carry great weight. Those made 

 by Mr. John Simon are especially worthy of considera- 

 tion, not only on account cf his well-known ability and 

 clear-sightedness, but because his official position has 

 given him a better opportunity of becoming acquainted 

 with the working of laws and of forming a correct judg- 

 ment regarding the probable operation of any proposed 

 bill than other witnesses who are constantly engaged 

 either in the laboratory or with the cares of practice. 



The opinion he expresses that incompetent experimen- 

 ters, careless of the sufferings they inflict, do not exist 

 as an appreciable class in this country, is borne out by 

 the evidence we have already referred to, and it does 

 seem hard that physiologists of high reputation and 

 unb'emished character should be treated as a dange- 

 rous class, and should be licensed and regulated " like 

 publicans and prostitutes under the licensing system ;" 

 Mr. Simon considers that it would afford facilities for 

 the persecution of physiologists, and would enable 

 those who are so inclined to hold them up individually to 

 popular odium. That the inclination is not wanting is 

 shown by the advertisements of the Society for the Abo- 

 lition of Vivisection constantly appearing in the daily 

 papers. In these an attempt is made to destroy what- 

 ever medical practice the authors of the " Handbook for 

 the Physiological Laboratory " may have, and by thus 

 reducing their means of livelihood to starve them as far 

 as possible. This is done by representing them as so 

 hardened by their pursuits and so callous to suffering as 

 to be unfit for attendance at a sick-bed ; although we 

 learn from the evidence of Prof. RoUeston and Mr. Simon 

 that two of them at least are exceedingly kindhearted 

 men, and the other two have devoted themselves to re- 

 searches having an unusually direct bearing on the pre- 

 vention of disease or the alleviation of suffering. 



Much and careful consideration is therefore wanted lest 

 in the endeavour to prevent abuses which may hereafter 

 creep into the practice of vivisection of animals we do 

 not afford facilities for the mental vivisection so graphi- 

 ceJly described in the evidence of Mr. G. H. Lewes, of 

 honourable, kind-hearted and sensitive men, whose pur- 

 suits are not merely advantageous to science but produc- 

 tive, as the Report clearly shows, of great benefit, both to 

 the human race and the lower animals. Legislation may 

 still be wanted in the interests of physiologists themselves, 

 not less than of the animals on which they experiment, 

 but what we have said is, we think, sufficient to show that 

 this must be undertaken in no hasty spirit. 



MISS BUCKLEY'S HISTORY OF NATURAL 

 SCIENCE 



A Short History of Natural Science, ^c. By Arabella 

 B. Buckley. (London : Johp Murray, 1876.) 



THE object of this book is, as stated in the Preface, 

 " to place before young and unscientific people 

 those main discoveries of science which ought to be 

 known by every educated person, and at the same time 

 to impart a living interest to the whole, by associating 

 with each step in advance some history of the men who 

 made it." 



We are also told that — 



'• When treating of such varied subjects, many of them 

 presenting great difficulties both as regards historical and 

 scientific accuracy, I cannot expect to have succeeded 

 equally in all, and must trust to the hope of a future 

 edition to correct such grave errors as will doubtless be 

 pointed out, in spite of the care with which I have en- 

 deavoured to verify the statements made. 



" As the size of the book makes it impossible to give 

 the numerous references which would occur on every page, 

 I have named at the end of each chapter a few of the 

 works consulted in its preparation, choosing always in 



