76o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



pest of the grape-vine, but all would consider it a pious duty to 

 destroy that baleful insect ; and it is right to use every effort to hunt 

 out the tigers and serpents of India. All the world is of one mind on 

 these points. 



Besides these maleficent animals there are useful ones, which 

 serve us food, or on which we call for daily help. It would be 

 absurd to prevent horses from drawing carriages, or oxen from being 

 yoked to plows. The suppression of animal food, which is almost 

 necessary to our existence, is not a subject for serious consideration. 

 But if man has the right to slay an animal to live upon its flesh, it 

 does not follow that he has the right to make it suffer before killing 

 it. Legitimate as it may seem to kill a sheep to make food of it, it 

 would be cruel to take the animal and expose him to torture for the 

 vain pleasure of watching his contortions and observing his pain. It 

 is, however, this very pain and just such contortions that physicists 

 who make vivisections study with curiosity ; and this leads us to the 

 consideration of the question. Has man the right to make living beings 

 suffer for purposes of utility or information ? 



We remark, first, that if vivisection is to be proscribed, it will be 

 impossible to draw the line at any animal. If morality prohibits us 

 from experimenting on the dog, we must, by the same rule, respect 

 the cat, the rabbit, the fowl, the turtle, and the frog. If we prohibit 

 the use of the frog, how can we permit the use of the snail, the oyster, 

 and the medusa ? In a little while we come to those beings the animal 

 nature of which is in dispute. If we are forbiden to send an elec- 

 tric current through the body of a medusa, I do not see what right 

 we have to electrify bacteria. Finally, it might be made to appear a 

 culpable act to put an axe into an oak, or to electrify a sensitive-plant, 

 since in either case we disorganize a living being, and possibly produce 

 suffering. Thus easily is the reasoning of the anti-vivisectionists re- 

 duced to absurdity. 



The anti-vivisectionists, however, direct their opposition against 

 the infliction of pain ; and that, they say, is acute in proportion as the 

 animal is intelligent. The animals nearest in order to man are the 

 ones which it is most important to spare from suffering, and there are 

 gradations in the wrong. It is very wrong to make a dog suffer, but 

 the matter is less a crime when it comes to a rabbit. A frog and a 

 crawfish are entitled to still less compassion, and, in the case of the 

 medusae, bacteria, and plants, whose sensibility is less developed, the 

 act is only half reprehensible. This argument yields the point that 

 we have a right to experiment upon animals which do not feel suf- 

 fering, or only feel it a little. Let us leave out the question of the 

 inferior animals, and go straight to the strongest argument that can be 

 brought forward, that which turns upon the martyrdom of the dog. 

 Let us take the question, as they say, by the horns, and see if the 

 physiologists have the right to make a dog suffer. 



