412 



NATURE 



August 28, 1879 



point to any additional means by which the sufferings of animals 

 in the cause of science can be diminished, we shall be anxious to 

 adopt them. If it can point to any abuse in one of our labora- 

 tories, we will hasten to correct it. This society has honourably 

 declared that they know of none. That physiologists have 

 been heedless, or even callous, in their experiments upon animals 

 in past times, when men were strangely insensible even to 

 human suffering, or in countries wliere a healthy result of 

 Christian civilisation has not yet baen seen in habitual gentle- 

 ness to animals, I need not deny. Such cases have been eagerly 

 sought and sometimes most unfairly judged. Only lately a 

 learned body felt itself not strong enough to retain the 

 admittedly invaluable services of an eminent foreigner, who had 

 once admitted that when absorbed in scientific and beneficent 

 researches he lost sight of any pain that might be inflicted.' Is 

 not this the very excuse which is held valid in the case of sport ? 

 Doubtless we ought to be ever mindful of every branch of duty, 

 but such occasional forgetfulness does not show hardness of 

 heart. It is an excusable weakness for a student of medicine to 

 shudder or to faint at the sight of blood, but he learns that this 

 merely physical sensibility becomes selfish and mischievous if 

 indulged : he is taught to suppress all such exhibition of emo- 

 tion, and to let it stimulate without paralysing his efforts to 

 relieve. But no one surely would think the hysterical youth 

 more truly humane than the surgeon whose compassion is shown 

 in the very firmness with which he inflicts a temporary pain for 

 an ultimate good. 



I have hitherto rested the whole argument upon the lawfulness 

 of inflicting pain and death upon the lower animals for the sake 

 of science jind humanity, but as a matter of fact I may again 

 assure those who, while assenting to the justice of the plea, yet 

 shrink from «'hat it may involve, that the great majority of 

 experiments upon animals are rendered painless, and that the 

 remainder are mostly those experiments which are most imme- 

 diately and directly subservient to medical a"t, and happily 

 even these are generally productive rather of discomfort than of 

 pain. Let me give you an example of such a vivisection, far 

 more painful than the immense majority of those of the 

 laboratory. Suppose a country surgeon were sent for late at 

 night to some case of urgent peril ; knowing that his ride is for 

 life or death, and unsparing of himself or his horse, he rides 

 him to the utaiost limits of endurance, and_beyond : who would 

 not applaud the action ? Those only who appear deliberately 

 to believe that our life is worth less than that of many sparrows, 

 those legislators only wh^ look forward to the time when wars 

 will cease, not because of human slaughter, of devastated 

 homes, of all the horrors which the world has endured for 

 centuries, but because of the cruelties to which the horses in the 

 artillery are subjected. We, who are familiar with human 

 sufiering and sorrow, which our knowledge is all too feeble to 

 prevent, best understand how in testing some new remedy on a 

 less precious fellow creature than a man, one who is truly 

 humane may be tempted to forget the comparatively trivial 

 suffering of a rabbit or a frog. 



But some enthusiastic opponent will say, "I cannot pretend 

 to doubt that these experiments are in every sense of the word 

 useful, but we ought not to purchase the benefit they onfer by 

 inflicting pain upon innocent creatures. I would sign a petition 

 to-morrow to put down all field sports by law, I would allow no 

 operation upon domestic animals, and J will abstain from all 

 animal food until ,1 am 'certain that I can eat creatures which 

 have been killed without suffering pain. But if I were lying at 

 the point of death, and you brought an animal to my bedside and 

 assured me that by putting it to pain my life would be saved, I 

 would refuse to purchase it on such cruel terms." We may 

 hope that the excellent person \\ho made this heroic profession 

 would in the hour of trial be better advised, but if not we may 

 surely reply, " Right reverend sir, you are the best judge of the 

 value of your own life, and if you think proper to sacrifice it to 

 the comfort of a guinea-pig we must submit to the loss with 

 such resignation as we can muster ; but when you say that in 

 obedience to this silly whim you will let your dearest friend 

 suffer, allow the sacrifice of the most important life, and forbid 

 those studies which have already rescued multitudes from 

 deformity and misery and death, then those of us who have to do 



* Fortunately, Dr. Klein, whose researches in microscopic anatomy and 

 pathol(»gy are so well kniwn and appreciated, knows that he retains the con- 

 fidence and respect of his scientific brethren, and we hLipc that his honour- 

 able connection with the largest school of medicine in London, will 

 strengthen other and closer ties in binding him to }i^ngland. 



with the real responsibilities of life, and on whom presses the 

 awful sense of impotence to which our defective science too 

 often leaves us, answer that we too have duties to fulfil, and 

 to the best of our power we mean conscientiously to fulfil 

 them. 



There is, I fear, another reason which animates much of the 

 opposition to physiological experiments. It is nothing else than 

 aversion from the methods and the results of science. It may be 

 that an excuse for this dislike has been furnished by the pretence 

 of false science, and the arrogance of much even which is true. 

 But surely, no reasonable creature, from such trivial irritation, 

 can deliberately wish to check the progress of accurate knowledge 

 by observation and experiment. There are, indeed, some who, 

 fearing (as .1 think prudently) that, " while a little philosophy 

 inclineth men to atheism, depth in philosophy bringeth men's 

 mind's about to religion," and desiring to subject the human mind 

 to a bondage as hard and more degrading than that of mediaeval 

 Rome, would gladly call off interest from the unremunerative 

 labours which are prompted only by the thirst for knowledge and 

 faith in the possibility of learning more and more of the divine 

 order of the world, to pursuits which bring obvious and material 

 utility. There are those again, who, fearing (as I think foolishly) 

 that increasing knowledge of this divine order will lower our 

 admiration of its beauty, or that the better a man understands 

 the laws of Gad the more likely he is to break them, have an 

 unfeigned dislike for natural science in general, and for biology 

 in particular. They repeat over again the error of which the 

 Dominican friars, wi'h far greater excuse, were guilty when 

 they imprisoned Galileo. If any such are here, may I venture 

 to tell them — in quietness and in confidence is your strength : the 

 va:,t fabric of Christian morals is in no danger of being overturned 

 by the discovery of a new chemical method in the laboratory, or 

 of a hitherto undescribed animalcule. If noisy attacks are made 

 in the injured name of science, you have only to wait, and you 

 will see these attacks repelled by the true leaders of science them- 

 selves, or, at the worst, by the next generation. But if, leaving 

 your secure fortress of defence, you come down %^ith your rhetoric 

 and your sentiments, yom: petilio\f>riiiciJ>u, your igttoratio elcnchi, 

 and all your familiar fallacies and tropes, thinking that with such 

 weapons you can meet, on their own ground, men who'have 

 spent their lives in the study of science, then no ^vonder if you 

 suffer grievous defeat. Happy for you if you learn, like 

 another discomfited pilgrim, to betake yourselves to another 

 "weapon." 



But I imagine that some of my audience are saying: "This 

 defence would have been necessary before the Royal Commission 

 made their report ; but when that was made, and affirmed the 

 necessity of physiological experiments, and the groundlessness of 

 accusations of cruelty against physiologists, when an act was 

 passed which licenses physiological laboratories, under the very 

 restrictions ■\\hich you had already imposed upon yourselves, 

 may we not regard the controver.sy as closed, and the result 

 as satisfactory ? " 



I answer that I h^e taken up your time with this defence of 

 physiological experiments partly because I would fain help, 

 however feebly, iu the enlightenment of the public con- 

 science, but also because the result of recent legislation is 

 not satisfactory. 



Science does not work readily in fetters. A system of licences 

 and certificates, numerous and complicated, obtained with trouble 

 and delay, and revocable at the will of a Minister who may, by 

 the accidents of party, be at any time amenable to anti-scientific 

 influences, such a .system adds serious difficulties to those already 

 in the way of experiments. 



Suppose, as an illuitration, that certain persons opposed on 

 various grounds to learning, and especially hostile to Greek, had 

 attacked the study of Plato. They would point out the danger 

 of modern ladies becoming as well read in his writings as was 

 Lady Jane Grey. They would show that the laxity of modern 

 manners was coincident with the popularity of the " Sympo- 

 sium " and that the notorious increase of infanticide was the 

 result of the teaching of the "Republic." Associations for 

 the total suppression of Plato would be formed, with 

 hired advocates, and anonymous letters, and " leaflets," 

 spreading a knowledge of his most objectionable passages. 

 Scholars would be threatened with eternal punishment, and 

 schoolmasters with the withdrawal of their pupils. Then a 

 royal commission would be appointed — a great Latin scholar, 

 a Whig and a Tory statesman (who, having taken a B.Sc. 

 degree at Oxford would be impartially ignorant of Greek) the 



