18801882 



neglected old maid, a man in the prime of his youth or a 

 misanthrope weary of everything, has not, holding the best 

 place in his recollections, the memory of some example of 

 fidelity, courage or devotion given by a dog? In order to 

 raise the revolt , it was sufficient for anti-vivisectionists to evoke 

 amongst the ghosts of dog martyrs the oft-quoted dog who, 

 whilst undergoing an experiment, licked the hand of the 

 operator. As there had been some cruel abuses on the part of 

 certain students, those abuses alone were quoted. Scientists 

 did not pay much heed to this agitation, partly a feminine 

 one : they relied on the good sense of the public to put an end 

 to those doleful declamations. But the English Parliament 

 voted a Bill prohibiting vivisection; and, after 1876, English 

 experimentalists had to cross the Channel to inoculate a guinea- 



Pig- 



Virchow did not go into details ; but, in a wide expose" of 

 Experimental Physiological Medicine, he recalled how, at each 

 new progress of Science at one time against the dissection 

 of dead bodies and now against experiments on living 

 animals the same passionate criticisms had been renewed. 

 The Interdiction Bill voted in England had filled a new 

 Leipzig Society with ardour ; it had asked the Eeichstag 

 in that same year, 1881, to pass a law punishing cruelty to 

 animals under pretext of scientific research, by imprison- 

 ment, varying between five weeks and two years, and de- 

 privation of civil rights. Other societies did not go quite so 

 far, but asked that some of their members should have a 

 right of entrance and inspection into the laboratories of the 

 Faculties. 



1 ' He who takes more interest in animals than in Science 

 and in the knowledge of truth is not qualified to inspect officially 

 things pertaining to Science," said Virchow. With an 

 ironical gravity on his quizzical wrinkled face, he added, 

 "Where shall we be if a scientist who has just begun a bona 

 fide experiment finds himself, in the midst of his researches, 

 obliged to answer questions from a new-comer and afterwards 

 to defend himself before some magistrate for the crime of not 

 having chosen another method, other instruments, perhaps 

 another experiment? . . . 



1 ' We must prove to the whole world the soundness of our 

 cause," concluded Virchow, uneasy at those " leagues " which 

 grew and multiplied, and scattered through innumerable 



