VIVISECTION. 433 



not anatomists, I will endeavour to demonstrate the proposi- 

 tion by some easily comprehensible evidence. 



Success in the performance of a surgical operation, other 

 things being equal, will depend on the practical conversance 

 the operator has acquired with the arrangement of parts, and 

 the distribution of organs he has to operate upon. Just as 

 rationally might an engineer seek to make himself acquainted 

 with the scheme of ramification of the gas- and water-pipes 

 of London by studying the gas- and water-pipes of Man- 

 chester, as an operator to acquire dexterity of hand upon one 

 animal through experience gained by operations conducted 

 upon another. 



Even if it so had happened that animals were devoid of 

 pain an hypothesis under which all objections to vivisection 

 on the score of cruelty would be disposed of still, analogical 

 vivisection would never be performed by any intelligent sur- 

 geon to impart dexterity of surgical manipulation. 



I am under no concern that this denial of the need of 

 vivisection as an aid to surgical dexterity should seem to be 

 laboured. Better supererogation than that there should re- 

 main on the mind of any one the smallest trace of a lingering 

 belief in the advantages of analogical vivisection none else is 

 possible to the end and with the object here contemplated. 



The reason for emphasising the words analogical vivisection 

 will be presently apparent. It will soon be demonstrated by 

 a process of exclusion that vivisection is unnecessary to vete- 

 rinary operators ; arguing that, inasmuch as it is never had 

 recourse to by operators on human beings (the major case), 

 hence there can arise no good plea for adopting it as an aid 

 to dexterity in operations performed upon brutes (the minor). 

 In what, let me now ask, consists the knowledge requisite 

 for the performance of surgical operations 1 whence comes 

 the power of operating ? It comes from the conviction, the 

 self-assurance in the mind of an operator, that he has mas- 

 tered the topography, the relation of parts, the arrangement 



FF 



