440 VIVISECTION. 



of confidence in operating that might accrue from aught save 

 knowledge would be no other than recklessness at the best 

 a quality obviously undesirable. Assume a surgeon to . be 

 well versed in anatomy to be moved to the performance of 

 some operation by the sense of duty, yet to fail in the parti- 

 cular sort of courage (as we will designate it) that, according 

 to the assumption, can only be imparted by the sight of blood 

 and suffering, assume this, and a case is made out, not for 

 vivisection indeed, but for the abandonment of a profession 

 by one whose temperament is so peculiar. 



Were it possible to grant the case of only one surgeon 

 ready and willing to operate, accessible ; him to possess the 

 requisite knowledge, him to favour the operation, but refusing 

 to operate save under the proviso that he might be allowed 

 to fortify his courage by a preliminary course of vivisectional 

 torture then there might be grounds for taking into con- 

 sideration the following question Whether the bad confid- 

 ence of recklessness would not be better than the absence of 

 all confidence? This is a mere hypothesis obviously; it is 

 one beyond all probable, even all possible, limits. 



No greater fallacy exists than the one that assumes a con- 

 nection between cruelty of disposition (whether natural or 

 acquired) and the ability to conduct with dexterity and suc- 

 cess a surgical operation. According to my experience and 

 it is not small the best, the most philosophic, the most reso- 

 lute surgeons have each possessed a nervous system delicately 

 attuned to all impressions; and in respect to this I would 

 here parenthetically remark, that I never yet did see, and I 

 never expect to see, the delicacy of touch so indispensable to 

 a good operator associated with a hard, stolid, unimpression- 

 able nervous organisation. 



Those who would strive to make us believe that a cold 

 and stolid, if not an absolutely cruel disposition of mind and 

 temperament is a quality to be aimed at by operative surgeons, 

 found their postulate on an assumption wholly untenable : 



