448 VIVISECTION. 



sented itself to his mind, in consideration of the disagreeable 

 natnre of the experiment, because of tlie cruelty of it. When 

 at length the physiologist's mind had adopted the resolve to 

 operate, a vertebrate animal was chosen a rabbit an animal 

 with a nervous system less delicately amenable to pain than 

 is that of many vertebrate animals which have sometimes been 

 made the subject of vivisectional experiments dogs, cats, 

 horses, and asses, for example. Then, whilst farther prose- 

 cuting his investigations, Sir Charles Bell found that it was 

 quite possible to make the organism of a rabbit reveal the 

 crucial truths he needed, under circumstances of vivisection 

 which reduced suffering to a minimum. The amount of suf- 

 fering was below that commonly experienced, indeed, by ani- 

 mals whilst being slaughtered by man for the purposes of 

 food. He soon came to operate upon rabbits made insensible 

 or rather stunned by a blow delivered on the back of the 

 head. Subsequently Bell, as well as the majority of other 

 experimenters upon the nervous system by vivisection, used 

 frogs for subjects. Rabbits being vertebrate animals, having 

 vertebral nerves of the ordinary bifid type, present the need- 

 ful conditions of research ; whilst frogs, being endowed with a 

 low nervous organisation, their susceptibility to pain is low 

 in a corresponding degree. 



Is it incumbent in this place and on this occasion to dis- 

 claim the tenet of belief, or rather of poetic expression, where- 

 by it is affirmed that all animated beings are susceptible to 

 pain in an equal degree? 'The poor beetle that we tread 

 upon' does not feel i in corporal sufferance a pang as great as 

 when a giant dies.' No unbiassed person, coming to the 

 present inquiry with an amount of anatomical and physiolo- 

 gical knowledge competent to the occasion, can entertain a 

 doubt as to that point. Speaking approximately, and for 

 general purposes, it may be affirmed that the capacity of an 

 animal for physical pain is in a direct ratio to the intellectual 

 intelligence of such animal. A leech may have its tail cut off 



