VIVISECTION. 440 



when sucking, and not desist from sucking. A spider may 

 have a leg amputated without seemingly interfering with its 

 immediate appetite for a fly; and, to take a rather extreme 

 case, a bull-dog (which is assuredly not the most intelligent 

 among the race of dogs) may be beaten and kicked, without 

 seemingly heeding that usage, if at the time his fangs be 

 closed upon an antagonist or a victim. 



At this point the. investigator does not fail to apprehend 

 that w T hat I have called ' analogical vivisection' can, in the 

 examples at least of physiological inquiry already contem- 

 plated, be used with effect. In proof of this, accept the 

 illustration of a frog being made to reveal the conditions of 

 nervous arrangement and nervous energy in a human being. 

 Various palliative and suggestive thoughts, moreover, arise, 

 predisposing the human mind to tolerate vivisection for scien- 

 tific uses. In the first place, palliative thoughts based on the 

 obvious inf requency of the need for having recourse to these 

 physiological vivisections. If it could have been shown that 

 vivisection is needed to give aid in operating, then a case 

 would have been made out for the frequent performance of 

 vivisection. Every successive student would be called upon 

 to acquire the faculty of dextrously operating, by perform- 

 ing the necessary vivisectional tortures each one on his own 

 behalf. There is clearly no parallel need to this in the ac- 

 quisition of physiological knowledge. 



A fundamental truth once proved, remains proved for ever. 

 What chemist now ever thinks it needful to burn diamonds 

 in oxygen gas to satisfy himself that the result of such com- 

 bustion is carbonic acid? What physiological student need 

 give himself the trouble (to take no other ground) of operating 

 upon a living animal in order to prove (what no one doubts, 

 or for a long time past has doubted) that the anterior root of 

 a spinal nerve is a motor root, whereas the posterior one is 

 made up of sensitive filaments ? This observation, however, 

 must not be construed as signifying that an experimenter 



GG 



