Curative methods due to research. 8 1 



portant way, by inculcating better systems of hygeine, 

 improved sanitary arrangements, &c., &c. It is not 

 to the zeal of " anti-vivisectionists," but to the well- 

 directed labours of experimental medical men, that 

 mankind are indebted for the discovery and invention 

 of nearly every known method of preventing and 

 alleviating animal suffering and of prolonging human 

 life. This statement is true of vaccination, the use of 

 chloroform in general surgery, dentistry, and mid- 

 wifery, of carbolic acid spray in surgical operations ; 

 the abolition of the practice of searing amputated 

 limbs with a red-hot iron ; and many other improve- 

 ments. Ferrier's comparatively recent vivisection 

 experiments have already enabled medical men to 

 treat more successfully those formidable diseases, 

 epilepsy and abcess of the brain. 



What this nation badly requires, is not less experi- 

 mental research, but more. When famines result 

 from insufficiency of Solar heat, instead of investiga- 

 ting the conditions of the Sun's surface to enable us 

 to predict their occurrence and provide accordingly, 

 we allow them to come upon us in our unprepared 

 state and produce their fearful effects. When con- 

 tagious disease overtakes us, what do we do? Instead 

 of previously employing and paying scientific inves- 

 tigators to make experiments in physiological and 

 chemical science, to enable us to combat it success- 

 fully, we vainly attempt to apply our present stock of 

 chemical and physiological knowledge to ward off the 

 difficulty. When high price of fuel intervenes, instead 



