CHAPTER VI 



1875-1876 



IN the year 1875 the bitter agitation directed against 

 experimental physiology came to a head. It had 

 existed in England for several years. In 1870, when 

 President of the British Association, Huxley had 

 been violently attacked for speaking in defence of 

 Brown Sequard, the French physiologist. The name 

 of vivisection, indifferently applied to all experiments 

 on animals, whether carried out by the use of the 

 knife or not, had, as Dr. (afterwards Sir) William 

 Smith put it, the opposite effect on many minds to 

 that of the " blessed word Mesopotamia." Misre- 

 presentation was rife even among the most estimable 

 and well-meaning of the opponents of vivisection, 

 because they fancied they saw traces of the practice 

 everywhere, all the more, perhaps, for not having 

 sufficient technical knowledge for proper discrimina- 

 tion. One of the most flagrant instances of this kind 

 of thing was a letter in the Record charging Huxley 

 with advocating vivisections before children, if not 

 by them. Passages from the Introduction to his 

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