46 HUXLEY 



to mankind, and also to the lower animals, since 

 " not a single one of all the great truths of modern 

 physiology has been established otherwise than by ex- 

 periments on living things." * 



In defending a practice which by one successful 

 experiment on an animal rendered insensible to pain 

 might save numberless lives from some fell disease, 

 Huxley had to meet a frontal attack, whose chief 

 weapon, wielded by fanaticism, was misrepresentation 

 and slander. He was charged by one of the so- 

 called " religious " papers with advocating the 

 practice of vivisection before children, and the charge 

 was repeated in the House of Lords. It was nec- 

 essary to publicly deny what had been thus publicly 

 asserted; he quoted chapter and verse from his 

 Elementary Physiology in refutation, adding that 

 " personally and constitutionally " the performance of 

 experiments upon living and conscious animals was 

 " so extremely disagreeable " to himself that he had 

 " never followed any line of investigation in which 

 such experiments were required." But he said that, 

 as a teacher of physiology, he could not 



consent to be prohibited from showing the circulation 

 in a frog's foot, because the frog is made slightly un- 

 comfortable by being tied up for that purpose ; nor 

 from showing the fundamental properties of nerves, 



X I. 434- 



