THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 44?9 



When I consider that every part must have nerves for feeling, 

 because every part may become sensible capable of experiencing 



plied their place by " une sorte de masturbation," which was neither more nor less, 

 I suppose, than la masturbation. It required more time, he says, but at length 

 he made the cat emit. This was what some bluff John Bulls would call French 

 taste. Now, as the cat had lost all sensation, I cannot see how it could be alive 

 lo the pleasures of masturbation, how emission, which in coition results only 

 when sensation arrives at a certain height, could be excited ; nor how the presence 

 of semen in the urethra could be felt and ejaculation effected. Whatever might 

 have been the effect of imagination on the man, the cat must have been a stranger 

 to the pleasures of imagination as much as of Dr. Brachet's masturbation. 

 Dr. Brachet, on the other hand, seemed delighted ; for, as if he had not proved 

 what he wished, he masturbated the cat again the next day (je fis repe"ter 

 la meme manoeuvre (literally), et une nouvelle ejaculation eutlieu); and, 

 not yet satisfied, he did it again the day after. There, I am thankful to say, he 

 stopped. " Je m'en tins la, et 1'animal me servit pour d'autres experiences." 

 Not only were these repetitions superfluous, but the experiment was altogether 

 superfluous, as the man's case was perfectly similar. I do not think a phy- 

 siologist would have ventured to divulge such a disgusting experiment in this 

 country ; and I cannot refrain from expressing my horror at the amount of 

 torture which Dr. Brachet inflicted upon so many unoffending brutes. Nearly 

 or quite two hundred must have suffered under his hands. I hardly think that 

 knowledge is worth having at such a purchase ; or that it was ordained that 

 we should obtain knowledge by cruelty. I care nothing for killing a brute 

 outright, without pain : it is then but as before it was born, feels no loss, and 

 escapes all further chance of suffering. Vivisection may be justifiable in some 

 instances. But before an inquirer commences an experiment of torture, he ought 

 to be satisfied of its absolute necessity, that the investigation is important and the 

 means indispensable ; and also that he is master of the existing knowledge on the 

 subject, and qualified to operate and to philosophise upon the results. He should 

 proceed to the task with the deepest feelings of regret. I do not wish to make 

 a parade of feeling : but to torture animals unnecessarily is a most cowardly and 

 cold-blooded act, and in my opinion one of the utmost depravity and sin. A 

 course of experimental physiology, in which brutes are agonised to exhibit facts 

 already established, is a disgrace to the country which permits it. My esteemed 

 French friends will pardon me, but I fear that in France there is among many 

 too little repugnance to vivisection * : and I am sure that the following expe- 

 riment would have caused Dr. Brachet to be blackballed in any respectable 



* In his youthful days the tone of feeling among French medical students 

 must have been bad, unless the following brutality was followed by immediate 

 expulsion from the hospital. He says that one of his colleagues, when he was 

 interne of the H6tel Dieu, regaled the rest of them with a dinner of cats, which 

 he had experimented upon in their lifetime; and the next day sent the skins, bowels, 

 &c. to the party in order to let them know what they had eaten, (p. 338.) 



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