82 
NAT ORE 
[NOVEMBER 26, 1903 
tinual observation of the motions of the heart and 
blcod vessels in living animals, and this epoch-making 
discovery is always wrongly attributed by anti-vivi- 
sectionists to the observation of the valves of the veins, 
though it must be clear that in that case they would 
have suggested to Fabricius, their observer, the real 
meaning of their presence and structure. 
Sir Charles Bell, who has been quoted with weari- 
some reiteration to disparage experiments on living 
animals, and to exaggerate the exclusive importance 
of anatomical investigation, not only contradicted 
himself, but earned his scientific reputatign by those 
experiments on living animals which he later con- 
demned, and when he adhered strictly to ‘‘ the just 
views taken from the study of anatomy ”’ he fell into 
the greatest error which ever misled an eminent man. 
Two hundred years after Harvey had settled the ques- 
tion of the circulation of the blood for ever, Sir C. Bell, 
confusing himself with a syringe and a dead body, and 
unable to allow for the difference between it and a 
living one, came to the conclusion that the heart had 
little to do with the circulation of the blood, and adopted 
Galen’s error that the principal force was the attraction 
of the vessels for the blood, and maintained that the 
law of gravity was abolished in living animals, but 
that Providence re-introduced it temporarily (!) for the 
arrest of hemorrhage whenever an animal sustained a 
trifling wound. 
Consistent in whole-hearted devotion to their own 
views, the anti-vivisectionists have misrepresented the 
lessons of the past and opposed every step of progress 
in medical knowledge in our own time. They profess 
to believe that every stage of progress in medicine has 
been effected, and always must be, by clinical work 
alone. Yet it is perfectly obvious that from classical 
times clinical investigation at Alexandria and Cordova 
and many other places enjoyed as great opportunities 
as could be desired, yet, until the opening of the re- 
naissance of experimental method with Harvey about 
1400 years later, medical knowledge had_ scarcely 
moved, for it is impossible to say that the physicians 
who mobbed Charles the Second to death, and who 
presumably represented the best talent of that time in 
England, and Dr. Guy Patin, Dean of the Faculty of 
Medicine in Paris, an eminent physician of about the 
same period, who maintained that all medical know- 
ledge was summed up in senna and the lancet, had 
more real knowledge of physiology and the meaning 
of symptoms than Galen. And in modern times, when 
more progress in the knowledge of the causes and 
nature of disease has been acquired in a few years than 
in as many centuries formerly, every step of progress 
which has been obtained by physical science has been 
opposed by the anti-vivisectionists. Antiseptic surgery, 
which has brought more immediate relief from pain 
and death than any single discovery in the history of 
the human race, the whole science of bacteriology, with 
the light which has been thrown on tuberculosis, 
cholera, diphtheria, yellow fever and malaria, and the 
mysteries of infection and immunity, improvements in 
the operations of Surgery, and the great names of 
Pasteur, Koch, and Lister, each and all have been 
assailed by the anti-vivisectionists with every species 
of abuse and disparagement. 
Indeed, the denials or at best the grudging ad- 
mission of the advances made in recent years in 
medicine and surgery would suggest that to the anti- 
vivisectionist they are actually unwelcome, as justify- 
ing the very researches which they attack. 
It is a commonplace with Mr. Coleridge and his 
friends that they are actuated by the highest of all 
motives—love and humanity. The commonplace has 
been so reiterated that among the public it is taken 
as a matter of course, and even the Lord Chief Justice 
NO. 1778, VOL. 69] 
would appear to have regarded science and humanity 
as necessarily to be found in opposing camps. Let us. 
see how far this claim of theirs will bear investigation. 
If Mr. Coleridge and his friends were, indeed, the 
lovers of men and animals they declare themselves to 
be, no body of individuals in the kingdom would be 
less ready to receive or believe in stories of cruelties in 
others which would be incomprehensible and impossible 
in themselves. They would put them to the strictest 
tests, only accept them on the clearest proof, and re- 
joice unfeignedly were such proof not forthcoming. 
But what really happened? A scientific man is 
accused of barbarities which would sicken a savage. 
The eye-witnesses repeatedly observe in silence tortures 
which a word would have ended, nay, they even with- 
hold that word because it would have ended them, and 
yet Mr. Coleridge actually accepts this tale. He 
adopts it, he declares he has used every possible means 
to verify its truth, and he gives out this slander to 
the world, though he might easily have learned that 
these sufferings were inventions, and that the tortures 
of the defenceless creatures in whom he professed so 
deep an interest had never occurred at all. Is this 
humanity? Is this love, the love that thinketh no 
evil, or is it the wounded amour propre of one who 
has been worsted many times, whose statements have 
been refuted over and over again? 
It is difficult to understand the secret of the para- 
doxes we are called upon to reconcile—philanthropists 
ascribing the basest actions to their fellow men, 
humanitarians diverting funds from hospitals, 
moralists supporting calumny by falsehood. The high 
motives which are claimed should exist, but until those 
claims rest upon some better foundation than assever- 
ations contradicted by facts, we shall continue (and we 
should advise all others who are seriously considering 
this question to continue) to discount them altogether. 
NYASALAND.* 
R. DUFF has written a very charming and 
& illuminative book on Nyasaland, otherwise 
known as the British Central Africa Protectorate, 
where, since the beginning of 1808, he has resided as 
an official, His acquaintance with the little protec- 
torate of 43,000 square miles was mainly limited to 
the Shire Province and the west coast of Lake Nyasa, 
but Mr. Duff is made of the same stuff as the late 
Prof. Henry Drummond—he is able to take in many 
salient points at a glance and to see things which do 
not strike the ordinary traveller or resident. (What- 
ever may be thought of Henry Drummond’s later 
writings by scientific men, no scientific man acquainted 
with Africa can fail to regard his little work on 
Central Africa as one of the most remarkable contribu- 
tions to the literature of the Dark Continent which has. 
ever been published.) 
Mr. Duff’s work is illustrated by a few well chosen 
photographs and several of his own drawings, most 
of which are excellent, but one or two, perhaps, too 
sketchy and vague to consort with the general accuracy 
of the book. There are useful appendices, a sketch- 
map of the protectorate, and a good index. 
The portions of the book which will most appeal to 
the readers of Nature are those dealing with the flora, 
fauna, and human inhabitants, and these subjects 
occupy more than half of the book. 
“Tf it be spring,’’ writes the author, ‘‘ the display 
of flowers will attract the attention of the most in- 
different, blooms of every shape and hue being then 
abundant, from the great clusters of petals adorning 
certain papilionaceous trees down ‘to the less con- 
spicuous but equally beautiful ground flowers and 
1 “Nyasaland under the Foreign Office.” By H. L. Duff (B.C.A.Admn-) 
Pp. xv + 422.6 (London: George Bell and Sons, 1903-) Price 12s. net- 
