August II, 1881] 



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■were thus blindly groping after the truth, their patients 

 were suffering or dying. The doctors might ///////•, per- 

 haps, that some other treatment would have been more 

 beneficial than the one they adopted, but they did not 

 knoiii it, and they were obliged to act according to the 

 best of their belief. They were forced by the circum- 

 stances in which they were placed to perform what Mr. 

 Simon terms a "popular" experiment instead of a 

 scientific one, and the complicated conditions under 

 which it was performed rendered it doubtful how much of 

 the result was due to the drug and how much to the 

 disease, so that a conclusion could only be arrived at 

 after an immense number of trials. The method by 

 which pharmacology is now studied is entirely different. 

 Instead of first giving the medicine to a patient labouring 

 under disease, the effect of any new drug is tested upon 

 plants, such as algse and fungi, and upon the lower 

 animals, such as frogs and rabbits, and its mode 

 of action is then exactly ascertained by means of experi- 

 ment upon animals, so that before giving it to a human 

 being we not only know what organs and structures in his 

 body will be affected by it, but, to a great extent, Iwdi 

 ihey will be affected, and consequently what changes will 

 be produced in the course of the disease for which we 

 administer it. Instead, therefore, of acting blindfold, 

 we are able, almost with certainty, to relieve where we 

 should formerly have been powerless, and to prevent 

 suffering even when we cannot save life. The key-note of 

 the present medical congress, struck by Prof. Virchow in his 

 address, is the absolute necessity of experimentation upon 

 living beings for the progress of medical science. Without 

 experiment we can have no certain knowledge, and without 

 knowledge we have no power to cure and pre vent disease and 

 death. Experiment there must be, and the only question is. 

 Upon what living beings are the experiments to be per- 

 formed, and how are they to be performed .' Are they to 

 be popular experiments, such as those to which Mr. 

 Simon alludes, blindly made upon hundreds or thousands 

 of human beings, healthy or diseased, or are they to be 

 made upon a few animals in laboratories ? The idea of 

 inflicting pain upon animals is naturally repugnant to 

 every well-regulated mind, and the thought that they are 

 preventing unnecessary suffering is probably one of the 

 greatest pleasures that tender-hearted and sensitive per- 

 sons can experience. But this pleasure may be purchased 

 too dearly, and by preventing the infliction of a certain 

 amount of suffering upon a few animals a much greater 

 amount of suffering may be caused to thousands of men. 

 Vivid pictures have been drawn of the suffering of 

 animals in a physiological laboratory, and, misled by 

 these, great numbers of people have been induced to join 

 in the agitation, and consequent legislation, against vivi- 

 section, forgetting entirely that the pain inflicted in a 

 vivisection experiment, except in the very rarest instances, 

 is far exceeded, both in intensity and duration, by the 

 sufferings of very many human beings in the course of a 

 mortal disease, and of almost all animals except those 

 slaughtered by man or killed and eaten by other animals. 

 Every winter hundreds and thousands of birds and beasts 

 die of cold and hunger, and hunger and thirst must 

 almost always hasten the death of all wild animals. 

 Sometimes they starve simply because no food is to 

 be obtained ; but the result is the same if weakness or 



disease renders them unable to reach it, although it may 

 be plentiful around them. For while the death-beds of 

 men are usually soothed 'by the kindness of the friends 

 who moisten the parched hps and administer such nourish- 

 ment as the sufferer can take, animals dying from old 

 age, weakness, or disease have no such alleviations to their 

 sufferings. The experiments of Chossat on starvation 

 are generally quoted as the most cruel ever performed in 

 a physiological laboratory, and yet they were only repeti- 

 tions, on an exceedingly small scale, of the experiments 

 which are constantly being performed by the conditions 

 of life on thousands or millions of wild animals through- 

 out the world. The animals on which Chossat experi- 

 mented did not suffer more pain than those which die in 

 the fields or forests because their death was witnessed by 

 an observer who utilised it to gain knowledge of great 

 importance to man, while the sufferings of their wild 

 companions were unseen by any human e^-e. Yet many 

 people seem to think that this is the case, and that the 

 mere fact that pain is inflicted for a beneficial purpose 

 renders it much less endurable than if it were simply in- 

 flicted thoughtlessly or in sport. More pain is caused by 

 the whip of a London cab-driver in one day tljan is inflicted 

 in any physiological laboratory in this country in the 

 course of weeks ; and the householder who puts down 

 a pot of phosphorous paste to poison the rats which 

 pjague him inflicts upon them a more painful death 

 than any they would be likely to suffer at the hands of a 

 vivisectionist. Within the last few years those who 

 experiment upon animals have been frequently and 

 unjustly abused for their endeavours to gain the know- 

 ledge necessary to relieve pain and cure disease. They 

 have, however, followed the example of their great master, 

 Harvey, who held that to "return evil-speaking with 

 evil-speaking " was " unworthy in a philosopher and 

 searcher after truth," and have, like him, believed that 

 they "would do better and more advisedly to meet so 

 many indications of ill-breeding with the light of faithful 

 and conclusive observation." They have, indeed, sub- 

 mitted to legislation which was felt to be unjust, inas- 

 much as it was directed against abuses which .vera not 

 shown to exist, and which has already been found to 

 hamper greatly the progress of experimental investigation 

 in this country. Confident in their sense of the necessity 

 for experiment, and feeling assured that ere long every one 

 capable of forming a correct opinion and willing to take the 

 trouble of ascertaining the facts for himself would perceive 

 the necessity, they have remained silent, though assailed, 

 like Harvey, with opprobrious epithets. Now, however, 

 when the opponents of vivisection are exerting all their 

 efforts to render legislation, already sufficiently oppressive, 

 entirely prohibitory, the medical profession has spoken 

 out, and with no uncertain voice, and has declared that 

 experiments upon animals are absolutely necessary. Nor 

 could medical men do otherwise. For no man can 

 practise the medical profession without having occa- 

 sionally to suffer most acutely on account of the imper- 

 fection of his knowledge. Often and often is his heart 

 saddened by his patient's asking, with feeble voice and 

 wistful eye, for the relief which he is powerless to give, 

 and again and again has he to avert his face and to shake 

 his head when, with agonised voices, the friends around the 

 dying sufferer cry to him, " Oh, doctor, can nothing more 



