374 



NATURE 



\August 1 8, 



.1 



it can provide for his being minutely watched and regulated by 

 the Secretary of State : and in respect of the details of experi- 

 mental procedure, the supervision of that high political officer 

 is substituted for the discretion and conscience of the scientific 

 investigator. 



Consider for a moment what this means in regard of the mem- 

 bers of our profession whom it affects. Contrast with it the 

 almost unbounded trust with which the world, from time imme- 

 morial, has regarded the character of our profession. Consider 

 the relation of inmost confidence in which members of our pro- 

 fession in every corner of the kingdom are admitted to sh.are in 

 the sanctities and tendernesses of domestic life. Consider our 

 immense dady responsibilities of human life and death. Con- 

 sider that there is not a member of our profession to whom the 

 I.aw does not allow discretion that, in certain difficulties of child- 

 birth, he shall judge whether he will kill the child to save the 

 mother. And in contrast with all this, is it to be seriously main- 

 tained that society cannot trust us with dogs and cats ? that our 

 foremost workers— (for it is essentially they who are affected)— 

 cannot be trusted to behave honestly towards their brute fellow- 

 creatures, unless they be regulated and inspected under a special 

 law in much the same prevenient spirit as if they were prostitutes 

 under the Contagious Diseases Act ? 



I have reason to believe that, if that Act continues on the 

 statute-book, one of two results will follow?. Experiments, indis- 

 pensably necessary for the growth of medical science in relation 

 to the cure and prevention of disease, will cease, or almost cease, 

 to be done in this country ; or, as the alternative to this, persons 

 who desire to advance the science of their profession, will be 

 tempted to clandestinely ignore the law and to run their chance, 

 if the worst comes to the worst, of having to try conclusions with 

 the common informer. 



Let me illustrate this by two personal references > I have 

 already mentioned Prof. Lister as an experimenter, whose name 

 is now classical wherever science has reached, and whose work 

 has been of signal advantage to mankind. Last autumn Mr. 

 Lister wished to do some experiments in extension of the par- 

 ticular branch of knowledge with which his name is identified, 

 and at a point which he considered of extreme importance in 

 surgical pathology. He found he must either abandon his 

 investigation or must conduct it in a foreign country, and in his 

 zeal for science he chose the latter course. His experirrients 

 (which had to be on large animals) were done at the Veterinary 

 College of Toulouse ; and in stating this fact in a letter, from 

 which I quote, Mr. Lister added that " even with reference to 

 small animals, the working of the Act is so vexatious as to be 

 practically prohibitory of experiments by a private practitioner 

 like myself, unless he chooses lo incur the risk of transgressing 

 the law." A second name which I have mentioned is that of 

 Prof. Greenfield, who has so highly distinguished himself in 

 developing, by means of experiments, the preventive medicine 

 of splenic fever. Dr. Greenfield, in order to perform his inocu- 

 lation-experiments, had of course to become a licence-holder 

 under the Act ; and his experience of the hindrances which 

 attach to that position is expressed to me in the following terms: 

 " It is my deliberate conviction, as a result of my experience, 

 that these hindrances and obstacles are so numerous and so 

 great as to constitute a most serious bar to the investigation of 

 disease, and even of such remedial measures as would by com- 

 mon consent be for the direct benefit of the animals experi- 

 mented upon. When to this is added all the annoyance and 

 opprobrium which are the lot of investigators, it is to be won- 

 dered at that any one should submit to be licensed." Dr. Green- 

 field's experimental operations consisted only in inoculating the 

 virus of animal diseases, and he says : "I have not been 

 engaged in other investigations for the simple reason that, with 

 the present restrictions and the difficulty in obtaining a licence, 

 I regard it as almost hopeless to attempt any useful work of the 

 kind in this country." 



As I feel sure that the Act must at no distant time be recon- 

 sidered by the Legislature, and as I also very strongly feel that, 

 quite apart from any question of legal enactments, there is the 

 question of moral right or wrong to be considered in the matter, 

 I would beg y )U to allow me to make my own public confes- 

 sion of faith (from which I dare say yours will not much differ) 

 in that extremely important matter of controversy. 



The question being whether medical science can rightly use 

 living animals as subjects for experiments which may be painful, 

 and even, in exceptional cases, very painful to them, the answer 

 may be sought in either of two directions : I. What says the 



voice of the experimenter's own conscience? and 2. What 

 says the standard of common contemporary conduct in analogous 

 cases ? 



As regards the first, if I may take the liberty of expressing 

 my own feeling, I would say this. I do not in any degree 

 regard it 'as matter of indifference that, in certain cases, by 

 my own hand or by that of some one acting for me, I must 

 inflict death or pain on any living thing. I, on the contrary, 

 think of it with true compunction ; but I think of it as good 

 or bad according to the end which it subserves. Where I see 

 my way to acquire, at that painful cost, the kind of exact know- 

 ledge which, either in itself or in contribution to our common 

 stock, will promote the cure or prevention of disease in the race 

 to which the animal belongs, or in the animal kingdom generally, 

 or (above all) in the race of man, I no more flinch from what 

 then seems to me a professional duty, though a painful one, than 

 I would, in the days before chloroform, have shrunk from the 

 cries of a child whom I had to cut for stone. If, in a case of 

 the latter sort, the surgeon nerves himself to his work by the 

 conviction of an indispensable usefulness in what he has to do, 

 so does the pathologist in his, and surely in a much larger sense. 

 The agitated parent of the child might sometimes be tempted to 

 say : " Forbear giving this cruel pain ; let the poor little sufferer 

 die " ; but the surgeon's reply would have comforted her. And 

 so with the physiological experimenter : except that he, instead 

 of looking at one individual life to be saved, is looking at a 

 race or at many races, and reflects how, in respect of some 

 grievous physical misery, the whole of them, in all their multi- 

 tudinous successions, may be redeemed through the suffering of 

 the few. This is my personal view of the abstract light or 

 wrong in the question. I state it because, in matters of right 

 and wrong, no man ought to shelter himself behind authority. 

 I believe I may add that if it, or something very like it, had not 

 for centuries been the general view of the medical profession, 

 our professional knowledge would probably be standing in this 

 present age about where it stood in the days of the Plantagenets. 

 Of Harvey and Hunter and Bele, we well know that such was 

 the view on which they acted in rendering their immortal ser- 

 vices to mankind ; and I am not aware that any man, whose 

 opinion really counts in matters of medical science, would 

 express any material dissent from it. 



The second standard to which I referred was that of the com- 

 mon conduct of men in analogous cases. I pointedly say 

 " analogous," rather than "similar," because common life does 

 not in fact give cases w-hich, properly speaking, are "similar" 

 to ours. But what, I ask, is tlie common fri ncifk of behaviour 

 of civilised man towards the so-called lower animals ? He in 

 every respect subordinates their lives to his own. If he thinks 

 he can get an advantage to himself by killing or painfully muti- 

 lating an animal, he does so with apparently no hesitation. See, 

 for one instance, the sexual mutilations which are inflicted on 

 all but a small minority of most kinds of domestic animals, and, 

 as regards some kinds, on many of the females. When I ap- 

 peared as a witness six years ago before the Royal Commission 

 which was considering the question of our experiments, I par- 

 ticularly endeavoured to draw their attention to this view of the 

 case ; and in one of my answers (No. 1491) I entered on it more 

 fully than would be suitable to the present occasion. 



Thus, either way, whether I look to what I may call the 

 general conscience of the medical profession, or look to the 

 principles by which men in general govern their conduct 

 towards the brute creation, nowhere do I see fair ground on 

 which exception from outside can be taken to a limited, a 

 strictly economical, use of animal life for purposes of scientific 

 experiment. 



No doubt there can be found, outside the medical profession, 

 excellent persons, and plenty of them, whose first inclination 

 would be to dissent from that position of ours ; and some such 

 persons have (as I think, hastily) given public utterance to such 

 first impressions, and done their best to promote legislation 

 against us. Among names which I see identified with opinions 

 different from ours, are some for which I have deep respect. 

 Particularly of one such man, whom I have the honour to know, 

 I think it may be truly said that his own whole life has been one 

 of practical beneficence, and I would not willingly incur the 

 censure of any such man. But even to him I would fearlessly 

 say, that I think he has not done justice to the case of our pro- 

 fession. To him, and such as him, I would confidently appeal 

 to reconsider their first impressions. On him, and such as him, 

 I would urge that the practice of scientific experimentation on 



