February 10, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



223 



lost touch with fellow animals somewhere in 

 the stone or bonze age, since which time he has 

 ceased to domesticate them) upon the lower forms 

 of life needs revision ; that many of the ravages 

 are unjust, nay cruel and degrading ; that in 

 many cases they should be ameliorated through 

 human education, while in other indefensible 

 instances they should be abolished by human 

 law. 



In this agitation the observer of humanity, 

 from the widening point of view of anthropo- 

 logical science, sees not a fanatical outbust, but 

 an extension of one of the potent familiar fac- 

 tors of human development, an evolution of the 

 ancient and ever-growing protest against the al- 

 leged right of exti-eme might, constituting itself 

 the judge, whether as populace, or despot, 

 priest or tyrant, egotist or felon, science or 

 creed, to forcibly inflict pain upon insignificant 

 or helpless victims. 



Science, since Darwin at least, admits no such 

 chasm as theology formally alleged, between 

 animals and man, while, with the wider study 

 of nature, the attitude of mind which has pre- 

 viously circumscribed the activity of human re- 

 dress to human ills fades away. 



It is the effort which affected the abolition of 

 gladitorial combats, burnings at the stake, tor- 

 ture chambers, the Inquisition, serfdom, the 

 abatement of slavery and the persecution of 

 Jews, which is now seen to expand. Long 

 limited in sympathy to the groans of man, it is 

 now led, by the power of expanding knowledge, 

 to listen to the cry of man's speechless victim, 

 the tortured brute. 



Suddenly and strangely, at the close of the 

 nineteenth century, we mark, throughout civil- 

 ized peoples, the uprising of societies and indi- 

 viduals who, again rejuvenating the thought of 

 Buddha, appear unselfishly to strive to extend 

 human sympathy beyond the human barrier. 

 But the outgrowths are not spontaneous. It is 

 because of one of the most potent of the forces 

 which has led man from darkness toward civil- 

 ization that they exist. It is because of a prin- 

 ciple that should be dear to the heart of a man 

 of science, and for which Science herself has 

 suffered, that the idea of the human being ad- 

 vancing his own knowledge by acts so selfish 

 as vivisection meets with self condemnation. 



Flint (Text-book of Physiology) frequently 

 exposing the nerve roots of dogs in public dem- 

 onstrations ; Castex (Archives Oen. de Medicine, 

 Jan. and Feb., 1892) clubbing out of joint the 

 shoulders of unnarcotized dogs to show how to 

 massage them ; B. A. Watson (Experimental 

 Study of lesions arising from severe concussion, 

 1890) dropping living dogs from heights so as to 

 produce and then study on them concussion of the 

 spine ; cutting the intestines of living dogs and 

 then sewing the ends together with dull needles 

 in certain ways, to study circular sutures ; 

 Phelps' fixing the joints of living dogs in 

 cramped positions for six weeks and five months, 

 to see if anchylosis would ensue ; Porter (Jour- 

 nal of Physiologists, April 6, 1895) exposing for 

 its entire length the cervical cord of a narco- 

 tized dog and severing it at the sixth cervical 

 vertebra ; seizing the phrenic nerve of thirteen 

 lightly narcotized dogs and rabbits and tearing 

 it out of the chest ; studying respiration (Report 

 Koyal Humane Society, 1865, pp. 31-66) by 

 plunging the heads of seventy-six living ani- 

 mals in liquid plaster-of-paris until suffocation 

 ensued bj^ the hardening of the plaster in the 

 bronchial tubes in four minutes ; Chauveau 

 (Wilberforce to the Zoologist, London, July, 

 1892) studying excitement of spinal marrow 

 upon eighty living horses and asses by chiseling 

 open the vertebrre and exposing the marrow ; 

 washing out parts of the brains of living dogs 

 and studying their future action in subsequent 

 days or weeks (Pfluger' Archives, 1888, p. 303). 

 These are acts which, when known in the light 

 of widening sympathy, gradually become intol- 

 erable to the human mind. 



Henry C. Mekcer. 



Section of American and Prehis- 

 toric Aech/eolooy at the Univer- 

 sity OF Pennsylvania, January 9, 1899. 



[It is desii'able for this Journal to admit 

 discussion of scientific questions, however little 

 the point of view may commend itself to most 

 men of scifcnce. Mr. Mercer states that the 

 anti-vivisection movement does not justify itself 

 in logic, and hence argument seems somewhat 

 futile. If any of our readers are influenced by 

 Mr. Mercer's remarks we recommend them 



