SCIENCE. 



FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 188:^. 



THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 



The book we take as the basis of our re- 

 marks,^ originalU" published in Eiiglaiul, is one 

 of several recent signs that British phj-siolo- 

 gists are at last coming to their senses; and, 

 instead of attempting to conceal the fact that 

 they experiment on animals, have decided to 

 explain to the general public what a vivisec- 

 tion is, and whj- vivisections are necessary. 

 Philanthropos, who is evidently well informed, 

 discusses without passion or prejudice such 

 topics as, ' AVhat is pain?' 'What is cru- 

 elty ? ' ' Our rights over animals,' * "What is 

 vivisection ? ' ' The relation of experiment to 

 phj'siolog3',' ' The relation of medicine to exper- 

 iment,' and so forth. If our colleagues across 

 the water had, some seven or eight j'ears ago, 

 shown sufficient courage to trust to the com- 

 mon sense of the majority of tiicir countrymen, 

 and had endeavored to inform the laity by se- 

 curing the publication and distribution of some 

 such book as this, the anti-vivisection legisla- 

 tion could hardly have been enacted. Its pas- 

 sage, and the still-continued .agitation for an 

 act of Parliament tot.ally forbidding .ill experi- 

 ment on living animals, prove that the public 

 did not and does not know enough about the 

 matter to save itself from being misled by the 

 reckless misstatements of irresponsible fanat- 

 ics, and of certain seekers after notoriety or 

 salary. 



People in general do not read official blue- 

 books: so, in spite of the fact that the royal 

 commission appointed to investigate the mat- 

 ter reported, that, after prolonged and careful 

 inquiry, it could find no evidence that Eng- 

 lish physiologists were guilt}- of cruelt}", it has 

 been possible for certain anti-vivisectors, b}- a 



» rbyeiological cruelty; or, fact v. fancy ; an inquiry into the 

 vivisection question. By Phllantliropos. New Vorls, John 

 Wiley <£• Sana, 1883. 156 p. 8*. . 



No. 38. — 1888. 



persistent course of malignant vituperation and 

 lirazen mendacity, to produce a wide-spread 

 l)elief that vivisection essentially' consists in 

 torturing an animal for the object of seeing 

 how much it can suffer without dying. That 

 such is the actual conviction of many worthy 

 men and women in England, we know to be the 

 case. The physiologists kept silent, and left 

 the field to their enemies, with disastrous result ; 

 no one, not a brute, who believed lialf the 

 stories circulated, could fail to hate pliysiology 

 and physiologists. When the railroad-stations 

 of England were placarded with large figures 

 of dissections of dead animals, accompanied 

 b}- printed words designed to entrap the gener- 

 al public into the belief that they represented 

 vivisections of living creatures ; when a text- 

 book of practical physiologj-, designed only 

 for special students of physiolog}', was repre- 

 sented far and wide as intended for use b}' 

 every crude medical student ; when the fact 

 that the words ' first give an anaesthetic ' 

 were omitted (as the}- are in text-books of 

 surgeiy, the administration of an anaesthetic 

 being, of course, assumed in cases where 

 very special reasons for its omission do not 

 exist) in the directions for the performance of 

 certain operations, was used as proof that physi- 

 ologists never thought of employing means to 

 prevent or minimize pain ; when a law was 

 passed which allows any one to torture a frog 

 in the most brutal manner if he says he does 

 it just because he likes it, but subjects a uni- 

 versit}- professor to fine and imprisonment if 

 he draws a drop of blood from the anim-al's toe 

 for a scientific purpose, — then it had certainly 

 become time for the phj'sicians and j)h}-siolo- 

 gists of the British Isles to endeavor to inform 

 the public on the \'ivisection question. 



The anti-vivisection craze has now spread to 

 (ierman}-, and there are premonitory symptoms 

 in the United .States. Our people in general 

 are too well informed, and have too great con- 

 fidence in scientific men, to be so easilj- led 



