706 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1090 



is much easier to get a license to run a 

 low grogshop. Any man may without a 

 license and with practically no regard for 

 the sensations of the animals rip out the 

 testes from a boar or a dog, merely because 

 it suits his convenience or his whim or his 

 purse to have his animals gelded; but if a 

 physiologist wishes to make the same opera- 

 tion for the purpose of scientific observa- 

 tion on the effects of castration he must 

 secure a license stating with precision the 

 building where this is to be done, and the 

 purpose of the experiment, and he must, 

 he has no option, perform the operation 

 under complete anesthesia. 



In this country at present the opponents 

 of biological research point to England as 

 the model country. But in England they 

 ■continue the agitation for further regula- 

 tion or complete prohibition, and they con- 

 tinue to persecute the licensees with persist- 

 ent vilification and misrepresentation. 



It would be out of place for me to take 

 your time in a statement of the peculiarly 

 extravagant and unscientific views of the 

 opponents of biological and medical re- 

 search if it were not that there is a real 

 danger of the enactment of pernicious and 

 obstructive legislation. A situation exists 

 in which we who are doing what we believe 

 to be an important work for humanity need 

 your active cooperation, sympathy and 

 support. 



1. Practically all antivisectionists agree 

 in the charge that experiments on living 

 animals are necessarily cruel. 



Now cruelty implies the infliction of 

 needless or avoidable pain. No one justi- 

 fies or can justify cruelty in experimenta- 

 tion any more than he can justify cruelty 

 in any other action. But in the question of 

 pain the unbiased individual wiU see that 

 no one is so well qualified to judge as the 

 experienced physiologist or surgeon. It 

 would require the whole evening to discuss 



this one subject. Allow me to point out 

 in brief the following: 



The experimenter, even if he were really 

 cruel, would usually defeat his own ends by 

 the infliction of pain (a) because the pain 

 impulses would cause disturbance of the 

 normal functions which he seeks to dis- 

 cover and (6) because the struggles of a 

 suffering animal would disturb the adjust- 

 ment of apparatus and prevent the desired 

 observation. It is the total ignorance of 

 the real situation that causes so much em- 

 phasis to be laid upon this point by the 

 opponents of research. 



On the other hand, it is the fact that most 

 vivisection experiments as actually per- 

 formed, are done under deep anesthesia or 

 narcosis — usually for obvious reasons much 

 deeper than would dare be employed in 

 human surgery. Now the opponents of re- 

 search insist that anesthetics are not given, 

 or that when given the attempt at an- 

 esthesia is a mere blind, and that the ani- 

 mals are allowed to undergo torture. Most 

 of this discussion is by people who never 

 gave an anesthetic, who would not know 

 when an animal could be judged uncon- 

 scious, and who would be unable to form 

 an intelligent opinion as to whether move- 

 ments of the animal were unconscious re- 

 flexes or purposeful struggles. 



But why assume, as every one of the anti- 

 vivisectionists does seem to assume, that all 

 persons engaged in animal experimentation 

 are necessarily cruel? As one reads their 

 publications he finds that always the experi- 

 menter is supposed to delight in torture. 

 In fact he is spoken of over and over again 

 as "arch-fiend," "torturer," "devil in 

 human form" and the like. Can they see 

 no other purpose ? No other motive ? Has 

 the eminent head of our department of 

 pathology exposed himself week after week 

 to the danger of infection with typhoid, 

 tuberculosis and what not, merely because 



