November 19^ 1915] 



SCIENCE 



707 



he has a fiendish delight in seeing the 

 quivering of flesh and hearing the plaintive 

 squeal of guinea-pigs when he thrusts the 

 hypodermic into them? "Why would not a 

 plain needle serve equally? The point of 

 view is so absurd that it should require no 

 discussion among intelligent people. 



It is charged, however, that the practise 

 of vivisection tends to induce a disregard 

 for the sufferings of animals and brutalizes 

 the mind and conduct of the experimenter. 

 Now it happens that I have a pretty wide 

 acquaintance among physiologists, and I 

 have known some of the most accused vivi- 

 seetors rather intimately. Of course they 

 are not all alike, they differ as other men 

 differ. But on the average in point of hu- 

 mane, kindly sympathy they stand above 

 their colleagues. And the reason for this is 

 clear to him who will listen to reason. They 

 have gone into this work because the higher 

 human sympathy has appealed to them; 

 they have sought earnestly for those things 

 which will relieve or prevent suffering; 

 their lives are given to the solution of prob- 

 lems the ultimate end of which is found 

 in the very things about which they are 

 charged to be wholly indifferent. 



Not only is it not true that vivisection 

 experiments tend to make the experimenter 

 callous; the reverse is actually the case. I 

 can testify from my own experience that 

 it is harder to make the fiftieth experiment 

 than the first; that one's sympathies are 

 more and more awakened rather than de- 

 stroyed. There is no doubt that abuses are 

 possible — are even probable. Yet most of 

 the stories told to illustrate the brutality of 

 vivisectors in things aside from the experi- 

 ments themselves are highly improbable. 

 As, for example, the statement that Dr. 

 Sweet, of the University of Pennsylvania, 

 kicked across the basement floor a poor 

 emaciated dog on which he had operated. 

 An operated animal is too valuable to be 

 used in this way. 



"Were I to descend to the methods of our 

 detractors I might use the following from 

 my own experience to prove that antivivi- 

 section doctrine induces brutality. 



I was once teaching in a small college 

 the president of which was an ardent anti- 

 vivisectionist. One day I received by mail 

 a large poisonous centipede, carelessly en- 

 closed in an unlabeled box. I made haste 

 to get it into a wide-mouthed bottle. I had 

 just succeeded when the president came 

 into the room followed by a stray dog. 

 There was a rule that dogs were not to be 

 allowed in these rooms. The president took 

 me roughly to task for allowing the poor 

 centipede to suffer for lack of air in the 

 bottle. Then, seeing the dog, he asked if it 

 was mine ? When I told him it was not he 

 ordered it out of the room. The poor ani- 

 mal instead of obeying crouched on the 

 floor and the president kicked it brutally 

 and cruelly across the room and through 

 the entance. Yet he could declaim with 

 tearful voice upon Llewellyn's faithful 

 hound Gelert! 



It should be emphasized here that the 

 lower animals themselves gain immensely 

 from the results of vivisection and of experi- 

 ments on living animals. The same advan- 

 tages of protective serums and antitoxins 

 are made available for them as for the 

 human. The Agriculture Department of 

 the University of California at the present 

 time makes and distributes hog cholera 

 serum. The Report of the College of Agri- 

 culture for the year 1913-14 states that 

 when a herd of hogs becomes infected and 

 is not treated with serum forty to eighty 

 per cent, of the animals die. I am told by 

 experienced and unprejudiced stock raisers 

 that this estimate errs on the side of con- 

 servatism. The report shows further the 

 following figures for a diseased herd treated 

 with the serum : 



Died before vaeeination 92 



Sick when vaccinated 123 



