SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 82. 



cated physicians would be false to their 

 high calling did they not resist with all 

 their energy the attacks of an enemy whose 

 success would destroy all hope of establish- 

 ing medicine in the position to which it is 

 rightfully entitled, that of the most impor- 

 tant branch of biological science. 



In thus maintaining their right to study 

 and teach their profession, physicians are 

 not called upon to maintain that unneces- 

 sary pain has never in the history of the 

 world been inflicted in connection with 

 vivisection. Their true contention should 

 be: 



1. That the men in charge of the institu- 

 tions where vivisections are practiced in 

 this State are no less humane than those 

 who desire to supervise their actions, while 

 they are, at the same time, vastly better 

 informed with regard to the importance of 

 animal experimentation and the amount of 

 suflering which it involves. 



2. That no abuse of the right to vivisect 

 has been shown to exist in these institu- 

 tions. 



3. That the governing bodies of these in- 

 stitutions possess both the will and the 

 power to put a stop to such abuses should 

 they arise. 



4. That the existing statutes furnish 

 sufficient protection against cruelty in vivi- 

 section as well as against cruelty in general. 



5. That for the reasons above given legis- 

 lation on this subject is wholly uncalled for. 



These propositions define substantially 

 the position assumed by this Society in the 

 resolution adopted four years ago in re- 

 sponse to a communication from the Massa- 

 chusetts Society for the Prevention of 

 Cruelty to Animals, and, with the medical 

 profession united in their defence, no fear 

 need be felt that our Legislature will ever 

 yield to the pressure of fanatical agitation 

 to the detriment of the best interests of the 

 community. 



A full account of the origin and progress 



of the anti-vivisection agitation would, of 

 course, be impossible within the limits of 

 this discourse, but it will be well to refer 

 briefly to the history of the movement in 

 other communities, calling attention to cer- 

 tain points which are full of instruction 

 and warning for ourselves. 



The first serious attack upon biological 

 research in England seems to have been 

 made in an essay entitled ' Vivisection, is 

 it Necessary or Justifiable ? ' published in 

 London in 1864 by George Fleming, a 

 British army veterinary surgeon. This 

 essay is an important one, for though char- 

 acterized at the time by a reviewer in the 

 London Atheneum as ' ignorant, fallacious, 

 and altogether unworthy of acceptance,' its 

 blood-curdling stories, applied to all sorts 

 of institutions, have formed a large part of 

 the stock in trade of subsequent anti-vivi- 

 section writers. 



A fresh stimulus to the agitation was 

 given by the publication, in 1871, of a work 

 edited by Prof. J. Burdon Sanderson, en- 

 titled ' Handbook for the Physiological Lab- 

 oratory.' This book was intended to be 

 used by students of physiologj'- under the 

 guidance of their instructors, and contained 

 a description of the experimental basis 

 on which modern physiology rests. Un- 

 fortunately, however, it fell into the hands 

 of excitable men and women, who were 

 ignorant of many things which had prop- 

 erly been taken for granted in writing for 

 members of the medical profession. That 

 anaesthetics, for instance, would be used in 

 all cases to which they are applicable, was 

 tacitly assumed just as it would be in a 

 work on operative surgery. In conse- 

 quence of this failure to comprehend the 

 object for which the book was written, 

 many well meaning but too impulsive peo- 

 ple jumped ' to the conclusion that raw 

 medical students were being encouraged to 

 repeat, for their pleasure, every experiment 

 that had ever yielded results, careless 



