90 



SCIENCE- 



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



the bounds of human knowledge, from the 

 vexatious interference of persons who can 

 know nothing of the importance of the 

 work or of the amount of suffering which 

 it involves. 



In Pennsylvania, also, attempts to secure 

 restrictive legislation have been made by 

 the American Anti-vivisection Society, 

 which has its headquarters in Philadelphia, 

 but the energetic protests of the medical 

 profession have sufficed to render these at- 

 tempts abortive. 



In Washington, during the present ses- 

 sion of Congress, the efforts of the local 

 humane societies have been so far success- 

 ful that the Committee on the District of 

 Columbia has brought before the Senate a 

 bill providing for the licensing and restrict- 

 ing of vivisection, but there seems to be 

 little reason to fear that such a bill will be- 

 come a law. 



In Massachusetts the State Society for 

 the Prevention of Cru.elty to Animals has, 

 until quite recently, treated this question 

 with moderation and good sense. While 

 regretting the necessity for sacrificing ani- 

 mal life for the advancement of science, 

 and anxious, like all right-minded people, 

 to reduce the sufferings of such animals to 

 a minimum, it has not seen in the existing 

 state of things any reason for demanding 

 additional legislation or for taking any 

 action under laws already in force. A few 

 years ago the President of the Society pub- 

 licly called attention to the failure of the 

 anti-vivisection agitation, both in this 

 country and in Europe, to effect any reduc- 

 tion in the number of animals subjected to 

 experiment, and maintained that the proper 

 attitude of the Society should be one of co- 

 operation with the best men of the medical 

 profession in seeking to prevent any abuses 

 from arising in connection with the practice 

 of vivisection. To the friends of the Society 

 who rejoice in the good work it has been 

 able to accomplish in the community, it 



must be a matter for sincere regret that 

 this wise policy has been abandoned, and 

 that the Society now finds itself arrayed in 

 opposition not only to the medical profes- 

 sion, but also to the higher educational in- 

 stitutions of the Common w^ealth. It is, 

 however, but just to state that this position 

 seems to have been assumed without any 

 formal action by the governing body of the 

 Society. 



The bill first presented by the Society to 

 the Legislature of 1896 provided that no 

 painful experiments upon living animals 

 should be performed in any educational in- 

 stitution of the State, except under the au- 

 thority of the State Board of Health, and 

 that the Massachusetts Society for the Pre- 

 vention of Cruelty to Animals might super- 

 vise all such experiments. Violations of 

 the law were to be punished by fines which ,^ 

 when collected, were to be turned over to 

 the Society. 



During the hearings before the Judiciary 

 Committee of the House this bill was twice 

 modified, first by the omission of the sec- 

 tion relating to the State Board of Health, 

 and of the clause requiring the fines to be 

 paid into the treasury of the Society, and 

 subsequently by providing that the agents 

 of the Society employed to supervise vivi- 

 sections should be doctors of medicine. 

 The petitioners for this legislation were, 

 one after another, compelled to acknowl- 

 edge under cross-examination, that they 

 were unable to present any evidence of 

 cruelty practiced in the educational insti- 

 tutions of Massachusetts in connection with 

 vivisection, while the remonstrants, by a 

 straightforward account of what actually 

 occurs in physiological laboratories and by 

 an exposure of exaggerations and misstate- 

 ments with which anti-vivisectionist litera- 

 ture abounds, sought to convince the com- 

 mittee of the mischievous character of the 

 agitation and of the unfortunate results- 

 which would necessarily follow the pro- 



