CHAPTER XXIX 



1875-1876 



In the year 1875 the bitter agitation directed against 

 experimental physiology came to a head. It had existed 

 in England for several years. In 1870, when President of 

 the British Association, Huxley had been violently attacked 

 for speaking in defence of Brown Sequard, the French 

 physiologist. The name of vivisection, indifferently applied 

 to all experiments on animals, whether carried out by the 

 use of the knife or not, had, as Dr. (afterwards Sir) William 

 Smith put it, the opposite effect on many minds to that of 

 the " blessed word Mesopotamia." Misrepresentation was 

 rife even among the most estimable and well-meaning of the 

 opponents of vivisection, because they fancied they saw 

 traces of the practice everywhere, all the more, perhaps, for 

 not having sufficient technical knowledge for proper dis- 

 crimination. One of the most flagrant instances of this 

 kind of thing was a letter in the Record charging Huxley 

 with advocating vivisections before children, if not by them. 

 Passages from the Introduction to his Elementary Physi- 

 ology, urging that beginners should be shown the structures 

 under discussion, examples for which could easily be pro- 

 vided from the domestic animals, were put side by side with 

 later passages in the book, such, for instance, as statements 

 of fact as to the behaviour of severed nerves under irritation. 

 A sinister inference was drawn from this combination, and 

 published as fact without further verification. Of this he 

 remarks emphatically in his address on " Elementary In- 

 struction in Physiology," 1877 {Collected Essays, iii. 300) : 



459 



