iS74 VIVISECTION 465 



nelly, that he would only undertake a course which involved 

 no vivisection. Further to require an official assurance that 

 he would not do that which he had explicitly affirmed he 

 did not intend to do, affected him personally, and he there- 

 fore declined the proposal made to him to give the course 

 in question. 



It followed from the fact that experiments on animals 

 formed no part of his official course, and from his refusal 

 under the circumstances to undertake the non-official course, 

 that his opinions and present practices in regard to the ques- 

 tion of vivisection, did not come under their Lordships' 

 jurisdiction, and he protested against the introduction of 

 his name, and of the approbation or disapprobation of his 

 views, into an official document relating to a matter with 

 which he had nothing to do. 



In an intermediate paragraph of the same document, he 

 could not resist asking for an official definition of vivisection 

 as forbidden, in its relation to the experiments he had made 

 to the class of teachers. 



I should have to ask whether it means that the teacher who 

 has undertaken to perform no " vivisection experiments " is 

 thereby debarred from inflicting pain, however slight, in order 

 to observe the action of living matter ; for it might be said to be 

 unworthy quibbling, if, having accepted the conditions of the 

 minute, he thought himself at liberty to inflict any amount of 

 pain, so long as he did not actually cut. 



But if such is the meaning officially attached to the word 

 " vivisection," the teacher would be debarred from showing the 

 circulation in a frog's foot or in a tadpole's tail ; he must not 

 show an animalcule, uncomfortably fixed under the microscope, 

 nor prick his own finger for the sake of obtaining a drop of 

 living blood. The living particles which float in that liquid 

 undoubtedly feel as much (or as little) as a frog under the 

 influence of anesthetics, or deprived of its brain, does ; and the 

 teacher who shows his pupils the wonderful phenomena ex- 

 hibited by dying blood, might be charged with gloating over the 

 agonies of the colourless corpuscles, with quite as much justice 

 as I have been charged with inciting boys and girls to cruelty 

 by describing the results of physiological experiments, which 

 they are as likely to attempt as they are to determine the longi- 

 tude of their schoolroom. 



