VIVISECTION. 6 77 



them. I introduce the word death as well as pain, because, in spite 

 of the etymology of the word, and the fact that vivisection suggests 

 to the public mind pain only, and not death at all, the truth is, that 

 in at least the great majority of cases vivisection does or ought to 

 mean death only, and not pain at all. In the minds of those ignorant 

 of physiology — and they are foremost, if not alone, in blaming vivi- 

 section — much confusion has arisen from the different meanings at- 

 tached to the words " life " and " living." I alluded to these in the 

 beginning of this paper. To many such it is perhaps a revelation to 

 learn that an animal may be kept alive — that is, with its heart in full 

 working order, and its respiratory movements continuing with perfect 

 regularity — for hours and hours after all signs of consciousness have 

 disappeared. All operations performed on such an animal would come 

 under the term vivisection ; but, in the total absence of all signs of 

 consciousness, it would be absurd to speak of pain. It would perhaps 

 be a still greater revelation to such to learn that a frog, at a later 

 stage in the series of events which we class together as death — when 

 its brain and spinal cord have been instantaneously destroyed by an 

 operation the pain of which may be said to be infinitesimal, and its 

 heart removed at a time when feeling is impossible — may yet be made 

 by proper means to kick and jump and move its body about in almost 

 all possible ways. Any operation performed on the body of such a 

 frog would by many be still called vivisection ; but, to speak of such 

 a mere mass of muscle and nerve as suffering pain, is about as truth- 

 ful and rational as to say that it is cruel to cut down a tree, though a 

 silly, ignorant looker-on might shriek when the leg moved, for about 

 the same cause and with the same reason that the African grovels 

 before his fetich. 



Did the reader ever see a rabbit completely under the influence 

 of chloral ? Lying prostrate, with flaccid limbs, with head sunk back 

 on the limp neck, motionless and still, at first sight, it seems quite 

 dead and gone. But a gentle heaving of the body, a rise and a fall 

 every few seconds, tells you that it still breathes ; and a finger placed 

 on the chest may feel the quick throb of the still beating heart. You 

 pull it and pinch it ; it does not move. You prick with a needle the 

 exquisitely-sensitive cornea of its eye ; it makes no sign, save only 

 perhaps a wink. You make a great cut through its skin with a sharp 

 knife ; it does not wince. You handle, and divide, and pinch nerves 

 which, in ourselves, are full of feeling ; it gives no sign of pain. Yet 

 it is full of action. To the physiologist, its body, though poor in 

 what the vulgar call life, is still the stage of manifold - events, and 

 each event a problem, with a crowd of still harder problems at its 

 back. He therefore brings to bear on this breathing, pulsating, but 

 otherwise quiescent frame, the instruments which are the tools of his 

 research. He takes deft tracings of the ebb and flow of blood in the 

 widening and narrowing vessels ; he measures the time and the force 



