SUMMARY OF REPORTS, ETC. 373 



care is taken to ensure a minimum of pain. If 

 sport were thus restricted, it would soon come to 

 an end. The first time that a sportsman wounded 

 a bird instead of killing it, he would be censured 

 by a Government official ; the second time, his 

 gun-license would be revoked, a question would 

 be asked about him in Parliament, and he would 

 be held up to execration in the daily papers, for 

 the slow, deliberate torture of helpless animals. 

 He could plead, in excuse, only his. right to please 

 himself and his friends in his own way, and his 

 intention to inflict, for his own pleasure, not torture, 

 but only death. Experiments on animals have 

 this excuse, that they are necessary not only for 

 science but also in practice. In physiology, and 

 in pathology, and in the prevention and the cure 

 of disease, and in the operations of surgery, they 

 have helped to save human lives literally in 

 thousands and tens of thousands. Admit, that 

 some of them involve pain, some have no direct 

 bearing on practice, some fail, or are misin- 

 terpreted : there remains a whole legion of our- 

 selves, rescued from disease and death, a multitude 

 past all reckoning and ever increasing. 



It might be worth the trouble, to collect and 

 expose some of the false statements published by 

 the opponents of all experiments on animals ; 

 but the task would be endless. This book is 

 concerned only with the results that have been 

 obtained by the help of these experiments, and 

 with the Act relating to them. It was decided, 

 and with authority, that it should be written for 



