THE VIVISECTION CLAMOUR. 
By the EDITOR. 
H AS the outcry ceased now that a Bill has been passed by the 
House of Commons ? We fancy not. The Bill has not 
satisfied those who are opposed to vivisection, while of course it 
has not pleased the medical profession. But the voice of the 
opposition has not been as loud as in the beginning of the year. 
Then it was shockingly violent and unreasonable. There has 
been, as the old saying is, “ much cry and little wool,” and a 
number of well-intentioned and equally uninformed old women 
have raised a banner with “ cruelty to animals ” inscribed upon 
it. This, of course, has been followed by an ignorant and 
withal a very noisy crowd, who have raised a special outcry 
against the medical profession, of abhorrent cruelty to animals. 
The medical profession at first took little notice of this bab- 
bling crowd ; and we fear that if it had not been for the decided 
movement of Mr. Ernest Hart it would have been absolutely 
silent on the matter, and as a consequence we should have 
had the Act passed in its original form, which has, now that 
its intentions are familiar, become so objectionable to the 
entire profession. Mr. Hart saw the objectionable character 
of the proposed law, and he called public attention to the 
subject through his paper, the “ British Medical Journal,” and 
by a well-organised plan he got the profession together, and 
brought them in a body to Mr. Cross to protest against this 
measure (as it was then drawn up) becoming law. The oc- 
currences at that meeting are familiar to the public. Mr. 
Simon and Sir W. Jenner pointed out, in terms of the most 
clearly logical force, the utterly unfair nature of the Bill, and 
the slur which it would cast upon what is unquestionably the 
most charitable profession in existence. While at the same 
time, as Mr. Simon indicated at some length, the profession 
of medicine is charged with cruelty — cruelty whose committal 
is under chloroform — the fox hunter, the harrier keeper, the 
deer stalker, the pigeon slayer, the rabbit snarer, to mention but 
