J380.1 Vivisection Question. 5°5 
of an evil which it is sought utterly to abolish. The abuse 
of anything implies that there is a legitimate use. Hence 
Prof. Zollner is by no means to be regarded as one of those 
advocates, blind to fafts and deaf to reason, who seem to 
spring up in connection with every agitation and movement. 
Yet we scarcely see that he draws the line between the use 
and the abuse of vivisection with the clearness which would 
be desirable, and his language at times seems to savour of 
the most violent English school. Still, taking the title of 
the book into consideration, we are bound to put the most 
favourable construction upon, his words. On our part we 
are free to admit that vivisection has been abused, and that 
some writers — not content with defending its legitimate 
and necessary employment — have weakened their position 
by denying or justifying such abuses. We fully grant that 
painful experiments upon living animals should be under- 
taken simply for purposes of research, for the solution of 
novel or undecided questions. We would neither practise 
nor countenance vivisection for mere demonstration, or for 
the acquirement or display of manipulative skill. We hold 
that every animal irremediably injured should be at once 
put to death after the operation or experiment is at an end. 
We deplore that physiologists should in any degree have 
departed from these conditions, and should thus have given 
a foothold for agitators and sentimentalists, and have 
gravely compromised the future of biological research. 
But whilst admitting and regretting such aberrations and 
excesses, we must not forget that nothing of the sort is 
chargeable to English men of Science in modern , days. 
Even the Secretary of the Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals, when giving evidence before the Royal 
Commission on Vivisection, acknowledged that he did not 
know of a single case of wanton cruelty.* Such being the 
faCts, and due regard being had to the ultra-humanitarian 
tendencies of the nation which — save when sport or fashion 
is concerned — is so exceedingly averse to give pain, it might 
have been thought that special legislation was unnecessary, 
and that public opinion would have proved amply sufficient 
to restrain the abuses of vivisection. 
But whilst finding in the fundamental idea of Piofessoi 
Zollner’s work much that we can accept, we regret to note 
a striking absence of tnose features which we considered 
ourselves warranted to expeCt. The vivisection question is 
* It would have been well had Prof. Zollner and others noticed how much 
the Report of the Royal Commission goes beyond the fadts elicited, and how 
far it is, in turn, outstripped by the Bill as proposed, and even as carried. 
