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ANALYSES OF BOOKS. 
Physiological Cruelty or Fact v. Fancy: An Enquiry into the 
Vivisection Question . By Philanthropos. London : 
Tinsley Brothers. 
Second Notice (see p. 354). 
Philanthropos says, in meeting Mr. Hutton’s contention, 
“ We must try, then, to imagine ourselves belonging to superior 
beings who make us obey them in all things, and whose reasons 
we can seldom understand. They tie us up in order to prevent 
our going where they wish- — they prevent our making love, for 
fear of its interfering with our work — they keep us in prisons, 
because they like to look at us and to hear us sing — they take 
away our clothes, in order to wear them themselves — they crop 
our ears, because they think we look prettier with them short — 
they do various painful things to us in order to make us taste 
nicer when cooked — and, finally, they kill and eat us. ... If 
we were suddenly enabled to understand the reasons for each 
adtion, our dispositions remaining the same, is it likely that the 
sense of injury which had not been evoked by anything else 
would arise when they went on to use us for experiments for the 
advancement of their science and the improvement of their 
own health ? ” 
In the next chapter the author puts the much-needed question 
“ What is vivisection ? ” On this subject the vaguest notions 
prevail, not merely among the public, but among Bestiarian ad- 
vocates, who, if better informed themselves, have no objection 
to profit by vulgar confusion and exaggeration. Philanthropos 
shows how little — vanishingly little — of the work performed in a 
physiological laboratory can in any manner be included under 
this name. He shows that “ in England animals are never dis- 
sected alive in orderto show the relations of their parts. . . . There 
is no room for talking about medical students being demoralised 
by witnessing tortures : there are none for them to witness.” 
Painful operations are confined to purposes of original research, 
and “ in the few cases where pain must be given it is generally 
very slight.” The author enumerates inoculations, used in 
studying the origin and communication of disease, experiments 
on the effecfts of drugs, and especially the treatment of poisons ; 
and, lastly, a few experiments relating to various animal func- 
tions. In this latter class anaesthetics were used, wherever 
possible, before any law was passed on the subject. Here 
Philanthropos truly says — “ Yet although no facft is better 
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