INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
615 
North American Indians with their foes ; of the Inquisition 
with heretics ; of Nana Sahib with English women and 
children — and, I blush to say it, of French professors with 
their poor dumb patients. All have heard of Majendie, 
the physiologist, whose investigatory steel has been thrust 
into every kind of flesh that the law' even of France left 
available : all the dogs and cats that ever came within his 
grasp w 7 ere sure to leave some partof their organs sticking to his 
fierce forceps. It is said that an old English Quaker waited 
upon him one day, and in simple downright phrase laid bare 
to him the horrors of w hat he had been doing through a long 
lifetime. I do not know where the anecdote is to be found, 
but it is further recorded, that after that the old physiologist 
w 7 as haunted by a terrible consciousness of having committed 
a w-rong. A similar case occurred more recently to a Scotch 
vivisecting professor, whose last illness was a long and 
painful one ; and his sufferings, it w 7 as confessed, w r ere 
aggravated by the recollection of the agonies he had so often 
inflicted upon unoffending animals, which but for him might 
have lived out their days with that pleasure w 7 hich the Creator 
designed as a concomitant of their life. 
In connexion wflth this subject, I am happy to mention the 
claims of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — 
of the council of which I have the honour to be a member — 
and I could wish that every member of our profession should 
lend his substantial support to this valuable society, thus 
co-operating for the relief of pain and disease, as contem- 
plated by the founders of this College. On the other hand, 
I hope the society will take a hint, and keep its attention 
fixed upon the probable introduction of vivisection on a 
large scale into the schools of this country : and, if necessary, 
rouse the public mind to the importance of the subject. 
Happily, amongst Englishmen, public opinion is so right- 
mincled and so strong, that w 7 ere it concentrated but for an 
hour upon the existence of such horrors as I have mentioned, 
indignation would do such a work that would prevent their 
recurrence for ever. 
Among other proofs of a more humane treatment of the sub- 
jects committed to our care, may be mentioned the gradual 
substitution of mild for severe measures in practice ; and the 
cessation, in the hands of scientific and skilful men, of the 
system of enormous drugging, wrhich, together with the over- 
composition of prescriptions, is a relic of barbarous ages. 
Time was, as could easily be illustrated, when a prescription 
was a pack-horse upon wdiose back you could not put too 
many burdens; and when, out of the intestinal w 7 ar of 
