1876.] 
Vivisection . 
317 
this is done it cannot be considered that we have reached 
the state of sanitary improvement befitting a great and 
prosperous country. 
Postscript.— Since the above was written I have had an 
opportunity, through the courtesy of Mr. Sclater- Booth, 
M.P., the President of the Local Government Board, of 
perusing a copy of the Public Health ACt of 1874, which 
appears to me admirably calculated to meet the case of the 
districts referred to in this paper, and to provide the 
machinery by which the suggestions here offered might be 
carried out,— E. H, 
IIL VIVISECTION. 
YSTERIOUS and perplexing are the ways of modern 
Humanitarianism. One moment it swallows the 
largest of camels, and the next it strains at the 
tiniest of gnats. With unfaltering step it marches over the 
summit of Mount Everest, and then stumbles at some 
scarcely visible mole-hill. To drop metaphor, it fastens 
upon matters never demonstrated to be evils, minute in their 
amount and unobtrusive in their character, whilst practices 
much more questionable in their nature, and almost world- 
wide in their extent, are allowed to pass unchallenged. 
Perhaps, however, there is method in this seeming madness. 
Sport and Fashion are popular and powerful, and may there- 
fore — to quote a somewhat cynical proverb— “ steal a horse 5 ' 
with impunity, whilst Science, weak and uninfluential, “ is 
hanged for looking over the gate. 55 This may perhaps, in 
some degree, explain the recent raid made upon vivisection. 
But if Humanitarianism is cautious aa to whom or what it 
attacks, when it has once selected a victim it is equally per- 
tinacious and unscrupulous. It never retraCts, never owns 
itself mistaken. We have heard that there is no animal, 
not even a Galeodes, so aggressively pugnacious as an advo- 
cate of “ international arbitration none so narrow-minded 
and selfish as the professed cosmopolitan ; and, in like man- 
ner, it might be said that of all enemies the most bitter, 
vindictive, and unchivalrous is the humanitarian. There is 
with him no toleration, no agreement to differ. “ Be my 
