Vivisection » 
326 
[July 
It may be said that men can by habit become blunted 
to the exadt nature of what they do, see, or experience. 
This is true, but the blunting process is special, not 
general. A man long inured to some particular form of 
danger, and grown indifferent to that one form, may be 
nervous, or even timid, if suddenly exposed to some novel 
peril. We have heard of reckless miners — accustomed to 
open their safety lamps in a fiery vein, and to calmly smoke 
their pipes over a keg of gunpowder — displaying no small 
trepidation if out at sea in a moderate breeze. Precisely in 
the same manner men accustomed to inflidt pain or death 
upon one particular class of animals are not necessarily, on 
that account, blunted to the sufferings of other brutes, and 
still less of their own species. Fishermen, butchers,* 
poulterers, are by no means more inhuman or ferocious than 
other persons of similar position in life and degree of culture. 
Sportsmen and anglers cannot, certainly, as a class be ac- 
cused of general and habitual brutality. Some of them are 
even zealous and distinguished philanthropists. Why, then, 
should it be asserted, without a tittle of evidence, that 
medical men who have pradtised vivisedtion, or who have 
made any experiments upon living animals, must be rendered 
callous to human suffering ? Inflidting pain, as they do, 
more rarely than the classes of men above-mentioned, and 
for the highest purposes only, it is extremely unlikely that 
such a result should ensue ; and in the absence of affirma- 
tive fadts, which had they existed would have been trumpeted 
through the length and breadth of the land, we must dismiss 
this argument as idle and frivolous in the extreme. 
In proof that great respedt for animal life does not neces- 
sarily involve reverence for the superior sandtity of human 
life, we may refer to the sedt of the Jains, generally supposed 
to be an offshoot of the Buddhists, and still numerous in- 
some distridts of India. Some of their priests never sit 
down without previously sweeping the spot, lest they might 
crush out the life of some creeping thing. They refuse to 
eat in the dark, as they might possibly swallow an insedt, 
and thus destroy its life. “ To prevent their inhaling an 
animalcule, the more rigid of them wear a thin cloth over 
their mouths.” The pinjaropol, or hospital for decayed 
animals, maintained in the city of Surat, finds amongst them 
* In proof that the habit of destroying animals of one particular species 
does not render a man generally indifferent to animal suffering, we may men- 
tion a case for which we can vouch : — A butcher discovered that a hen in his 
possession had contracted the habit of eating her own eggs. According to 
the laws of the poultry yard this offence is capital ; bud die butcher expe- 
rienced a reludtance to kill the bird which he could not overcome, and he was 
obliged to send for a poulterer to perform the execution. 
