Vivisection. 
328 
[July. 
upon living creatures would be able to judge whether this 
method was safe or fallacious ? Do they really require to 
be instructed on this head by unscientific outsiders ? Can 
we really assume that physiologists would for one moment 
have recourse to a means so disagreeable if they could either 
discover a substitute, or if, on checking and verifying their 
results, they found them essentially delusive ? The process 
is difficult, but so is all experimental enquiry ; and few 
methods in any science have, in judicious hands, yielded a 
more splendid harvest. A medical contemporary justly re- 
marks that “the whole history of medicine is pregnant with 
examples of benefits to humanity derived from such experi- 
ments.” 
The discoveries of the aCtion of the laCteal and lymphatic 
system, and of the compound function of the spinal nerves 
may serve as illustrations. These discoveries, it has been 
justly said, lie at the very foundation of our present know- 
ledge of the laws of animal life. Yet these discoveries are 
mainly due to vivisection. Turning from abstract biology to 
practical medicine, what would be our treatment of the 
diseases of the heart and blood-vessels if we suppose Har- 
vey’s great discovery blotted out ? Hunter’s treatment of 
aneurism — a disease previously always fatal — springs from 
the same root, and was discovered and verified in the same 
manner. Look at the operation of ovariotomy, by which one 
single surgeon has saved the lives of more than five hundred 
women. This process, or at least a certain point which it 
involves, was first proved upon dogs, rabbits, and guinea-pigs. 
Without such preliminary experimentation no medical man 
would have ventured on a procedure formerly held necessarily 
fatal. To declare, then, that vivisection, as a means of research, 
is barren and deceptive, betrays an amount of ignorance which 
is positively indecent. It is the bounden duty of all who 
undertake to enlighten the public on any subject to make 
themselves first accurately and fully acquainted with all its 
bearings. Otherwise, instead of enlightening, they deceive 
and lay themselves open to the natural suspicion that such 
is their intention. He who comes forward in a court of 
justice to give evidence on matters which he does not know 
is considered a perjurer. Is not the position of the humani- 
tarian zealot who scatters baseless assertions broadcast 
morally, though not legally, exactly similar? Surely the 
few illustrations which we have cited, capable as they are 
of being indefinitely multiplied, form an overwhelming proof 
of the value of vivisection, and must utterly silence all the 
cavils raised against it on the score of inutility. Nay, they 
