ON TIIE DISSECTION OF 
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and described scenes of almost incredible barbarity. They la¬ 
mented the incautiousness with which some lecturers were, even 
at the present day, in the habit of expressing themselves on 
these points; excusing, if not actually lauding, the cold-blooded 
inflicters of torture that would have disgraced the dungeons of 
the inquisition; and they both cordially agreed, that the true 
principles of physiology and pathology would be best learned by 
a careful observation of proceedings of nature in health and in 
sickness, and among as many as possible of the various classes 
of animals. A perfect knowledge of healthy and of diseased struc¬ 
ture-observation of the living, and examination of the dead,—no 
tortures of ours interrupting the natural course of things, would 
a little more slowly, but alone, with certainty, place the sciences 
of physiology and medicine on their proper basis. We had 
scarcely parted, when the veterinary practitioner met with a 
little book worth its weight in gold, Letters to a young Natu¬ 
ralist, on the Study of Nature, and Natural Theology, by 
James L. Drummond, and one of these letters was so 
much in point on the subject of the conversation alluded to, and 
contained advice so excellent and so creditable to the writer, 
that we determined to lay it before the veterinary public. We 
cordially subscribe to every word of it ,* and when the veterina¬ 
rian takes up the pursuit of physiology, let this be his instructor 
and his suide. 
If you have not read of the experiments made by anatomists 
on living animals, you will have an imperfect idea of the hor¬ 
rible excesses which are committed. The slightest matter of 
the merest curiosity is made the pretext for mangling living 
animals in the most dreadful way that can be imagined. It is 
not always, I must observe, in consequence of a theory being 
formed, and a belief that, if proved true, it might be of importance 
to our species, that experiments are made to determine its correct¬ 
ness or fallacy. In France, especially, the most barbarous cutting 
up of living animals is pursued with a savage and reckless en¬ 
thusiasm, not for the purpose of verifying a probable, and, if 
true, important conjecture, but to ascertain what effects are pro¬ 
duced by such butchery :—I hesitate not to use the word, for it 
is the fittest that could be selected. Experiments of this de¬ 
scription are unhallowed in their nature, and they will, almost 
always, be unsatisfactory in their result to a rigid investigator of 
truth ; for a conclusion can seldom be depended on, which is de¬ 
rived from observation of a mangled suffering creature bleeding 
under the dissccting-knife. 
