AND OPEliATIONS UPON LIVING ANIMALS. 361 
That experiments have sometimes led to a little increase of 
certain knowledge, I know; but their frequent repetition after all 
has been proved by them that is necessary, every humane man 
must deprecate; and still more is it to be regretted that the pro¬ 
secution of experiments on living animals is recommended to stu¬ 
dents, to boys, as a useful mode of employing their time and im¬ 
proving their minds. I can find no excuse for any man, who will 
dissect living dogs, rip up their bellies (or, as the softened phrase 
is, lay open their abdomen), cut out their stomach, or spleen, or 
kidneys, or perform other dreadful mutilations, merely to satisfy 
a feeling of curiosity; and still less do I think that he can be 
excused for recommending such practice to his pupils. 
‘‘ One would suppose that the determining such a question, as 
whether, in vomiting, the stomach acts alone, or is assisted by 
the diaphragm and abdominal muscles, or is altogether passive, 
would scarcely be thought worth the sacrifice even of one dog— 
by any man, at least, who had ever himself felt what pain is, 
were it but that from the prick of a needle, or of a thorn lodged 
in the finger. Yet this unimportant matter, this subject of cu¬ 
riosity alone, which is not of the slightest consequence, whatever 
w'ay it might be settled, has been the cause of innumerable living 
dissections, the very least of which is sufficient to make one’s 
blood run cold. Let any one who has ever experienced nausea 
and sickness for ten minutes, think what must be the sufferings 
of a creature whose belly is ripped open and emetics injected 
into its stomach; or what must be the agony produced by cutting 
away its stomach altogether, and sewing a bladder in its place— 
thereby substituting, for the purpose of experiment, an artificial 
stomach ! These and similar barbarous but really useless experi¬ 
ments have been repeated over and over, with a perseverance 
which is perfectly disgusting. Think of a dog being tied down 
to a table, the whole fleshy walls of its belly being cut away 
with a knife, and experiments made on it in that dreadful and 
pitiable state, for the purpose merely of ascertaining whether it 
will vomit or not. ‘An animal,’ Magendie observes, ‘still 
vomits though the diaphragm has been rendered immovable by 
cutting the diaphragmatic nerves: it vomits in the same manner, 
though the whole abdominal muscles have been taken away by 
the knife, with the precaution of leaving the linea alba and the 
peritoneum untouched*.’ 
Now, you will observe that I do not mean to inculcate the 
positive abstinence from experiments on any account whatever, 
for there may be circumstances which will fairly warrant their 
adoption ; though a humane or just man will never have recourse 
Mygeiidie’s Plivsiology, tjjuiblalcd by Dr. Milligan, ed. 3, p. 827. 
