EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
671 
which are to be witnessed at Alfort and Lyons. But those 
statements bear too distinctly the mark of authenticity to be 
for a moment called in question. Mr. Spooner was himself 
one of a deputation which went to Paris in May last, in con- 
nection with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals, to co-operate with a French institution of a similar 
nature for the purpose of attempting to put a stop to the 
horrible custom of vivisection, or dissecting alive, which it 
seems is maintained in the two chief veterinary colleges of 
France. Nothing can be more revolting than the picture 
drawn of the scenes which take place in those establishments. 
Twice a week the pupils are instructed in surgery by cutting 
up live horses. At nine o’clock in the morning the wretched 
animal selected is led out to be operated upon. There is no 
torture human ingenuity can devise to which he is not sub¬ 
jected. He is stabbed, he is ripped up, pieces of his flesh are 
cut away, his eyes are dragged from their sockets, his feet 
are slashed, his glands are torn away, operations of the 
most delicate nature are performed upon him, whatever the 
sharp knifes or the tenacious forceps can do, aided by a 
stout arm and a pitiless will, is effected, and for seven 
hours the sanguinary work goes on, unless the wretched 
animal falls exhausted meanwhile beneath the sharp pangs 
of agony he is compelled to endure. Such cruelty as this, 
perpetrated too in the name of science, is, we have no hesi¬ 
tation in proclaiming it, a blot upon the name of France. We 
seem to be reading of some wild country in the interior of 
Africa, rather than of that which lies next to our own shores. 
The barbarities practised at Alfort and Lyons must take rank 
as wanton and gratuitous. It is impossible to believe that 
they are needed in the interests of science, or that veterinary 
surgery could not be studied without inflicting such agonising 
suffering upon a noble animal. Mr. Spooner maintains, in¬ 
deed, that position. He declares that vivisection is utterly 
unnecesary; and it seems obvious, indeed, that if human 
surgery can be learnt without such barbarity, veterinary 
surgery must be placed under the same conditions. There 
is no possible excuse, therefore, for persistence in a system 
which shocks all the higher sentiments of our nature, and 
which, by the authoritative sanction accorded to it, assumes 
the proportions of a national disgrace. It is not usually the 
duty of one country to remonstrate with another upon its 
purely domestic shortcomings ; but in this case we cannot do 
otherwise than accord our heartiest approval of the course 
adopted by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals, or refrain from expressing a hope that the exertions 
