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EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
it has used to put an end to the atrocities in the French 
veterinary schools will soon be attended with the most com¬ 
plete success. 5 ’ 
Criticisms like these are well calculated to rouse public 
attention to the attempt which has been made by “ The So¬ 
ciety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 5> to remove so 
great a blot from the shield of science as the infliction of un- 
necessary pain and suffering on animals, and to strengthen 
its efforts in so just a cause. 
On the day succeeding the publication of these remarks, 
w T e read in the pages of the same journal the following letter, 
which shows at least that an impression had been made in 
the right quarter, and consequently that ere long we may 
hope to see the beneficial effects of this ventilation of the 
question. 
To the Editor of i The Daily Telegraph* 
Sir, —It will gratify many people to find by your journal of this morning 
that you are exerting your powerful pen in opposition to the practice of vivi¬ 
section. You do not, however, seem to be aware that the practice is still 
followed to a horrible extent,'and not only in France, but also in this country, 
under the idea that it is useful in the study of physiology and diseases of 
man. lam not now singular in having for many years publicly combated 
that error, and I have repeatedly challenged the advocates of vivisection to 
select any series of investigations for analysis which they thought most 
useful or defensible. 
It is, however, only recently that any serious attention has been accorded 
to the subject, and this has been obtained chiefly through the influence of 
the societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals of London and Paris. 
A commission of eminent persons in Prance has been appointed to consider 
the subject, and the report which they have made now lies before me. Whilst 
the document places vivisection under some restrictions—which, pro tanto, 
in the present state of the question, are not wholly worthless—it still con¬ 
cedes advantages to it which are entirely unfounded and demonstrably erro¬ 
neous. 
The report has been placed in my hands by the Royal Society for the 
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in London, and I have undertaken, at the 
wish of the Society, to prepare a reply. This, as I am instructed, will be 
published in the course of next month. I shall, in my answer, show, so far 
as the limits prescribed to me may allow, that vivisection is useless ; that it 
invariably “ fogs” the question it proposes with interfering influences, so as 
to render it impossible to deduce any logical, much less useful, conclusion; 
that vivisectors themselves, almost without exception, unconsciously furnish 
us with evidence of the superiority of other and entirely unobjectionable modes 
of inquiry; that no one useful discovery has ever resulted from vivisection ; 
that some which have been attributed to it, such as Mr. Hunter’s operation 
for aneurism, &c., are simply, as matters of history, untrue, having been de¬ 
ductions from facts to which vivisection in no degree contributed; that 
Charles Bell, quoted in the report as an example of the utility of vivisection, 
was one of the strongest opponents of it, and his own words will be quoted 
