676 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
Without seeking to enter upon a scientific dissertation, 
we may be permitted to affirm that this progress dates from 
the establishment of the gastric fistulae—a vivisection. This 
is a fact which no man will seek to deny. And if the para¬ 
mount importance, in the vital economy of the human frame, 
of the function be considered—since it is the first of all 
those necessary to the preservation of life—there will be no 
need to dwell further upon the extent of the benefit this 
conferred. 
Setting aside, therefore, all reference to medical or sur¬ 
gical illustration of our argument, let us confine ourselves 
to one single object, the most striking of all, from the pe¬ 
culiar position in which we stand, and also because it offers 
more serious matter for reflection than any other. Certain 
vivisections seem to have no other aim than that of pro¬ 
voking manifestations of pain : these relate to the study of 
the nervous system, and these have more need than all the 
rest to be justified by the plea of utility in the result, for no 
human being, endowed with the smallest spark of sensibility, 
could be supposed to practise such experiments unless he 
had constantly before him the sublime result of which he is 
in pursuit, both for the good of science and humanity. If 
we can, therefore, succeed in establishing that the experi¬ 
ments hitherto made upon the nervous system, by the scien¬ 
tific discoveries to which they have led up to the present 
moment, cannot be classed amongst the definitions we have 
just given of “ cruelty/ - ’ we shall then be justified in de¬ 
claring that the practice of vivisection may be considered as 
a legitimate branch of scientific research. 
The nerves belonging to the system of sympathetic life 
transmit to the brain the sensitive impressions collected from 
the surface of the body on the contact of external agency; 
they serve likewise in the transmission of the exciting mo¬ 
tive, which issues from the sensorium under the influence 
of volition. The currents determined by these two distinct 
orders of action are consequently directed in a contrary 
sense. Some of these nerves—which have been compared 
to the wires of the electric telegraph—serve exclusively for 
the transmission of one or other of the two currents; others, 
again, which doing double service, are useful in transmitting 
both. The first are the sensitive nerves; the second the 
muscular; and the last are called mixed. 
It would be difficult to imagine how these distinctions, 
now so plainly demonstrated, could ever have been estab¬ 
lished without experiments upon the living animal. It had 
become necessary to behold whether sensibility or motion, 
