680 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
under those certain conditions wherein the will of the operator 
masters the experiment, instead of allowing the experiment 
to master his will. 
It is this reason which renders it so difficult for us to 
understand how vivisection has ever been considered an art, 
and how this art has ever been elevated to the rank of a 
branch of public instruction. No one can deplore with 
greater sincerity this excess, nor lament more deeply the 
existence of a sentiment of scientific curiosity, powerful 
enough to silence that sense of feeling inherent to the in¬ 
telligence of man, and to furnish spectators to the exhibition 
of this mortal agony. But we can go no further. Our in¬ 
fluence would be powerless to repress this excess. Were it 
otherwise, we should hesitate to use other weapons than 
those of persuasion, for, in order to hit the abuse, we should 
fear the risk of smiting the custom. If the first be decidedly 
reprehensible, we have nothing more to do than to impart 
the conviction of the lawfulness of the second. 
Another word in answer to a widely spread opinion which 
has been emitted in the bosom of our ow n Society. 
Many people are persuaded that the habit of vivisection 
deadens the sensibilities and hardens the heart. It is suffi¬ 
cient to understand the nobility and elevation of that pe¬ 
culiar sentiment we designate as the love of science, to 
perceive the fallacy of such an idea. I am acquainted with 
a certain vivisector, the greatest of our day, the individual 
wffiose labours have been the most fruitful in useful results, 
whose whole life bears witness in the most peremptory 
manner to the error of this verdict. During the days of his 
probation in life, it has often happened to him to deprive 
himself of nourishment for days together, in order to ensure 
sufficient food to those animals he was supporting with a 
view 7 to his scientific experiments. I know of no more noble 
and more disinterested nature, no friend more devoted, no 
man endowed w ith greater sensibility in the exercise of every 
domestic virtue. 
We will conclude with a short anecdote which will speak 
more eloquently than the finest dissertation on the subject. 
One day during the past year I had been invited with 
a great physiologist, my friend, to pay a visit to the skilful 
vivisector of whom I have just spoken. The object in view 7 
was the verifying, by experiment, the truth of certain state¬ 
ments made with regard to some peculiar physiological 
doubt upon the nervous system, wffiich had been accepted 
by some practitioners and opposed by others. Just as our 
experimentalisers were about to strip the spinal marrow of 
