VIVISECTIONS. 
159 
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ani¬ 
mals, it will be also remembered, nobly took the subject up, 
and appointed a committee to confer with a similar society 
in Paris, hoping to obtain its co-operation, so as to put a stop 
to the system of vivisection, more especially as it is practised, 
in the veterinary schools of France. (See pp. 396 and 670.) 
To this application a report was drawn up, in the form of 
answer, in which, if vivisections were not altogether justified, 
an attempt was made to show the advantages that were de¬ 
rived from them, and now we have a rejoinder, issued by the 
Society of England, entitled— 
“ Report on Vivisection, by the Committee appointed for the consideration of 
that subject, with an Appendix, containing extracts from various notices 
which recently appeared in the London newspapers , in condemnation of that 
practice , which this Committee considered necessary to republish, in order 
to strengthen their objections to a Report approving of that practice, pre¬ 
pared by M. A. Sanson, in the name of a French Commission, on the 
ground that the dissection of living animals was indispensable for physio¬ 
logical acquirements, and consequently advantageous to human beings, which 
was laid before a general meeting of the Paris Society for the Protection 
of Animals in the month of October last, published in its Monthly Bulletin, 
and copied into various publications in this country . 
“This Committee, advocating as it does the cause of dumb and helpless 
animals against such revolting cruelties, repeated day after day, until life 
becomes extinct, has directed its principal attention to the following extracts 
from that report which appear to embrace the whole question at issue :— 
‘ If we can establish the fact of its having rendered service, of ever so trifling a 
nature, we must defend the practice, and be permitted to infer the probability 
of ulterior advantages as well? 
“ ‘ If the question were propounded thus before an assembly of physiologists, 
it ivould excite nothing more than a smile / 
“ Supported as these views are by such distinguished characters as the 
members of that commission, and transmitted to us, as it has been, by the 
Paris Society, so celebrated for its exertions in the cause of humanity; 
the only course open to us was that of referring it to competent judges on 
questions of this nature, in order to ascertain, in the first place, how far this 
practice was 'necessary for these ends ? and, in the next place, how far the 
evidence it adverted to could justify such conclusions ? as in all tribunals of 
justice on the evidence alone the verdict should depend. 
“ Upon the first of these questions we obtained the following opinions :— 
That a knowledge of man can only be acquired by anatomical experiments 
on human beings.—That experiments on animals of different species are 
more calculated to lead to erroneous conclusions than advantageous results. 
—That this knowledge is better acquired after life is extinct than during the 
struggles and sufferings of living animals; we, therefore, consider that we 
are rendering a greater service to mankind, and to the cause of humanity in 
every sense of the term, by opposing than by supporting the doctrine com¬ 
prised in this quotation from that report. 
“ Upon the next question, as to how far the evidence adduced in that 
report, as favorable to this revolting practice, could sustain the conclusions 
thus arrived at ? we obtained the opinion of Mr. Macilwain, P-R.C.S.,&c.,&c., 
an eminent practitioner, who, having directed his attention for a series of 
