218 
VIVISECTIONS. 
opinion is, that whenever that day arrives, that we cease to protest against 
the abuse of vivisection, and take ‘ scientific experiments 5 as our pass-word, 
we may as well break up and take leave of each other. Public opinion will 
and does already demand of us, that we call on the public authorities to make 
a distinction between vivisections which are really necessary to science, and 
those thousands of tortures inflicted on the brute creation, without any tan¬ 
gible reason. 
‘‘This distinction once made, the next step should be to attempt to 
humanise such as contemplate vivisection with a kind of brutal delight, and 
in case of need to bring such to justice as will not be deterred by persua¬ 
sion. But here we have a report and resolutions, passed in the name of a 
majority of the Commission, which admit of no desire for legislative enact¬ 
ments, either for suppressing or curtailing the abuses of vivisection.” 
Extract from a sermon, preached at the new parish church of St. Mary’ 
Stoke Newington, and afterwards at one of the Protestant chapels, Hue 
d’Aguesseau, at Paris, in the mouth of May last. By Thomas Jackson,M. A., 
Hector of Stoke Newington, and Prebendary of St. Paul’s : 
“Could the autobiography of a London horse be written, what a tale of 
misery would it often disclose ! The records of our police-offices contain 
narratives of barbarity long continued and ingeniously concealed, with the 
bare recital of which I dare not harrow the feelings of my hearers. The 
plain moral to be learned from them is, that you and I ought never to hire or 
ride in vehicles which are dragged by maimed, wearied, and half-starved 
animals. Were this simple rule always observed, our eyes and sensibilities 
would be less frequently afflicted by them, and the very lust of gain would 
force the proprietors to a better policy and a more liberal treatment of the 
poor, silent animals, whom at present they so wilfully torture. 
“But of all horrible mutilations and abominable pangs inflicted upon the 
animal creation, those which are done in the name of anatomical and surgical 
science are at once the most fearful and revolting, and the most plausibly 
defended. Even the monsters in human shape who nailed a living dog by 
his four paws to a table, and then dissected him alive; and those who, having 
fastened a horse so that he could not stir a limb, then began, some to open 
his chest, some to saw into his skull, some to probe the interior of his eyes, 
some to pare away the muscles in slices, and some to apply red-hot irons to 
the brain, have found apologists ! The most degraded savages of Ashantee, 
maddened by a feast on human blood, have never condescended to outrages 
so eccentric and so refined, as the modern physiologists of Paris, in their 
cool hours of study; and, it is to be feared, in some cases, until recently, the 
students of anatomy in the capitals of England and Scotland. The tender 
mercies of these wicked men are indeed cruel! The excuses for such 
vivisection are founded on the assertion, that important physiological facts 
are ascertained by the practice; and that operations on living subjects in a 
state of disease are thereby rendered less painful. But, on the other hand, 
it is argued, by eminent anatomists, that such physiological facts having 
been once ascertained, the fearful operation need not be repeated; that far 
more is to be learned by the careful study of disease; and that most of the 
inferences deduced from such experiments are entirely fallacious, the pain 
which accompanies them interfering with the proper play of the functions of 
the animal on whom they are made. 
“ But enough has been said of the moral causes of these cruelties in their 
manifold variety and extent. We gladly leave the negative view of the 
question. We turn from the spectacle of torture, and the cries lifted up to 
heaven, which too few on earth regard, to consider the positive announce¬ 
ment of the text, ‘ The righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.’ He 
