714 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
results which must be satisfactory to themselves and the 
lovers of humanity. The vivisections habitually practised at 
Alfort, Lyons, and other veterinary schools, have been long 
denounced by the most scientific persons as useless and 
abominable cruelties ; they are such as would not be tolerated 
for a moment by the feelings or the laws of Englishmen; 
and if the London Society has gone rather far afield in 
directly appealing to the Emperor of France to arrest these 
proceedings in his veterinary schools, they have at least done 
a good work. It might have been a more graceful and appro¬ 
priate manner of advancing their object to have engaged the 
learned medical academies to take an active part in the 
abolition, which would have partaken less of the character of 
c foreign aggression/ For the present, however, the unhappy 
animals impounded and not claimed, or otherwise obtained 
at the establishments, will not be handed over to the students, 
slowly to die under the agonising succession of operative 
tortures, practised just to form the hand of the neophyte. 
The edict of the police has gone forth against this practice. 
We have more than once condemned this barbaritv, and 
rejoice that it will terminate—we hope finally. 
“ The larger question, however, to what extent, and under 
what circumstances, experimental vivisection may be carried 
on for purposes of original investigation, cannot be decided 
so hastily or in so peremptory a manner. The Emperor 
has very properly called for a report from the Academy of 
Medicine on this matter; and the commission appointed to 
report consists of MM. Cruveilhier, Cliquot, Claude Bernard, 
Robin, Moquin-Tandon, and Le Blanc. The objections 
raised as to the practice of vivisection as totally reprehensible 
are clearly founded upon an imperfect statement of the facts. 
The remark that the results of Magendie were vitiated by the 
disturbance effected in the nervous system owing to the 
shock of the experimental mutilation, shows that either only 
a few of these results are known to the objectors, or that the 
others are disregarded. It must be observed that this ques¬ 
tion is a very important one, since it affects in a very material 
degree the progress of physiological science, on which medi¬ 
cine now so largely builds, and to which we look hopefully 
for our greatest future aid. Not to go beyond two problems 
which are at this moment in process of solution—how else 
could Dr. Pavy have established that the sugar-forming 
function of the liver, described by M. Claude Bernard, was 
due to a post-mortem change; and by what other means 
could we acquire information upon this subject, so important 
to our knowledge of the healthy actions of digestion, and of 
