VIVISECTION IN FRANCE. 
5ni 
The worthy and humane doctor concludes by advising the 
students to protest against such sanguinary experiments by 
absenting themselves from the physiological course whenever 
they are to occur, or to leave the hall when the mutilations 
are about to commence. Magendie has repeatedly been 
blamed for his addiction to these practices, which he long 
repeated publicly when giving lessons at the College de 
France. Dr. Latour, another medical opponent of vivi¬ 
section, as now practised, calls to mind a poor dog the roots 
of whose vertebral nerves he (Magendie) desired to lay bare, 
to demonstrate Bell’s theory, which he claimed as his own. 
The dog, already mutilated and bleeding, twice escaped from 
under the implacable knife, and threw his front paws round 
Magendie’s neck, licking his face, as if to soften his murderer 
and ask for mercy. Vivisectors may laugh” (adds Dr. 
Latour), ^^but I confess I was unable to endure that heart¬ 
rending spectacle. Such practices are frightful and immoral.” 
It was in 1830 that Magendie began official and public 
lectures and demonstrations at the College de France, and 
many were the hecatombs of dumb creatures that expired in 
agony on his bloody table. They tell of a Quaker who one 
day walked into the hall, hat on head, when these sanguinary 
manipulations were proceeding, asked for Magendie, and 
demanded of him by what right he thus tortured animals to 
death, and set an example of cruelty to his fellow-men. It 
is recorded that the operator was embarrassed to reply, but 
he did not the less continue his researches. He seems to 
have pursued them with a regard to economy, for we are told 
of animals being put by alive after they had undergone a 
certain number of operations for further dissection on a 
future day. Scientific butchers, it appears, consider it jus¬ 
tifiable to extract the utmost possible amount of experiment 
from the luckless cat or dog, horse or rabbit, selected for 
their abuse. “ The habit of such experiments,” says Dr. 
Cartaux, renders certain individuals so heedless of the pain 
they inflict, that one sees them plunge the bistoury into the 
tissues, and unreflectingly leave it there while pursuing a 
discussion which might certainly be carried on at any other 
moment. There are veterinary pupils who, after having 
tortured a poor horse for a whole morning, do not give them¬ 
selves the trouble to kill it. If unfortunately the professor is 
not present to order them to put it out of its agony, it is left 
for the knacker to finish when he makes his round.” At the 
veterinary college of Alfort a wretched horse is periodically 
given up to a group of students to experimentalise upon. 
They tie him down and torture him for hours, the operations 
