786 
SENATE BILL 1552 . 
as this Department is directed by Congress to make investigations of. animal diseases, and 
to provide for their suppression and control, the Department should be left free to carry on 
such work in such manner as may seem best to the Secretary of Agriculture in order to at¬ 
tain the end in view. The Department must always be under the direction of responsible 
officers who may be called upon by the President at any time for information, and a board 
of inspection composed of persons not in the Government service and who serve gratuitously 
is not needed and would not be in the interest of efficient service. 
8. An apparent concession is made in section 2, paragraph c, which provides “ that 
in so-called inoculation experiments or tests of drugs or medicines, the animal need not be 
anaesthetized nor killed afterward, nor in tests of surgical procedure need animals be kept 
completely anaesthetized during the process of recovery from the surgical operation.” This 
concession is, however, apparent rather than real. The investigator remains subject to all 
the other limitations of the bill: (I) If not a duly authorized medical officer of the Govern¬ 
ment of the United States or of the District of Columbia, he must first obtain a license (sec. 
2, b.) (2) His application for a license must be signed by three physicians duly licensed 
to practice medicine and actually engaged in practicing medicine in the District of Columbia, 
also by a professor of physiology, medicine, anatomy, medical jurisprudence, materia medica, 
or surgery, in the medical department of any duly established reliable school or college in 
the District of Columbia (sec. 7). (3) The Commissioners may require the place where 
the experiments are made to be registered (sec. 3). (4) If under twenty-five years of 
age, and not duly authorized to practice medicine in the District of Columbia, he cannot 
obtain a license (sec. 4). (5) He must, if authorized to experiment at all, confine his 
experiments to the advancement by new discovery of physiological knowledge or of knowl¬ 
edge which will be useful for saving or prolonging life or alleviating suffering (sec. 2, a). 
(6) If the experiment is to be made upon a dog, cat, horse, ass, or mule, a certificate 
must be given (it is not specified by whom) stating in addition to certain other statements 
that for specified reasons the object of the experiment will be necessarily frustrated unless 
it is performed on an animal similar in constitution to a cat, dog, horse, ass, or mule and 
that no other animal is available for such purpose (sec. 2, par. e, 3d part). (7) Any ap¬ 
plication “for a certificate to be given as in this act mentioned must be signed by three 
physicians duly licensed to practice and actually engaged in practicing medicine in the 
District of Columbia, and also by a professor of physiology, medicine, anatomy, medical 
jurisprudence, materia medica, or surgery in the medical department of any duly estab¬ 
lished reliable school or college in the District of Columbia : Provided, That when any 
person applying for a certificate under this act is himself one of the persons authorized to 
sign such certificate, the signature of some other of such persons shall be substituted for 
the signature of the applicant.” (8) Such certificate shall not be available until one week 
after a copy has been forwarded to the Commissioners of the District (sec. 7). (It is not 
stated to whom the application for this certificate shall be made.) (9) The investigator 
must hold himself ready to report at any time to the Commissioners of the District both 
the methods employed and the results of the experiments in such form and with such details 
as the said Commissioners may require (sec. 5). It makes no difference how premature the 
report may be, or how damaging to the investigator to publish it before the results are 
completed, there is no recourse. (io) The investigator, his animals, methods and ex¬ 
periments are to be subject to the constant inspection and espionage of four inspectors to 
be appointed by the President, who shall serve without compensation, and who shall re¬ 
port to the President the results of their observations (sec. 6). 
It can hardly be supposed that a scientific man could master all of these requirements 
and limitations of the law without embarrassment and injury to his work, or that he could 
conduct a series of experiments to a successful issue without contravening some of them 
and making himself liable to the extreme penalties provided for such an offense. The as¬ 
sertion that the effect of either the original bill or the substitute will be simply to regulate 
experiments and prevent abuses are absurd in the light of an analysis of the provisions. 
The effect will be practically prohibitive, and there is good reason to believe that this is 
the result aimed at by those who drafted the bills. 
It appears that this bill, S. 1552, was formulated by the anti-vivisection committee of 
the Washington Humane Society (Annual Report, 1895, p. 24) and I am informed that 
a substitute bill has more recently been proposed by the said anti-vivisection committee. 
An examination of the proposed substitute does not, however, disclose any material modi- 
