SYNOPSIS OF CONTINENTAL VETERINARY JOURNALS. 243 
as 72 operations, mostly very painful, were practiced on the 
same animal. This passed without protest, since no one 
then appreciated the enormity of such practices. They were 
considered useful, and therefore justifiable. But now the 
Societies for the Protection of Animals have interfered, and 
they have excited a just commiseration with dumb animals, 
resulting happily in the prevention of many sufferings by 
them. We also have become amenable to this sentiment, and 
have been asked whether the so cruel sufferings which w T e 
accumulate in surgical experiment in our experimental 
operating theatres on a single animal are justified by the end. 
To this question, carefully examined, we can but give a 
negative reply. Is it not true, indeed, that the animals on 
which our pupils practiced so many operations simultaneously 
or successively, were placed in such conditions of restraint 
that their struggles, otherwise very feeble, were no longer 
a source of danger to the operator? Also, drained of their 
blood, there was scarcely left any to accumulate on the 
wounded surfaces, and hence the argument brought forward 
of difficulties in operation, produced by hoemorrhage and by 
suddenness of struggles, does not really here bear in favour 
of such means of education. Thus as concerns the operator, 
the animal is practically dead, since he no longer struggles ; 
but he does not suffer the less, nor less cruelly and uselessly. 
Nothing, then, justifies the retention of practices formerly 
adopted ; besides, the public sentiment has brought to bear on 
us active force with regard to that to which we have consented. 
It does not follow that the instruction of pupils will suffer by 
the suppression. It is not in the operating theatre that 
students obtain the best practical knowledge. We must look 
at things as they are. The animal operated upon having no 
value, the precautions recommended and observed in real 
practice are not adopted in casting him. With regard to 
positions, since there is no fear from struggling, students 
often take those which are most convenient, and opposed to 
all rule. Also we may note that the true apprenticeship for 
the exigencies of operative surgery is in the clinical operating 
theatre rather than in that of experimental surgery. Also 
we can accustom ourselves to the practice of operative sur¬ 
gery on dead animals, of which human surgery gives us 
ample proof. As for physiological vivisections, far from 
being forbidden, they are encouraged, for they are not only 
useful but indispensable. But we perform on one subject 
only one operation at a time, and not seventy-two, as formerly, 
upon one poor surgical victim. If the revenue of the schools 
would allow us thus to limit surgical operations for experi- 
