V VIVISECTION. 
A 
f rise dfegajf, -$?• 
- BY 
G. FLEMING, ESQ. F.R.G.S., F.A.S.L. 
Veterinary Surgeon, 3d King's Own Huzzars : 
Author of “ Travels on Horseback in Manchu Tartary,” etc. 
“Ssevitia in Bruta est Tirocinium, f . 
Crudelitatis in Homines.” [ ( 
Le Clere, in ProierbA 
PUBLISHED ORIGINALLY BY 
THE ROYAL SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY 
TO ANIMALS. 
\ 
PHILADELPHIA. 
WOMEN’S BRANCH OF THE PA. SOCIETY FOR PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 
OFFICE, 1320 CHESTNUT STREET. 
1871. VIVISECTION. 
A 
_ (fssatt, 
G. FLEMING, ESQ. F.R.G.S., F. A.S.L. 
Veterinary Surgeon, 3d King’s Own Huzzars: 
Author of “ Travels on Horseback in Manchu Tartary” etc. 
“Sfflvitia in Bruta est Tirocinium, 
Crudelitatis in Homines.” 
Le Clerc, in Proverbs. 
PUBLISHED ORIGINALLY BY 
THE ROYAL SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY 
TO ANIMALS. 
PHILADELPHIA. 
WOMEN’S BRANCH OF THE PA. SOCIETY FOR PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 
OFFICE, 1320 CHESTNUT STREET. 
1871. PREFACE. 
The Royal Society (of England) for the Prevention 
of Cruelty to Animals offered prizes, in the year 1866, 
for the best Essays on the two following propositions: 
I. Is Vivisection necessary or justifiable (when per- 
formed, as at certain Veterinary Schools) for the purpose 
of giving dexterity to the operator? 
II. Is it necessary or justifiable for the general pur- 
poses of science, and if so under what limitations? 
Thirty-two Essays were received, a majority of the 
following judges decided in favor of that by G Fleming, 
Esq. and the first prize, (fifty Pounds,) was awarded 
to him. 
The Noble Earl, President of the Society, 
Ills Imperial Highness Prince Louis Lucien Bona- 
parte. 
Right Hon. and Right Rev. Lord Auckland, 
Bishop of Bath and Wells. 
Col. F. H. Buckeridge, 
Frank Buckland, Esq., M. A. 
Dr. Carpenter, f 
J F. Clarke, Esq., (of the Lancet,) \ 'fJ 
Dr. Fraser, 
ProffssOr Owen, 
Dr. Quain, 
Professor Spooner, 
Professor Varnell. 
The Essay on the Second Proposition is the one here 
reprinted(almost entire) by the Women’s Branch of 
Penna. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. VIVISECTION. 
Js it necessary or justifiable for the general purposes of 
science ; andif so, under what limitations ? 
Besides those learned men who council the practice of Vivi- 
section as a means of acquiring manual dexterity in veterinary 
surgery, there is a far more numerous body, who, while ready 
to discountenance and suppress such cruelties as we have 
enumerated, yet contend that for the general purposes of 
science, and especially for the welfare of mankind, the dissec- 
tion of living animals is necessary, and to be justified on many 
pretences; and they appeal to what they consider valuable 
results, which certainly are far more plausible at first sight 
than those advanced in extenuation of the horrible acts con- 
sidered under the previous proposition. 
The avowed object of vivisection when pursued in the 
general interest of science, is to examine more particularly 
into those functions of animal life which are not directly ac- 
cessible to observation; or to facilitate the study of those 
phenomena, which, by artificial means, are disengaged, wholly 
or in part from other collateral phenomena which render their 
appreciation difficult. Its ultimate aim is so to improve science, 
that the amelioration of human suffering may be more rapidly 
and surely attained. 
That this may be the sincere desire of those who, by live 
dissections attempt to solve some of the problems of vitality, 
we take for granted, because we cannot believe that men 
brought up to the high calling of medicine would identify 
themselves with the repulsive practices included in the term 
“experimental physiology,” unless they had some higher 
aspirations than to be patrons of cruelty. The results achieved 
however, looking at them from the most favorable point of 
view, be they valuable or otherwise, have cost an amount of 
suffering to sentient beings far beyond considerations of value 
or necessity, and which, when compared one with the other, < 
fixes a perfectly just verdict of “needless and cruel” against 
nine-tenths of the almost endless number of experiments per- 
formed by physiologists* Where the lives of animals are 
* See (a) Appendix.—Second Proposition. 6 
VIVISECTION 
sacrificed by tens of thousands; where the greater portion of 
these lives are yielded only after almost incredible pain and 
torture; and where every one who imagines he knows some- 
thing of science, or is in Jftiy way interested in its progress, 
can slaughter as much as he chooses, and in any fashion ho 
fancies, it is surely the interest of all men who are impressed 
with the nature of the sacred charge confided to them in the 
lives and welfare of highly organized creatures, to inquire 
whether the exquisite torture by which these investigations are 
accompanied, is really compensated for by corresponding 
benefits; and whether every one who imagines he is so privi- 
leged by his vocation as to trifle with pain and existence with- 
out being called to account, is competent to be a judge. 
At first the physiologist or experimentalist may not be very 
cruel, his experiments may be few, conducted with as great a 
regard as possible to the avoiding of pain, and having the 
elucidation of the most profitable researches in view; but to 
him, as to other men, habit may render that which was at first, 
perhaps, most sickening and repulsive, an affair of but little 
moment; and the ready infliction of pain to any degree, and 
in any amount, will not, in all probability, appear in the same 
disgusting light, thaL it will do to the uninitiated, and less 
hardened individual. ( There are but few men who are capable 
of performing the parts of executioners, even when stern 
justice demands the taking away of life, or those of butchers, 
when animals must be sacrificed as food for man; and the 
dissector of live animals who has imbibed a taste, or fancies 
he sees some necessity for the practice, does not often exalt 
his labor to a more enviable degree in the estimation of the 
feeling and thinking world. Cei’tainly in nearly every instance 
vivisections are less necessary, and are but too often accom- 
panied by a larger share of torture, than the acts of either of 
these functionaries. \ The vivisectionist may be aptly compared 
to a remorseless inquisitor, who attempts to wring the secrets 
of nature from his victims by the most harrowing and pro- 
tracted tortures; whereas the hangman, tho headsman, and 
the butcher, are mercifully prompted to obviate suffering by 
instantaneous death. It is a thousand pities that of all tho 
sciences, the most interesting, and, perhaps, important—that 
of physiology—is almost the only one sought to be identified 
with the apparently needless infliction of punishment, and the 
death of inoffensive animals by varied—sometime 
but distressingly slow means. 
The barbarous character of vivisection cannot bo defended, 
even by those who plead for it, and has ever been an unmiti- 
gated reproach to those who would thus interrogate nature by^ FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIEENCE. 
7 
the dolorific devices of art. From the time when Celsus, the 
Hippocrates of the Eomans, blamed Herophilus of Chalcedon 
for having dissected the bodies of living criminals which had 
been given over to him by the kings of Egypt, up to the 
present day, when the voice of humanity is making itself more 
loudly and forcibly felt on behalf of the lower animals, many 
and just good men have given their opinion as to its barbarity. 
Nothing but express considerations of great utility to suffer- 
ing mankind, and something like certainty as to the measures 
employed to attain that high end, would allow of such a repug- 
nant method of investigation being carried on; and it is only 
these considerations which are offered to counteract the legal 
and moral restraints which would otherwise be applied to sup- 
press so abhorred a course. 
But if instead of accepting this apology, and without inquir- 
ing more concerning vivisection, we ask for these great results 
purchased by the of myriads of.-Craalma:s and spread 
over some hundreusoFyelal!s|v^}aOo^ve^feF7,^Scarcely any- 
thing but examples of profound error, and philosophers wading 
through agony and slaughter to doubt, confusion and contra-, 
diction. What better proof have we of this than in the writ/ 
ings and in the opinions of physiologists themselves. 
Pick up any ordinary work in physiology, and you will find, 
when treating of the nervous system, that in it contradictions, 
fresh experiments, confessions of doubt, and appeals to many 
different results, are made in the endeavor to throw some 
light on this most prolific source of experimentation and con- 
fusion. The very highest authorities on physiology have given 
it as their opinion, that vivisection is not a trustworthy mode 
of ascertaining the mysteries attending the vital functions of 
animated beings,and whilecounsellingothermeansofresearch, 
almost forbid adopting that of experimentation. And why? 
because its fallacies have proved a constant stumbling-block to 
investigators, and its deductions being nearly always at variance 
with those obtained from other sources, have often retarded the 
more successful, because more reasonable modes.* 
Let me quote from the work of a French physiologist, who 
is ar great advocate for vivisection, a staunch admirer of those 
men who have been notorious for their practice in that par- 
ticular branch of science, and who is himself a most enthu- 
siastic experimenter. M. Colin says„j* “ Of all the arts, that of 
experimentation is, perhaps, that which offers the most diffi- 
culty, because it is applied to the study of phenomena the 
* See (b) Appendix.—Second Proposition. 
f Traite de Physiologic Comparee dec Aaimaux Domestiques, par G. Colin, Paris, 
1854. pp. 31, et seq. 8 
VIVISECTION 
most complex in nature. It is a difficult art in conception, in 
the institution of experiments, and in their execution; this 
last demands the most exact anatomical knowledge, and tho 
habit of manipulation. It is a delicate art; to perform an 
experiment well, it is necessary that those means be employed 
which will the best put in evidence, and permit to bo analysed 
with the greatest exactitude, the functions that we study, with- 
out removing the animals but as little as possible from their 
normal condition. And, lastly, to appreciate these functions 
at their just value, it is most essential that we separate those 
results which belong to the very essence of tho phenomena wo 
seek to know about, from those which arise in the perturbations 
provoked by the vivisection. This separation, this distinction, 
demands more tact than we think, and more attention than is 
usually given to simple observations. 
“ In studying a phenomenon, we cannot completely isolate it 
from those with which it is intimately connected, and they are 
all so closely allied to"one that none of them can be 
modified without implicating the rest. From the moment that 
a function is disturbed or removed from its normal conditions 
it changes its character, and all the others (if it is a function 
of some importance) experience a commotion moro or less pro- 
found, and soon become suspended. The possibility of isola- 
ting physical or chemical phenomena, and the impossibility of 
isolating those which belong to the order of physiology, estab- 
lishes a capital difference between the modes of experimenta- 
tion, as applied to the first, and those which belong to tho 
second. The difference is so great that it is impossible to see 
what there can be in common between tho two modes. 
“It is then superfluous for us to seek to apply a means of 
procedure 'which is inapplicable to physiological researches. 
The code of experimentation has need 
to be revised. .... Certain experiments 
are complex in their nature, when they are applied to impor- 
tant functions, the perturbations of which react on nearly the 
whole economy. Apply your instrument to the brain, or to 
tho heart, and quickly you will have general and serious 
troubles which it is necessary to disengage from those which 
belong to the direct and immediate result of the experiment. 
There are organs so delicate that the slightest operation per- 
verts their action and alters their character. Make the smallest 
wound in the stomach or intestine, and soon digestion is sus- 
pended, and the secretions of these viscera are diminished or 
suppressed.” Speaking of the selection of animals for different 
experiments, he exclaims, “ I cannot comprehend the routine 
of certain experimenters, some of whom have but the dog as FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
9 
their victim, while others seek only for their information from 
the rabbit or the guinea-pig. It is because we overlook the 
necessity of experimenting on different types of animals, that 
are raised those eternal disputes, those contestations without 
end, between physiologists on the majority of questions. It 
will never be otherwise so long as we persevere in a way so 
vicious. . . . Often the same experiment repeated 
twenty times, gives twenty different results, even when the 
animals are placed apparently in the same condition. 
“ It may even happen that the same experiment 
gives contradictory results. In neglecting to repeat experi- 
ments many times, we are exposed to take the exception for 
the rule, the accident for the constant fact, the accessory for 
the principal fact. Unfortunately this happens too often. This 
is why, on nearly every occasion, we oppose a result to another 
of a contradictory nature. Which of the two is the true one ? 
It is necessary to recommence in order to learn, and when wo 
have done so, the other yet remains to be accounted for.” 
We have here a tolerably fair opinion of the merits and 
benefits supposed to be derived from mutilating animals; and 
with all the sagacity of this author, and the care with which 
ho performed his own experiments, very many of the results 
he arrived at would be disputed by as many physiologists. 
Indeed, that portion of his book devoted more particularly to 
a study of the nervous system, is so rife with conflicting state- 
ments derived from vivisection, that one wonders why a mode 
of research, which is so obviously fallacious, should be so ex- 
tensively pursued by men who ought to know the proper and 
primary principles of inductive philosophy before they presume 
to tamper with sensibility. From the time of Galen there has 
been a misappreciation of facts, when researches on the living 
body were pursued with chisels, knives and needles. The 
methods of induction applied to this branch of science have 
been far from happy; error has propagated error, and those 
beautiful, but mysterious operations of nature, when sought to 
be rudely exposed, so that their harmonious action might be 
disclosed to inquisitive man, havo only been seen or manifested 
in an abnormal or disordered condition f rom whence proceeds 
false reasoning and conflicting conclusions. And can it be 
wondered at, that the martyr when delirious from the tortures 
of the wheel or rack, should give a faltering incoherent an- 
swer, liable to any sort of interpretation, to the queries of the 
inquisitor ? 
’ If, as Sir Charles Bell asserts, 11 confusion is a monster of 
Science,” perhaps I am justified in contending that this monster 
is the most marked result vivisection has endowed the science 
of vitality with. 10 
VIVISECTION 
Take the brain which has been of all organs the most entic- 
ing to the physiologist, and the knife, forceps, and chisel of 
the vivisector. After an amount of torture which the mind 
shrinks from contemplating, what do we obtain ? Speculation ! 
Gratiolet, one of tho most learned men on this and kindred 
subjects, says, “ Let us confess that in our ignorance of the true 
construction of the medulla, the peduncles, and the optic thal- 
ami, the question is abandoned to tho speculations of physiol- 
ogists.* 
Dr. Kellie first started the notion that the quantity of blood 
within the cranium was constantly the same. Without fully 
informing himself as to the anatomical peculiarities which have 
since been pointed out, he hastened at once to the favourite 
method of seeking to verify conjecture; he bled sheep, cats, 
and dogs to death, and hung others with the head downwards. 
He imagined he was justified in these experiments by having 
discovered a new feature in the circulation of the brain; but- 
Dr. Burrows, Breschett, and others, have shown that he was 
entirely wrong, and that a sufficient knowledge of anatomy 
would have prevented this torture. 
Ignoring altogether the teachings of pathology or observa- 
tion, the sensitiveness of the brain has been a moot point with 
experimenters. Aristotle and Galen believed the cerebrum in- 
sensible, and numerous vivisectors have shared this opinion. 
But Haller, Zinn, and Serros, after the usual amount of cruelty, 
came to a different conclusion; the animals they experimented 
upon became convulsed, screamed, and uttered painful cries 
when this part was punctured or sliced away. MM. Flourens, 
Longet and Colin, thereupon set themselves to work upon all 
kinds of animals, from horses and dogs downwards, and the 
conclusion they came to was, that sensibilty was doubtful; 
but there was no excitability. Magendie, that prince of vivi- 
sectors, who never lacked an excuse for the indulgence of his 
savage predilections, withdrew the fluid which surrounds the 
brain and spinal cord by puncturing the membranes, and found 
that some animals were affected by dullness and stupor, but in 
two cases they were in a continual state of agitation and fury. 
Ecker removed this fluid by an aperture between the scull and 
the atlas ; and the animals lost their equilibrium, while spasms 
and tremors occurred in the extremities. But Magendie went 
further, and chiseling and sawing off the upper parts of tho 
cranium of living animals, began to remove by successive slices 
the substance of the bi’ain, leaving the medulla oblongata intact. 
Although rendered blind the poor brutes continued to be affect- 
* Gratiolet Memoire sur les Plis Cerebraux de I’llomme et des Primates. Paris, 
1855. FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
11 
ed in as lively a manner by pungent odors or tastes, or by ir- 
ritation of the skin, as if no further injury had been sustained 
than the loss of blood occasioned by the experiment. A full- 
grown hedgehog cried if a hair of its whiskers was plucked, or 
vinegar held to its nose, and strove with its fore feet to rid 
itself of the annoyance. These phenomena lasted for more 
than two hours. Flourens repeated this, and found that life 
continued a certain time; the creatures moved about, retain- 
ing their equilibrium and locomotory functions, but were 
drowsy, and as if they had lost their senses. They neither 
saw nor heard; had lost memory, instinct, intelligence, voli- 
tion. They did not move spontaneously: if they were pushed 
they went along, but ran against surrounding objects without 
trying to evade them; if thrown on their backs they recovered 
their feet again; if struck they did not attempt to run away. 
When hungry they had no idea of eat ing, but if food or fluid 
was placed in their mouths they swallowed readily. In this 
miserable state some of them lived for entire months—a fowl 
deprived of its brain survived its loss for nearly a year, and 
pigeons from twelve to eighteen days. The horse seldom lives 
beyond twelve hours. Now, long before those wicked muti- 
lations were practised, the fact was well known by the expe- 
rience of the hospital or battle field, that the brain has no com- 
mon sensibility, and that life may be prolonged for many days, 
or recovery may even take place, after the loss of a large 
quantity of brain. 
A host of vivisectors disagree as to the functions of the brain, 
each disagreement calling forth a fresh series of tortures still 
more contradictory in their results—because depending upon 
so many different influences; but all partaking of the horrible. 
Hero is a sample of what is supposed to be the pursuit of science 
—“ When, after a series of transversal sections of the encepha- 
lon, we have reached the medulla oblongata, just above the 
upper roots of the par vagum we find that respiration contin- 
ues almost normal. If we now cut away the part of the 
dulla giving origin to this pair of nerves, we find in most cases 
that respiration is suddenly stopped The stronger 
an animal is, the more parts of its encephalon can be taken 
away before we destroy respiration It seems in- 
deed, wonderful to see animals, after the puncture in some part 
of the encephalon with the point of a needle, turn round, just 
like a horse in a circus, or roll over and over for hours. . . 
. The trunk and neck of the animal are bent by a spasmodic 
action on the side of turning, if it has a circus movement; and 
it is bent like a corkscrew, as much as the bones will allow, in 
cases of rolling .... To add to the strangeness of the^ 12 
VIVISECTION 
fact, in the last case the muscles remain contracted, sometimes 
for hours, sometimes for days and weeks As long 
as it lives (many days, or even many months) these phenome- 
na may be observed In mammals, the least punc- 
ture of the auditory nerve causes rolling; violent convulsions 
then occur in the eyes, the face, and many muscles of the neck 
and chest.”* 
Professor Hughes Bennett tells us that the results of experi- 
ments by Flourens, Rolando, Hertwig, and others, have shown 
that on slicing away the brain, the animal becomes more dull 
and stupid in proportion to the quantity of cortical substance 
removed. But he also mentions that clinical observation points 
out the fact, that in those cases in which disease has been after- 
wards found to commence at the circumference of the brain, 
and proceed towards the centre, the mental faculties are af- 
fected first; whereas in those diseases which commence at the 
central parts of the organ, and extend outwards, they are affect- 
ed last. How impotent then has been experiment, and how 
much more valuable the observations of pathologists. This 
learned writer also states that, “ in making experiments on an- 
imals, it is often impossible to ascertain how far the shock of the 
operation, the flow of blood, or the destruction of other parts 
may vitiate the results.” Again, in speaking of the nervous 
system, he says “ anatomy, human and comparative, has fur- 
nished us with many valuable facts; but it is not easy to de- 
termine what are the nervous ganglia or other parts in the 
lower animals which correspond with what exists in man; 
whilst erroneous interpretations as to the habits and motions 
of these creatures are too readily formed .... This 
last”—the effects ofthe disease—“ is by far the most import- 
ant means of research open to us.”f 
If the Cerebrum or larger brain has rendered such unsatis- 
factory evidence under the heart-sickening cross questionings 
ofthe mutilator’s knife, the Cerebellum, or little brain, has 
-afforded them even less. By chiselling off the top of the skull 
of many descriptions of living animals, MM. Flourens, Magen- 
die, Bouilland, Hertwig Longet, and others, imagined that it 
was insensible, because by pricking it, slicing it away, and 
other means, neither pain nor convulsions was induced. M. 
Colin made a number of experiments on the horse, and obtain- 
ed a different result. The functions of this part have given 
rise to conflicting theories and speculations. M. Flourens 
says,| u I have removed by successive layers, the cerebellum 
* The Lancet, December 11th, 1858, pp. 600, 601, 625. 
•f Outlines of Physiology, by J. H. Bennett, Edinburgh, 1858. 
j Becherches Experimentales sur lea Functions du Sysieme Nerveux, p 37. 13 
of a pigeon. During the ablation of the first layers there only 
appeared a little feebleness and want of harmony in its move- 
ments. When I cut to the middle layers, it manifested a uni- 
versal agitation, but without convulsions. Its movements 
were fierce and disorderly; it was able to see and hear. 
When the last layers were cut, the bird, whose jumping, fly- 
ing, walking, and turning faculties had been more and more 
altered by the preceding mutilations, completely lost them. 
Placed on its back it knew not how to recover itself. Far 
from resting quietly on its legs, as with the pigeons whose 
Cerebellum had been destroyed, it seemed continually and 
madly agitated, but it never moved in a firm and determined 
manner. For example, it saw a threatened blow, wished to fly, 
and made a thousand contortions to evade the seeming danger, 
which it was unable to do. Laid on its back, it could not rest 
until after being spent in vain endeavors to regain its feet, it 
was obliged to lie. Finally, the volition, the sensations, the 
perceptions persisted; the possibility of executing movements 
also remained, but the co-ordination of these movements into 
regulated and determined movements was lost.” The same 
results were obtained on larger animals. M. Colin says, “ By 
all these results which I had the pleasure of seeing re-produced 
in the lectures of M. Flourens ... I have tried to repeat 
on solipedes these experiments. . . . Having laid bare 
this organ in a draught horse, by raising the superior part of 
the occiput, I have thrust a scapel into its middle lobe, but 
not deep enough to touch the spinal cord; then the horse 
shook its head, but did not experience any convulsions. After 
a second and a third stab its walk became tottering, its legs 
were wide apart, and threw its first weight on the fore ex- 
tremities, and then on the hind one, the better to preserve its 
equilibrium. When it went along we saw its body swaying 
alternately from right to left, and as if it would fall. It soon 
manifested a marked tendency to bear in front, and took the 
attitude of a horse about to throw all its weight into its collar. 
At this time seven or eight students were under the necessity of 
pulling him back by the tail to prevent his advancing. An- 
other stab caused the limbs to be flexed, and determined the 
fall of the solipede Another horse had the cerebellum punc- 
tured through an opening in the skull which had been made 
with some care by the trephine. He presented the same phe- 
nomena as the last, but without the tendency to advance ; he 
saw, heard very well, advanced, backed, turned to the right 
or left when required to do so, and did not execute any con- 
vulsive movement. Magendie cut one of the peduncles of this 
organ, and says, “ One of them being cut, all at once the ani- 
FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 14 
VIVISECTION 
mal began to roll laterally on itself, as if it had heen pushed 
with a great force. The rotation was made from the side 
where the cut was made, and sometimes with such rapidity 
that the animal made more than sixty revolutions in a minute. 
This singular and painful movement has lasted, nearly with- 
out interruption, four entire days; it was only stopped by 
mechanical obstructions, often then the animals held their feet 
in the air and ate in this attitude.”* Thousands of like ex- 
periments have been made on this part of the brain, and what 
have they yielded? Duges thought it an organ of hearing 
and the perception of taste. Kolando thought it the central 
source of all voluntary motion; Magendie imagined that it 
impelled the animal forward; Flourens, Hertwig, and other 
vivisectors supposed it to be the regulator of voluntary move- 
ments; and others again quite dissent from all these conjec- 
tures ; Brown Sequard declares that the guiding power has 
not its seat here, and that pricking several parts of the ence- 
phalon with a needle produced the same disordered movements. 
Schroeder van der Kolk announces that “ the cause of the co- 
ordination of the muscular movements is situated in the spinal 
cord, and it has always been incomprehensible to me how any 
one could ever have referred it to the cerebellum. In ulceration 
of that organ, I have never seen irregular movements.” After 
the thousands of experiments made by these gentlemen, by 
which they are enabled to contradict each other, and after all 
this fiendish massacre, the latest writer on the nervous system, 
Moritz Schiff, a man who has gained some notoriety as a Vivi- 
sector, concludes, from numberless other experiments he has 
made, that the functions of the cerebellum are altogether 
unknown! 
The nature of the functions of the medulla oblongata has 
been almost as prolific of experiment and pain to animals— 
disordered movements, convulsions, and agony accompany 
each step of the enquiry. Magendie wounded a certain portion, 
and the eye of that side was fixed downwards and forwards, 
while the opposite eye was drawn upwards and inwards. M. 
Colin reproduced these amusing phenomena, but, of course, 
With slightly different results, in a ram After puncture, the 
eyes began to pirouette in their orbits. The right eye was 
drawn upwards, and exposed a large portion of the white, 
the left looked downwards, showing the whole of the cornea. 
They preserved this position with some convulsive move- 
ments, for more than two hours, after which the animal was 
sacrificed. 
It is needless to detail more of the sections and punctures so 
• Precis Elcmcntaire dc Physiologic. 4th ed. Vol. I, p. 410. 15 
FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
cruel and so fruitless, gone through year after year, in this par- 
ticular region, save to give the last investigator’s opinion I can 
find. Schroeder van der Kolk asserts, “ That the medulla 
oblongata’’ (not the brain) “ is the seat of perception, can scarc- 
ly any longer be a subject of doubt. Not only is it known that 
the brain itself is insensible, but while the nerves of sensation 
in the spinal cord pass upwards, the trigemimus descend to 
the medulla oblongata, that is to the seat of perception.”* 
But like all vivisectionists, he is either at disaccord with him- 
self or others. In the remarks on “ Shrieking,” he says, 
“ There are, in fact, many involuntary actions, which we or- 
dinarily regard as voluntary; for example—shrieking with 
pain. This shrieking appears to be merely the effect of a reflex 
action on the upper part of the spinal cord, or medulla oblongata. 
Hence it follows, that in vivisections so many 
incorrect inferences are drawn as to feeling or perception in 
animals If the brain is cut off above the pons varolii, and 
the fifth pair of nerves be strongly stimulated, the animal will 
cry out, although without consciousness, without perception, 
and without feeling of pain.” Was ever anything more un- 
reasonable, more contradictory, or more characteristic of this 
harsh system, of trying to wring out the truth by violent and 
audacious means! If the medulla is the seat of perception 
and sensation, how is it that cutting away the brain destroys 
sensation, when what is left, the medulla oblongata, is entire, 
and the sentient centre? 
The spinal cord, in its entire length, has been exposed and 
divided by tranverse and longitudinal sections, while the 
animals were alive and conscious, but the results of multitudin- 
ous mutilation only go to show that they were unnecessary 
and unjustifiable when other modes of discovery were more 
serviceable and far less brutal.f In the beginning of this 
century, when anatomy had suggested the functions of the 
roots of the nerves at their origin in the spine, vivisectionists 
began to experiment upon the discovery, and it afterwards 
became a favorite mode of teaching to have a number of living 
animals mutilated and tortured without mercy, for the purpose 
of exhibiting these functions. It is most extraordinary, that 
even if humanity did not forbid this custom, common sense at 
least should not have interfered so far as to suggest, that, when 
the vertebrae have been hacked and the spinal canal laid open 
by saws and chisels; when pain and loss of blood have disordered 
all the functions of nature; and when—happily for the suffering 
creatures—death is imminent—no rational conclusion can be 
* On the Minute Structure and Functions of the Spinal Cord and Medulla Oblon- 
gata ; translated by W. D. Moore. London, 18»9. 
f See (c.) Appendix.—Second Proposition. 16 
VIVISECTION 
which motion it would be difficult to distinguish from that pro- 
formed as to the normal functions of these parts. As usual, 
whenever experimentation began, then began the squabbles of 
the numberless torturers, and countless dogs and other animals 
were condemned to suffer the most awful agony possible in 
these disputes, which subsequent and more reasonable inves- 
tigation has shoThm to be to a great extent ill-founded and of 
the nature of faction-fights. The common sense view has 
been gradually gaining ground with all, save those who de- 
light in living dissections; and it is acknowledged by the best 
physiologists, that a careful register of the phenomena of dis- 
ease, followed bj post-mortem examinations, is generally more 
to be depended upon than those experiments, so revolting to 
humanity, which have disfigured the emblem of science; but 
from which, nevertheless, different investigators drew different 
theories to suit his own special view of the case. One of the 
greatest of English physiologists, Sir Charles Bell, was com- 
pelled by the incredulous and prejudiced to resort to direct 
experimentation on this subject, in which he was a great dis- 
coverer, in order to prove to others what anatomy had al- 
ready taught him. But the suffering which this barbarous 
mode of proving a discovery caused was ever present to him, 
and though his whole heart was devoted to science, yet it was 
never moved to prolong or repeat these experiments. “ It is 
a duty to avoid the unnecessary repetition of experiments” he 
says. He saw the great cruelty and the uselessness of them, 
and throughout his writings there is a constant allusion to 
them in this humane light. “ The dura mater (the membrane 
covering the brain) is insensible, as we can prove by the opera- 
tion of trepan: it has, in the way of experiment, been pricked 
and injured by every possible contrivance, by mechanical and by 
chemical stimulant; yet the animals, the subjects of such cruel 
experiments, have given no signs of pain.” With regard to 
his discovery then, he tells us—“ It was necessary to know, in 
the first place, whether the phenomena exhibited on injuring 
the separate roots of the spinal nerves corresponded with 
what was suggested by their anatomy. After delaying long, 
on account of the unpleasant nature of the operation, I open- 
ed the spinal canal of a rabbit, and cut the posterior roots of 
the nerves of the lower extremity ; the creature crawled, but 
I was deterred from repeating the experiment, by the pro- 
tracted cruelty of the dissection. I reflected, that an experi- 
ment would be satisfactory, if done on an animal recently 
knocked down and insensible; that while I experimented on 
a living animal, there might be a trembling or convulsive ac- 
tion exerted in the muscles by touching a sensitive nerve, FOR TIIE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
17 
ducod more immediately through the influence of the motor 
nerves. I therefore struck an animal behind the ear, so as to 
deprive it of sensibility by the concussion, and then exposed 
the spinal marrow. On irritating the posterior roots of tho 
nerve, I could perceive no motion consequent in any part of 
the muscular frame, but on instating the anterior roots of the 
nerve, at each touch of the forceps there was a corresponding 
motion of the muscles to which the nerve was distributed. 
These experiments satisfied me that the different roots and the 
different columns from whence these roots arose, were devoted to 
distinct offices, and that the notions drawn from their anatomy 
were correct.” 
Tho dissectors of live animals, ever glad to get a distinguish- 
ed name or a great discovery to countenance their repulsive 
occupation, have cited Sir Charles Bell as an authority for 
vivisection, and no one can deny the right he has to be heard 
on such a matter. “ In a foreign review of my former papers, 
the results have been considered in favor of experiments on 
living animals. They are, on the contrary, deductions from 
anatomy, and I have had recourse to experiments, not to form 
my opinions, but to impress them on others. It must be my 
apology that my utmost powers of persuasion were lost whilo 
I urged my statements on the ground of observation alone.” 
Again he says, r Anatomy is already looked on with prejudice : 
let not its professors unnecessarily incur the censures of the 
humane. Experiments have never been the means of discovery', 
and the survey of what has been attempted of late years will 
prove that the opening of living animals lias done more to 
perpetuate error than to enforce the just views taken from 
anatomy and the natural sciences.” / 
In an early experiment, he acknowledges his want of success 
—“ But here there was confusion, because of sensation, there- 
fore the animal was instantly destroyed by a blow on the head, 
because sensation obscured the reasoning of the experiment.”* 
A'eai’S have gone by since these words were written, and yet 
we find by the statements of vivisectors themselves, that tho 
spinal cord and nerves have been, and are now exposed, cut, 
pinched, punctured, galvanized, burnt with hot irons, and des- 
troyed by chemicals, while the animals yet live and feel, but 
with what object it is difficult to guess, if not for the sake of 
merely making experiments, or contradicting some other ex- 
perimenter’s conclusions. 
Two celebrated English physiologists, who deserve to be 
listened to, giye it as their opinion that “ Direct experiments 
* Anatomy and Physiology, by J. and C. Bell. London, 1829. 18 
VIVISECTION 
on the anterior and posterior columns of the cord are surround- 
ed with difficulties which embarrass the experimenter and 
weaken the force of his inferences. The depth at which the 
cord is situate in most vertebrate animals, its extreme excita- 
bility, the intimate connection of its various columns with each 
other, so that one can scarcely be irritated without partici- 
pation of the others, the proximity of the roots of the nerves to 
each other . . . sufficiently explain the discrepancies which 
are apparent in the results of the various experimenters which 
have been published.—‘If the anterior fasciculi of the cord’ 
observes Dr. Nasse, ‘possess sensibility but only in a slight 
degree, the mere opening of the vertebral canal, and laying 
bare the cord must cause such a degree of pain as would 
weaken or destroy the manifestations,” etc.* 
All the nerves of the body, and especially those which pre- 
side over the functions of organic life, have been more or less 
tampered with to the torture, or slow miserable death of the 
animals ; but Dr. Carpenter-}* has but little faith in the truth- 
fulness of the deductions of the experimenters, if the following 
be any testimony:—“ There is no good reason to believe that 
‘nervous agency’ is essential to the processes ofnutrition and 
secretion in animals, any more than to the corresponding pro- 
cesses in plants. This is a question which may be more certain- 
ly determined by observation than by any experiment which can 
be made. Thatthey are very readily influenced by changes in 
the condition of the nervous system, is universally admitted ; 
and it is the intimacy of this connection which has given rise 
to the idea of a relation of dependence, and which prevents that 
idea from being disproved. In order to cutoff all nervous 
communication from any part of the organism—a gland for ex- 
ample—so violent an operation is required (involving no less 
than the complete division of the bloodvessels, on which a 
plexus of ganglionic nerves is distributed,) that it is impossi- 
ble to say, that disturbance of the function may not be owing 
to the shock produced on the general system.”! Dr. George 
Wilson says of the vital forces.—“ They are a class of agencies 
extremely difficult to investigate, from their acting in living 
bodies, side by side with the forces found solely operating in 
dead matter; and from the impossibility of subjecting living 
beings to experiment without risking the destruction or de- 
rangement of the vital forces, by the unavoidable interference 
with their normal action, which experiment necessitates.Ӥ 
In every other department of physiological inquiry, where 
* Todd and Bowman's Physiology. Vol. I., p. 317. 
f See (d.) Appendix.—Second Proposition. 
| Principles of General and Comparative Physiology. By Dr. Carpenter, p. 209. 
£ Life of Dr. John Reid, p. 51. FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
19 
the mutilation of animals has been resorted to, there is the 
same unvaried round of discrepancy and error. In a brief 
essay like the present it is indeed difficult to give any idea 
of the extent to which this prevails by quoting examples ; so 
that a few of, perhaps, the more striking blunders inseparable 
from a system so fallacious, may bo taken as illustrative of 
what the highest authorities have adduced in their evidence 
against vivisection. 
The physiology of vomiting, in various classes of animals, 
has for many years excited the ingenuity of experimenters. 
A reference to M. Colin’s work on comparative physiology 
will give a faint idea of the number of animals sacrificed; 
though it will in this, as in other experiments, be impossible 
ever to know the exact number, considering that anyone may 
experiment for himself, and but few venture to publish their 
conclusions or results. Magendio’s essays in this line were 
always characterised by great cruelty. M. Colin designates 
them as “so seductive I” One of his many attempts was to 
cut out the stomach of a large dog while it was alive, and 
substitute in its place a bladder which he fastened to the 
gullet, in place of the stomach. By exciting vomiting in 
pouring an emetic solution into the veins, the contents of 
this bladder were discharged, as from the natural organ. 
Hear •what an eminent writer sa}rs about this feat:—Magendie 
has inferred from his experiments, that it is only the con- 
traction of the abdominal muscles and diaphragm which pro- 
duces vomiting, and that the stomach has no share in the 
act. This physiologist, on this, as on other occasions, has 
not taken into account the various sources of error to which 
experiments on livinganimals are liable. He has not sufficient- 
ly considered or calculated upon the unnatural positions in 
which such experiments place the animals experimented upon, 
and which thus derange their natural operations.* Besides, 
the natural movements of the stomach have been often wit- 
nessed when accident or disease has left it exposed. L’Epione 
saw the organ contract in a man wThose abdomen had been 
accidentally ripped open. This same Magendie, whose unen- 
viable reputation for inhumanity and merciless punishment to 
all kinds of creatures, but especially those nearest to man in 
intelligence and sensitiveness, has called forth the remonstran- 
ces and the anger of many physiologists, had no high estimate 
of the practice which had" gained him his name; for shortly 
"before his death he advised his friends against conferring with 
vivisectors, frankly admitting that no medical man would con- 
* J. Copeland, M. D., in Appendix to Elements of Physiology. By A. Rich* 
rand. London, 1829. 20 
suit a surgeon or physician who obtained his knowledge from 
so uncertain a source, and one which would be sure to mislead.; 
'"' Towards the end of the last century, M. Bremond, a great 
philosopher and scientific man of his day, and also a vivisector 
of some note, published some of his experiments in the trans- 
actions of the Imperial Academy of Paris. The elasticity of 
the lungs was the subject of'his investigations. “Ifound,” he 
says, “ that having stabbed a dog in one side only, it could 
run about the house and howl,”—and so would, I dare say, 
the clever philosopher had he been so undeservedly treated— 
“but,” he goes on, “the air which the dog took in by the 
wound when it expired, was pressed out again by the wound 
when it inspired. Next, I opened the chest of a living dog, 
and there I saw that when the lungs contracted the chest dila- 
ted.” Would the student who has studied the most simple 
outlines of physiology say that these were experiments likely 
to lead to any good result, or that they were anything but 
atrocious cruelties perpetrated by a man who had neither head 
nor heart. Ten thousand pities it is that science should bear 
the deeds of this and such like pretenders ! Sir Charles Bell 
has no patience when speaking of this bravo of science. 
Lower affirmed that, by tying a ligature on the posterior 
vena cava of a dog, he could produce dropsy in the belly, and 
that when the jugular veins were tied the head became dropsi- 
cal. Hewson repeated these experiments many times, but 
always with a contrary result. Hunter’s experiments on the 
veins of the intestines wero not in unison with those of Sir 
Everard Home, Yalsalva, Yan Swieton, Pechlinius, Lower, 
Costceus, Morgagni, and others, but especially Drelincartius, 
in his “ Experiments Canicidia,” spent many days and weeks 
in tying up the carotids of dogs, and for no obvious reason 
save that they believed some fable about a goat which was 
said to go to sleep when its throat was compressed, and waked 
up again at pleasure. The Prussian Philosopher, Kant, believ- 
ed and reasoned on these errors. How many of the experi- 
ments of modern vivisectors have been as devoid of reason to 
guide them, and how many of them has had as little fruit? 
The conscientious director of the Imperial School, at Alfort, 
in reviewing a long series of vivisections, has felt himself com- 
pelled to ask, “Is there one of these experiments I have de- 
scribed, which has produced for humanity any advantage that 
can compensate for the suffering they have occasioned ? I 
have no hesitation in replying in the negative.” 
The late Professor Coleman, imbued strongly with experi- 
mental notions at the out-set of his career, furnishes us with 
an example. I quote from the “ Life of Sir Astley Cooper,” 
VIVISECTION 21 
wherein that renowned surgeon says, “ I was abetter anatomist i 
than Coleman. He was a better theorist than I, and we made ! 
“ihe experiments together, which were published in his work 
on respiration. This was begun in the idea that mechanical 
obstruction in the lungs was the cause of death in drowning, 
and in hanging. But, as he "went on, he was obliged to add, 
the want of change of blood. A multitude of experiments 
were made, some of which proved curious. Mr. Coleman had 
no sooner come to Mr. Cline’s than he again engaged himself 
in studying the subject of asphyxia, and he made so many ex- 
periments upon cats and dogs, and killed such numbers of these 
animals, that a friend of his once declared he had blocked up 
Houndsditch The result of this unprovoked war upon dogs 
and cats was a mighty one to science—they were discovered 
to die for want of air !f 
Bichat, in speaking of the little value to physiology of reason- 
ing by hypothesis, asserts that it is necessary to abandon it, 
since the experiments which should serve as a foundation for to\ 
deceive us.| This man was a most zealous dissector of living 
animals. 
Galen who so ably ridiculed the physicians of his time, and 
from their mode of treating diseases, styled them empirics, 
would find as good reason to deride the burlesque—but for their 
victims—painful philosophy of many of our own day who seek 
to learn the complex functions of life in man, by merely experi- 
menting on rabbits, pigeons, ducklings, guinea pigs, dogs and 
cats, each or all, and then apply the very questionable results 
they obtain to his vital operations. What can be more falla- 
cious when these results have to be modified in a thousand dif- 
ferent ways before they" can be even approximately compared 
with what takes place in the human species. Respiration, di- 
gestion, innervation, and many other functions, are very dis- 
similar in all these. Even when the higher animals are the 
subjects of experiment, physiologists err in their analogies, 
because they have not sufficiently made themselves acquainted 
with comparative anatomy and physiology, and because they 
wish to dive to the bottom of deep problems before they learn 
the nature of their superficies. Reaumur, observing digestion 
only on birds which have a strong muscular gizzard, came to 
the conclusion, because this organ was capable of grinding hard 
substances, that trituration was the essential principal of diges- 
tion. To study digestion as it is in man, what wisdom is there 
in experimenting upon a ruminant animal, with three or four 
FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
* Life of Sir Aetley Cooper, Bart. London, 1843. Yol. I, p. 181. 
f See (e.) Appendix.—Second Proposition, 
t Anaiomie Generate. Par Bichat. 22 
VIVISECTION 
stomachs to digest a vegetable diet, a carnivorous animal with 
a stomach adapted only for flesh, or a creature that feedsalmost 
exclusively, on grains ? And yet we find that Sir Astley Cooper 
' drew his deductions from experiment on the dog, a.carnivor- 
ous animal, and applied them to man, an omnivore. When 
noticing digestion, I may call attention to the opposite results 
which vivisectors have obtained in their experiments upon it. 
A most inhuman man, a Dr. Brachet, divided the pneumogras- 
tic nerves in a dog, after allowing it to become ravenously Hun- 
gry, and found that it had lost all desire for food. Dr. Reid, 
of Edinburgh, repeated the experiment several times, but with-1 
out success. 
Sir B. Brodie found that by cutting the vagus nerves, the 
flow of mucus secreted by the stomach was immediately 
checked. Dr. Reid’s results disprove this. The vivisectionists 
who have thus sought to learn the functions of the stomach in 
animals, seem to have overlooked the serious shock which they 
gave to the other functions of respiration and circulation, and, 
in fact, to the wrhole body, by the destruction of such import- 
ant nerves as these. Death generally took place by a slow as- 
phyxia in a short space of time. Who can wonder, then, if the 
digestive process was subverted, or if evidence were unsatis- 
factory ? Who could believe in the value of evidence so obtain- 
ed ? Magendie, thinking to improve upon Brodie, who had cut 
these nerves in the neck, cut them in the chest. Is there any 
reason to suppose that the shock was less, or that the opera- 
tion would be more successful ? None whatever. To prevent 
suffocation, another investigator opened the windpipe, by which 
means lifewa s preserved a day or two longer, but the truth 
was no nearer; for it was not only to keep off dissolution, but 
to find out the modifications imposed upon digestion that these 
proceedings were instituted. Blainville having cut the vagus 
nerves in pigeons, gave them grains to eat, and on opening 
them after a certain time, found that these were still in the 
crop unchanged. From this he concluded that digestion was 
suspended. What a mistake! He quite overlooked the fact 
that owing to the paralyzed condition of the oesophagus, the 
grains could get no further than the crop, and though the giz- 
zard and stomach may have been intact, they never had a 
chance of performing their work. 
Legallois* divided the vagus nerves in ginea pigs, and as- 
certained that the stomachs retained all the food put in them. 
The fact was that he had paralyzed that organ and whether or 
not there was secretion, it could not pass on the food to the in- 
* Experiences sur le Principle de la Vie, p. 218, et seg. FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
23 
testines. Dupuy made a section of these nerves in horses and 
sheep, and though he scarcely found any change in the aliment 
contained in their stomachs, yet M. Colin can see no proof that 
their digestive offices were suspended.* Brodie, Magendie, 
Leuret and Lassaigne, entered upon another course of experi- 
ments equally unsatisfactory and debatable. A host of minor 
vivisectors entered the list, but the only valuable facts relating 
to this process were obtained from cases of accident or malfor- 
mation in the human subject, as in those of Alexis St Martin, 
Catharine Kutt, and that reported by Busch. Blondlot cruelly 
made fistulous openings into the stomachs of animals, but the 
results were not so much to be relied upon as those derived from 
man.f 
Absorbtion in the stomach was for more than a quarter of 
a century a hard contested point among physiologists. Some 
contended that they had seen absorbtion take place after sec- 
tion of the vagus nerves, in opposition to those who denied the 
possibility of such a circumstance, and that the faculty of ab- 
sorption was independent of nervous influence. The fact is, 
that the stomachs of carnivorous animals are constructed on a 
certain principle, and those of herbivorous animals on a differ- 
ent plan; the structures of the first possess conditions which 
facilitate absorption, while those of the second are constructed 
as if to resist it. The dispute might have lasted for ages, had 
it not been discovered that one set of experimenters operated 
on the stomach of a dog, which has strong absorbent power, 
and another set carried out their investigations on ruminants, 
and more especially on the horse, the stomachs of which ab- 
sorb but feebly. 
But there is no end to these and like examples; so that one 
can scarcely wonder if an ardent vivisector like M. Longet 
should come to the conclusion, after many long years of pain- 
ful meddling with, and slaughter of, unlucky creatures, that 
“experiments on animals of a different species, so far from 
leading to useful results, as regarded human beings, had a ten- 
dency to mislead us. In seeking to benefit mankind by vivi- 
sections, it would be necessary to have recourse to pathologi- 
cal facts, founded on experiments on human beings/' M. Colin 
announces “That experiments on animals, however well con- 
ceived and directed though they be, do not give all expected 
of them, unless they be followed with extreme care, other- 
wise the observations will be inexact or incomplete, and at the 
best they will only lead to insufficient results, in part false; 
* Traite Comparative. Vol. 1, p. 580. 
t See (/.) Appendix.—Second Proposition. 24 
VIVISECTION 
and cannot serve as a basis for healthy reasoning or rigorous 
theories.” The celebrated Mr. Abernethy, in noticing some of 
Spallanzani’s researches, has some apt thoughts regarding vi- 
visection. “ There is yet one point which I feel it a duty to 
advert to, Mr. Hunter, whom I should not have believed to 
be very scrupulous about inflicting suffering upon animals, 
nevertheless censures Spallanzani for the unmeaning repetition 
cf similar experiments. Having resolved publicly to exprQSS 
my own opinions with respect to this subject, I choose the pres- 
ent opportunity to do so, because I believe Spallanzani to have 
been one of those who have tortured and destoyed animals in 
vain. I do not perceive that in the two principal subjects 
which ho sought to elucidate, he has added an important fact 
to our stock of knowledge; besides, some of his experiments 
are of a nature that a good man would have blushed to think 
of, and a wise man would have been ashamed to publish; for 
they prove no fact, requiring to be proved, and only show that 
the aforesaid Abbe was a filthy minded fellow The design of 
experiments is to interrogate nature ; and surely the enquirer 
ought to make himself acquainted with the language of nature, 
and take care to propose pertinent questions. He ought fur- 
ther to consider the probable kind of replies that may be made 
to his inquiries, and the inferences that he may be warranted 
in drawing from different responses, so as to be able to deter- 
mine whether, by the commission of cruelty, he is likely to 
obtain adequate instruction. Indeed, before we make ex- 
periments on sensitive beings, wye ought further to consider 
whether the information we seek may not be obtainable by 
other means. I am aware of the advantages which have been 
derived from such experiments, when made by persons of 
talent, and who had properly prepared themselves. But I also 
know that these experiments tend to harden the feelings which 
often leads to the unnecessary and inconsiderate performance 
of them. Surely, we should endeavor to foster and not to stifle 
benevolence, the best sentiment of our nature, that which is 
productive of the greatest gratification and advantage both to 
its possessor and to others.” 
Dr. Elliotson, as a physiologist, expresses a similar opinion 
in his work on that subject* Alluding to the numerous ex- 
periments made by Dr. Brachet—whom we have already 
noticed—to discover the functions of the ganglionic system of 
nerves, “I cannot refrain,” says he, “from expressing my 
horror at the amount of torture which Dr. Brachet inflicted 
upon so many unoffending brutes. Nearly, or quite two hund- 
* Human Physiology. By J. Elliotson, M. D., p. 449. FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE 
25 
red, must have suffered under his hand. I hardly think that 
knowledge is worth having at such a price, or that it was or- 
dained tliat we should obtain knowledge by cruelty. I care 
nothing for killing a brute outright without pain. It is then 
as it was before it was born—feels no loss, and escapes all fur- 
ther chance of suffering. Vivisection may be justifiable in some 
cases. But, before an enquirer commences an experiment of 
tqrture, he ought to be convinced of its absolute necessity; 
that the investigation is important, and the means indispensa- 
ble, and also that he is master of the existing knowledge on the 
subject, and qualified to operate and to philosophize upon the 
results. He should proceed to the task with the deepest feel- 
ings of regret. I do not wish to make a parade of feeling, but 
to torture animals unnecessarily is a most cowardly and cold- 
blooded act, and in my opinion of the utmost depravity and sin. 
A course of experimental physiology, in which brutes are agon- 
ized to exhibit facts already established, is a disgrace to the 
country which permits it. My esteemed French friends will 
ftardon me, but I fear that in Franee there is, among many, too 
ittle repugnance to vivisection; and I am sure that the follow- 
ing experiment would have caused Dr. Braohet to be black- 
balled in any respectable society in England; for a physiologist 
was blackballed at the .Royal Society from the horror excited 
by an account readjust before; ofan experiment in which rabbits 
heads were crushed; though, on reflection, it was found that 
these experiments were unattended by pain, and he was hon- 
orably elected on an early occasion. ‘ I inspired’ says Dr. Bra- 
chet ‘ a dog with a great aversion of me by plaguing or inflict- 
ing some pain or other upon it as often as I saw It. When this 
feeling was carried to its height, so that the animal became 
furious as soon as it saw and heard me, I put out its eyes. I 
could then appear before it witboutits manifestingany aversion. 
I spoke, and immediately its barkings and furious movements 
proved the passion which animated it. I destroyed the drums 
of its ears, and disorganized the internal ear as much as I could. 
When an intense inflammation had rendered him deaf, I filled 
up his ears with wax. He could no longer hear at all. Then 
I went to his side, spoke loud, and even caressed it without 
his falling into a rage—it seemed even sensible of my caresses/ 
Hay, Dr. Brachet repeated the same experiment upon another 
. dog, and begs to assure us that the result was the same. Aud 
what does all this prove ? Simply, that if one brute has an 
aversion to another, it does not feel or show that aversion when 
it has no means of knowing that the other brute is present! I 
blush for human nature in detailing these experiments; and I 
shall finish by informing my readers that the memoir, contain- 26 
VIVISECTION 
ing this and many other horrors, obtained the physiological 
prize for the French institute in 1826. It need not astonish 
any one to hear this worthy French doctor jocosety relating 
how, when he was a house pupil at the Hotel Dieu, one of his 
colleagues regaled the others with a dinner of cats which ho 
had experimented upon in their life-time, and the next day 
sent the skins, bowels, &c., to the recipients of his hospitality 
in order to let them know what they had eaten.”* • ' 
Sir Astley Cooper and John Hunter have been held up as 
men who greatly benefitted society and science by their ex- 
perimental researches on the lower animals. In vain have I 
carefully sought in their writings for any verification of this 
result to mankind from their living dissections. Sir Astley 
Cooper’s error in investigating digestion on the dog, and draw- 
ing his inferences regarding it as if it had been pursued on a 
human being, I have already noticed. He often forgot that 
there are many experiments performed on the lower animals 
which can never be ofany service to man, and that a little fore- 
thought would save the pain which is inflicted so needlessly. 
What can evidence this better than his experiments to discover 
the functions of the membrana tympani, and the effects of a 
rupture of it on dogs. “ This had been made the subject of ex- 
periment upon the lower animals, but without success, from the 
difficulty of ascertaining, with any correctness, the results pro- 
duced on their faculty of hearing.” The most curious circum- 
stance connected with this failure was, that when much time 
had been thrown away in attempting to induce a certain de- 
gree of deafness in poor brutes, he looked around him, and 
found innumerable cases ready to hand, in his own species, 
wdthout being required to resort to torture.f One of the 
achievements he made in operative surgery was said to be 
founded on his vivisectional experience, namely, the cure of 
aneurism by ligature of the artery. The effect of tying arter- 
ies was known before his day, and the success which attended 
his essays in treating this particular disease, was owing far 
more to his profound knowledge of human anatomy, his bold- 
ness and dexterity, than to any teaching derived from ligatur- 
ing the blood vessels. By other means than this he had sat- 
isfied himself of the possibility of success, and pathological 
observations on man were not the least of these.| His grand 
operation for aneurism of the anterior aorta owed nothing, I 
believe, to the vivisection of brutes. Before he would venture 
to operate on a living human being, he adopted the expedient 
of rehearsing the most difficult part of his task on the dead 
* Dr. Elliotson. f Life. Vol. II., p. 3. 
J See (g.) Appendix.—Second Proposition. FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
27 
body, and the intense anxiety with which he waited for the 
result, will show the doubtful value this operation at first had 
in his estimation * Nowhere does he attribute his skill in per- 
forming this feat to dissecting live animals. The greatest 
achievement of his life—his Treatise on Hernia—does not ap- 
pear to have been at all indebted to experiments on dogs or 
cats for the remarkable manner in which hedescribesitsnature 
and cure. Indeed, I am inclined to think that very many of 
his experiments on live creatures were totally unproductive of 
any results whatever, and others were so meagerly so that 
they were not worth mentioning. His writings f urnish us with 
no facts in regard to this ; may we not, therefore, assume that 
the results of his very many years of slaughter, were doubt 
and conjecture ? 
His biographer, though a strong advocate for vivisection, in 
summing up the character of Sir Astley Cooper and John 
Hunter, concludes by the following:—“ In examining the 
comparative rank of each of these distinguished men, it will 
be found generally to have depended upon the extent of the 
anatomical knowledge of the individual :—John Hunter, the 
greatest philosopher, and Sir Astley" Cooper, the most scientific 
and enterprising surgeon the medical profession of this country 
has ever had to boast of. Both derived their fame from one 
and the same origin, and it is equally certain, even at the pre- 
sent time, that whoever would wish to emulate their eminence 
must base his claims to distinction upon knowledge emanating 
from the same source—dissection of the dead” f—a rather 
different opinion to that of Pecquet, a notable vivisector and 
nothing more, who described anatomy as “ a mute and frigid 
science,” probably because the yell of torture and the warm life 
blood pleased him better. 
The experiments of John Hunter were many, and were very 
painful to the dumb creatures he tortured, but I am sure 
the most sanguine vivisector would never attribute his dis- 
coveries to vivisection. He was indeed a most profound and 
unwearied anatomist, as well as a keen observer, and his 
successes, brilliant as they were, required no more than his 
anatomical genius and great knowledge of disease. I cannot 
trace in any of his writings mention of his having relied for 
great results upon operating on live dogs or other animals, but 
I find everywhere that he esteemed clinical observation and 
post-mortem examinations the most certain means of attaining 
surgical distinction. , 
It is particularly worth noticing the way in which men, who' 
were never satisfied unless trying experiments on animals fior 
* Op. cit. Vol. II., p. 448. 
t Op. cit. Yol. II., p. 205. 28 
VIVISECTION 
the greater part of their lives, began to forsake a pursuit so 
unnatural when age commenced to make them reflect. Were 
it so greatly needed for the welfare of their species, or did 
the ends justify the means, surely they would not so readily 
relinquish a method of seeking the truth which until now they 
had so eagerly employed. Yet such is the fact with many. 
I have already cited some, and Astley Cooper, if his biographer 
informs us correctly, is no exception. “ Towards the end of 
his days he began two subjects of physiological interest, which 
were never made public. His experiments in the first place 
did not appear to him to furnish results sufficiently interesting 
or satisfactory for publication. In the second case he abruptly 
discontinued his enquiries for a remarkable reason. It was 
necessary for his object that a large number of animals should 
be experimented upon, and Mr. Parmenter, who was engaged 
in assisting him in them, informs me that he became afraid, 
lest from their nature he should be accused of cruelty towards 
the subjects of his experiments, and hence desisted from the 
prosecution of this pursuit and turned his attention to the sub- 
ject now under consideration”*—(Diseases of the breast.) The 
experiments alluded to were intended to determine certain 
questions relative to the functions of the brain. These were 
the last attempts at living dissections of a man who would not 
have hesitated in his younger years to sacrifice any number 
of animals without, I fear, much regard to pain. 
Who that has read the life of Dr. John Reid, can soon forget 
the passage, in which we are told, when this good able man 
wTas in his last days, and suffering the most fearful agony in 
that region of his body endowed with those nerves, the func- 
tions of which had cost him so very much time to investigate, 
and the dogs he instituted his researches upon so much pain, 
that he often said—“ This is a judgement on me for the suffer- 
ings which I inflicted on animals.”f Does it not sound like 
remorse, and the honest confession of great cruelty practised 
without an adequate compensation ? And yet this great phy- 
siologist was by far the most considerate and merciful in the 
prosecution of his experiments of any other worker I find 
mentioned, except, perhaps, Sir Charles Bell. The avoidance 
of apparently useless pain was generally his aim, though he 
afterwards acknowledged the thoughts of scientific fame had 
carried him sometimes beyond this limit; the introduction to 
one of his essays on the eighth pair of nerves will show this. 
6i In stating the experiments, I shall enter more fully into the 
details than many may think necessary, as it appears to me, 
* Op. cit. Vol. II., p. 443. 
f Life, of Dr. John Reid, p. 179. FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
29 
that it is an object of essential moment to mention all the cir- 
cumstances under which any important experiment is perform- 
ed in physiological investigations; and I am 
convinced, that if this plan had been more fully followed, 
many a controversy might have been avoided, as well as much 
animal suffering spared. It may appear to some that I have 
repeated many of those experiments with unnecessary fre- 
quency, and a wanton sacrifice of animals. But I naturally 
felt diffidence and distrust in the accuracy of the results I 
obtained, when opposed to those of more experienced obser- 
vers; and it was only after repeated and careful examination 
of the phenomena, that I could feel myself justified in calling 
these in question. It is also sufficiently obvious, that nothing 
is more injurious to the pi*ogress of science than hasty and 
partial observations; and I was anxious to avoid, as far as I 
possibly could, adding to that mass of conflicting evidence 
which there is already so much reason to deplore. Besides, as 
every false observation requires additional experiments for 
its refutation, I felt that, with less extended opportunities of 
witnessing the phenomena under examination, I must incur a 
greater risk, not only of throwing obstacles in the way of 
the progress of truth, but also of occasioning a useless infliction 
of pain.”* There is honesty and truth in this, and there is an 
appearance of that mercy which should ever be dominant in 
the mind of man when the feelings of his humbler companions 
are at stake. I much doubt if many experimenters of the 
present day could make such a conscientious avowal as this; 
and yet it did not save him from the pangs of regret when 
he looked back, and thought only of the torture he had been 
guilty of.f 
Dr. Carpenter, than whom we could scarcely have a higher 
authority on the subject, in reviewing the various means by 
which physiologists are to seek for knowledge concerning the 
vital operations in living beings, very clearly demonstrates the 
value of experimentation. J He says:—“The chemist, when 
desirous of establishing to which of the ingredients in a given 
mixture a particular effect is due, places each separately in the 
conditions inquired to produce the result; but the physiologist 
finds that the attempt to insulate any one organ, and to reduce 
the changes performed by it to definite experimental investi- 
gation, necessarily destroys, or considerably alters those very 
conditions under which alone its functions can be normally 
performed. Take away an important and essential part of a 
* Anatomical, Physiological, and Pathological Researches. By Dr. John Reid. 
t See (h.) Appendix.—Second Proposition. 
J See (i) Appendix.—Second Proposition. 30 
VIVISECTION 
living being, and it ceases to exist as such ; it no longer exhib- 
its even a trace of those properties which it is our object to 
examine; and its elements remain subject only to the com- 
mon laws of matter. We cannot, like the fabled Prometheus 
of old, breathe into the lifeless clay the animating fire; we 
cannot by a judicious and skillful arrangement of elements, 
combine them into new and artificial forms, so as to produco 
new and unexpected phenomena; and almost all our knowledge 
of the laws of life must be derived from observation only. Ex- 
perimentation can conduct us very little further in this inquiry, 
than the determination of the dependence of the functions upon 
one another, and upon the external agents, heat, light, &c., by 
the action of which upon the organism the phenomena of Life 
are produced. But a judicious and careful system of observa- 
tion will almost supply the place of experiment; for the ever- 
varying forms of organised beings by which we are surround- 
ed, and the constantly changing conditions in which they exist, 
present us with such numerous and different combinations of 
causes and effects, that it must be the fault of our mode of 
study, if we do not anive at some tolerably definite conclusions 
as to their mutal relations. In the language of Cuvier, the 
different forms of animals may be regarded as so many kinds 
of experiments ready prepared by Nature, who adds to or de- 
ducts from each of their different parts, just as we might wish 
to do in our laboratories, showing us herself at the same .time 
their various results/’* And in another part of this invalua- 
able work on physiology, he insists that “ Observation alone of 
the vital phenomena of the lower animals, will reveal what 
only could be determined in man by experiment.”f 
I have endeavoured in the foregoing quotations and exam- 
ples, selected from a few sources, to show how little depen- 
dence can be placed upon the deductions drawn from the ex- 
periments of vivisectors, and for the simple reason that truth 
can rarely, if ever, be so elicited, because of the complex nature 
of the vital functions, the difficulty of isolating them from other 
influences, the perturbations which their attempted isolation sot 
up in the whole system, and which only too often give highly 
exaggerated pathological conditions, instead of those tranquil 
manifestations of vitality which we know to be their normal 
state. I have diligently and impartially sought for informa- 
tion through a large library of books, devoted, in great part, 
to the writings of experimental physiologists; and after all 
my search, the opinion to which I would not have listened 
* See (k and finally) Appendix.—Second Proposition. 
f Principles of General and Comparative Physiology. By Dr. Carpenter, pp 4, 
204. FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIEENCE. 
31 
some years ago, comes with tenfold power, and with many of 
the very highest authorities, I am obliged to admit that the 
practice of dissecting living animals for the general purposes 
of science, is except in the most limited degree neither neces- 
sary or justifiable. 
Nothing is so obvious, in scrutinising the labors of vivisec- 
tors, as the fact that nearly all were cutting and puncturing, 
burning and pinching structures or organs to discover their 
healthy functions, the anatomy of which, and of their relation 
to each other, they were entirely ignorant of. What a flood 
of light is thrown on the mechanism of many functions, by the 
untiring industry of the anatomist with his microscope—func- 
tions which have baffled for years the revolting interrogations 
of the inquisitor’s chisel and scapel! We shall never arrive 
at anything like a true knowledge of the functions of the brain 
and spinal cord, until we are perfectly acquainted with their 
minute structure. Other mooted points in experimental phi- 
losophy will only be solved by this means. How much suffer- 
ing would have been spared numberless creatures, had vivisec- 
tors, when studying the physiology of vomition, only studied 
on the dead body the anatomical peculiarities of the various 
structures called into play for that purpose? Would not the 
structure of the stomach alone explain why some animals 
should be able to perform that act with ease, of which others 
are quite incapable. Bichat ridiculed the idea of employing 
the microscope as a means of ascertaining the true nature of 
many functions. He little knew that its revelations were of 
far more value, than the thousands of fruitless experiments he 
inaugurated in suffering upon all kinds of creatures, and that 
it would quite upset many of the conclusions which he had 
purchased so dearly. 
With regard to comparative physiology, Dr. Carpenter has 
already shown its importance in the role of aids to decipher the 
laws of nature. Comparative anatomy has been too little re- 
garded by experimenters; hence their experiments, besides 
being needless, are faulty, many of them, to the last degree. 
Cuvier was conscious of this when he said, “ Nature seems to 
have supplied the means whereby we learn that which experi- 
ments on the living body never could furnish. It presents us 
in the different classes ofanimals, with nearly all possible com- 
binations of organs; it exhibits them combined two by two, 
three by three, and in all proportions. There are none but 
have some description of organs by which they are made famil- 
iar to us; and it only suffices to examine closely the effects 
produced by these re-unions, and those which result from their 
partial or total absence, to deduce very probable conclusions 32 
VIVISECTION 
as to the nature and use of each organ and of each form of 
organ.”* 
Thus, in rising from the simplest to the most complicated 
animal form, wo are made acquainted with the functions of 
organs in a far more satisfactory manner than if we rudely 
attempt to expose them by the knife, and amid struggling and 
perverted action, imagine we are actually witnessing what 
goes on when nature reigns undisturbed. As well might a 
stranger attempt to describe the domestic and political insti- 
tutions of a people, as they existed during peace, were ho sud- 
denly brought among them when all was tumult and rebellion. 
The teachings of pathological anatomy are most instructive, 
and when, during life, the diseases which afflict vital organisms 
are closely observed, and the varying changes and complica- 
tions are duly noted, no experimentation can equal the results 
to be obtained by an examination of the morbid appearances 
after death. To mark the traces left by disease, the changes 
which it has produced, the peculiar functional disturbance 
which accompanied these changes—all this furnishes most val- 
uable instruction and gives results which the vivisector cannot 
emulate, but which he very needlessly tries to repeat. 
Ilow often does disease present itself to us, bearing, as it 
were, the form of an experiment by nature ! How much can 
the habit of observation teach, without the wilful infliction of 
pain on those men or animals which, by disease, come into our 
hands to be relieved 1 Hippocrates observed the peculiar cros- 
sed function of the brain when the skull was injured, and this 
organ involved. He remarked that, on the injured side, con- 
vulsions of the corresponding part of the body take place, and 
paralysis of the opposite side. Hydatids in the brains of sheep 
also testify, by the symptoms they produce, to this opposite 
action. These were noticed long before vivisection attempted 
to repeat their effects. 
How frequently do we find injuries of the spinal cord teach 
us all that experiments can 1 Have we not loss of sensation 
when the posterior portions are damaged, loss of motion when 
the anterior aspect has sustained injury, and hemiplegia when 
the lateral tracts are the seat of disease ? What more than a 
fracture or dislocation of the upper cervical vertebra can prove 
the functions of this part of the spinal cord? In all the ex- 
periments to prove the cause of the heart’s sounds, have we 
anything more conclusive of the production of the second sound 
than the permanent patency of the aortic valves, which is a 
consequence of disoase. Do not the muscular fibres ofthe heart, 
by their length and disposition, betray their combined action 
* Anatomie Comparee, 2d Edit. Vol. I, p. 17 FOR THE PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
33 
in the contraction and dilatation of the organ? Goodwyn 
thought oxygen in the arterial blood was the cause of the re- 
gular succession of the heart’s action, and its absence as a cause 
of asphyxia. Brown-Sequard opposed this view, and affirmed 
that carbonic acid is the special stimulant to its movements. 
They both forgot that the heart will act in vacuum, sometimes 
even for days, after its removal from every apparent vital in- 
fluence. We also recognized the rhythm of its beats by those 
accidents or malformations which exposed it many years be- 
fore it was fashionable to mutilate living animals for this pur- 
pose. Destruction of the epiglottis by disease might have 
convinced vivisectors that this cartilage was not absolutely 
indispensible to swallowing. The obliteration of large blood- 
vessels during the progress of a malady have long ago con- 
clusively shown that the value of anastormosing branches in 
carrying out the circulation of the blood is of the very high- 
est. What more did Hunter’s and Cooper’s experiments prove? 
The insensibility of the substance of the brain, of the bones, 
tendons, and cartilages, were well known in the course of ac- 
cidents and amputations, long before Haller and his school be- 
gan their experiments to demonstrate these. What better 
facts have we regarding vital operations than many of those 
which are elicited by the humane practice of surgery ? Ho 
experiments on the lower animals are half so conclusive or so 
useful to mankind.* 
* Dr. Wilson in his own beautiful way, while opposing the general practice 
of vivisection, points out in simple language the merits of pathological obser- 
vation. He writes : —“ Further it is not only in the pages of death, but also 
in those of disease, that the history of life is written. Disease is the per- 
version, rather than the reversion of health. The sick body is not deserted by 
its natural or normal forces, and possessed by unnatural morbid ones; but the 
forces are working wrongly, some too feebly, others too powerfully, so that the 
nicely balanced equilibrium of the opposing agencies in whichhealth consists, 
is overturned. The sick man’s frame is like a clock keeping false time, not 
because any new forces have usurped the place of cohesion, gravity, elasticity, 
or inertia, and held back or pushed on the hands of the dial; but because the 
altered length of the pendulum, or the diminished elasticity of the spring, or 
the increased friction of the pinions, has changed that relation between the 
weight, inertia, and momentum of the component parts of the machine, which 
is essential to its being a true chronometer. And exactly, as the movements 
of certain portions of an engine can be best seen when it is moving slowly, 
and the movements of certain others when it is moving swiftly, so the char- 
acteristic actions of living organs are often mostly surely ascertained by watch- 
ing them when morbidly slow, or rapid in the Action. The pantings and 
convulsive struggles of a sufferer from Asthma, show most vividly the power 
of the muscles by which we breathe. The throbbing pulse of high fever, ex- 
aggerates in a striking way the natural action of the bloodvessels. The sick- 
ening palpitations of the invalid from heart-disease best demonstrate the use 
of the valves which in him are deranged. The cold and powerless limbs of 
the paralytic teach the true use of the nerves, which are the seat of his malady. 
Nor is there any disease which does not carry with it a lesson as to the nature VIVISECTION 
Those freaks of nature—monstrocities—seem in many in- 
stances as if ready prepared experiments, fruitful in conclusion 
to the scientific observer. So much so, indeed, that Goeffroy 
St. Hiliare declares that they are a series of natural experi- 
ments, wisely prepared, where the causes of those errors which 
so frequently modify the results ofvivisectional researches are 
found all but abrogated* 
I have hitherto omitted to speak of another branch of ani- 
mal torture, which, though it cannot properly be termed vivi- 
section, yet belongs to that fashion of experimenting, and may 
be even more productive of suffering to the lower creatures 
than live dissection. I mean the administration ofsubstances 
which are either known to be active poisons, or are possessed 
of qualities which it is necessary to test before they can bo 
applied for the relief of mankind. Only on man and the lower 
animals can this be done, and to prevent the more valuable 
sacrifice of human life thelatter are selected, and the symptoms 
which particular drugs produce before death, with the post- 
mortem changes they induce, are noted as guides for the path- 
ologist, the theraputist, and the chemist. 
One of the great faults of this testing the properties of 
various substances on particular animals, arises from that very 
cause of error which I have already alluded to as interfering much 
with the experiments of vivisectors—the difference of organi- 
zation. Whether this has appeared to many of those therapeu- 
tists and druggists whom. I have known, and those whose ex- 
periments I have read, it would be needless to say; for there 
remains the fact, that, regardless of their great dissimilarities, 
the dog, rabbit, horse, cow, and goat have been subjected to 
these trials, which of course, when the results were applied to 
the human species, could not but be considered unsatisfactory. 
And beyond all this, there seems to lurk a substratum of cruelty 
which it requires very much in the shape of benefit to diseased 
humanity to palliate. What service can be rendered to man- 
kind by administering to a cat or dog some powerful corrosive 
poison in large doses, and watching the agonising throbs ofthe 
of the function which it disturbs. Again, it is by its own living actions that 
the diseased body cures itself, if it is cured at all. The assuaging of a fever, 
the disappearance of a dropsy, the closing of a wound, and every other heal- 
ing act, though it be but the departure of a headache, or the stopping of a 
leech-bite, is the putting forth of a living power most instructive for the 
physiologist. He must, therefore, haunt the hospital, watch at the sick man’s 
bedside, stand by the operating surgeon, trace every step of recovery, and 
every stage of decay ; and, when death has done its worst, attend with all the 
appliances of his science, to connect the morbid appearances of the dead 
body with the symptoms of the living sufferer.—Life of Dr. John Reid, p. 52. 
* Historic Generate et Fartieuliere des Anomalies de 1’organisation. Paris, 1836. 
Yol. Ill, p. 689. FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
35 
suffering beast until it dies, when already our private and 
hospital surgeons, by painful experience in the cases often 
brought before them, are perfectly acquainted with its action ? 
If an antidote be discovered to some metallic poison, why 
cannot an agent be found which will neutralise its irritant 
qualities in the mortar or retort before experimenting to seek 
the one while the animal’s stomach is being destroyed, and 
creature is enduring great torture. And what is the use of 
giving a dog poison until he is killed, then drawing infer- 
ences with regard to the dose which will cause death in man, 
when it is known that both are so differently constructed, apart 
f rom difference of size, that the analogy cannot hold good ? 
We know that the different classes of animals are very differ- 
ently affected by many medicines. A few grains of tartar 
emetic causes almost immediate vomiting in dogs, whereas the 
same drug, even when given in doses of several ounces, has 
scarcely any physiological effect on horses. Aloes, the most 
uniform and convenient purgative for horses, is uncertain and 
irregular in its action on cattle, but purges dogs in doses of 
nearly a drachm, or eight times as much as is given to a man. 
Opium, strychnia, and aether also afford good illustrations of 
the different effects which the. same medicine has on different 
classes of animals. Horses are particularly liable to super- 
purgation by medicines, and most substances which act as an 
emetic for men and dogs produce a sedative effect when given 
to horses in sufficient doses. Facts of this nature might be 
multiplied, ad infinitum. * 
Many of the experiments appear to be devised without 
special regard to utility, and leave no record save of the agony 
or death of the animals, in a wTay that cannot be satisfactory 
to those who hold the infliction of pain and death deserving of 
some benefit to mankind. We must remember, too, that many 
substances act differently when given to an animal in health, 
than when disease is present, and that this fact has been proved 
by the daily practice of the physician or surgeon. 
Need I say that in these experiments there is almost as much 
contradiction and uncertainty as we have seen to exist with 
those of live dissections. The cruelty is certainly not a whit less. 
Poisoning by arsenic, corrosive sublimate, sulphate of copper, 
or even lime, cannot be described as terminating in painless 
deaths; and the exhibition of anaesthetics, which are sometimes 
mercifully employed by the vivisector to disguise the pain, are 
here forbidden, because the external manifestations of these 
irritant poisons would be suppressed. 
Having thus stated the charges brought against vivisection, 
and supported them by examples, as well as by the opinions of 36 
VIVISECTION 
men who stand foremost as physiologists, and whose authority 
in this department is universally acknowledged, it would only 
be doing justice to what is apparently a difficult question, to 
hear what some of the vindicators of this practice have to urge 
in its behalf, and to criticise their statements. Though many 
of the advocates are scientific men, their apologies are peurile 
in the extreme. Others are masked, and are intent only on 
exhibiting the system in its most pleasant aspect. Of course, 
in doing this they do not give the whole truth; indeed, they 
seem to fear its being made known, and resent inquiry, as if 
they dreaded or were ashamed of the consequences. What 
shall we say to the following extract from an article in a weekly 
reviewer ?*—“ The present plan of experimenting on live sub- 
jects must stand or fall by its utility. If it can be shown that 
by the sufferings of two or three hundred chickens or rabbits 
per annum science can be put in a position to lessen the agonies 
of a countless number of men and women writhing under the 
inflictions of disease, not many persons would be found to place 
the interests of a few fowls, of which the majority are doomed 
to a violent death for human convenience, above an incalcula- 
ble gain to unborn generations of our race. We should not 
rate highly the benevolence of those lovers of poultry who for 
the sake of saving a few ducklings from the pain caused by the 
anatomist’s knife, would consign countless multitudes of their 
own kind to greater anguish. If no argument of necessi ty can 
justify us in putting animals to pain, no argument can justify 
us in putting them to death.’4 
To kill is one thing ; to torture is quite another. Under tho 
butcher an ox dies, and his sufferings are at a minimum point, 
and certainly less than those of natural death—under the vivi- 
sector they are at a maximum point generally. Besides so far 
from it being true that only these animals are doomed to be 
sacrificed to appease the gods who govern the acts of vivisec- 
tors, there is the evidence of these men to prove that thousands 
of dogs, cats, horses, and other beasts, have been doomed to 
the most inhuman tortures the ingenuity of man could con- 
ceive, and the results so far from relieving diseased mankind, 
pr even improving or extending scientific knowledge, have 
Shocked the moral nature of the first, and retarded or confused 
fthe second. 
Bransby Cooper, the editor of the Life of Sir Astley Cooper, 
and the gentleman who thought it a remarkable reason that 
his talented uncle should abstain from a series of experiments, 
because they were too cruel for his accustomed hand, says in 
that workj* that the most eminent men of the medical profession 
* The Athenceum. July 16, 1864. 
f Vol. I., p. 144. FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
37 
have practised vivisection, and that it seems almost essential 
to the acquirement of the higher orders of surgical and phy- 
siological knowlege. “ By this means only are theories 
proven erroneous or correct, new facts brought to light, im- 
portant discoveries made in physiology and sounder doctrines, 
and more scientific modes of treatment arrived at. Nor is 
this all; for the surgeon’s hand becomes tutored to act with 
steadiness, while he is under the influence of the natural abhor- 
ence of giving pain to the subject of experiment, and he him- 
self is thus schooled for the severer ordeal of operating on the 
human frame. I may mention another peculiar advantage in 
proof of the necessity of such apparent cruelty, that no practis- 
ing on the dead body can accustom the hand of the surgeon 
to the physical phenomena presented to his notice in operations 
on the living. The details of the various differences which 
exist under the two circumstances need hardly be explained, 
as there are few minds to which they will not readily present 
themselves.” Now, it is exactly the absence of these details 
which might militate against their arguments, that renders the 
motives of vivisectors so suspicious. With regard to the prac- 
tice of living dissections seeming almost essential to surgi- 
cal and physiological knowledge, I have in the preceeding 
pages given a few of the opinions of men of much greater 
weight and experience in this line than Bransby Cooper as to 
their value in physiology, which is shown to be extremely 
doubtful. There is, I am certain, no eminent surgeop of the 
present day who would not stand aghast at, or treat as a joke, 
the assertion, that it was only by operating upon the inferior 
animals that real surgical skill could be obtained; and that 
the man who was most expert at amputating the limbs of men, 
had gained his proficiency by removing those of dogs and cats; 
or the professor who was celebrated for such plastic operations 
as forming a new nose from the texture of the forehead, had 
spent years in learning this on pigs, dogs, or ducklings. The 
thing is too ridiculous; and, besides, we have distinct proof 
that surgeons entirely and indignantly repudiate such a source 
of skill. In what those other advantages he refers to consist 
the inevitable absence of details leaves his readers to conjecture. 
If they cannot bo found in such records as those he has pub- 
lished, we may be allowed to doubt their existence. 
Dr. Blundell, whose evidence appears in the above work, and 
also in the “ Times” for August 1868, is one of the most elo- 
quent of those writers who attempt to procure a license for 
wholesale vivisection He says : “ Those who object to the 
putting of animals to death for a scientific purpose do not re- 
flect that the death of an animal is a very different thing from 38 
VIVISECTION 
that of a man. To an animal, death is an eternal sleep; to 
man, it is the commencement of a new and untried state ofex- 
istence. . . . Shall it be said that the objects of physiolo- 
gical science are not worth the sacrifice of tew animals ? Men 
are constantly forming the most erroneous estimates of the 
comparative importance of objects in this world. Of what im- 
portance is it now to mankind whether Antony or Augustus 
filled the Imperial chair ? And what will it matter a few cen- 
turies hence whether England or France swept the ocean with 
her fleets ? But mankind will always be equally interested 
in the great truths deducible from science, and in the infer- 
ences derived from physiological experiments. I wilt ask, 
then, whether the infliction of pain in the lower animals in ex- 
periments is not justified by the object for which these experi- 
ments are instituted, namely, the advancement of physiologi- 
cal knowledge ?”/ It is but a sorry excuse to advance on behalf 
of a system whichdoes not decimate a few animals, but uncount- 
ed thousands, to say that the death of a creature is a very differ- 
ent affair from that of a man, it being an eternal sleep to the 
one, and the advent of a untried state of existence to the other. 
What matters it to either, so far as pain is concerned, what 
happens after death ? Is it because death is an eternal sleep 
to all beneath man in organization, that torture may be resort- 
ed to, and justified in the eyes of humanity, for putting these 
creatures to sleep. Because the brutes go to an eternal death, 
is that a reason why man, who has an untried state of exis- 
tence before him, should inflict the most grievous injuries on 
them during their lives ? Certainly not; and neither the laws 
of G-od nor man will justify such a silly argument. It may be 
necessary that an animal should die, but it does not follow 
that it may be tortured to death, and certainly not because 
death consigns it to an eternal oblivion. How does an ad- 
mired author meet this argument of the Doctor’s? In the 
“ Guardian,” No. 61, he begins:—“I cannot think it extra- 
vagant to imagine that mankind are no less, in proportion, 
accountable for the ill use of their dominion over creatures of 
the lower rank of beings, than for the exercise of tyranny over 
their own species. The more entirely the inferior creation 
is submitted to our power, the more answerable we should 
seem for our mismanagement of it; and the rather, as the very 
condition of Nature renders these creatures incapable of re- 
ceiving any recompense in another life, for their ill-treatment 
in this.” 
M. Colin is less humane in his apology. He says:—“There 
is, we are convinced, no more inhumanity with experimenters, 
than there has been with those nations of antiquity, where so FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
39 
many slaves became, in the middle of circuses, the prey of fero- 
cious beasts, for the amusement of spectators.” This needs no 
more allusion than just to show the estimation in which some 
vivisectors hold their occupation, and the examples they would 
seek to justify it by. 
Legallois is of the opinion that “ the physiologist who sacri- 
fices an animal with the object of instructing, is surely more 
excusable than the hunter who kills so many inoffensive ani- 
mals to feast on, or than the epicure who mutilates or gives 
them mortal maladies, in order to render their flesh more del- 
icate.” To this we may reply that the hunter, who seeks to 
kill animals for food, is mercifully disposed to cause their in- 
stant death; and the epicure, if found guilty of cruelty by caus- 
ing prolonged pain to the creatures destined as food for him, 
would certainly deserve the reprobation of mankind, and might 
even be made amenable to legal restrictions * 
In the official report of the Commission appointed by the 
French Government to inquire into the subject of vivisection, 
and which was read before the Imperial Academy of Science of 
France, on the 4th of August 1862, the reporter, glad to avail 
himself of any opportunity to justify the abominable practice, 
and but little pleased with England for its crusade against 
vivisectors, points to our prize fights among men, and to the, 
perhaps, more brutal dogfights as a proof that there is more 
brutality in the world than living dissections. Our French 
friends must remember that such things are only patronised 
amongst the lowest and most degraded of our idle people; 
that they are strictly forbidden, and are punishable by law; 
and that to place vivisection on a level with these vile amuse- 
ments, is, at once, to deny its right to be regarded in any 
other light than as a crime, and its devotees on a par witn 
the dregs of human kind. 
“ But/' says another pleader, “ there is no cruelty inflicted, 
nor yet pain, beyond that which is unavoidable in the examina- 
tion of certain functions ; and often chloroform is administered 
to deaden sensation when the exhibition of feeling on the part 
of the animals is not required in the experiments.” It would 
be as unjust as it would be unwise to brand everyone who has 
had recourse to experiments as men who were regardless of the 
pain they might cause in the course of their researches, or to 
say that reckless inhumanity prompted them to neglect means 
which might have palliated the sufferings of their victims. 
Unfortunately, however, the history of physiological science is 
replete with as foul examples of inhumanity to the lower 
* Plutarch observes—“ If we kill an animal for our provision let us do it 
with the meltings of compassion, and without tormenting it.” 40 
VIVISECTION 
animals, as could be found even among the most depraved 
wretches who gain a livelihood by their brutal exhibitions. To 
read of them, makes one doubt that vivisectors possess any 
humanity at all; or if they have ever had this “ weakness/’ 
that they are able to keep it. Cruelty has attended the path 
of the mutilator from the earliest days up to the present, and 
it was to avoid the scandal to which ill-defined experiments 
gave rise, that in the sixteenth century, the Italian schools, 
presided over by Fallopius and Eustachius, gave opium to the 
animals they prosecuted their anatomical and physiological re- 
searches upon. Later experimenters have not been so scrupu- 
lous or so careful, and the few published accounts of demonstra- 
tions—a few out of thousands unpublished, or even unrecorded 
—testify to the utter want of humanity of the operators in too 
many instances. The French, especially, have distinguished 
themselves in the most unenviable way, and do not mind about 
concealing it; but trumpet forth their exploits, as if they 
merited praise for their hardness of heart in dallying over 
operations which would sicken the most callous butcher. 
Magendie’s experiments are nearly all of them replete with 
most dastardly symptoms of cruelty. I have, much against 
my own desires, already enumerated a few of these, but they 
all fall short of others, which I think are unfit for publication/ 
Who has not, however, been moved with emotion—whether 
of anger or pity, or a mixture of both, it would be hard to 
tell—as he read of the merciless horrors which attended one 
of this savant’s class demonstrations, when a poor dog was 
the subject of an experiment on the spinal nerves. In vain 
did the unpitying man endeavor to lay bare the roots of the 
vertebral nerves—scalpel, chisel, hammer, and bone forceps 
were plied diligently, as usual for the edification of the stu- 
dents. Twice the poor creature escaped from its imprisonment, 
and at last, when brought back, and when struggles availed 
Tfot to save it from the lacerating knife, it threw it paws around, 
the cruel man’s neck and licked his face kJVhich was the bmtfl. 
then? In the “Life of Sir Astley a brief 
anecdote of a milder nature—(of course the more outrageous 
stories would not be published)—which is told, as it were, 
pleasantly. “ During this time,” it alleges, “ Astley, who was 
always eager to add to our anatomical and physiological 
knowledge, made a variety of experiments on living animals. 
I recollect one day walking out with him, when a dog followed 
us, and accompanied us home, little forseeing the fate that 
awaited him. He was confined a few days till we had ascer- 
tained that no owner would come to claim him, and then 
brought up to be the subject of various operations. The first FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
41 
of these was tying one of the femoral arteries. When poor 
Chance, for so we appropriately named him, was sufficiently 
recovered from this, one of the humeral arteries was subjected 
to a similar process. After the lapse of a few weeks, the ill- 
fated animal was killed, the vessels inejected, and preparations 
made from each of the limbs.”* 
So much for the plea that an anaesthetic is used. True it is, 
some vivisectors exhibit chloroform in a few experiments on 
the smaller animals ; but this agent cannot be always success- 
fully administered to the larger quadrupeds, such as the horse 
and cow. And after all, if we are to credit one of the first 
surgeons of the day, its value must be rather limited, especially 
when delicate observations are required. Mr. Erichsen gives 
us the following testimony in regard to this point. “ Chloro- 
form, however, does not remove the physical impression pro- 
duced on the system by a severe mutilation ; hence the influ- 
ence of a serious and prolonged operation is still manifested 
in the production of shock, of collapse, of slow recovery, even 
though the patient has suffered no actual pain. Certain op 
orations appear to exercise a peculiar depressing effect on the 
nervous system, even though no pain be experienced.”f 
Those who make reckless assertions, that only rabbits, 
chickens, and ducklings are experimented on, also quite forget 
that they are exhibiting the unscientific character of their sys- 
tem, and are stating what is contrary, not only to truth, but to 
the principles which are laid down by their own authorities, to 
the effect that very many species of animals must be employed 
before deductions can bo drawn. Any pursuit, scientific or 
otherwise, which will not bear public scrutiny, and which needs 
recourse to mis-statements to justify it, cannot be deemed a 
laudable one; and no pursuit better deserves supervision than 
one which is so eagerly and jealously guarded, lest the whole 
truth be known. Does it not appear as if it carried with it its 
own condemnation in the minds of its supporters ? “ Good 
wine needs no bush,” and a fair transaction need not fear ex- 
posure. Tff vivisection be so valuable to mankind—I have 
shown that it is not—then there would be less hesitation in 
proving its value, and far less need to hide its enormities from 
the eyes of the humane. Vivisection is not, however, content 
to mutilate those animals lowest in the order of creation ; but 
the domestic pet, the cat, the wisely reasoning dog, which, as 
Burns nobly expresses it, owns man as its God, and whose at- 
tachment to him is so evidently influenced by moral feelings, 
* Life of Sir Astley Cooper. Yol. I., page 142. 
f Science and Art of Surgery. 3d ed. 42 
VIVISECTION 
suffer most largely, and have had to bear the most racking 
tortures. If the courageous and toiling horse, or patient ox 
have suffered less, it is because their money value protects 
them, until disease or old age carries them to institutions 
where they may be freely subjected to those investigations, 
which lead to a more dreadful death than nature ever intended; 
It is this blunting of the finer feelings of the human heart—• 
this destruction of that instinctive emoli n of pity which is 
the strongest deterring influence in guarding us from cruelty— 
that most offends the moralist in the practice of vivisection. 
Cruelty differs from none of the other vices in its insidious 
approach to obtain possession of our more merciful sentiments, 
and to control the promptings of our God-like charity towards 
all animated nature. Domitian began a savage life b}7 killing 
flies, and the most cruel disposition can amply gratify itself 
without let or hindrance, in vivisection, as it is'at present 
allowed to be carried on. The gentle emotion which moves 
the youthful breast when an unfortunate animal is first heard 
to shriek from the pain of an experiment, becomes in too many 
instances, weakened in time, and the demoralising effects of 
unmitigated cruelty become familiar through frequent repeti- 
tion. Far different is the action of that course of operative 
surgery which the student has to be a spectator of, or a parti- 
cipator in. In it he sees pain inflicted lor the relief of actual 
suffering and to preserve life—the most sacred and justifiable 
of all the works which man may perform; in living dissections 
he can see nothing but fruitless torture in attempting to un- 
ravel some mystery or make a discovery—torture deliberately 
perpetrated on animals in health, creatures which have not an 
intellect or a religion to support them in their pitiful trials, 
and, unlike man, do not swoon, but to the last preserve their 
heightened sensibilities. 
Can we wonder that the learned Dr. Johnson, who delighted in 
the progress of science as much as he did in the progress of 
mankind, should express himself in strong terms regarding 
such practices ? “ The idlers that sport only with inanimate 
nature,” says he, “may claim some indulgence. If they are 
useless, they aro still innocent; but there are others, whom I 
know not how to mention without more emotion than my 
sense of quiet willingly admits. (Among the inferior professors 
of medical knowledge is a race of wretches, whose lives are 
only varied by varieties of cruelty; whose favourite amuse- 
ment is to nail dogs to tables, and open them alive; to try how 
long life may be continued in various degrees of mutilation, or 
the excision or laceration of the vital parts; to examine 
whether burning irons are felt more acutely by the bone or FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
43 
the tendon, and whether the more lasting agonies are produc- 
ed by poison forced into the mouth, or injected into the veins. 
It is not without reluctance that I offend the sensibility of ten-' 
der minds with images like these. If such cruelties were not 
praticed, it were to be desired that they should not be con- 
ceived; but since they are published every day with ostenta- 
tion, let me be allowed to mention them once with abhorrence. 
Mead has invidiously remarked of Woodward, that he gather- 
ed shells and stones, and would pass for a philosopher. With 
pretentions much less reasonable, the anatomical novice tears 
out the living bowels of an animal, and styles himselfphvsician; 
prepares himself, by familiar cruelty, for that profession, in 
which ho is to exercise upon the tender and the helpless, upon 
feeble bodies and broken minds, and by which he has oppor- 
tunities to extend his arts of torture, and continue those 
experiments upon infancy and age, which ho has hitherto 
tried upon cats and dogs. What is alleged in defence of those 
hateful practices, every one knows. But the truth is, that by 
knives, fire, and poison, knowledge is not always sought, and 
is very seldom attained. The experiments that have been 
tried are tried again; and he that burnt an animal yesterday, 
will be willing to amuse himself by burning another to-mor- 
row. I know not, that by living dissections any discovery 
has been made, by which a single malady is more easily cured. 
And if the knowledge of physiology has been somewhat 
increased, surely ho bu}7s knowledge dear, who learns the use 
of the lacteals at the expense of his humanity. 
is time that universal resentment should arise against ( 
/these horrid operations—which tend to harden the heart, ex- 
tinguish those sensations which give man confidence in man, 
and make the physician more dreadful than the gout or 
" ~~ ' 
JNo part of vivisection can be more strongly condemned, 
than that kind of desultory warfare against animal life and 
happiness which is waged by incompetent or unscrupulous 
individuals, from a vain notion that they are able to make 
discoveries, or are qualified to question Uiose of more cele- 
brated and accomplished men. Year after year rinds them 
dabbling In science, trs—they imagine, ever pursuing some 
object which realizes no more than the agony, or death of 
their victims, and achieving no more than those barren philo- I 
sophers who spend their lives — 
C“ Dropping buckets into empty wells, / 
And growing old in drawing nothing out.” 
It is against such that the most earnest protests must be 44 
VIVISECTION. 
entered, for it is doing violence alike to the fair name of 
science and the works of the Almighty to permit them thus 
to pass their time unchallenged. Put a stop to these idle and 
wicked workers, and vivisection would be deprived of nearly 
all its horrors. The extent of their cruelty, enormous as it 
is, can never be known, and, like their supposed contributions 
to human knowledge, humanity will be all the better for 
never knowing. Civilization and religion demand that the 
law take cognizance of their acts, that both be not mocked 
and disgraced by deeds which would overshadow the barbari- 
ties of a savage nation. 
The constant repeating of experiments is another feature 
in vivisection which must be suppressed. The chief object of 
science is truth, and when it is supposed to be attained, why 
should mere}' and sensation be outraged by rehearsing over 
and over again the most dreadful tortures that can be perpe- 
trated? What merit is there in demonstrating at such a 
fearful cost truths which require no such demonstration? 
Z1 How often have I heard of-—I will not say seen—division 
of the spinal cord performed by unfeeling, inquisitive men, 
and marvelled what pleasure or satisfaction there could be in 
seeing a poor animal in good health secured, a knife thrust 
into its back, and its body, after an amount of hacking and 
stabbing, reduced to the disgusting and painful condition 
which has been well described as “ like a living head and dead 
i trunk—dead to its own sensations, and to all voluntary over 
l its movements.” / 
' And yet these artificial divisions of the spine could teach 
no more than the first one did, or than did those unavoidable 
accidents which so frequently happen to man, and some of the 
lower animals. Hogs and other creatures have been, and may 
be even now, sacrificed by dozens, to please idle and brutal 
curiosity, because it can be done with impunity, and because 
it is sanctioned by men of learning, who ought to know bet- 
ter. This evil is magnified a thousand times when the experi- 
ments are performed before people, who, in witnessing them, 
are either disgusted, or made hard-hearted and willing to be- 
come sharers in the common license to slay and torture by 
imitation. 
The highest authority in the land, Professor Owen, is of 
opinion that no teacher of physiology is justified in repeating 
any vivisectional experiments merely to show their known 
results to his class or to others; that it is against abuses of 
this nature that humanity, Christianity, and civilization should 
alike protest. _ , 
TddcTancl Bowman speak in the same strain of such likcT FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
45 
practices: “Nor can we nope that truth can be elicited from 
experiments and observations which are made before the 
public gaze, with more of the character of a theatrical exhi- 
bition than of a sober philosophical investigation.* 
Looking, then, at the practice of vivisection in its scientific 
and moral bearings, the inevitable conclusion to which an im- 
partial examiner will be brought is, that living dissections are 
not to be tolerated except upon the most urgent and imperative 
occasions; and when every other means has been exhausted. 
Therefore is the subject brought to those limits—that it is 
* As an instance of the license permitted to these acts of cruelty, and the 
far from revolting light in which they are viewed by those who commit them, 
let me refer to a Mr. Wainde, surgeon, of Kirby Moorside, who could not be 
contented with his torturing proclivities in private, but must needs advertise 
them in the public journal of a fashionable watering-place. Writing to the 
“ Scarboro’ Mercury ” in the early part of 1860, he says : “ Having noticed 
the rapidity with which wounds grow up and heal in the lower classes of 
animals, I have often revolved in my mind the possibility of uniting, by 
keeping in strict approximation the raw surfaces of two animals not only of 
different species, but of totally different genera. With this view I have, at 
various times, endeavored to produce adhesive inflammation between two 
animals, by removing the whole of the true skin on a part of each, equal in 
extent, and then keeping the divided parts in approximation by means of 
bandages. In the last experiment of the kind that I made, I was eminently 
successful. Having had some time in my possession a rat, which had not 
quite attained its full growth, and which was to a great extent tamed, as it 
would permit any one to approach and caress it without any signs of fear, I 
determined upon making a final attempt, and I was confident of success. 
The next step was to procure another animal with which to unite it; and for 
this purpose I obtained a full-grown crow. Having removed the skin from 
the back of the rat, I with a scalpel removed a slice of the sub-cutaneou3 
tissue, about two lines in thickness, so that the mouths of the minute blood- 
vessels might be opened. I then took off the feathers from the breast of the 
bird, and performed precisely the same operation, with regard to the size and 
thickness of the piece of flesh removed, which was one of an oval form, and 
about two-and-a-half inches long, by one five-eighths broad, or thereabouts. 
“After sponging the parts with a little cold water, I placed the crow with 
its legs across the back of the rat, and by means of a long, narrow bandage, 
kept them in such a position that they could not retract the incised surface 
in the least. I had them fed regularly every four hours, though for the first 
day the crow ate nothing. At the end of sixteen days I removed the bandages, 
and was delighted (!) to find that the whole surfaces were united, except at 
the extreme edges of the wound, the skin was beginning to unite. They now 
present a most peculiar appearance, and do not seem by any means disposed 
to part company. The crow scarcely possesses power of wing sufficient to 
lift its companion far from the ground, though it flutters along at the height 
of a foot or two, for several yards. Should any one be sceptical as to the fact, 
I shall have great pleasure in showing them the subjects of the experiment, 
if they will make it convenient to pay me a visit.” 
Is it not a matter for regret that the law did not admit of his first visitor 
being a police-constable, armed with power sufficient to keep this visitor in 
“strict approximation” to a cell in the nearest prison? Who can wonder 
after this that these amu&ng and delightful experiments should be the admir- 
ation'of a certain class ! we blame young people, and those who have 
the powers of life and death over harmless creatures, if they perform cruel 
acts, when they have such examples among- the members of a humane 
profession, whose experiments are as aimless ana unmeaning as are' 
disgustingly wicked? 46 
VIVISECTION 
in the highest degree unjustifiable to sacrifice animals, espe- 
cially by torturing and causing them pain, for the mere name 
of advancing science; and, in a minor degree, for the purpose 
of extending our knowledge of disease or sparing human 
suffering, until every other department of science which can 
minister to this research has been exhausted thoroughly, and 
in vain; and then only when there is something like certainty, 
not mere speculation, that the experiment will confer some 
significant boon upon the healing art. 
Until the practice can be entirely suppressed by legal 
enactments, these considerations, if acted upon, would circum- 
scribe to the narrowest degree the present limitless system of 
needless punishment. Too much should not be left to the 
consciences of vivisectors. Conscience, with such a man as 
Magendie, would be no check, and what one man of a humane 
disposition would deem unjustifiable and heartless cruelty, 
another would pride himself in asserting publicly as scientific 
and laudable research, though he could find no other apology 
for it. For this reason, the temporary right to experiment on 
living animals should also be limited to a very few, and they 
should be men who are not only qualified by general scientific 
attainments for such a responsible and profound task, but by 
their humane and merciful characters. 
Such a function should not be intrusted to one or two indi- 
viduals, but in the words of Dr. Wilson, “a select jury of com- 
petent witnesses,” such as Dr. Eeid invited at his original 
researches, should always, if possible, be present, as one of the 
most certain modes of making a single experiment suffice for 
many observers. As an amendment to this, I would propose 
that no experiment should be undertaken until this jury was 
present, and not until every inquiry had been made as to the 
history, the object, and the probable result of the dissection, 
and then its very detail should be carefully noted. 
While proposing the above restrictions, and recommending 
them to the kind consideration of the mercifully disposed, as 
consistent with justice to those physiologists who imagine 
living dissections are indispensible to the welfare of mankind, 
let it not be supposed that in principle I think them either 
necessary or justifiable. It is my firm conviction that they 
are not necessary—that instead, they are confusing and pro- 
lific of error, and that other sources of information are open 
to the observer which are not only legitimate but commenda- 
ble. If there was not danger to the moral feelings of those 
who witness such experiments, physiologists themselves would 
not exclaim against their being publicly practised, and if there 
is danger to the spectator, why not to the operator ? It is an open 
confession of the influence of vivisection on the human heart. FOR THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF SCIENCE. 
47 
To plead compassion for mankind, while he unfeelingly 
tortures animals as exquisitely endowed with sensatiun as 
himself, and with little or any result, is surely unworthy of, 
as it is inconsistent with, the holy responsibility vested in the 
professor of medicine. To him, as to all others, we may 
apply the saying of Plutarch, in his life of Cato the Censor: 
“It ought to be esteemed a happiness to mankind, that our 
humanity has a wider sphere to exert itself in, than bare 
justice. It is no more than the obligation of our very birth 
to practice equity to our own kind, but humanity may be 
extended through the whole order of creatures, even to the 
meanest; such actions of charity are the overflowings of a 
mild good-nature on all below us.” A public writer has also 
thus expressed himself: “Cruelty is the only wrong which a 
man can do to another animal, but no one doubts that a very 
one sided form of expediency—that form in which the con- 
venience, the instruction, and even the amusement of the man 
outweighs the life of the animal—is the sole test of the moral 
qualities of the actions of men towards animals.” Let us 
then give our humanity a wider sphere, and let us temper our 
one-sided expediency with a little more mercy; let justice be 
done in all our dealings with dumb creatures, who cannot tell 
us. their wrongs, save by their screams and struggles. Do 
not have a law for punishing the poor man’s cruelty to his 
bread-winner, and no law to punish the scientific amateur or 
professor, who can, without scruple of conscience or danger 
of interference, cause more suffering in a day than could be 
summed up in an enumeration of all the police-cases of cruelty 
to animals which are published for a month. 
The poor coal-seller or porter could, perhaps, bring forward 
a far stronger plea of necessity and justification in working 
his debilitated, raw-skinned servant, while they were both 
£ngry, and striving for their bread, than the gentleman who 
lmly and deliberately sets himself to torture to death his 
If dozen animals every now and again, simply to register a 
few facts under the name of science—facts curious enough, 
—-doubtless, but powerless to alleviate human misery. 
Damaging alike to science, to the genius of humanity, and 
especially to the god-like functions of medicine, we submit 
the wrongs inflicted on the inferior creatures by vivisectors 
urgently demand redress, by the merciful interposition of 
legal restraint. That such is not far distant is certain, and it 
becomes every Christian and benevolent man—the lover of 
his own species, and of those beneath him in organization and 
intellect—to hasten the advent of such a happy release from 
torture and suffering. Appendix.—2d Proposition. 
The following note3 having been kindly supplied in writing by Dr. Carpen- 
ter,one of the Judges, the Author, (unwilling tosuppress argumentsand state- 
ments against his own views,) thinks it due to the learned gentlemen to print 
them in this Appendix, with his own rejoinders. 
(a.) 
I entirely dissent from this statement. If we knock out of the existing system 
of universally-accepted physiological knowledge, all that has been learned 
from experiment, and what experiment alone can reveal, we should go back 
to a depth of ignorance, which must cause a most lamentable increase in 
human suffering, through the maltreatment of disease and injury which would 
be the result. I shall show that nearly the whole of our present knowledge 
of the functions of the nervous system has been obtained by experiment, and 
that the most minute anatomical research couM never have disclosed it. The 
author has obviously a very erroneous conception of the relative shares of 
anatomy and experiment in Sir C. Bell’s discoveries. This I shall show further 
oh (c.) But he utterly ignoies the great doctrine of reflex action, which rests 
entirely on an experimental basis. And he makes no allusion whatever into 
the recent researches of Brown-Sequard, and others as to the vaso-motor 
nerves, which I hold to be of the utmost therapeutic value. Again, the 
Hunterian treatment of aneurism by ligature, which has saved hundreds, 
perhaps thousands, of valuable human lives, was worked out by experiments 
on a comparatively small number of animals. Surely the humanity argu- 
ment is here all in favour of judiciously-conducted experiments. What Sir 
A. Cooper did in regard to the operation of tying the abdominal aorta was to 
ascertain by experiment on a dog, whether he would be justified in trying the 
operation on the human subject, by the re-establishment of the circulation 
below the ligature through the collateral vessels. Will the writer affirm that he 
ought either to have operated on the human subject without this preliminary 
trial; or that he ought to have let the patient die for want of it ? If I am not 
mistaken, the operation has been since successfully performed by Mr. Syme; 
at any rate, its partial success in Sir A. Cooper’s hands showed that it affords 
a chance of saving life in a case otherwise desperate. 
[I have simply to repeat, in reply to the first part of the 
above paragraph, that I have diligently searched in vain for 
the discoveries made through experimentation upon animals, 
without which there would now be “a lamentable increase in 
human suffering;” and I am assured by many medical prac- 
titioners that they are no more enlightened as to these dis- 
coveries than myself. It is a pity that, instead of this often- 
repeated assertion, we have not been furnished with satisfac- 
tory details which would convert the assumption into an 
established fact. With regard to Hunter’s great discovery, 
Avhieh Dr. Carpenter attributes to vivisection, it will suffice to 
quote Professor Owen, who, in his opening address, at the APPENDIX. 
49 
twenty-eighth meeting of the British Association for the ad- 
vancement of science, held at Leeds in 1858, thus refers to 
Hunter: 
‘'Some medical contemporaries of John Hunter, when they saw him, as 
they thought, wasting as much time in studying the growth of a deer’s 
horn as they would been bestowed upon the symptoms of their 
best patient, compassionated, it is said, the singularity of his pursuits. 
But by the insight so gained into the rapid enlargement of arteries, 
Hunter learned a property of those vessels which emboldened him to 
experiment on a man with aneurism, and so to introduce a new opera- 
tion which has rescued from a lingering and painful death thousands 
of his fellow-creatures.” 
Without asking Dr Carpenter for his proofs, I am content to 
leave the question at this point, in order that the doctor may 
settle the disagreement with Professor Owen, with whom he 
he is evidently at right angles in this matter.—G. F.] 
(6.) 
Every department of physiology has had to struggle through this phase of 
doubt and contradiction; but any one familiar with the history of experi- 
mental physiology must be aware that we have now a large body of well- 
ascertained facts on which all are agreed, and that the matters still in doubt 
are of compatively secondary importance. 
[True, but, unfortunately, the history of vivisection shows 
that “ well-ascertained facts” have no sooner been accepted, 
than a new vivisector has arisen, and, by more recent experi- 
ments, has demonstrated the unsoundness of the “well-ascer- 
tained facts.”—G. F.] 
(c.) . 
Anatomy, in Sir C. Bell’s hands, led to the suspicion that the anterior and 
posterior roots of the nerves had diverse functions; but what these were it 
could not reveal. Only experiment could show the anterior to be motor, the 
posterior to be sensory. Anatomy alone misled Sir C. Bell in his interpre- 
tation of the functions of the fifth and seventh facial nerves, and it was ex- 
periment alone that put him right. Now, here was a point directly bearing 
on the treatment of facial paralysis, tic doloureux, &c., which has been pre- 
viously based on most erroneous notions. 
[This note is contradictory of Sir Charles Bell’s own express 
statement, left on record probably that we should not attrib- 
ute his discoveries to experimentation. He says he performed 
experiments only to demonstrate to others that which he had 
previously discovered and made conclusive by other means. To 
assert that Bell was not always right, is to say he was human; 
and, surely, when the history of vivisection is full of the 
grossest blunders and the most serious errors, it is poor logic 
to contend that Sir Charles’s shortcomings appear as witnesses 
against his methods of discovery, and in favor of vivisec- 
tion.—G. F] 50 
APPENDIX 
(d.) 
I must entirely disclaim the general inference which the author bases on a 
limited proposition. I go as far as any one in the importance I attach to an- 
atomical investigation, and in faith as to the value of the “ experiments pre- 
pared for us by nature.” But the author ought not to ignore the explicit tes- 
timony I have borne to experiments in my chapter on the determination of 
functions of nerves. 
[If the learned doctor contradicts himself, I submit it is not 
my fault. I refer the reader to his book.—G. F.] 
(e.) 
If the author were better informed as to the history of our knowledge of 
asphyxia, he would not speak with contempt of these results. The most ab- 
surd (as we now account them) doctrines formerly prevailed; and our pres- 
ent knowledge of the pathology of asphyxia is entirely due to experimental 
research. 
[Is this quite true? I have a little book by my side, a por- 
tion of which has recently excited much attention; it is the 
latest Annual Report of the Royal Humane Society, in which 
appears a report of a Committee appointed by the Royal 
Medical and Chirurgical Society to investigate the subject of 
suspended animation. The Committee consisted of several 
eminent vivisectors, and resolved to pursue the inquiry—1. 
Ry experiments upon living animals; and 2. By experiments 
upon the dead human body. Upwards of seventy experiments 
were made by these gentlemen upon living dogs, some of the 
animals having to undergo the torture of two or three distinct 
operations—in fact, were restored from the jaws of death to 
be re-tormented. Incisions were made in tho trachea, into 
which tubes were inserted, fitted with corks to cut off the 
supply of air, in order to ascertain the duration of the death 
struggles. Others for similar purposes had their heads forci- 
bly held under water, or plunged into mercury, or thrust 
down into liquid plaster of Paris—or submitted to other tor- 
tures. The most elaborate measures were adopted, and great 
patience and skill were shown to make these experiments 
successful, and—cui bono? We will quote from the Report of 
these learned vivisectors: “These results lead to the conclu- 
sion—First. That a dog may bo deprived of air during a 
period of three minutes filty seconds, and afterwards recover 
without the application of artificial means; and, secondly, 
that a dog is not likely to recover if left to itself af ter having 
been deprived of air during a period of four minutes ten sec- 
onds. Other experiments, which will subsequently be referred 
to, in connection with other questions, tend also to confirm 
the above fact, viz., that in dogs the doubtful interval of 
recovery and death lies between three minutes filty seconds 
and four minutes ten seconds.”—or, that if you deprive a dog APPENDIX. 
51 
of air for a certain period he will die! A mighty discovery, 
and deserving the dignity of the royal medical Chimrgical 
Society. But the question is still unanswered—if a dog will 
live five minutes without air, a cat four, a guinea-pig three, 
how long will a man live? After these scientific and humane 
operations, the Committee state, “no definite conclusion con- 
cerning the relative value of the various methods of artificial 
respiration can be drawn from these experiments;” and they, 
therefore, “refer to the report of experiments upon the dead 
human body,”—and with good reason, for these alone were 
found of practical value. The whole transactions of the vivi- 
sectors were a magnificent failure, and if Dr. Carpenter can 
find comfort in them, it is more than any other humane man 
can do. No case can be quoted which will better illustrate 
the utter uselessness and cruelty of these operations; for, as 
the reader will see, the simple advantage gained from these 
disgusting abuses is, that the learned Committee is able to 
assure the Royal Humane Society, that their plan of restoring 
drowned persons, adopted many years before, (and for which 
we are not indebted to vivisection,) is the best method that 
can be used. Well may Dickens say: 
“Inhumane Humanity.— Will the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals to be good enough to look after the Royal Inhumane Society ? 
I make the request in behalf of the dogs, the cats, the guinea-pigs, and 
the rabbits, who have a very serious charge to bring against the society. 
. . . In the report we find a record of nearly a hundred cruel exper- 
iments made upon the lower animals, for the purpose of investigating 
the subject of suspended animation. This is the plan generally and 
commonly adopted : ‘ The animal is secured on its back, and the trachea 
is exposed by a single incision in the mesial line of the neck’ (which, 
being translated into plain English, means that the animal is tied up 
and has its throat cut.) ‘ A ligature being passed round it, it is opened 
by a vertical cut, and a glass tube, as large as can conveniently be in- 
serted, is passed into it for a short distance downwards, and firmly 
secured by the ligature. Through this tube, while patent’ (fine words 
will not cover throat-cutting,) ‘the animal breathes freely, but the sup- 
ply of air can be at once completelcy utoff by inserting a tightly-fitting 
cork into the upper end of the tube.’” 
[Then follows the recital of experiments, appended to which is the following 
note :—‘ The duration of the heart’s action was conveniently ascertain- 
ed by means of a long pin inserted through the thoracic walls into some 
part of the ventriclos. So long as the heart continued to beat, the pin 
moved, and its motions were thus recorded for some time after the car- 
diac sounds had ceased to be audible.’] 
‘Passing over sixteen other cases of neat throat-cutting and nicely-contriv- 
ed suffocation, accompanied by the insertion of pendulums in the heart 
. . . We pass from experiments in chokipg to experiments in drown- 
ing. . . When I came to the double performance of cutting the throat 
first and drowning afterwards, I was fain to believe that the force of ex- 
perimental surgery for the benefit of mankind could no further go. But 
I was mistaken. On turning over the page, I find horrors upon horror’s 
head accumulating. ‘ Experiment 53. A middle-sized dog was depriv- 
ed of air in the usual way, by plugging the trachea; 1 minute after its 52 
APPENDIX. 
last respiration, the actual cautery was applied by drawing the caut- 
ery-iron, heated to a white heat in a gas jet, over different parts of its 
chest and back. The dog died, or rather there were no symptoms of its 
recovery.’ No one will go so far as to declare that the slow suffocation 
of cats and dogs, the cutting of their throats, the pierceing of the vent- 
ricles of their hearts with pins, are not acts of cruelty. But no doubt 
it will be said by some that such experiments are justifiable and neces- 
sary in the interests of surgical science for the benefit of mankind. 
Their necessity I dispute. A set of rules for restoring suspended ani- 
mation in the human body was framed many years ago, and all the 
experiments recently made on animals have added little or nothing to 
our knowledge of the treatment of such cases. 
“The new method being in all essential respects identical with the old one, 
it would appear that nearly a hundred animals have been tortured by 
the Royal Humane Society’s chirurgical gentlemen to no purpose. Man 
may be justified—though I doubt it—in torturing the beasts, that he 
himself may escape pain; but he certainly has no right to gratify an 
idle and purposeless curiosity through the practice of cruelty.”—All 
the Year Round. No. 360. G. F.] 
(/•) 
One of the results now best established by experiment is, that the secretion 
of gastric fluid is essentially independent of the eighth pair; but that it is 
temporarily suspended by its section, as by a shock to the nervous system. 
No observations upon such cases as that of Alexis St. Martin could have 
established this most important result. 
[If so, cui bono? 
(?•) 
Already noticed under Note a. 
(A.) 
I was intimately acquainted with Dr. John Reid, and would hold him up 
as the model of an experimental physiologist. I am sure that he never 
inflicted suffering which he could regard as useless, and in his short life and 
comparatively limited range of inquiry, he settled more important questions 
than Magendie during his long and brutally extended career of operations. 
I think it very unfair to cite expressions used by him under the agony of 
pain, to express a penitence for what he had done, which I know that in his 
calmer moments he did not feel; for I have letters from him written very 
near his end, in which he looks forward to the continuance of his scientific 
inquiries as one of the sources of happiness in a future state. I am myself 
prepared to uphold and justify feverything which he did; whilst I should, 
equally with the author, repudiate as unjustifiable every needless repetition 
of experiments attended with animal suffering. 
[It is, indeed, to me a matter of much regret that Dr. Car- 
penter should think I have acted “very unfairly” in quoting 
the words of Dr. John Reid during his sufferings. Nothing 
could be further from my intention than to take any undue 
advantage of a loose thought or a random observation, elicited 
during the pangs of agony from a despairing sufferer; but the 
reader will, upon re-perusal of my observations, bear me 
witness that I have been particularly careful in this regard. 
Surely I cannot be accused of acting unfairly in quoting a 
statement, which his biographer has taken great pains to APPENDIX. 
explain in the following note to the paragraph referred to in 
the essay: 
“I cannot give the exact words (the term 'judgment’ excepted), which 
have escaped my memory, as well as Professor Goodsir’s, from whom 
I had the statement at the time when it was made, but the members 
of Dr. Reid’s family, who heard him more than once make a similar state- 
ment, confirm their general accuracy.—Life of Dr, John Reid, p. 179. 
There can be no more unfairness in quoting these words than 
those of any other writer, whose operations upon animals 
have, in many instances, drawn a confession of regret or dis- 
approbation from themselves, when they had seen, after long 
years of worse than fruitless torturing, the little to be gained 
from vivisections.—G. F.] 
(»••) 
See Note d. 
{k., 
I certainly never intended to lay down any such general proposition. If 
the sentence, as it stands, is to be found in either of my books, its meaning 
must assuredly be limited by the context. 
{finally.) 
I would ask the writer, in conclusion, to consider what justification is to be 
offered for the universal practice of castrating animals ? There is here not 
only the pain of the operation, but the deprivation of the animal’s power of 
sexual enjoyment through the whole of life. Yet we feel that this is justifi- 
able, in the case of the horse, merely that he may be made more serviceable 
to man; and in the case of the ox and sheep, that their flesh may be more 
palatable. 
Or, again, let me take the case of chloroform. Surely any amount of suff- 
ering that the case might have required might have been legitimately 
inflicted upon the lower animals, to secure such an inestimable boon to 
humanity. 
I hold it to be required by the highest humanity to perfect the sciences of 
physiology and pathology, for all experience shows that the improvement of 
the healing art has gone hand in hand with the advance of those sciences ; 
whilst discoveries, which at first appeared likely to have only a scientific 
value, come in time to find most important practical applications. I quite 
agree with the author that everything should first be sought out by anatomi- 
cal inquiry and pathological obversations, so far as these can possbly be carried. 
But when they have yielded all the information obtainable from them, a few 
well-devised experiments will often (as in the cases of Sir C. Bell and Dr. J. 
Reid) clear up the whole mystery. And when their results have been accept- 
ed by those best qualified to judge of their value, I entirely agree with the 
author that the repetition of the experiments is unjustifiable. I never, when 
a teacher of physiology, practised such repetitions, and I do not believe that 
pupils really learn anything from them. 
On such subjects as the functions of the different parts of the Encephalon, 
I do not believe that experiment can give trustworthy results; since violence 
to one part cannot be put in practice without functional disturbance of the 
rest. Here I consider that a careful anatomical examination of the progress- 
ively complicated forms of the Encephalon, from fishes up to man —the 
experiments ready prepared for us by Nature — is far more likely than any 
number of experiments to elucidate the problem. 54 
APPENDIX, 
[With regard to the amount of cruelty attending emascula- 
tion, I would scarcely venture to name it in the same breath 
with that accompanying nine hundred and ninety-nine out of 
a thousand vivisections; and it is difficult to conceive why 
such a question should be asked at all, or why an attempt 
should be made to diminish the hideousness of nearly all 
experimental operations on the living body, by a reference to 
this surgical operation. According to the testimony of the 
most enthusiastic and able physiologists, living dissections are 
either prolific in disseminating error and doubt, or are entirely 
barren of useful results; whereas it is obvious to the meanest 
comprehension, that the simple and not very painful opera- 
tion, for the removal of the reproductive organs, is not only 
certain in producing the required results, but has both neces- 
sity and convenience to commend it. Without recourse to 
emasculation, many animals most essential to man in the 
important affairs of life, would be not only utterly useless, 
but dangerous alike to other animals, to themselves, and to 
man. By this operation, the organism of the creatures sub- 
mitted to it, undergoes certain remarkable modifications, 
either in form, disposition, or in the nutritive functions, en- 
tailing no pain or discomfort. Its influence on the character 
or disposition of an animal is most marked, and has attracted 
the attention of observers from the earliest times until the 
present. The horse deprived of its generative instincts, sub- 
mits himself completely to the will and the action of his 
master, loses nothing of his strength or endurance, can be 
used at all times, and often under circumstances when the 
perfect animal could not be successfully used. Those who 
have been much among entire horses in this country, or in 
India, well know how savage they oftentimes are, and what 
an amount of injury they inflict, sometimes on their own, and 
on the human species. The male of the bovine species, it is 
wrell known, is very often not only unmanageable, but vicious 
to an extreme degree on arriving at adult age; when cas- 
trated, it is docile to a wonderful extent, and ready to meet 
all the exigencies of domestication. The patient “traihng- 
footed” ox, is the very antithesis of the mad, bellowing bull, 
whose unsteadiness and fury are only too often beyond con- 
trol when he is excited. The ram, especially when laboring 
under sexual excitement, is sometimetimes a most formidable 
aggressor, and a source of danger to his own species and to 
mankind: when castrated he is transformed into the most 
inoffensive of animals; in fact, into the very mild sheep—and 
so with ofhor animals. Its influence is, perhaps, not less with 
regard to form, and by it man may be said, in a certain APPENDIX. 
55 
degree, to mould animals to the shape and size best suited to 
the wants of human society, as well as to promote the happi- 
ness of animals. The weapons of offence become lessened or 
disappear: the ox and the sheep acquire the horns of the 
females of their species; the tusks of the boar are not seen in 
the pig which has been castrated at an early age; the sharp 
spurs of the cock are invisible altogether, or so arrested in 
their development as to be useless; so that these animals are 
not a cause of injury to their own or to any other species. 
In modifying the nutritive forces to the advantage of man- 
kind, castration is a most important and highly laudable 
opeiation. When the sex is annulled, the animal lives no 
longer as a member of a species, but as an individual; all the 
assimilable materials are devoted to other purposes than those 
of maintaining the integrity of the species, and are diverted 
into channels which best suit the necessities of man; in those 
creatures not employed as moving powers, but chiefly reared 
as food-producers, fat and muscle are greatly increased in 
quantity and quality, and their flesh acquires a taste and a 
succulence ver}T superior to that of an animal which has been 
left entire. Nothing can he more loathsome than the peculiar 
heavy and rank taste and smell which the tissues of an animal 
possess. Castration, then, is a means of accommodating the 
flesh of the living animal to the better nourishment of man; 
and if it be justifiable to slay animals for food, it is equally 
justifiable to improve their flesh in quantity and quality to 
the highest degree that can be attained, so long as the 
animals are not subjected thereby to pain. 
Wo have no proof that, beyond the few seconds required for 
the operation, the castrated animal suffers any pain or incon- 
venience whatever, or that the loss of sexual enjoyment is a 
loss of anything but anxiety, feverishness, ferocity, and 
injury. Wo cannot say that the gelding ever thinks of his 
deprivation; but we are certain that he never manifests any 
despondency, or any external sign by which wo could infer 
that he experiences any pain or regret at his loss. But we 
do know that the entire animal, when prevented from obeying 
his sexual instincts, for various reasons, suffers exceedingly; 
and at certain seasons in India, to my knowledge, there are 
numerous cases of loss of appetite for food, feverishness, 
debility, emaciation, spermatorrhea, and even death, from 
over-excitement of the sexual organs. Entire animals are 
more liable to disease when in a state of domestication than 
those which have been emasculated, and the risks they run 
from injury from each other are very great. 
Much more could be said on this subject; but when I assert 56 
APPENDIX. 
that castration is an operation of the greatest possible value 
to mankind; that it causes no loss or hardship to animals 
submitted to domestication, hut is rather an advantage; that 
the trifling pain attending the operation is far more than com- 
pensated for, in the immunity it gives the creature from 
injury by its own species, I offer enough to prove that it 
cannot be compared for utility and humanity with the opera- 
tions performed by the vivisector, which are begun in doubt, 
carried on sometimes for “days, or weeks, or months/’ with 
incredible pain or torture to the hapless creature which has 
no redress and receives no benefit. 
With regard to chloroform—let me ask if the discovery of 
its valuable properties was made by experimenting with it on 
animals? I think there is abundant proof to the contrary. 
It was not until 1864 that its anaesthetic properties were, it 
may be truly said, discovered by a chemist of Massachusetts, 
Dr. Charles T. Jackson. In a letter addressed to the Academy 
of Science, and communicated by M. Elie de Beaumont, he 
says: 
“ For five or six years I have known the particular state in which the nerv- 
ous system is plunged by the inhalation of the vapor of sulphuric 
aether, which I have inspired in large quantity, in first in form of ex- 
periment, and afterwards at a time when I had a very bad catarrh, 
caused by the inhalation of chlorine. Lately, I have made a beneficial 
use of this fact, in inducing a dentist of this town (Boston) to administer 
the vapor of aether to persons who were having their teeth extracted. It was 
observed that these people did not experience any pain during the 
operation, and no inconveniences resulted from the administration of 
the vapor of aether. I afterwards begged this dentist to go to the 
general hospital of Massachusetts to administer the vapor of aether to 
a patient who was about to submit to a very painful surgical operation. 
The result was that the patient did not experience any pain during 
the operation, and went on well subsequently. An operation on the 
jaw, an amputation of the thigh, and the dissection of a tumor, were 
the subjects of the first surgical experiments. Since then numerous 
operations have been performed on different patients with the same 
success, and always without pain; the persons so operated on have had 
a remarkable easy convalescence, and have not experienced any 
nervous shock.” 
In “ Silliman’s American Journal of Science and Art,” for Jan- 
uary, 1832, the discovery of chloroform is announced by Mr. 
S. Guthrie, of Sacket’s Harbor, New York, in a paper entitled 
“A New Mode of Preparing a Spirituous Solution of Caloric 
iEther;” it proceeds to state that he had used the product 
very freely during the previous six months to the point of 
intoxication; that he had found it singularly grateful, pro- 
ducing promptly a lively flow of animal spirits, and conse- 
quent loquacity, and leaving little of the depression consequent 
on the use of ardent spirits; that it promises much as a rem- APPENDIX 
57 
edy in cases requiring a safe, quick, energetic, and palatable 
stimulus, and that for drinking it requires an equal weight of 
water. It was discovered about the same time by M. Soubei- 
ran. Nothing was known as to its physiological effects until 
1847, when Professor Simpson, of Edinburgh, accidentally 
administered a small quantity, kept as a curiosity, to himself 
and friends, and this led to its discovery as a powerful and 
prompt anaesthetic agent. Experimentation upon the lower 
animals had nothing whatever to do with the glorious and 
blessed discovery of either of these agents, else their discov- 
erers tell untruths.—(See Dr. Cogswell’s Paper on the History of 
Chloroform, read at a meeting of the Medical Society of London, 
Dec. 6,1847.) 
It is a curious circumstance that, while vivisectors are 
eagerly (and incorrectly as I have shown) claiming the dis- 
covery of chloroform as a trophy of vivisection, other vivisec- 
tors, among whom are Dr. Benjamin Richardson, are arguing 
the need of further vivisections for the purpose of learning 
more relating to chloroform, or of discovering a more safe 
and useful anaesthetic. EXTRACT 
FROM 
(eMedical Education in America,” being the Annual Ad- 
dress read before the “ Massachusetts Medical 
Society,” June 7, 1871, 
BY 
Henry J. Bigelow, M. D., 
Professor of Surgery in Harvard University. 
How few facts of immediate considerable value to 
our race have of late years been extorted from the 
dreadful sufferings of dumb animals, the cold-blooded 
cruelties now more and more practised under the 
authority of Science! 
The horrors of Vivisection have supplanted the 
solemnity, the thrilling fascination, of the old une- 
therized operation upon the human sufferer. Their 
recorded phenomena, stored away by the physiological 
inquisitor on dusty shelves, are mostly of as little pres- 
ent value to man as the knowledge of a new comet or 
of a Tungstate of Zirconium: perhaps to be confuted 
the next year; perhaps to remain as fixed truth of 
immediate value, — contemptible, compared with the 
price paid for it in agony and torture. 
For every inch cut by one of these experimenters in 
the quivering tissues of the helpless dog or rabbit or 
Guinea-pig let him insert a lancet one-eighth of an inch vivisection. 
into his own skin, and for every inch more he cuts let 
him advance the lancet another eighth of an inch, and 
whenever he seizes, with ragged forceps, a nerve or 
spinal marrow, the seat of all that is concentrated and 
exquisite in agony, or literally tears out nerves by their 
roots, let him cut only one-eighth of an inch further, 
and he may have some faint suggestion of the atrocity 
he is perpetrating, when the Guinea-pig shrieks, the 
poor dog yells, the noble horse groans and strains—the 
heartless vivisector perhaps resenting the struggle 
which annoys him. 
My heart sickens as I recall the spectacle at Alfort, 
in former times, of a wretched horse, one of many hun- 
dreds, broken with age, and disease resulting from life- 
long and honest devotion to man’s service, bound upon 
the floor, his skin scored with a knife like a gridiron, 
his eyes and ears cut out, his teeth pulled, his arteries 
laid bare, his nerves exposed and pinched and severed, 
his hoofs pared to the quick, and every conceivable 
and fiendish torture inflicted upon him, while he 
groaned and gasped, his life carefully preserved under 
this continued and hellish torment, from early morning 
until afternoon, for the purpose, as was avowed, of 
familiarizing the pupil with the motions of the animal. 
This was surgical vivisection on a little larger scale, 
and transcends but little the scenes in a physiological 
laboratory. I have heard it said that “somebody must 
do this.” I say, it is needless. Nobody should do it. 
Watch the students at a vivisection. It is the blood 
and suffering, not the science, that rivets their breath- VIVISECTION. 
less attention. If hospital service makes young stu- 
dents less tender of suffering, vivisection deadens their 
humanity, and begets indifference to it. 
In experiments upon the nervous system of the liv- 
ing animal, whose sensibility must be kept alive, not 
benumbed by the blessed influence of anaesthesia, a 
prodigal waste of suffering results from the difficulty of 
assigning to each experiment its precise and proximate 
effect. The rumpled feathers of a pigeon deprived of 
his cerebellum may indicate not so much a specific 
action of the cerebellum on the skin, as the more prob- 
able fact that the poor bird feels sick. The rotatory 
phenomena, once considered so curious a result of the 
removal of a cerebral lobe, were afterwards suspected to 
proceed from the struggles of the victim with his 
remaining undamaged and unpalsied side. Who can 
say whether the Guinea-pig, the pinching of whose 
carefully sensitized neck throws him into convulsions, 
attains this blessed momentary respite of insensibility 
by an unexplained special machinery of the nervous 
currents, or a sensibility too exquisitely acute for 
animal endurance? Better that I or my friend should 
die than protract existence through accumulated years 
of torture upon animals whose exquisite suffering we 
cannot fail to infer, even though they may have neither 
voice nor feature to express it. 
If a skilfully constructed hypothesis could be elab- 
orated up to the point of experimental test by the most 
accomplished and successful philosopher, and if then a 
single experiment, though cruel, would forever settle VIVISECTION. 
it, we might reluctantly admit that it was justified. 
But the instincts of our common humanity indignantly 
remonstrate against the testing of clumsy or unimport- 
ant hypotheses by prodigal experimentation, or making 
the torture of animals an exhibition to enlarge a med- 
ical school, or for the entertainment of students, not 
one in fifty of whom can turn it to any profitable 
account. The limit of such physiological experiment, 
in its utmost latitude, should be to establish truth in 
the hands of a skilful experimenter, with the greatest 
economy of suffering, and not to demonstrate it to 
ignorant classes and encourage them to repeat it. 
The re-action which follows every excess will in 
time hear indignantly upon this. Until then, it is 
dreadful to think how many poor animals will be sub- 
jected to excruciating agony, as one medical college 
after another becomes penetrated with the idea that 
vivisection is a part of modern teaching, and that, to 
hold way with other institutions, they, too, must have 
their vivisector, their mutilated dogs, their Guinea- 
pigs, their rabbits, their chamber of torture and of 
horrors to advertise as a laboratory. From 
EE PORT OF THE 
SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF ANIMALS IN FRANCE. 
SEPTEMBER, 1871. 
List of Publications received. 
“ L’ACTE do la Deglutition son Mecanism, par le docteur 
Moura. Paris, 1807. Delahaye. Ce livre etait accomp- 
agne d’uno lcttre d’envoi, d’ou nous extrayons ce passage 
significatif. 
“ La decouverto que j’ai faite sur le deglutition n’a coute la 
vio a aucun animal. Cependant, depuis les temps les plus 
recules jusqu’a nos jours, c’est adire jusqu’cn 1801 les physio- 
logistes do tous les pays ont sacrifie les animaux le cbien sur- 
tout, ce fidele ami do l’homme, pour arrivcr a la connaissance 
do la deglutition chez l’homme. 
“ Magendie, en particulier, a laisse parmi nous, ses contem- 
porains, une trop eelebre reputation a cet egard. 
“Les experiences in anima vili sont souvent inutiles; clles 
conduisent raremont au resultat quo l’ou attend. 
“Jo demontre a l’aido d’un instrument particulier, quo la 
deglutition chez Phomme s’opero autrementquo chez lo chien. 
“ Ce serait done une cruaute sans excuse quo do rcnouveler 
a ce sujet les hecatombes animales de mes predecesseurs.”— 
[Bulletin de la Societe Protectrice des Animaux. Paris. Sep- 
tembre, 1871. 
[translation.] 
“ The Act of Deglutition. Its Mechanism. By Doctor Moura. 
Paris. 1807. Delahaye.” This book was accompanied by 
an introductory letter, from which we extract this signif- 
icant passage: 
“ The discovery that I have made in deglutition has not cost 
the life of a single animal. Yet from the most remote times down to our own day, that is to say until 1861, physiologists 
of all countries have sacrificed animals, especially the dog,— 
that faithful friend of man,—to arrive at a knowledge of 
deglutition in man. 
“ Magendic, in particular, has left among us, his contempo- 
raries, a reputation only too celebrated in this respect. 
“ The experiments in anima vili are often useless; rarely 
leading to the results expected from them. 
“ I demonstrate, by the help of a special instrument, that 
deglutition in man is not performed in the same manner as in 
the dog. 
“ It would be, therefore, inexcusable cruelty to repeat, for 
this purpose, the animal hecatombs of my predecessors.” 
VIVISECTION.