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PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
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PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY:
OR,
FACT v. FANCY.
AN INQUIRY INTO THE VIVISECTION QUESTION.
PHILANTHROEOS. cf^u >
    NEW YORK :
JOHN WILEY AND SONS.
      1883.

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s2                       PREFACE.
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          In compiling this little book, my aim has been to
        place in the hands both  of professional  and unpro-
        fessional readers a short compendium of the principal
        established facts and most obvious reasonings on the
        question of Experiment  upon Living Animals.   I
        venture to hope that such a work may prove useful
        to medical men who have not time to consult books
        of reference, and  examine into  the details  of the
        subject for themselves, without its being too technical
        to interest those of the general public who are
        willing to give thought  and attention  to  a most
        important matter.   I  must risk  the accusation  of
        being  either too professional, or too popular, only
        pleading  that I have, at any rate, endeavoured  to
        avoid inaccuracy.

          London, April, 1883.
388531 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
                  CHAPTER I.—Introductory.
                                                            PAGE
Duty of unprejudiced Investigation—Object of this Book   .    .    1

                 CHAPTER II.—What is Pain >.
Our knowledge of Pain derived from human experience alone—
  The process of Sensation and Pain—Reflex action independent
  of consciousness—Vagueness of " signs of  Pain"—Definition of
  Pain—Feeling and Irritability—Feeling dependent on conscious-
  ness—Its relation  to mental development—Animals less sensitive
  than Men—Mental element of Pain—Absence of this in animals
  —Examples—Amount  of Pain in  operations—Painlessness of
  Convalescence—Insensitiveness of brain substance—Example .   4

               CHAPTER III.—What is Cruelty 1
Cruelty defined—What is sufficient justification for giving Pain?
  —Not merely the good of  the sufferer-Nor his consent—But
  the attainment of an  adequate benefit—Benefits  aimed at in
  Physiological  Experiment—These  surpass the evil of Pain in
  quality—And exceed it in quantity—Consequently the benefit
  aimed at is adequate—Answer to objection    .    .     .    .20

           CHAPTER IV.—Our Rights Over Animals.
Experiments on animals asserted to be abstractly wrong—Reasons
  usually given—Experiment not necessarily demoralizing to the
  operator—Universality and beneficence of  the Law of Vicarious
  Suffering—Our right to  apply it to animals for our benefit—
  Vagueness of the principle generally acted on—The true prin-
  ciple—Mr. Hutton's principle—Impossibility of  carrying it out
  —Summary    ......•••■  31

               CHAPTER V.—What is Vivisection?
What  is  Vivisection?—Various definitions — Dissecting alive-
  True  sense of the word—Course of study in physiological labo-
  ratories—Histological department—Chemical department—Phy-
  sical department—Experiments upon detached tissue and organs
  —Experiments upon pithed animals—Painful experiments—In-
  oculations—Testing of  drugs—Use of  an&esthetics—Statistics of
  experiments performed—Conclusion......40

   CHAPTER VI.—The Relation of Experiment to Physiology.
Many non-physiological  systems—Only  one physiological  system
  —The Empirical  system—The Physiological system founded on
  Experiment—Experiment  on  living animals part of a rational
  method of  investigation—The Circulation  of the Blood—Blood
  pressure—Contractile  power  of the  arteries—The Absorbent
                                b 
VI
CONTENTS.
                                                           pagk
  Vessels—Discoveries of Aselli  and  Pecquet—Value  of this
  knowledge—Respiration—Changes effected  in the inspired air
  —Changes  effected  in  the blood—Digestion—The  Nervous
  System—Discoveries of Bell, Magendie,  and others—Present
  state of our knowledge  on the subject—Muscular  action—
  Discoveries of Haller—Summary    ......  51

   CHAPTER VII.—The Relation of Medicine to Experiment.
The subject a complicated one—An amputation in old times—An
  amputation at the present day—Facial nerves—Artificial respira-
  tion — Transfusion of blood — Orthopaedic surgery—Internal
  operations — Chassaignac's  ecrasenr — Removal  of one  kidney
  —Removal of  larynx—"Animal  grafting"—Study of the pro-
  cesses of  disease—Testing of drugs—Preventive  medicine—
  Other benefits of experiment  .......  68

  CHAPTER VIII.—Legislation :  Past, Present, and Possible.
General state of  the law—Martin's Act—No English physiologist
  prosecuted under it—The "Hand-book to the Physiological La-
  boratory"— The Norwich  experiment — Appointment  of the
  Royal Commission—Its conclusions from the evidence—Recom-
  mendations—The Act of  1876—Its principal provisions—De-
  fects—Autocracy of the Home Secretary—Mode of proceeding
  under the  Act—Action of the Home  Secretary—Bill  for the
  Total Abolition  of Vivisection—Desirable modifications in the
  working of the  Act—Responsibility to  be left to the signa-
  tories—Certificates unnecessary for inoculations—Licenses held
  by medical instructors to hold good for  their term of office—
  What is abstractly desirable    .     .    .     ...     .     .83

                  CHAPTER IX.—Conclusion.
Summary of  previous  argument—Supposed demoralization of ex-
  perimenters—Where the real danger lies—Conclusion    .     .  103
                       APPENDIX.

APPENDIX  A.—Popular Fallacies about Experiment  .     . 112
APPENDIX  B.—Amount of Suffering Inflicted  .     .     . Ill)
APPENDIX  C.—Necessity of Experimental Research, for
      the Welfare of Man and of the Lower Animals.
Section I.  Utility to Man.—Section II. Utility to Animals  .     . 129
APPENDIX  D.—The Fundamental Discoveries due to Experi-
                   ment upon Living Animals.
Harvey and the circulation of the Blood—Discovery of the Lacteals 136
             APPENDIX E.— The Medical Minority.
Evidence  given  before  the  Royal  Commission  — Subsequent
  Literature      .    .    .    .    .     .    .    .     .     . 142
                  APPENDIX F.—Legislation.
Object of  Legislation recommended by Royal Commission—Scope
  of  Legislation  recommended by Royal Commission—Manner
  in which the Act is administered    .....      152 
PHYSIOLOGICAL  CRUELTY.
                   CHAPTER  I

                     INTRODUCTORY.

     Duty of unprejudiced Investigation.—Object of this Book.
   When  a  question  has  been made the  subject of  hot
debate, and  been tossed up and down in discussions where
feeling has played as large a part  as  argument, it becomes
enveloped in a dust-cloud  of words, sweeping charges, and
irrelevant recriminations,  in which it is  difficult to keep
sight of the central object.   The first duty, then, of any one
who wishes  to see the truth for himself, and to show it to
others, is to get rid, as far as may be, of all this turmoil,—
at least, to keep the door of his own mind close shut against
it,—to silence any strong prepossessions for one side or the
other, and strive quietly to see the thing which is, not that
which he hopes, or fears, or thinks may be.
  This is  never  an easy thing to do; and in the  " Vivi-
section " controversy it is peculiarly difficult, for it involves
the sacrifice on both sides of the strongest feeling  involved.
A physiologist  must  lay  aside his  abstract devotion to
Science;  he  can  no  longer  use the  advancement  of her
interests as the ready test of his work, and the sanction of
her greatest  servants  as his justification;  but he  must be
                          B 
2
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
content to inquire whether the practice of performing  ex-
periments on living animals is or is not  reconcileable with
true humanity, and what is its effect upon the  moral sense
of those who use or approve it.  On the other hand, a lay
man or woman must not be swayed by the natural love of
animals, and dislike to  the infliction of pain, which make it
grievous  to think that any feeling creature has been hurt
deliberately; still less  must they excite their  feelings by
the attempt to realize the necessarily repugnant details of
the operations, and to imagine their own  pet dogs subjected
to them.   What they have to ascertain  is—what is really
done of  this  sort,  whether  what  is done is necessary,
whether  it is justifiable, and how it  is  regarded by those
who practise it.  The question of whether it is pleasant or
painful to think of has absolutely no more to do with the
matter than  it has with surgical operations, which few of
the general public would  care  to witness,  or to hear de-
scribed in detail.   I do not write for readers who  take a
pleasure  in ghastly descriptions and  ugly minutiae, which
are totally unnecessary for the discussion of principles.
Such a pleasure is morbid, and I desire to address only the
sane.   That class of mind which,  in a lower  stratum of
society, revels in the Police Netvs and the "penny dreadfuls,'"
will never be  at a loss to provide itself  with repulsive
literature, and I shall not cater for it.  In the text of this.
little book, therefore, there will be found only such medical
details as  are  indispensable  to  the argument,  further in-
formation on special points being added in the Appendix.
   I desire now to make an attempt to look  fairly at all the
points of  this large subject, and to carry my readers  step
by step along the inquiry which has brought my own mind
to certain definite  conclusions.   We  shall  insist, as we go
along, upon knowing exactly what we mean and  are dis-
cussing, and having a clear idea for every word used.   We 
INTRODUCTORY.
3
shall endeavour to trace  the moral principles which bear
upon  the matter,  and to learn how to apply them.  We
shall examine into the actual relations of Physiology and
Medicine  to  Experiment  in the past,  and thence deduce
their probable relation in the future.  We shall see what is
and has been the state of  affairs in England as to experi-
ment upon living  animals in our own day, both before and
after the passing of the " Cruelty to Animals Act," of 1876,
—what has been done in the laboratories, what is permitted
by the law.  Thence we shall be able to conclude whether
any changes  are desirable in the nature or administration
of the law ; and if so, what  they should be.
  There has  been  enough, and too much,  of  personal con-
troversy  over  the " Vivisection" question,  and I would
rather avoid  adding to it.   As far as possible, it seems best
to consider the absolute  facts  and  reasons which  bear on
the subject, and draw our own conclusions, without stopping
by the way to argue with every one who has arrived at  a
different result; but in reaching any conclusions at all, one
is obliged to  differ from thinkers either of  such eminence or
of such  influence that to take no  notice  of their arguments
would seem arrogant or cowardly.  It will,  therefore, be
necessary to  discuss some of the most  notable  statements.
and  arguments which have  appeared in print.
   As far as possible, I  shall  give references and  authorities.
for every assertion of fact  which can  be disputed by any
one with a reasonable knowledge of the subject; and I ask
from  my readers only that candid attention, and that open-
ness of  mind, which are the absolute conditions of finding-
truth in any  direction whatever.
  The point  chiefly in dispute is the  rightfulness of giving
pain  to animals  for certain purposes; consequently,  the
question which meets us at  the outset of our  enquiry is—
What is pain?
                           b2 
4
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
                     CHAPTER  II.

                  WHAT   IS  PAIN?

Our knowledge of Pain derived from human experience alone—The
  process of Sensation and Pain—Reflex action independent of Con-
  sciousness—Vagueness of  " signs of  Pain"—Definition of Pain-
  Feeling and Irritability—Feeling  dependent on  consciousness-
  Its relation to  mental development—Animals less sensitive than
  men—Mental  element  of  Pain—Absence of this  in  animals-
  Examples—Amount of  Pain  in operations—Painlessness of con-
  valescence—Insensitiveness of brain substance—Example.
  All that we know about Pain is derived from human
experience.   This seems very obvious, but not  the less
it is  often forgotten.   As a  matter  of  fact, we  know
nothing  about any pain except what we have ourselves
suffered.   We cannot feel with  another person's  nerves;
and when he describes his feelings,  we cannot be sure that
the words he uses bear the same meaning to him as they do
to us : but we take for granted a  general analogy between
him and ourselves, based on our common nature ; and  from
time to  time we correct this  assumption, as  we discover
minor differences between us,  and conclude perhaps that
he feels  pain  more or less acutely than  we do.   As men
have  been  acting on  this assumption for centuries,  and
constantly comparing experiences,  there has  grown up an
average standard of human sensibility, by  which  we guide
ourselves, and  which allows us to  say in a rough way that
such  and  such a  person is insensitive  or hypersensitive. 
WHAT IS PAIN ?
5
But when we have to do with animals, we lose ourselves at
once.  The community of nature from which we argued with
men, has sunk from an identity of species to a similarity of
type ; the comparison of experiences by which we corrected
our conclusions, is  impossible.  We  have  nothing left to
guide us except an  analogy with ourselves  which we know
must be misleading, and " signs of pain," which are of all
indications the vaguest.  They are thus vague,  because all
that they prove is that something is going  on which the
organism repels ; but they do  not prove that there  is any
consciousness of it,  and if there  is  consciousness they do
not show the degree  of feeling.  This will be clearer if we
glance at what  actually happens when an injury  of  any
kind is inflicted.
  Every one  knows that there are two  great classes of
nerves,—the afferent, which  convey messages (or,  more
properly, impulses) to the brain and spinal cord,—and the
efferent, which bring away impulses  from it.  The afferent
nerves alone can convey those impulses which give rise to
feeling;  the efferent nerves are quite incapable  of doing so,
and their chief business is to convey those impulses which
excite motion.   The afferent nerves mainly begin in small
organs called touch-corpuscles, great numbers of which are
situated  in the skin, making it much more  sensitive than
the deeper tissues.   If you drop some hot sealing-wax on a
person's  hand, all the little terminals of the spot on which it
falls are  suddenly stimulated, and  there is an instant change
in the activity of their molecules.   Then a change runs
along the nerve-fibre to which they belong, until it reaches
the spinal cord, where it enters a  ganglion,  or knot of
nerve-cells, full of independent  energy.  A portion  of the
impulse  will  be communicated to  the fibres which go up
to the brain; while some of the energy latent in the gan-
glion will be released by the  arriving shock, run down an 
6
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
efferent nerve, and set in motion the muscles of  the hand
and arm,—and the hand will be pulled away.   This process
sounds long  in  describing,  but  we  feel  it  to  be done
instantaneously.   It can  be carried out by the nerves and
the ganglion, quite independently  of  that part  of the
impulse which went on to the brain,—and what becomes of
that need not necessarily affect the action.  Its  fate will
depend upon  the  condition in which it finds the brain.
That organ may be awake and ready to attend to it, and
in that case there will be a keen feeling of pain ; it may
be absorbed in its own work, carrying on thought, and give
it only a  half  attention,—and  then  (especially  if  the
stimulus has not been of quite so strong a kind as the one
supposed) there  will be  a faint impression  made on the
mind, and  soon  forgotten ;  or it may be stupefied by nar-
cotics, and take no notice at all, and in that case there will,
of course, be no  feeling of pain whatever.  But  whether
pain be keenly felt, or faintly, or not at all,—the jerk away
of the hand,  which  is the outward sign  of  pain,  will be
present all  the  same, unless  the narcotizing has been so
performed  as to  affect  the nerve-centres in the  spinal
marrow which govern reflex  actions, as well  as the brain.
So long as only the  higher centres are laid  asleep, reflex
actions  will  go  on, even more markedly and with  greater
energy than when it is awake.   People operated upon under
chloroform  will shrink  and scream, because the stimulus
from the irritated  nerves has gone round to the nervous
centres which set the vocal  organs in motion;  but their
intellectual and higher sensory centres are asleep, and they
feel nothing.  It  will  not do to say  that they did  feel
the pain at the time, but have forgotten it; for, firstly, they
will sometimes remember having heard themselves scream ;
and, if  so,  why  should they  not remember the much 
WHAT IS PAIN ?
7
stronger impression of pain ?  and, secondly, when they are
only partially narcotized, they feel some pain, and remember
that they have  done so,—whence  it is  only reasonable to
conclude that when they remember no  pain it is because
they  have  felt none.   Therefore, even cries do not prove
that pain is really felt, because they do not prove that the
brain  is in  a condition to  feel it.  It is  the same with
motions, jerks, or struggles.  We have seen that the process
which makes us jerk away our hand, for instance, from any
painful touch, can go on quite independently of conscious-
ness.   It may go  on where we knoiv that there is no con-
sciousness.   If a person's neck or back is  broken {i.e., if
the  spinal  marrow is so severed or injured that impulses
can no longer pass  the place of the injury), there will be no
consciousness of what goes on below it.   Such a person's
foot might be cut off, and he would never feel it.   Prick the
leg, he will tell you that he has no sensation of pain, yet the
leg will be  pulled away from the prick;  tickle the sole of
 his foot, and the foot will be jerked away.   What is more
 such reflex actions will  be  much more violent than they
 would have been if he had been conscious, probably because
 all the energy of the impulse is  expended upon producing
 motion,  and none  of  it upon producing sensation.   It is
 often difficult  to  keep  such patients  covered up in bed,
 because the slightest tickling or irritation from the bed-
 clothes  will make them kick them off. A horse can kick
 after he is dead.   A knacker, after he has cut off a horse's
 head, will pass a long rod down the spinal marrow to destroy
 its activity; otherwise, as soon as he began to skin the body
 the  legs would kick  with  sufficient  force to  break his
 arm*  Such a motion in response to a stimulation is called
   * Evidence  of Dr. Anthony before  the Royal Commission on Vivi-
 section, Q. 2484. 
8
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
in scientific language a reaction; in agitationist language
it is  called a  " spasm of  agony."*   It  is  best marked
where there is no  agony at all, which is, perhaps, a reason
for preferring  the former  phrase.   Motions, cries,  jerks,
and struggles cannot, therefore, be depended upon as indi-
cations of pain.
  But it  may be  asked; If so, why do physiologists per-
forming  experiments under anaesthetics tell  us that they
give a fresh dose whenever  they see  the animal  move ?
Clearly, in order to be a long way on the safe side.   When
the reflex functions of the spinal cord are laid  at rest, the
consequent anaesthesia is deeper than when only the higher
brain centres are affected;  and we have the test of  motion
for the one, and have no test  for the other.   It  is  known
that an animal may be unconscious while it struggles vehe-
mently ;  but there is no doubt that it is unconscious, when
it does not struggle at all; and to save it pain and keep  it
quiet  for the time  are the objects of the operator ; he need
not also think constantly of the danger of its  succumbing
to the anaesthetic, as he would with a human subject,—con-
sequently, he gives it much  more  freely.
  It would  of  course  be absurd to say that there  are no
such things as  signs  of pain; all that can be said  is that
such  indications are  exceedingly vague, and  cannot be
interpreted  rightly without a knowledge  of  the condition
of the brain.   When we  see a creature struggling  and
kicking,  or hear it cry, we  cannot tell from  that alone
whether it is feeling pain, or whether it is feeling much or
little.   In order to know if it feels any pain, we must know
whether  its consciousness is  at work, or whether the im-
pulse  is  circling round  its  nerves  and  muscles, without
  * " The very fact that  physiologists  select delicate petted dogs  to
exhibit reactions (anglice, spasms of agony) under their operations . ."
Miss Cobbe, in Fortnightly Review, January, 1882. 
WHAT IS PAIN ?
9
arousing the brain at all;  and in order to know if it feels
much pain, we must know what sort of cognizance its brain
:'s capable of taking of such messages, when they do arouse
it.  In other words : In order to judge of the  pain suffered
by any creature (human or other), we must be  acquainted
with  both the  ordinary quality and the present condition
of its brain.
  Pain (like many other words upon which  much  depends)
is used with a good deal of ambiguity.   It is often far from
clear—even to  the speaker—whether he means by it the
effect produced upon  the nerves or upon the  organism,
whether he is thinking of what the nerves feel or of what
the creature feels.   Yet there is a deep distinction.  One
often hears it  said  that  a person has undergone a very
painful operation, but that he  did  not feel it,  because he
was under chloroform. As soon as we look at this critically,
we  are inclined to ask: If he could  not feel, he could have
no  pain; and  if he had  no pain, how was the operation
painful ?  And the criticism seems valid. There is evidently
a confusion between two  meanings of the same word, and
confused  speaking  leads to  confused thinking.   Let us
therefore avoid both, by clearly defining the sense in which
we use our terms.
  A moderate stimulation of a nerve produces an agreeable
or  a  useful  effect.  Nerves were meant  to work, and for
each  there is a degree of activity which is normal and
pleasant.  Beyond  this   point  stimulation  becomes  dis-
tressing and injurious, and, with sensory nerves, passes into
pain.  Pain may therefore be described as the result of the
excessive stimulation of a nerve.  Of course, if the brain is
narcotized, it is not affected by this excessive  stimulation
(though it takes  place just the same); and therefore it is
not nonsense to talk of a painful operation being performed
without pain  But when the brain is awake, and working 
10
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
healthily, it  takes  note of  the  excessive stimulation; we
become conscious of it, and the result is Feeling. The nerve,
however, is not narcotized, and then the impulse runs along
it, and is reflected by  the  ganglion  cells into the corre-
sponding efferent nerve, which responds accordingly.   This
capability on the part of  a nerve of being affected by
stimuli—is called Irritability ; it lies  quite apart from con-
sciousness, and is entirely  different from Feeling. A muscle
cut out of a freshly-killed animal has Irritability, because
it will contract under  a  current of electricity; so has the
heart taken  from a decapitated frog, because  it continues
to beat, and its action can be hastened or retarded by heat,
cold, or drugs; but they have no brain, and so can have no
consciousness and no Feeling. So, when the cerebral hemi-
spheres are removed from a frog, all its nerves possess their
old Irritability, and the reflex actions go on as well as if it
were a complete creature.   Touch it, and it will jump ;  but
a drop of acid on one  leg,  and  it  will rub it  off with the
other; put food into its mouth, and it will swallow;  but all
this time it  has no Feeling, for it has no organ of con-
sciousness,  and acts like a  machine, which merely moves
when you work the springs. If, instead of removing the
cerebral hemispheres, we suspend their action by narcotics,
the effect for  the time being is  as if  they were not  there,
and there may be the highest Irritability of the nerves, but
still no Feeling in the creature.  There may be all the signs
of pain, which result from the general sensitiveness of the
nervous  system; but these prove that it  is sensitive, and
nothing more ; they prove nothing  about Feeling, of which
we know them  to be quite independent.  And  observe,
when it is said that a pithed frog {i.e.,  one whose spinal
marrow  has  been cut  through, near its junction with the
brain), a pigeon without cerebral  hemispheres, or a chloro- 
WHAT IS PAIN ?
11
formed cat, cannot feel, the statement is not a conjecture.
We are on firm ground, because we are going upon human
experience, assisted by trustworthy analogy.  We have the
evidence of  men  and women who can be questioned, and
can tell  us  what  they have  felt, and not felt.   We know
that we cannot feel without our brains; and we find that
wherever we can  test  the functions of  the brains of other
animals,  they are like ours  in kind, though differing in
degree.  We see also that the general type of the nervous
system is the same in all vertebrate  animals; and that its
increasing specialisation,  as we ascend  in the scale, is all in
the direction of resemblance to our own.  We have, there-
fore, every reason to  believe that the  brain is always the
organ of consciousness, and that when it is  absent, or in-
active, there can  be no consciousness, and consequently no
feeling.
  As the existence  of  feeling  depends upon the activity of
the brain, there is  a fair presumption beforehand  that it
also increases  with the more perfect development  of that
organ ; and we should naturally expect to find that animals
can both enjoy and suffer more,  as they  stand higher upon
the ladder of being, and that man—the highest of animals
—is also chief in sensibility.   We can  never get inside the
consciousness of a creature with which we cannot commun-
icate ;  but in  the human race we find a certain rough pro-
portion between  sensibility and intellectual development,
which  leads us to believe in a  similar proportion existing
in the ranks below us.   Savages will  undergo with  equan-
imity  tortures which  no civilized  man (except  perhaps
under great excitement)  could endure; and it is impossible
to believe that the prolonged  pain  of tattooing could be
borne for the sake of ornament by any one who felt it as we
should do.   The arguments used for  the special  protection 
12
PHYSIOLOGICAL  CRUELTY.
of cats and dogs against experiment  are founded on this
greater sensitiveness in the more highly organized creature.
  There are two factors in nervous and intellectual activity.
One is the structural factor, i.e. the actual amount of nervous
matter to be set  in action, the quantities of  blood  supplied
to it, and the arrangements  by which the blood bathes
numerous surfaces of the brain ;  the other is the functional
factor, i.e.  the amount  of  nerve  force in  action, or the
energy both actual and potential evolved by and stored up in
the nervous cells. Neither the size of the skull, nor even the
weight of the brain, is a clear index to a man's intellectual
faculties, because the  more  ethereal  component  always
escapes from our weights and measures.   But it is clear
that sensibility must vary as this supply of nervous  force
varies, because the same properties which cause us to think
a thought enable us also to feel a sensation.  If the nervous
system is not  easily  excitable,  a painful stimulus  will
travel through  it  slowly, and  even while producing its
appropriate  reflex  action,  will have little power left  to
affect the brain,  and will produce  a feeble  effect  when it
arrives there; whereas, sensitive  nerves will  convey im-
pressions rapidly to a sensitive brain, and  the  result is a
quick and vivid  sensation of pain.
  This all seems so  obvious as to be hardly worth saying ;
yet it is ignored by those who argue from  our feelings to
those of the lower creatures, as if  they  were the same, and
assert that  animals are  as  sensitive as man.   Their re-
actions may be as prompt as those of  men, because a larger
proportion of their nervous energy works through the spinal
cord and inferior  brain-centres, and less is expended  on
thought.  But the question is not—Does a prick of a needle
make them start as  quickly as a man would ? but—What
impression  does this  needle-prick make  on   their  con-
sciousness ?  And the answer must depend upon the amount 
WHAT IS PAIN ?
13
of nervous energy which goes to vivify that consciousness.
But the very fact that man's intellectual activity is so much
greater shows that a larger surplus vitalizes his brain, and
proves that the  whole stock of nervous energy from which
that surplus is taken  must be larger than  that of  inferior
creatures.  Therefore, though  an  animal's nerves may dis-
play as much irritability as a man's, it is impossible that it
can have as much feeling as he has, for  the simple reason
that it has not as much stuff to make them both out of.  In
fact, seeing that its mental power  (which is the index of its
supply of nervous force) is so much less than his, we should
be more inclined to believe that its actual feeling came near
his feeling, if the demonstration  of it were less;  because
(as was said before)  we see  that in human beings reflex
actions are  most marked  when there is no intellectual
action, i.e., when they are asleep, narcotized, or have sustained
injury of the spinal cord.
   Thus much about the raw material (so to speak) of pain,—
the nerves which convey the impulse to the brain,  and  the
brain  which  receives it.  But there is a distinct  element
contributed  to  the  feeling  of pain by this  organ  itself,
actively as well as  passively.  In all  that adult human
beings  suffer there  is  a  mental factor which is almost
absent  in animals.   It  cannot be better described than in
the words of Mr. Edmund Gurney.   " The sense of rebellion,
the helpless beating about of the  intellect,  the counting of
time,  and vivid sense  that  each moment will be like the
last, the  demand ever urgent and ever  baffled to find a
meaning for such experience,—more than  all, the sense of
wrong  that  comes  from  comparison, the consciousness of
self as an exception, of clueless isolation, of being  marked
off from normal sentient  life by an intolerable something
which none can share,—all this points to the close relation of
suffering  to  intelligence; and the consequent difference 
14
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
between  man  and brute would presumably be at its max-
imum in  cases of protracted suffering below the agony-point
where intellect is too blinded to be active."*
  Such   intelligent creatures  as  dogs  have,  of  course,
memory,  and  are capable  of recalling  places and things
which  have been associated with suffering, and disliking
them; but with an  average dog such memory is faint, as
compared with what  we  should exert under the circum-
stances.    Dogs kept at physiological  laboratories for the
purpose  of  experiments (of course,  not severe ones, as
animals  cannot  ever  be  kept  alive  to undergo these
again and again,) display no such horror  of the operating
room as was described  in a sensational paragraph (without
names or authentication) which was sent the  round of the
papers some time  ago.  A dog  released from experiment
has been known to jump up upon the operating table and
sit there  to inspect with interest his companion having his
turn, showing that no very painful  impression  could  have
been left on  his  mind by whatever disagreeables he had
undergone.  Dogs with gastric fistulae {i.e., with an opening
in the stomach, in which  a silver tube  is  usually fixed,)
enjoy life in perfect  health, and will  sit  up or lie down
when told, to have different substances injected or extracted.
At Professor Ludwig's  laboratory, in Leipzig, the dogs  used
as subjects for many such experiments are neither tied nor
chloroformed,  but merely patted and  talked to while the
process is going on.
  Among human  creatures we see the  effect of  mental
development upon the sense of pain very clearly in the
case of children.   An  infant  can  be vaccinated without
making it cry, if its mind is kept occupied by a bit of sugar
  * "A Chapter in  the Ethics of  Pain,"  Fortnightly Review, De-
cember, 1881. 
WHAT IS PAIN ?
15
held before it;  and it will undergo even much more pain
without  discomposure, if well  amused.   But  when that
child is three or four years older, he will understand that
something is going to be done to him ; he will be terrified at
the  preparations;  neither sugar  nor anything  else will
divert his  mind; and he will be conscious of all the pain
given, and  probably exaggerate  it from terror.  If pain
can  thus be a  secondary thought in the minds of infants,
it can be still more so in  that of animals.
  A house-dog met with an  accident, by which a large
piece of the skin and flesh above the eyebrow was cut, and
hung loose  over  the eye.  His master, a surgeon (who
furnishes the anecdote), determined to stitch it.   Now, it is
well  known that—the  skin being extremely  sensitive—
stitching is one  of the most painful  parts even of serious
operations.  The dog was taken into a shed, muzzled—for
the safety of the operator—and the cut stitched up.  All the
time that it was being done, he was straining and struggling
to  get away,  though  never  whining  nor  crying.  The
instant he was released, he dashed into a corner of the shed,
and seized a bone which he had  had his eye  upon, and
which had possessed his soul while he had been undergoing
operation without anaesthetics, and proceeded to enjoy it.
  A horse, whose leg was badly broken, was sentenced to be
shot, but there  was considerable delay before the execution
could  take place.  The  bones were completely  broken
through, so that the leg hung loose, a state of things during
which the least motion  causes a human patient most ex-
quisite agony.   No suffering  is worse than that from a
broken bone, and the only way to  prevent its  becoming
intolerable is to avoid the slightest jar which can grate the
fragments  against each  other or the surrounding flesh.
But during the two hours between its injury and its death 
16
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
this horse grazed, and limped about to graze, carrying the
fractured limb dangling !*
   Such cases as  these leave it no longer  to  conjecture
whether  animals  feel  as  keenly  as we  do.   We knew
beforehand that they were not likely to do so, on account
of their lower mental calibre,  implying an inferior supply
of nervous energy, and also on account of the absence of the
mental element  in  their sufferings;  we  saw  that  their
reactions  (commonly called  " signs of pain ")  proved only
irritability,  and not  feeling; and here is absolute  demon-
stration of the truth of our inferences.
   It may be well to add a few words on the absolute pain-
fulness of important  operations, both upon  the human sub-
ject  and upon animals, whether for purposes of cure or of
experiment.   The  suffering  is really much exaggerated.
The cutting of the skin is very painful, because it is amply
provided with fine twigs of nerves, and, above all, with the
terminals of  nerves.  But the  deeper tissues below are, for
the most part, only sparsely penetrated by trunks of nerves,
and  are supplied with nerve terminals which have nothing
to do  with  sensation;  and  unless a  nerve  trunk be cut
(when there is a momentary flash  of intense pain), there
is little feeling.  From  the few operations  that must still
be done without the use of anaesthetics, surgeons  know that
only the cutting of the skin  causes  the patients any great
degree  of  pain.  Indeed,  the deeper structures  may be
probed, incised, or pinched, without causing even uneasiness,
except a nerve-fibre lie in the  way of the instrument.  In
such a case, the  patient being a man, we can hear what is
really  felt, and know that the pain is moderate, even with

  * Both this  and the preceding anecdote are vouched for by eye-
witnesses, and will doubtless recall to most readers similar instances
of the indifference  shown by even the most sensitive of our domestic
animals to what we should call intense pain. 
WHAT IS PAIN ?
17
extensive laceration of the deeper soft parts.   Such facts
show us  that  it is not safe to judge of what is terrible to
suffer by what is terrible to witness.
  The pain of  convalescence  is often  counted among  the
sufferings inflicted upon animals by experiment, and  not
obviated  by  chloroform.   But  in reality they  scarcely
suffer at all.   It cannot be supposed that they are worse off
than human beings recovering  from severe operations,  and
as long as no  complications set in, such patients are easy
and comfortable.  Even a  severe cutting  operation which
removes some source of irritation, is felt to give immediate
relief; the mere healing of the cut surfaces actually causes
no pain;  and  if one questions the recent " operation cases "
in the  surgical ward of a hospital as to  how they feel, the
usual  answer is " quite comfortable."  Indeed, if it is  not,
the surgeon suspects that something  has gone  wrong,  and
the  wound must  be  examined.  The healthy  flesh of
animals heals  more rapidly and even more painlessly than
that of men, and their supposed  sufferings during convales-
cence are really a myth.
   The introduction of  the aseptic* treatment of wounds has
certainly assisted to ensure this complete  absence  of pain
after cutting operations.  As inflammation is thus warded
off,  the heat, swelling,  and painful throbbing, which are
almost  inseparable  from  its  slightest  form, are   also
prevented.  Some  time ago,  a case was  brought  into  a
police-court, in  which a surgeon was charged with having
kept monkeys in torture  for  months, because he had  per-
formed a series of experiments  upon their brains.  Now,
what  were the facts ?   During the whole of the actual
operation, it was necessary  to  keep the animals in a state
of profound anaesthesia; the most exquisite care was needed
  * Treatment with  carbolic acid, in order to destroy the microscopic
organisms which cause inflammation in wounds.
                            C 
18
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
in its performance, that the result might be successful; the
wounds were treated antiseptically,  to avoid inflammation,
and as a result, it  only took place in one case out of the
twenty-six operated upon.  How then were these animals
" tortured " ?
  It seems to be supposed by many people who write on
this  subject, that  injuries to the  brain are in themselves
painful; and the ugly expressions "washing the brain away"
and " reducing  a dog's brain to  the  condition  of a  lately-
hoed  potato-field"* are quoted and re-quoted as  if they
implied the infliction of horrors.  But as  a matter of fact,
injury to the brain itself causes no pain, and wounds of the
skull often pass through their entire course without the
patient having even  a headache.  The accurate scientific
account of such an injury, occurring in a human being,
which  appears in a recent German medical periodical, seems
to put  the question beyond doubt.  A youth,  aged 18,  re-
ceived  a blow of a hammer in the temple,  which cut the
scalp, fractured the skull, and ruptured the covering of the
brain.   The result  of this was that a  considerable quantity
of the brain-substance escaped on three several days. The
wound was dressed aseptically, and healed shortly without
any  inflammation.   Although many paralytic symptoms
followed, the patient never lost consciousness, and remem-
bered perfectly every circumstance connected with the injury,
symptoms, and  treatment, from first to last.  From the time
when the wound was first dressed, to its  complete  healing
and the disappearance of all symptoms, he never complained
of any pain, nor  even  had the  least headache.-^   Every
practical surgeon  is familiar with cases  proving  equally
well the want of sensibility in the substance of the brain.

  * Miss Cobbe, quoting from a German writer.
  t " Ein Fall Traumatischer Aphasie." Sitzungsbericht der Wiirz-
lourg. Phys. Med.  Gesellschaft, 1882. 
WHAT IS PAIN ?
19
  Such cases enable us to estimate the value of the indig-
nation expended upon all these experiments on the brain.
The only pain given is that to the feelings of tender-hearted
people ignorant  of physiology; but that appears to have
been so intense as  to  render it necessary to  stop the expe-
riments, arrest English  inquiry into the functions of the
brain, and limit the gaining of experience in the treatment
of its injuries to what can be acquired by Nature's experi-
ments upon human subjects.

  We have now seen that the Feeling of  Pain is dependent
upon Consciousness, and, in a certain degree, proportionate
to Intellect; consequently, an  animal at any time suffers
less than a man would do from the same cause ; and under
anaesthetics (like man) does not suffer at all.  Injuries to
the  brain  are painless  to  men,  and must, therefore, be
painless to animals.   Prolonged and  deep  operations are
not more  painful  to  men than superficial  ones (since the
cutting of the skin is the  acutely  painful  phase of any
operation), and therefore they cannot be so to animals ; and
we have moreover seen  from facts, that what would cause
us agony hardly disturbs their equanimity.  Convalescence
after operations  is  normally painless  to both.  All these
facts  must  be borne  in mind in further  discussing the
question of experiment on Living Animals.
C2 
20
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
                      CHAPTER  III.

                 " WHAT  IS CRUELTY?

Cruelty defined—What is sufficient justification for giving Pain?—
  Not merely the  good  of the  sufferer—Nor his consent—But the
  attainment of an adequate benefit—Benefits aimed at in Physio-
  logical  Experiment—These surpass the evil of Pain  in quality—
  And exceed it in quantity—Consequently the benefit aimed at  is
  adequate—Answer to objection.
  We are all agreed that cruelty is wrong.
  The  question  to  be  solved,  therefore,  is :—What  is
cruelty ?
  The  simplest  thorough definition  seems  to  be:—The
wanton or excessive infliction  of pain.
  The wanton infliction of pain is that for which there is
no  justification; the  excessive  is  that for which there is
justification in fact, but not  in  degree.  Both terms imply
that there can be such justification.  Let us try to ascertain
what it is.
  The first consideration that suggests itself is—that it is
justifiable  to inflict pain upon another  for its own good. We
act upon this principle constantly, with clear consciences,
and in the  cases  of  those  whom we love best.  In the
education of children, and the care  of the sick,  or in the
treatment  of criminals—who  are socially  children,  and
morally  sick—we do not hesitate to refuse what is pleasant,
and enforce  what  is  painful.   But this principle is not a 
WHAT IS CRUELTY ?
21
sufficient guide.   It is  quite  possible  to  do  something
which is really cruel, for the good of  the sufferer.  Let us
suppose a case.  Two children—a boy and a girl—are dis-
figured by teeth which have been allowed to grow crooked.
The mischief  has gone so far that it can only be remedied
by long and  painful treatment.  There will be  constant
discomfort and distress for months, and tooth drawing and
other very  painful  minor  operations from  time  to  time.
The teeth  are sound, and  there  is no danger of  worse
consequences  than the  ugly  appearance.   It  is certainly
for the children's good that this should be amended, and
the father takes them  to  a dentist.   But the boy is very
nervous and sensitive ; he  suffers agonies of terror at the
mere rattle of  the  instruments in  the drawer;  he  is
reduced to fainting by his first  experience of them, and
loses his sleep  from pain and  general nervous misery.
Would  not  any  friend  advise  the father:—" Give it up ;
it is  cruelty  to  torment the child so for a  matter of mere
appearance ; when he is grown up he  can wear a moustache
and  partly hide the defect;  and, after all, looks  are  of
little consequence to a  man" ?  Whereas, if the boy were
sturdy  and robust, his father would do well to encourage
him to bear the pain, or even  insist  on his doing so, for
his  future  advantage.   But with the  girl he would  be
much more  unwilling  to give  up the attempt, and his
lady friends   would certainly  urge  him  to  persevere,
reminding him that if her health suffered from  pain and
fright, she might be nursed up into strength afterwards ;
but that there would never be another chance of saving
her from disfigurement, and it would  be  a serious drawback
to her  through  life.   In this  case, the  pain is always
inflicted for the good of the individual, whether girl or boy;
but our  judgment  of  whether  its  infliction is cruel or
not, varies according to the proportion between the pain 
22
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
given  and  the object aimed at.   Hence  we conclude
that,—Pain  given for the good  of the  individual  itself
may be  unjustifiable, if the good to be obtained is not
sufficient.
  Another qualification which naturally occurs to the mind
is the consent of the sufferer.  It may be urged that there
can be no cruelty with the goodwill of  the person chiefly
concerned.   But in the case which we have just been con-
sidering,  if the  boy  had  been  very conscientious and
obedient, as well  as  very nervous and sensitive, it would
surely have  increased  the father's cruelty, if  he had used
the child's conscience to enforce  unreasonably harsh com-
mands.   Let us suppose another case, this time of suffering
with consent for  the good of others.  It is gaid that the
wife of an American doctor allowed herself to be inoculated
with a decoction of  mouldy straw, in  order to  see  if the
result would be an attack of measles, which  proved to be
the case.  Measles (though  extremely unpleasant) is not a
very painful complaint; and when we think of the risk
that the  lady ran, and of  the  discomfort to  which she sub-
mitted, in order to further her husband's  investigations, we
are only inclined  to admire her devotion to  him and to
science.  But suppose that  his  ascendancy over her mind
had induced her  to  let him inoculate her with  leprosy, in
order to try the agonizing modes of cure in use  among the
natives of some of the South Sea Islands.  Should we not
feel that  he  had been guilty of cruelty, and that obtaining
her consent was  no palliation ?   Suppose, besides, that he
had no intention of practising on leprous  cases,  or of pub-
lishing his results, but was merely gratifying a scientific
curiosity ; would  he not be deemed brutal beyond excuse ?
On the other hand, suppose  that he had nearly perfected a
mode of  healing,  however painful, and needed but one test
case to decide some critical point; after which he intended 
WHAT IS CRUELTY ?
23
to devote his life to curing what had been hitherto held to
be  incurable.   If, now,  his  wife gives  herself up to the
experiment, and  he  carries it out, do we not feel that the
case is altered ?  We may blame it as the very madness of
sacrifice,  or we  may honour  it as  the  sublime  of  self-
devotion, but  it is no longer a question of cruelty.   Here
again, the consent of the sufferer is always present; but
whether  the   pain   be   supposed  the  same,  or  greatly
intensified, we judge the  total  action according to the
benefit aimed  at; and conclude that—Pain given with the
consent  of the individual is unjustifiable, if the good to be
obtained is not sufficient.
  We are thus constantly thrown  back—for a test of the
justifiable infliction  of  pain—upon  a certain proportion
existing between the evil of suffering  caused and the benefit
of  whatever  kind  sought  to be obtained.   In a general
way, we can  roughly estimate this  for  ourselves, and do.
Every one, sooner or later, has to give pain, or to be the
cause of its being given ; and this comparative estimate is
either deliberately worked  out,—or half-consciously made
in the back of his mind, by old-established habits of judging,
—or brutally and carelessly neglected.   Upon whether he
makes it or not, depends the question of his personal cruelty.
Any one  who hurts another sentient creature without in-
tending  to obtain a  good greater than  the harm  that he
does, is  in so far cruel.   He may be mistaken in  his cal-
culations, and  obtain no good at all;  and then his  act has
proved a cruel one, but he himself was not so.  This is the
justification of the sportsman.   If he defends his sport to
his own  conscience, he does it by weighing the gain to  him-
self and  others in strength, health, skill, and daring, against
the sufferings of the game, which he tries to make as slight
as possible.  If he is convinced that the advantages pre-
ponderate, he pursues his amusement with a clear conscience, 
24
PHYSIOLOGICAL  CRUELTY.
and is not cruel;  but if we did not agree with his estimate
we should pronounce the sport cruel, and wonder that a
humane man did not see it to be so.   On the  other hand,
if he took no heed of the pain which he gave, did not try
to reduce  it as low as possible, or feel that it needed to be
justified, we should then  condemn him as brutal;  and,
much more, if he took any pleasure in looking  on at these
sufferings.
   What is true of the sportsman is equally  true of the
scientific experimenter.  If a physiologist gives pain with-
out being convinced that the object he has in view justifies
it, if he is indifferent as to its amount, neglectful  of allevi-
ating or preventing it, where possible,—above all, if he takes
any pleasure in witnessing it,—he is cruel; and  if he is also
eminent, his eminence only lifts high his fault, and mingles
bars of shadow in the glory of an illustrious name.  And
as we have  now  to do with scientific experiment, we  will
leave aside all the other causes for which pain may be given,
and enquire only : What are the benefits aimed at in such
experiments, and how can they be estimated in  comparison
with pain, when any is given ?
   The widest and highest aim of physiological  experiment,
whether painful or painless, is the advance of physiological
knowledge; and this is the one which scientific medical men
regard  most highly, and which it is most difficult to make
 laymen regard at all.  Every  scrap of knowledge is turned
 to practical account sooner or later ; the sounder and more
 accurate that knowledge is, the more trustworthy  are the
 conclusions drawn from it; the more doctors  learn of the
 nature and working of the machine they have  to repair,
 the less likely they are to make  mistakes  in  dealing  with
 it, and be it remembered that a medical mistake may mean
 a lost life.  But this is too long an outlook for popular legis-
 ation, and under our present law, no experiment is allowed 
WHAT IS CRUELTY ?
25
of which  the beneficial object is not direct and immediate.
This does not affect the line of argument; for the benefits
sought  are  the  same  in  both cases;  only by advancing
Physiology the}- are sought indirectly, and on a large scale,
instead of directly, on a small one.  They may be resumed
in four:  relief from pain, lengthened life, restoration of
mental or bodily  activity, and restoration to health.
   How can we now bring these into comparison with pain,
and  find  a common  measure by  which to estimate their
values ?  It is  not impossible.  There are two modes in
which a good may exceed an evil, in quality and in quantity.
It may be of a higher class, or it may be of a larger amount.
If it should exceed in one and be exceeded in the other,  the
balance would be very difficult to strike ; but if it exceeded
in both, the question would be solved beyond dispute. Such
is the case here; and we find our common  measure in ease,
freedom from pain.  Ease and pain are exact equivalents in
quality; one is a good, the other is an evil, but they are both
of the same order.  So let A and  B be two individuals of
the  same nature, and exactly alike.  If pain be inflicted
upon A by  which B is relieved from  the same amount of
pain, and the relief and the suffering  last for the same
length of time, it  is evident that an  exact equivalent  has
been obtained, but no more.   But longer life is a benefit of
a higher class than ease;  for men will  cling to life and pray
for it, in  spite of  discomfort, and  even  severe pain.  And
mental or bodily  activity are better  things than ease; for
men will endure pain  rather  than  cloud their minds with
opiates, and toil on when every exertion is distress, and we
honour them for so doing.  Health, again, includes ease, and
also the  capacity for those activities which  we have  just
seen to be superior to it.  Therefore :
     Ease is (as  to quality) equal to pain:
     Long life is superior to ease ; 
26
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
    Activity is superior to ease ;
    Health is superior to ease.
  Conclusion : Long life, mental and bodily activity, and
health, are benefits which in quality more than balance the
evil of pain.  And if A's pain purchases them for B, it has
been fully counterbalanced.
  But, it may be said, although the life of the victim may not
be shortened,  yet while  it is being kept in pain for the
sake of all  these beneficial results to another, its activities
are suspended and its health destroyed.  This is true, and
brings us a step farther.  If A and B are exactly equal
creatures, the loss of  activity to one  is  not  more  than
balanced by the gain  to the other.  But if B belongs to
a  superior  class—much  more, if he  is a man and A is
any other  animal—the activities  saved will be very much
more  varied, numerous,  and efficient than those sacrificed ;
and the  scale will again dip on the side of benefit.  Of
course, human activities are sometimes so perverted  as to
be positively injurious  to society and  to the man himself;
but these  are  exceptional cases.  As a  rule,  "a man is
better than a sheep,"*  or  even  than " a dog, cat, mule,
ass, or horse."-f-   The conclusion which cannot  be escaped
is—that  if the keeping of one rabbit, dog, or other animal
in pain could buy the health, long life, or activity of one
man who would otherwise have  suffered  equal pain, died,
or been  rendered useless, a distinct advantage  has been
gained to the community and  to the universe.  We reach
a stand-point in this  minimum of benefit.   Let any one who
dislikes the conclusion answer distinctly:  If the question
is whether a man or a rabbit shall have a certain amount
of pain,  is it  better that it should be the  man ?  And  if
it  is  not better that he should have the pain, is it better
that he should have what is worse  to  him than the pain?
      * Matth. xii. 12,        t Cruelty to Animals Act, 1876. 
WHAT IS CRUELTY ?
27
  It  is now  clear  that  the evil  inflicted on  animals in
painful experiments is  exceeded in quality by  the  good
sought to be obtained for man.  We have next to compare
the two in quantity.
  We have hitherto been supposing that the pain suffered
lasted as  long as the benefit purchased.  But this is never
the case.   The most prolonged painful experiment that could
be  imagined  would only last during a  few hours*, a far
shorter time  than  many  an  agonizing disease;  but  a
restoration  to health or a relief from pain for  such a time
would never  be thought worth counting among the good
results of experimental medicine.  To cure a sick man is
generally to  give  him  a period of restored  health  and
efficiency which may be  counted by  years; at any  rate,
whatever is worth  calling  " a cure " at  all  lasts for much
longer than the  longest painful  experiment.   The pain
passes, the relief remains;  the lower  creature  finds  a
speedy end to its  sufferings in  release or death;  the man
lives  on  in renewed  health and  power; what  is evil is
transient, what  is  good  is  enduring.   Even in  the  case,
then, of one animal suffering for one man, we see that the good
obtained exceeds the evil in quantity, because lasting longer.
  But, as a matter of fact, such a simple case of one versus
one seldom occurs.   The only instance of it is the  rare one
when a surgeon  tries an  experiment upon an  animal, for
the sake of perfecting  himself  in  it, before performing it
upon  a man.   This would  seem a  most righteous use of
vivisection, and all the  above arguments would apply to it
in full force, even if the subject  could not be anaesthetized.
When a surgeon knows  that the life or  death  of a fellow-
creature, with all the innumerable ties of duty and affection

  *  A series of experiments might of course last longer, but then they
would have intervals ; and so also would an induced illness, but the
animal is generally killed as soon as the disease is fully developed. 
28
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
which hang round all human lives that  are not desolate, is
shortly to depend upon his skill, surely it is his duty to fit
himself for that solemn charge by every means in his power.
Besides, such experiments for gaining  operative experience
could nearly always  be  performed under chloroform ; but
although they might be quite painless, and their usefulness
is peculiarly direct and obvious, they are  expressly forbidden
by our English law.  We need not, therefore,  consider them
further.
  The next simple case is that in which a definite number
of animals is experimented upon for a definite object, and
we know the result.  For instance, we know that—in order
to perfect the method of performing the  operation known
by  his  name — Mr. Spencer Wells  operated upon 16 (?)
anaesthetized rabbits and guinea-pigs.  And  we know also
that with his own hand  he treated successfully 600 women,
who would otherwise have had an exceedingly small chance
of life, considering the danger of so terrible  an operation,
before  his experiments.   We know, moreover,  that this
number is constantly increasing,  as other surgeons of suffi-
cient skill rise up and avail themselves of his  method, while
no more rabbits need be killed.
  It is not often, however, that we can so distinctly put  in
two columns the lives sacrificed and the lives saved; and,
though  such instances are distinct and impressive, they are
not in the least necessary to the  argument.  Usually  expe-
riments  are made upon a number of  animals which we are
without means of computing ;*  their results are collated
with and modified by other trains of investigation;  and the
conclusion drawn  affects  an unascertainable  number  of
patients, in different degrees, qualified by the varying skill
of the doctors applying it.  Moreover, such experiments do
not  always  give  the expected  result.   Theories, which it
was sought to prove by vivisection, have been disproved by
        * Except in England, under the new law, of course. 
WHAT IS CRUELTY ?
29
it; and the result  of the  experiment has  been to detect
mistake, instead  of establishing  positive  truth.   False
tracks have been started upon ;  and animals have bled and
died, only to mark "No Thoroughfare" upon some tempting
path.   But though the result  be negative, and the good
done  has  been indirect,  it has not been less real.  Human
victims  would have paid the penalty of these errors, if they
had not been ransomed by others of lower kind.  Whether
results are positive or negative, they all go to build up the
fabric of an accurate and scientific physiology, upon which
(as we saw before, and shall see later with more detail,) the
success  of medicine chiefly depends.   Every patient any-
where  on the globe, who is treated by any civilised doctor,
profits by this sound and accurate knowledge,  which owes
so much—how much I shall try to show in a  subsequent
chapter—to  experiment.  And as new lives come into being,
and  the human race increases, the  number of those who
thus  benefit  goes  on ever  increasing.  The consequence is
that though  we cannot always assign the precise share of
vivisection in any investigation of which it has formed a
part, yet we can always  know  that—whether  it be great
or small—it  is multiplied by a practically infinite factor.
While, if it was a painful vivisection, the pain was endured
by a  limited  number of animals for a limited time.  Thus,
the greatest  pain suffered for  the  smallest actual result
would in time be fully  counterbalanced, since the lowest
figure,  when  multiplied  by infinity,  exceeds  the largest
definite sum.  Much more is this the case when the result
is large and visible to begin with.  We conclude, therefore,
that even where we have no means of knowing the number
of animals which  have suffered, nor the  exact degree in
which men have benefited  by  their sufferings under expe-
riment—the good still exceeds the evil in quantity.
  It  may be objected  to this argument that by it we
actually destroy  all proportion  between the pain inflicted 
30
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
 and  the benefit  expected,  and  would  justify  the  most
 excruciating tortures, in prospect of the  smallest possible
 addition to  our  knowledge.   This would  be  true, but
 for two considerations.   First,  that  in practice  minute
 fractions must always be  neglected.  The very  condition
 which saves the performance of a painful experiment  from
 being cruelty—is the presence in the operator's mind of a
 distinct expectation  of counterbalancing good; but if this
 good is diffused and attenuated over infinite time, his finite
 mind cannot grasp it, and the condition is clearly destroyed.
 Secondly, the number of individuals benefited is not really
 infinite, but only practically so, because incalculably large
 and quite indefinite.   The human race  must  some day
 become  extinct, and all its physical triumphs die with  it.
 These two considerations make  a reductio ad absurdum
 impossible, and leave the plain and reasonable deduction—
 that in order to be justified in  performing a painful expe-
 riment,  and  free from the charge of cruelty, the operator
 must  have in  view a benefit  proportional to  the  pain
 inflicted; but  that  the benefit need  not necessarily be
 proved to be as great to any one individual as the pain is,
 because it will be  shared by an indefinitely larger number,
 during a much longer time.
  I cannot expect that the facts and arguments of the fore-
 going  chapters  will  convince  every one.  When all has
 been explained and argued,  there will still remain irrecon-
 cilables, determined to persist in their war  against scientific
 experiments.   But we can now see  clearly what  this war
 amounts to.   It is  an  effort   to keep many animals in
 suffering instead of  few, men instead  of beasts, the most
 sensitive creature instead of the less sensitive.  Whereas,
a true and  humane physiology seeks to prevent  as much
as possible of  human suffering,  at the  cost of as little as
possible of animal suffering.   On which side is the cruelty ? 
OUR RIGHTS OVER ANIMALS.
31
                     CHAPTER IV.

                OUR RIGHTS OVER ANIMALS, i

Experiments  on  animals asserted to be abstractly wrong—Reasons
  usually given — Experiment not  necessarily demoralizing  to the
  operator—Universality and beneficence of the Law of Vicarious Suf-
  fering—Our right to apply it to animals for our benefit—Vagueness
  of the principle generally acted on—The true principle—Mr. Hutton's
  principle—Impossibility of carrying it out—Summary.
  When we have proved  that even  painful experiments
upon animals need not be cruel, we have not disposed of the
whole moral difficulty ; in fact, it is only then that we find
ourselves face  to face with the true crux of  the question.
The opponents of such experiments assert that they are
wrong in themselves, and  that  therefore it is time wasted
to  prove that  advantages  are gained  by  them, since no
profit can justify a crime.  I most unreservedly admit that
no  hygienic gain is worth a  moral loss, and  that the  health
of  one man's  body is too dearly purchased by the disease
of  another  man's  soul.  But vague   declamation  is not
enough.   It must be clearly explained to us why such ex-
periments are  wrong, apart from their object  and  result,
before we can admit either to be  quite  immaterial con-
siderations.
  The reasons usually given are  four: 1st, that they are
cruel;  2nd, that the infliction of  pain  hardens  and de-
moralizes the  inflictor;  3rd,  that  it  is unjust to make 
32
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
animals suffer for  our good ;  4th, that it is an infringement
of their rights which we have no authority to make.
   In the last chapter we saw that  experiments, when per-
formed  for good  reasons—are  not cruel;  for  they are
intended to save more pain than they inflict; and it cannot
be cruel—of two sufferings to prefer the least.
   Painful  experiments—done with  a serious purpose and a
sufficient reason—are no more demoralizing to the performer
than painful operations.  In  both  cases there must be an
absorption  in  the  object and the process which withdraws
the nerves  from much of the  harass of  sympathy ; but this
is essential to the work  being properly done, and has no
more to  do with  demoralization than  the  hardness of a
labourer's hand.  It is difficult to see how the fact that the
operator's object is in one case  the good of his subject,
and in  the other  the good of more numerous but remote
patients, can  make any  difference in the  effect  on his
morals.   It may make some  in the effect on his feelings,
rendering the operation the easier to carry through, because
the object is more  immediately to be reached ; but we  must
not confuse feelings with  principles.  Unsteady nerves are
not the same  thing as  sensitive  consciences; and the fact
that people cannot bear  to see or give pain means much
more often that they are weak and selfish than that  they
are particularly humane.
   Next comes the more serious assertion—that it is unjust
to make animals  suffer for  our  good; and as many ex-
periments are made in investigating the diseases of animals,
this spreads itself  out into the general question: Is it right
that one creature should suffer for the good of another ?
   Vicarious suffering is one of the darkest mysteries—as it
is one  of  the  most comprehensive laws—of  the sentient
world.   There  are times  when  we - all  rebel  against its
terrible and unequal pressure, and cry out  passionately : 
OUR RIGHTS OVER ANIMALS.
33
               " That not a moth with vain desire
                Be shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
           Or but subserve another's gain."

But in saner moments we bow before its stern beneficence,
and recognize that it alone has moulded the forms of beauty
and strength which we see  around  us in insect, bird, and
beast;  and that it  alone is  developing  rarer and higher
beauty in the spiritual life of  man.   The most insignificant
fly that dances through a summer's day opens out its  mar-
vellous little  wings with strength  and dexterity, because
thousands  of  other flies that  were  slow  and clumsy were
snapped up by their enemies ; the robin pipes his autumn
song,  because dozens  of quiet  caterpillars and writhing
worms have  been pecked  to  death to  feed that cheery
sweetness.   It is not all horror.  The less goes to make the
greater,  the  imperfect  fades  before  the  perfect, the whole
creation groans and  travails in pain together, yet the New
Heavens and Earth  are ever being born.  Much more is it
so in  the  world of men.  By this  law the human race is
solidaire.  The sins of the fathers are  visited upon the
children, and the children's sins are a curse to their fathers;
but so also a blessing descends from generation to genera-
tion, and only those who stand within the shadow of the
curse  can  lighten it.   Suffering with the suffering, or for
the faults and errors  of other  men, is the lot of all; but the
knowledge of what it is so to suffer,  and the certainty that
our  own faults and  errors will  lay the like on  others, are
among the most powerful motives  to hold us  back  from
evil. Were not our hearts bound to each other by cords which
wrench one when another  breaks, we should be a mass of
disintegrated  units, with no common life, no racial unity,
lower than the beasts who do feel—if not for, at  least, with
each other.  And this we admit and express in our worship.
The apotheosis of  utter self-sacrifice is that around which
                           D 
34
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
the Christian's most sacred  thoughts and  aspirations cling
which he aspires, however dimly, to imitate;  at least, which
he owns as the perfect ideal of manhood.  And  those who
do not believe that that ideal ever
                    " Had breath, and wrought
            With human hands the creed of creeds,"
must  still  confess  that  (tried by the  most  utilitarian
standard) the great law of nature which secures the benefit
of all by the sacrifice of some, is justified in its  working.
  In the abstract, then, we declare that it  is  right and well
that one should suffer for the sake of  another; there  is
nothing in  it at all revolting to our moral feeling.  We live
by and under this law; we submit to it, because we must;
we accept it, if we are  wise.  It is not possible to carry on
this  discussion with any one who rebels against it; he must
become a loyal and law-abiding subject of the world he lives
in, before he is qualified to discuss its administration.
  The remaining question is: Have we the right to constitute
ourselves administrators of this law, and  to apply it  to
animals for our own  interest ?  Nature will do so in the
interest of  their race  if  we let her alone;  but when we
domesticate any creature, we to a certain  extent  protect
it from her action.  We withdraw it from the struggle for
existence, and   substitute artificial for natural  selection.
We do not allow it  to be starved out by  stronger  compe-
titors, or  devoured  by  wild  enemies.   Have  we then
entirely delivered it from the general law, and are we bound
to make its existence nothing but a pleasurable one ?
  Of course no one says anything so unreasonable. It  is
generally admitted that we  may chase and  kill  an  animal,
often necessarily with  much pain, not because its life  and
liberty interferes with  ours,  but  because  its death will
render our life more complete,  perhaps in  the  most  trivial
detail.  We kill them  (without anaesthetics)  not only that 
OUR RIGHTS OVER ANIMALS.
35
we may have food and clothing, but that the food may be
varied and  attractive, and the clothing rich and beautiful.*
                     7               O
We subject them to painful mutilations in order to make
them more manageable for service, to improve the flavour
of their flesh, and even  to  please our whimsical  fancies.
We  imprison  them  in cages and  Zoological Gardens, to
improve our knowledge of Natural History, or merely to
amuse ourselves by looking  at  them.  It is abundantly
clear that in  all our customary dealings with animals we
apply to them  without  scruple the  law of sacrifice, and
interpret it with a wide latitude in our own favour.  What
was  said in  the preceding chapter  about the respective
values of human and brute activities  will go to justify as
much of this as  is justifiable; but it is certainly carried too
far,  and there is a great want of a fixed standard.
   So far, the general principle  of  dealing with  animals
which is in a vague way accepted by most humane persons,
but  seldom  distinctly formulated, seems to be that we may
kill, inconvenience, or pain them, for any benefit, conven-
ience, or pleasure to ourselves;  but that the pain must be
within moderate limits (of course undefined),  and that it
must form no element in our pleasure.   For this  I propose
to substitute the far stricter rule, that  we must commit no
cruelty towards them,—defining cruelty as the infliction of
pain without an adequate good object.   This goes far beyond
what is  usually put  in practice, and  any one who tries to
apply it  in every case will find it a sufficiently stringent
limitation.  But it certainly does not come up to the new
principle which we are askedf to recognize, even the same
   * Sardines, white-bait, shrimps—compare the amount of food and
the loss of life  implied in the words.  Fur trimmings,  ornamental
feathers, gloves—what is the proportion there between the satisfying
of human needs and the destruction of animal enjoyment ?
   t By Mr. Hutton, Nineteenth Century, January, 1882, p. 37.
                           D2 
36
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
that we find it so hard to carry out towards our fellow-men,
the golden rule of doing as we would be done by.  We are
told to " put ourselves in the place of the lower animals, and
ask what we, with their pains, and their sensitiveness, and
their prospects of life, and pain, and happiness, might fairly
expect  of  beings of much greater power, but of common
susceptibilities."  This brings us to our fourth point, the
infringement of the rights  of  animals;  and we can best
discuss it in discussing Mr. Hutton's proposed standard.
  To begin with, such an effort of the imagination is almost
impossible.  If we transplant ourselves into the place of the
lower animals, it is always we who are there; we, with our
own susceptibilities, not theirs, and our intellects working
up the  raw material  of  their  feelings.  This  is precisely
what we  see happening  in  a great deal that is written
upon this  subject.   People talk about the rights of animals,
and  import into  the discussion the very feeling of personal
outrage and wrong which they themselves  would have  if
any  of their own were invaded.  But the sense of individual
rights is not even necessarily human.  How  much of it can
a Fijian have, who stands still  to be  knocked on the head,
because " the king  has willed it; "* or a Dahomean, who
belongs to a nation of which every man is the king's slave ?
Probably  the Fijian  does not Ike to be knocked on the
head, any more than an ox does, but it is absurd to assume
in the beast a sense of injury which is absent  in the man.
The fact is, that we can  realize an animal's sensibility, but
not its insensibility ; its knowledge, but not its ignorance ;
its powers, but not their limitations.  Nothing is more hope-
less than the attempt to expel from our minds that with which
we are perfectly familiar; the old knowledge will sneak in
again at  the back door of our argument, and we shall find

        *  Spencer's "Principles of Sociology,"vol. i. p. 583. 
OUR RIGHTS OVER ANIMALS.
37
it quietly underlying the most novel deduction.  This is so
with the sentence quoted from Mr. Hutton, where the inno-
cent-looking words " fairly expect" involve the whole sense
of mutual  duty and  personal  right which  is exclusively
human, and which some races even of men  have yet to be
educated up to.   We  shall see this  more clearly if we
attempt to  make the supposition which he proposes.
  We  must try, then,  to imagine  ourselves belonging to
superior beings, who make us obey them in all things, and
whose reasons we can seldom understand.  They tie or shut
us up, in order  to prevent our going where we wish—they
whip us, to make us go  where they wish—they prevent our
making  love, for fear of its interfering  with our work—
they keep us in prisons, because they like to  look at us and
hear us sing—they take away our clothes, in order to wear
them themselves—they crop our ears, because they think
we look prettier with them short—they do various painful
things to us, in order to make us taste nicer when cooked—
and, finally, they kill and eat us.  We are ignorant of  most
of their reasons for these unpleasant proceedings ; but just
in proportion  as our intellects  are  developed and our cha-
racters fine, we acquiesce in this state of things, and are
loving and loyal to  our masters,  with an unquestioning
obedience and an unrebelling submission.   But having come
to this point, if we were suddenly  enabled  to understand
the reasons for each action, our dispositions remaining the
same, is it likely that the sense of injury which had not
been evoked by  anything else would arise when they went
on to use us for  experiments for the  advancement of  their
science, and the  improvement of their own health ?  If  we
were willing to be killed in order to support life as food, why
should we object to die in order to preserve it by knowledge?
Of course,  it is an absurd supposition  altogether; the con-
fusion between what  animals cannot possibly understand, 
38
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
 and what we should have to suppose ourselves in their place
 understanding, in order to pass judgment on the morality of
 their treatment—is inextricable, and altogether it is an idea
 that cannot be worked out; but the attempt  to  apply the
 "put yourself in  his place" argument altogether  fails  to
 convince us that under  any circumstances we  should object
 most to the pain inflicted for the best reasons.
   Mr. Hutton is willing to  admit the inoculation class  of
 experiments,  " especially as these inoculations  may  well
 benefit  not only  man  but the very creatures who suffer
 them."   It is not clear whether he means  the individuals
 which suffer, or the kind of creatures.   If the former, the
 consideration has little force; because in every  series of  such
 experiments, the failures must be the majority,—for when
 marked success has been reached, the  experiment is at an
 end.  If the latter, it follows that he thinks it more moral
 to cause an animal pain for the sake of  others of the  same
 species than of others of a higher  order.  It  is difficult  to
 follow this  reasoning, or to  see what difference  it would
 make to the creature concerned.
   Let us gather up the  scattered threads of this chapter.
   We have proved that all creatures—human  and other—
 live under the Law of Sacrifice; and that animals owe their
 physical prosperity—and men their social union and spiritual
 elevation—to this Law,  in the first  place submitted to un-
 consciously, in the latter accepted more or less  deliberately.
  We have seen that when we withdraw animals from the
 natural action of this Law, we apply it to them ourselves
 for our own interest, and that this is  the condition of their
 being of value, use, or pleasure to us.
  We have laid down  for our  guidance  in  dealing with
 them the rule of causing them no pain without an adequate
 good object, and have found it to  be more stringent  than
any at present prevailing. 
OUR RIGHTS OVER ANIMALS.
39
  We have found it impossible to go further, and apply to
them the Golden Rule, the differences in nature, sensibility,
and intellect, being insuperable by the imagination.
  But we have seen  no reason to suppose that it can  be
lawful to give pain for purposes  of human convenience,
pleasure, business, or food,—and unlawful to  give it for
purposes of human health and knowledge.
  We therefore conclude that to make painful experiments
upon living animals  lies ivithin an universally recognized
right over them, and is not wrong  in itself, but depends
for its morality or immorality upon the circumstances and
motives of each particular act. 
40
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
                      CHAPTER  V.

                WHAT IS VIVISECTION ?

What  is Vivisection ?—Various  definitions—Dissecting alive—True
  sense of the word—Course of study in physiological laboratories—
  Histological  department—Chemical department—Physical depart-
  ment—Experiments upon detached tissue and organs—Experiments
  upon pithed animals—Painful experiments—Inoculations—Testing
  of drugs—Use of anaesthetics—Statistics of experiments performed
  —Conclusion.
  We have  now  made  some  progress in  our  inquiry.
Having obtained a clear conception of what pain is,  we
have  seen when its infliction is  justifiable,  and when it
amounts to cruelty, and we have also decided  that we have
a right to inflict  it upon the lower animals,  when necessary
for the purposes of beneficent science.  We  have to deal
with an entire denial of that right, and a determined effort
to abolish the power of using it.  It  therefore seems as if
our next step  should  be  to ask  what  use is  made  of it
already.   What  is  the state of  affairs which it is proposed
to improve upon ?  To what extent is vivisection practised
in England ?
  But another question must come before this.   What is
vivisection ?  Literally, of course, the  cutting  of  a living
thing, such as opening  an oyster,  crimping  a  cod, or foxing
a terrier.  Sir Thomas Watson rather vaguely explains it
as " the  cutting  into  any living animal  for  scientific pur- 
WHAT IS VIVISECTION ?                41
poses."*  " Vernon Lee "f says that " vivisection is a generic
name for torture," an expression of which much meditation
has hitherto  failed to reveal the  meaning.  Webster's dic-
tionary gives it as:  " The dissection of an animal while
alive, for the purpose of making physiological investigation."
Probably this is a fair statement of the popular notion.} Many
people suppose that—just as  an anatomist lays bare nerve
after nerve and muscle after muscle in a dead body, tracing
each from its source to its remotest ramification, until he is
thoroughly acquainted with its position and relations—so
the  physiologist  studies the functions  of living organs,
displaying them  and watching their working in the living
body, and making each subject serve for as many experi-
ments as possible, until death renders it useless.   Nothing
less than such  an idea will  justify the language used by
some of the anti-vivisectionists about "the most cruel of
cruelties."   Still,  it is rather out of date, for it is about two
hundred years  since it represented any existing fact.  No
doubt,  the anatomists of  the middle  ages did cut open
living bodies to see  what was  going on inside ; §  but now,
the coarser structure and general relationships of the prin-
cipal organs are understood and taught on the dead human
subject, which  in  olden  times  was out of the reach of  the
most skilled anatomist.  As we  shall see, there are other
means of teaching the functions of the different parts of the
body to  students than  the old actual vivisections.  The
 experiments now performed  on living  animals are delicate
and difficult; they require much time and expensive instru-
ments ;  some  of  the most  important  involve very little
operating;  and there is nothing  at all  corresponding to

   * Report of Royal Commission, Appendix III., § 1.
   t Contemporary Review, May, 1882, p.  797.
   X See Appendix A., IT 5.
   § The practice was recommended by Bacon, see Appendix C, IT 11. 
42
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
dissection, or  " cutting up."   Webster's  definition is there-
fore misleading,  and the literal meaning is  valueless for
this discussion.   One  might  speak of vivisecting  a plant
for there is vegetable life  as well as  animal;  and  it is
certainly vivisection to cut up tissue which is itself living
though  removed from a dead  animal.   But this sort of
thing is not  what  people  mean  when they talk about
vivisection.  They  mean making  any  experiment upon
animals which gives them pain, whether there is any cutting
in it or not;  they generally have  some loose ideas about
dissecting alive,  like Mr. Webster's; and the more  careless
or dishonest of   them throw  in "torture"  as  a  natural
accompaniment, without waiting  to inquire into the degree
of pain caused.  The word has thus become so vague as to
be almost useless for  purposes of argument, and I have
hitherto  tried to dispense with it as far as  possible,  and
shall continue  to  do so; but if I am obliged to use it, it will
always be in the true sense of cutting a living thing, whether
animal or vegetable, sentient  or insentient, an organism or
a part of an organism.  When experiments on living animals
are in question, it is easy to call them by their right name.
   Only a small  part of the  work done  in  physiological
laboratories consists of such experiments, but though their
proportion to the rest  is small in  quantity, it is large in
importance.   Both  statements will be best explained by a
short review  of  the  various  sections into which Practical
Physiology is  divided, both in text-books and in teaching
establishments.   These will usually be found to be four: i.e.,
the Histological, Chemical, Physical, and Vital departments.*
   In the  Histological department,  the  pupil studies—by
means of the microscope—the minute  structure of  the
tissues of animals and plants.  The living animals examined
  * See "The Practice of Vivisection in England," by Professor Yeo,
—Fortnightly Review, March 1, 1882. 
WHAT IS VIVISECTION ?
43
are  (with very  few exceptions)  tiny  animalculae,  which
swim about under the glass with every appearance of ease,
and do not seem to consider themselves victims to science.
The common exception is the frog, the web of whose  foot is
spread out under the object-glass, that the course  of the
living blood-corpuscles  through its transparent substance
may be observed.  In this  case there is no -section  at all,
and the animal  is not injured in any way.  It is wrapped
in damp cloths, and its toes are held  apart by  soft threads
attached to their tips.   Every  precaution must be  taken
against hurting  the frog,  or irritating its  toes with the
thread, or even the moderate heat of  the human hand,—as
the  least roughness  or  want  of  skill  in operating would
interfere with the value of  the  observation,  by increasing
or  checking the flow of the blood in the delicate vessels.
A small portion of living  tissue is  often studied in this
department, but then it has been taken from dead animals.
Every one, perhaps, may not know that the tissues have an
independent life, which may survive for some time the
death of the organism,  if  that has taken place while they
were in health.  In this way, the movements of the  living-
cells of  man's blood, the  contracting of insects'  muscles,
and many other vital phenomena, may be  observed.   This
study  of life  without a living  creature  is not vivisection
in the popular  sense ; on the contrary, it is necessary that
the  animal  from which  the tissues are taken  should have
been killed as rapidly as possible.  On the whole, then,  it
is clear that in the histological  department,  which consti-
tutes, probably, a fourth of the whole laboratory work, and
is the first  and most important division of  that work in
which  students have to take an  active part—there are no
painful experiments, and  the  vivisections performed are
only upon little bits of tissue, and not upon animals.
  We  next come to the Chemical department. Here the 
44
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
student learns the nature and composition of the secretions
and  excretions,  how  to test them, and judge of their cha-
racter,—knowledge that will be most important to him in
diagnosing disease, but in gaining which he works on fluids
brought to him in the laboratory, collected painlessly from
living human beings, or extracted from the gland-textures
of dead animals.   Here there is no cause of dispute.
  What I have called the  Physical  department is that in
which the forces of nature  are  studied in their relation to
vital phenomena.  The student is provided with an elemen-
tary knowledge of the laws of dynamics  and mechanics,
sufficient to make him understand the action of the atmos-
phere in its  pressure  upon the lungs, the working of the
muscles as levers, the principle of the  pumping of blood
through the body by the heart,  &c.   Here also mechanical
appliances  are introduced,  to explain the  working of the
organs,  and  to  investigate and accurately measure the
actions  of various parts  of the body.  Models are shown,
illustrating the  process  of breathing, the  alternate con-
traction and  expansion of  the heart, the wonderful move-
ments of the eyeball,—and the apparatus by which a ray of
light is  refracted, so as exactly  to meet  the ending of the
optic nerve, and  excite visual sensations.  The very raison
d'etre of  all these expensive  and  elaborate  models and
instruments—is  to dispense with  vivisection.   Artificial
lungs and mechanical eyeballs  would be merely curiosities
of inventions, if professors were in the habit  of exposing
the actual palpitating organs  to their pupils' gaze, in the
body of a living animal.
  The instruments for measuring  the  action  of certain
organs are indeed used upon living animals, but there is no
pain  in their application,  and the  subjects are  generally
human.   The cardiograph writes  down  the manner in
which the heart beats,  the sphygmograph registers the 
WHAT IS VIVISECTION ?
45
character of the pulse, and the ophthalmoscope  enables the
surgeon to explore the recesses of the eye, and judge of the
condition of the nerve itself.  The student learns  the  use
of these instruments as well as of the laryngoscope and the
thermometer for  his future bed-side practice; but the in-
convenience which he inflicts in the process is very trifling,
whether he experiments on himself, his relatives at home,
his fellow-students, or the lower  animals.   At any  rate,
nothing takes place in the Physical department which need
excite any horror, or raise any moral discussion.
   The fourth  department  is  that in which the painful
experiments on living  animals take  place, but they are
very far from forming the  whole of its work. As in
histological investigation, experiments are often made  upon
living tissue from a dead creature,  so here  the laws which
govern the action of the heart, nerves, and  muscles, can be
to a great  extent  studied in  organs removed from a re-
cently killed animal.  If a frog be beheaded* and its heart
extracted,  the heart will continue to beat  for hours  after
it has been separated from the body, and influences which
will  quicken or retard its action may be tried  upon it.
Nerve-fibre  can be stimulated, and muscle will  contract
after they  have been  taken  from an  animal thus killed,
and their actions can be excellently studied.-f-  Much  that
was first discovered by vivisection can now be shown and
explained in this painless but effective manner; and in our
English schools it is so explained,  and a living creature is
never used where a dead one  will do.
   Next in order to these experiments upon organs,  come
 experiments upon entire animals, deprived of consciousness
 and partially of  life, by pithing. The creature is put under
   * This mode of  death leaves the reflex phenomena of  the spinal
 cord in fullest operation.
   t See Memorandum issued by the Association for the Advancement
 of Medicine by Research, p. 6. 
46
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
an  anaesthetic, and  the  spinal  marrow is divided.   The
nervous centres which preside  over the breathing move-
ments are thus injured, so that it would die, if oxygen were
not supplied to its blood:  but by means of a kind of air-
pump, artificial respiration is kept up, the  heart  continues
to beat, and functional life is maintained.  Still, as has been
fully shown in Chap. II., the animal  is not really alive ; for
it is not capable of spontaneous action, and all sensation
has been destroyed, by cutting the communication between
the brain and the  nerves of the body.  The whole appa-
ratus is in the condition of a telegraphic circuit with the
wires and battery perfect, but  with  no operator to work
them : there is still receptivity in the instrument, energy in
the battery, and conductility in the wire,  but  there is no
spontaneity of action, and there can be no message.
  We now come to experiments more nearly corresponding
to the popular idea of vivisection; i.e.,  those which involve
incision or cutting,  are performed on living creatures, and
are of a nature to give pain,  if the subject is not prevented
from feeling it.  To begin  with, it cannot be  too often
repeated, that in England animals are never " cut up" at
all, nor  are  they  dissected,  alive  in  order to  show the
relations  of their  parts.   This is  taught, as  has  been
already explained,  by means of dead subjects, models, and
diagrams.   When vivisections are performed for  teaching
purposes, they are done in order to show to students some-
thing necessary for them to  know, but which  they cannot
be taught equally well otherwise; and  under the present
law anaesthetics  must always  be  used at such  demon-
strations.   So  that  there is no room  for talking about
medical students being demoralized by witnessing tortures :
there  are none  for  them   to  witness.   Vivisections  in
original researches are performed  only when the question
in hand cannot be solved by chemistry, histology, or any 
WHAT IS VIVISECTION ?                47
other of the means at command, and always with a definite
object in  view.   The " random experiment" under which
we hear of creatures expiring in torment, exists only in the
minds of certain excitable but ill-informed writers.
   Painful vivisections are therefore  confined to purposes of
original research, and in the few cases where pain must be
given, it is generally very slight.  One large class  consists
of inoculations,  which are  chiefly  used  in studying the
origin and  communication  of diseases.   There are a few
pricks and scratches,  giving about as much  pain as vacci-
nation : and if the disease expected is induced, the subject
is usually killed at once, unless kept alive to try modes of
treatment.  In the former case, it does not suffer; in the
latter, it  is carefully nursed  and doctored ; and as  most
sick people prefer being treated to  being extinguished, we
may fairly suppose that an  inoculated rabbit would gladly
countersign a certificate to permit the doctor to keep it  alive.
   Another large class of experiments  consists in trying the
effects of  drugs upon animals, as a guide to their use upon
human patients ;  or, in the case of  poisons, to study their
antidotes  and treatment.   They are generally administered
by injection under the skin, and  the —section  consists
only  in pinching up  a portion of  it, and inserting the
pointed nozzle of a syringe.  The pain of  the  actual opera-
tion is merely a prick, but that which results will  be more
or less, according to the nature and action  of the drug.
   There then remain a number of experiments which cannot
be further classified, relating to the various animal functions,
varying according to the points which scientific men desire
to ascertain, and which the Home  Secretary does  not con-
sider useless knowledge.  In most of these, anaesthetics can
be used.  Whenever  they can be used they are, and always
were, before any law was passed on the subject.  This was
proved abundantly before  the Royal  Commission, and is 
48              PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
recognized in their report.   Yet, although no fact is better
authenticated than this systematic narcotizing of creatures
experimented on,* it is quietly and constantly ignored,
vivisection is described  as  the " worst form of  cruelty we
know,"*f- and the words " agony," " torture," and  " torment "
are scattered about as if no  such things existed  as chloro-
form, ether, and morphia.  But this is contrary  to common
sense.   If  an experimenter  did not use them for the  sake
of humanity, he would for his own convenience.  Can any
one suppose  that it  is agreeable to a man conducting a
difficult investigation to have the  subject crying and  rest-
less, when  he requires perfect stillness for the sake of his
delicate instruments,  and undisturbed concentration for his
own mind ?  An  anaesthetic of  some  sort is  absolutely
necessary for the  success of  most operations, and equally
needful for the feelings  of  most operators.  Doctors are
men,—men, the  whole object of whose lives is  to relieve
suffering, who live to heal and soothe, and whose feelings
are constantly cultivated by demands on their help and
sympathy, their skill and tenderness. Working physiologists
share these influences.  They are not a  caste of Fakeers,
cut off from all the gentlenesses of life, and vowed neither to
pity themselves  nor others.   They have at  home not  only
their wives and families, but  the  little child's  pet kitten,
the devoted dog, their own favourite horse,—all the friendly
animal world which gathers round an English home, seldom
so poor that it  does not hold a pet.  Why  should  it be
supposed that they like to hurt a helpless  creature lying at
their  mercy ?  As a  matter of fact, they do not; and Mr.
Colam's  often-quoted evidence j is alone sufficient to show

  * See Digest of Replies to Questions forwarded to the principal
Medical Schools.—Report of Royal Commission, Appendix III., § 8.
  t Miss Cobbe, in Contemporary Revievj, February, 1877.
  J See Appendix B, H 4. 
WHAT IS VIVISECTION ?
49
 that no such charge  against them could for one instant be
 supported.  If anaesthetics are not constantly mentioned in
 text-books, it is because their use in every laboratory is
 taken for granted.*
   But  experiments   are  sometimes  performed  without
 anaesthetics ?   That is true ;  it can be done under a special
 certificate; and let us now see to what extent—under the
 law as it stands—it is done.  We have the reports presented
 to  Parliament of the  experiments performed in  the years
 1878, 1879, and 1880.  In the report for 1878, the inspector
 says: "In 16 cases alone, so  far as I am able to judge (and
 these were confined to  two sets of experiments), is there
 any reason  to  believe  that  any  considerable  amount of
 suffering  was  directly  inflicted."   In 24 cases, animals
 suffered, not from an actual operation, but from induced
 disease.   The  report  for 1879  states:  " The  number of
 experiments in which  there is reason to believe  that  any
 material suffering was caused  appears to have been  about
 25.  Of  these, 15 were cases in which disease followed  the
 inoculation of  infectious matter, but  in  which  no painful
 operation  was performed; and 10 were experiments upon
 as many frogs, in which an incision of the skin was required
 for the introduction beneath  it of a  medical  substance."
 The account for 1880 is  similar.  In about 30  instances
 disease was induced,  " which, during the brief  period  the
 animals survived, may have caused slight suffering." There
 were no other painful experiments.*f"
  This then is the  sum total  of the  pain-giving experi-
ments  upon animals performed in England during  three
years.  Less than 100 cases, of which the  great  majority
consist of inoculations, followed—not by torture, but—by
illness, form the contribution of our country to the " syste-
matic torturing of thousands  of beasts all over the world,"
* See Appendix B, 1" 4.      t See Appendix B, IT 5
                    E 
50
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
referred  to by a writer on the subject*   It is a pity that
95 animals should have been put to any discomfort at all;
and if illness and pain could be abolished from the world
at one blow, the happiness of the lower creatures would be
no small ingredient in the general joy.  As it is, however,
physiologists must  aim at  something humbler; they must
try to decrease what they cannot destroy,  and to  alleviate
where they cannot  heal.   And those who  wish to narrow
the means at their  command for  doing so, by totally
prohibiting experiments on living  animals,-f* had better be
quite  sure that they know what the state of things is which
they propose to alter.  The same writer says that " experi-
mentations on living animals is a system of long protracted
agonies, the very recollection of which is enough  to  make
the soul sick  as with a whiff and an aftertaste from a moral
sewer."  The degree of correspondence between this phrase
and the  facts  of  English physiological  practice  will  be
apparent to  the reader of  the foregoing pages.  And it  is
with facts alone that we wish to deal.

  * Contemporary Review, May, 1882, p. 803.
  t A Bill for the total Abolition of Vivisection is to be presented  to>
Parliament this Session. 
THE RELATION OF EXPERIMENT TO PHYSIOLOGY.     51
                       CHAPTER VI.

       THE RELATION OF EXPERIMENT TO PHYSIOLOGY.* \

 Many non-physiological systems—Only one physiological system—The
   Empirical system—The physiological system founded on experiment
   —Experiment on living animals part of a rational method of invest-
   igation—The Circulation of the Blood—Blood pressure—Contractile
   power of the arteries—The Absorbent Vessels—Discoveries of Aselli
   and  Pecquet—Value  of  this knowledge—Respiration—Changes
   effected in the inspired air—Changes effected in the blood—Diges-
   tion—The Nervous System—Discoveries of Bell, Magendie,  and
   others—Present state of our knowledge on the subject—Muscular
   action—Discoveries of Heller—Summary.
   Since  human beings first writhed  under the  ills that
 flesh is heir to, and strove to escape from  them,  various
 different systems of medicine have won the  confidence and
 relieved or aggravated  the sufferings of mankind.   How-
 ever  many they  are, they must  all fall into one of two
 classes—the physiological and the non-physiological.  Phy-
 siological medicine is founded upon study of the organs of
 the body and their modes of action :  that is, upon a know-
 ledge—the more  thorough the  better—of the mechanism
 with which it  has to deal.   Although, as long as this know-
 ledge is  imperfect, different conclusions  may  be drawn from

  * For the information contained in this and the following chapter,
 I am largely indebted to an Address delivered before the Surgical
 Society of Ireland in  1878, by Dr. Robert McDonnell, to Professor
Heidenhain's Pamphlet, " Die Vivisection im TJienst de.r  Heilkunde,"
Leipzig, 1879, and to the Arris and Gale Lectures of 1882, delivered
by Professor Gerald  F. Yeo, and published in the Lancet, June 10,
1882, et sea.
                             e2 
52
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
 it, and different methods of treatment proposed and tried,
 so that it may seem as if there  were various physiological
 systems, yet  in  reality  there  is  but one;  for  all phy-
 siological workers  acknowledge the  same principles, and
 can correct and supplement each other's work,—so that the
 mistakes of yesterday are  set right  by the discoveries of
 to-day,  and  these will  be  developed by the results  of
 to-morrow.   It is not so with the non-physiological systems.
 These are many and various, and are based upon principles
 which are mutually irreconcileable.   Nearly all  of them,
 also, have their modern representatives, but I shall not risk
 bringing all these down upon  me at once by specifying
 their parentage.
   In the earliest times, when every disease was attributed
 to the anger or malice of some  spirit, the only system of
 medicine known  consisted  in  attempts to propitiate the
 offended power.   Later  on, under the influence of Greek
 intellect, this gave rise to something more deserving of the
 name.  The  origin of the empirical system of  medicine is
 very  interesting,  and it certainly has a solid  foundation,
 since it rests upon the observation of  facts.  The priests of
 some of the Greek temples (certainly of that at Cos) to
 which people used to resort in search  of  miraculous cures,
 kept  records  of the names of the patients,  their diseases,
 and the means (other than miraculous) taken to cure them.
 These were inscribed upon metal plates, called votive tablets,
 and were carefully preserved. Hippocrates, himself a priest
 of Cos, formed the accumulated experience  of  the  temple
 into  his great system,  which  at least, as has been said,
 rested on facts and nature.  The empirical school has had
 varied fortunes, sometimes sinking into mere  vulgar blun-
 dering, and sometimes having the success which  attended
the patient  listening to nature,  in days when men did not
know  how to question  her.  But the  mere collection of 
       THE RELATION OF EXPERIMENT TO PHYSIOLOGY.    53

 information without reasoning upon it is simply  useless,
 and a hundred disjointed facts will no more make one truth
 than a bag-full of acorns will make one oak.   One of those
 seeds, planted  in the right soil, and duly tended, may grow
 into a noble tree; and one of those facts, in the mind of a
 man of genius, capable of seeing its  relations and working
 out its results, may lead to a great discovery.  Thus empi-
 ricism—or the mere observation of nature—never created,
 or could  create, a  sound system  of physiology.   It is a
 system of hits and misses, free from humbug, but not trust-
 worthy ;  because it works on the supposition that one case
 will be exactly like another, whereas no  one  case  ever is
 exactly like another.
   It would take a volume  to sketch the various non-
 physiological  systems,  and  the  results  to  unfortunate
 patients,  in days  when  there  was  no  such  thing  as
 systematic physiology.   For there is no third alternative.
 So far as  the  physician knows  the  structure  of the body
 with which he has to deal, the relations of its functions
 and the working of its organs in health,—so far as he can
 recognize  disease, trace its causes  and consequences, and
 calculate  upon the effect of the treatment which he adopts
 —so far he is working in the light, and is likely  to succeed.
 But so far as he is guessing, theorizing, and  experimenting
 on his patient,—so far he is groping in the dark, and is likely
 to fail.  These seem very elementary truths,  but it is some-
 times necessary to insist on the most obvious things, when
 they  are   overlooked;  and the  defenders of science  are
 obliged to  spend  such  eloquence, research, and time, as are
 at their command—in defending this apparently unassail-
 able position:  It is necessary that a doctor should  know
 what he is doing. Or, in scientific language : Rational thera-
peutics are based upon sound physiology.
  But  is   the  physiological  system  of  medicine  firmly 
54
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
founded upon knowledge that can  be relied upon ? and
if  so, what share  has  experiment had  in  attaining this
knowledge ?
  To begin with,  it must be noted that  experiment upon
living animals  is not a thing by itself.  It is  part  of a
system—the physiological system, and part of a method—
the experimental  method. No  great discoverer was ever a
vivisector, and nothing more, though  every  great  physio-
logical discoverer has been a vivisector.  He did not spend
his time in the  " random experiment" in which his pro-
fession are supposed to delight; he had something better to
do  with it.  While his  mind  was  open to  all ideas,  his
thoughts were  bent on one ; he learnt what  anatomy could
teach him of  the matter in question; he watched  by sick
beds, and observed accidental circumstances; he  studied
the doings of other workers, and  meditated upon them ; he
probably—if the subject admitted of  it—experimented on
himself.   All  these things—anatomy,  clinical observation,
and meditation—are absolutely  necessary;  but they  are
parts of an accurate and scientific manner of investigation
which  cannot dispense  with the additional  means  of
experiment on living animals.  For it is really the touch-
stone  by which  the  theories  starting from  the  other
methods  are judged, and the results  obtained from them
are  studied.
   In order to  trace, as briefly as possible, consistently with
clearness, the dependence of  physiology upon experiment,
let us take in turn some of  the great branches  of such
knowledge, and inquire  what  were the  earliest  ideas held
on these  subjects,  what knowledge upon them  we have
arrived at, and what share experiment has had  in leading
us to this point.  For the sake of brevity, it will be under-
stood  that experiment  means  experiment  upon living
animals, unless otherwise stated.  Of course, I must assume 
       THE RELATION OF EXPERIMENT TO PHYSIOLOGY.     55

in my readers  such a general  knowledge of  elementary
physiology  as  every  educated  person ought to possess;
without which it would be absurd for any one  to attempt
to form an opinion on the subject of vivisection.
   To begin, then, with the Circulation of the Blood.   It is
difficult to take ourselves in imagination back to a  time
when the use of the arteries was  utterly unknown.  Yet
Erasistratus,  who  preceded  Galen,  thought that  they
contained nothing but air.  Galen (who  flourished about
131-201 A.D.) was a  diligent experimenter, and vivisection
soon taught him that this was not the fact.  He  says: " If
one cut many arteries at  the same time, they  will all  let
blood escape.  This  is a fact known to all the world."  He,
however, thought that they carried both blood and air ; and
that their chief  business was to conduct air (or vital spirits,
as he called it,) from the heart  to  vivify  the whole body.
The  nourishing  material  from the  food  was  collected
(according to his views) by the gastric and intestinal veins,
and carried to the liver, where  it was made into blood,
which was then distributed to the various  parts of the
body by the systemic veins.   Some of  the fresh  blood
coming from the liver flowed through the right side of the
heart, and  was conveyed to  nourish  the  lungs, by the
pulmonary  artery.  He thought that the current  flowed
backwards and  forwards  in the arteries  and veins  alike,
the former carrying the nutritive, the latter the vital blood.
   This curious mixture of fact and  fancy  was all that was
attained by the  first great experimental  physiologist,* and
it is noticeable that the facts are clearly due to vivisection,
which alone could  have  shown him the presence  of the
blood-flow in the vessels, and which convinced him (in  spite
  * We know that experiment formed a part of Egyptian medicine,
hut with our present imperfect knowledge of the state of that science
in Ancient Egypt,  this must be passed over. 
56
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
of his  former theory) that all the arteries contained blood..
Although he  had gone  thus far in 200 A.D., yet at  the
beginning of the 17th century, we find knowledge of this
subject in much  the  same position.   The  great motor
power of the  heart was unknown, the direction and con-
stancy  of  the flow of  blood  through the vessels of  the
system had  not  been  ascertained,  and  the  circulation
through the liver was a complete mystery.   How was this ?
Had not  doctors been practising, binding up wounds, ob-
serving patients, and reflecting upon what they saw, during
those  fourteen centuries ?  They had; but they had  not
been  experimenting.   Vivisectors there were, in  the true
sense  of  the word, who  really  dissected animals  alive,.
in order to study the parts of the  body; but  these were
anatomists, not physiologists.   The few experiments that
were  performed were  not  sufficiently numerous, careful, or
systematic,to produce any result worth mentioning.  In 1628,.
Harvey picked up the wonder-working rod that had fallen
from the hand of Galen, and physiology moved on again.
   It was more than a move; it was the greatest stride that
 the science ever took at one time.   The discovery of the
Circulation of the Blood was  to Physiology  what that of
the Law of Gravitation was to Physics.
   Let us learn from his own words how he arrived at it.*

   " When, in many  dissections of  living things (as were
given  to hand)  I  first  applied my mind  to observation,
whereby  I might discover the wont and  utilities of the
heart's motion by personal inspection, and not by the books
and writings of others, I found it a hard subject indeed, and so

  * As the  verbal  accuracy of Dr. Willis's excellent translation has
been impugned, I give a baldly literal version, in order to minimize
causes  of dispute.  The question of Harvey's priority is discussed in»
Appendix D, IT 1. 
       THE RELATION OF EXPERIMENT TO PHYSIOLOGY.    57

constantly full of difficulties that with Fracastorius, I might
almost think the motion of the heart to be known  to God
alone.  For neither in what way systole or diastole might
take place nor when, or where dilatation and contraction
might exist, could I rightly distinguish, on account of the  ra-
pidity of the motion, which in many animals in the twinkling
of an eye—as if in a flash of lightning—brought itself into
view and straightway vanished ; so that I might think now
I perceived systole on this side, diastole on that, at another
time the contrary, the motions to become various and con-
fused ; whereby my mind fluctuated,  and I could not come
to any resolution  myself, or believe others, and I was not
astonished that Andrew Laurentius wrote that the motion
of the heart was what the flow and ebb of the Euripus was
to Aristotle.  At  length, from  day to day  using  greater
research,  and diligence,  by frequently looking into many
and various  living animals,   I thought to have both
attained  the object, and to have escaped from this labyrinth,.
and at the  same time to have discovered things  which I
desired,  the motion and wont of the heart  and  arteries..
From which I was not afraid to put forward my opinion in
this matter not only to my friends in public, but also in  my
anatomical lectures, in the Academic method."*

   Harvey did not know all the details of the course pursued
by the blood, especially of  the manner in which it made its
way from the arteries into the veins.   Malpighi, who was
the father of minute anatomy, was the first to see it in  the
capillary vessels, and he demonstrated  its passage through
the  capillary  network of the lung of a living frog by a
genuine  vivisection, thus adding the  last link to Harvey's
chain of evidence.
   Comparatively recently,  the  experiments of Waller and
            * " De Motu Cardis et Sanguinis."  Cap. I. 
58
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
Cohnheim have taught us that the walls of the capillaries
will  allow  the solid—as well  as the fluid—parts of  the
blood to pass  through them; and as a white corpuscle  has
been seen to creep through the thin walls of the vessel, we
now  know  that not  only  does the blood convey nourish-
ment to the tissues, but that these mysterious  little units
of protoplasm, which  are the active  agents in  the  forma-
tion  of new tissue, can start  from  it  on their  work of
re-creation.
  The pressure of the  blood  against  the walls  of  the
arteries was first studied by Dr. Stephen  Hales, vicar of
Teddington.   In 1732 he published his Statical Essays, in
which he described the experiments by which he estimated
the force of the heart.  His methods of  measurement were
improved upon by  Poiseuille, and the  whole  subject of
haemo-dynamics (or the force  of the blood)  was  funda-
mentally investigated by Volkmann.  Of  course, it could
only be studied upon living  animals.   As a result of these
investigations and experiments, there are now a number of
instruments (the kymograph,  sphygmograph,  and  cardio-
graph,) which enable physicians to  observe—and record
graphically — the  most  delicate changes  in  the   circu-
lation, and are most valuable in studying the fluctuations
of disease.
  Just when the discovery of the immense  pumping-power
of the heart was  threatening  to degrade the arteries  into
mere conduit-pipes, it was discovered by Haller that they
possessed  a distinct coat of muscle-tissue and an inde-
pendent power of contracting, so as to press upon the blood
which they contained.  John Hunter's  experiments upon
the horse, and Dr. John Thomson's demonstrations  on the
frog's web, put the matter beyond doubt.  Claude Bernard,
Brown-Se'quard, and other experimenters, gradually showed
the wonderful muscular and nervous systems by which 
        THE RELATION OF EXPERIMENT TO PHYSIOLOGY.    59

 this contractility is produced and governed, and which are
 constantly at work,  regulating the blood-supply to the
 various organs.
   Let  us now sum up what amount of our knowledge of
 the blood and its circulation is due to experiments  upon
 living  animals.  In this manner we have learnt that the
 arteries contain  blood (Galen)—that it is driven into  them
 by the pumping action  of the  heart under high pressure,
 and so forced through  the body, and that the veins collect it
 and return it to  the heart  (Harvey)—that it passes  from
 the arteries to  the veins through the capillaries  (Malpighi
 and Leeuwenhoech)—and that it conveys solid nourishment
 and formative agents to the tissues (Waller and Cohnheim).
 We can  measure exactly the force of its pressure against
 the vessels which contain it (Hales,  Poiseuille, Volkmann);
 and we understand the manner in which these vessels con-
 tract and dilate,  and the nervous system which causes  them
 to do so.   It would be quite impossible, in a little  book like
 this, to  show in detail the influence which these experiments
 have  had upon medical practice, and how clear an insight
 they  have given  physicians into the  true interpretation of
 the various kinds of pulse, the changes in the heart's  beat,
 &c.   The question to be asked is not—When is such know-
 ledge as this useful ? but—What act or conclusion in medical
 practice is independent of  it ?  And another question is—
 How  will those  earnest anti-vivisectionists, who,  like  Miss
 Cobbe, prefer to " die sooner than profit by such foul rites,"
 provide themselves with a  medical  attendant warranted
 ignorant of the circulation of the blood ?
  Very closely connected with  the circulation of the blood
are the flow of the  chyle and  lymph in  their special
capillaries and peculiarly delicate vessels, and the nature of
the absorbent system generally.  The subject was not at all
understood in the time of Harvey, and a hot controversy 
CO
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
was raging as  to whether or not the absorption of  chyle
was the sole business of the mesenteric blood-vessels, when
a  great  Italian anatomist, Gaspardus Asellius, suddenly
chanced upon the  solution of  the whole question.  On the
23rd of July, 1662, he was making an experiment upon a
dog which  had lately had a full  meal,* when he  observed
" a number of very fine white cords," which he at first sup-
posed  to be  nerves,  but  which, when pierced, proved to
contain a milky fluid.  The discovery which he had  made
then burst upon him, and  he saw that he had hit upon the
conduits by which the chyle was  conveyed to the  blood
But he was not  successful in tracing their subsequent course
correctly; and,  as he held  to the old idea that all nutrient
matter was carried to the liver, there to be  made into blood,
he was easily satisfied that the  lacteals which he had dis-
covered led to that organ.
  By a chance precisely similar to that which had revealed
the lacteals to Asellius,-f* Jean Pecquet happened—while ex-
perimenting for another purpose—to observe the opening of
the main absorbent vessel of the thoracic duct, which carries
their contents into  the blood current.  He followed up the
clue thus given him, and by repeated experiments succeeded
in tracing  the  general course  of the lymphatic  system.*
The numerous experiments of Hunter, Hewson, Cruikshank,
and Magendie, have given us a clear idea of the mechanism
by which food  is absorbed from  the alimentary canal and
poured into the blood, and of the  wide distribution of  these
absorbent vessels, and their other functions in  collecting
and carrying away the overflow  of nutrient fluid  from the
textures.  It is through experiment—and experiment alone

  * For detailed account in Asellius's own words, see Appendix D. IT 2.
  t For detailed account in Pecquet's own words, see Appendix D. IT 2.
  J For a different account of the matter, see Appendix D. IT 2. 
THE RELATION OF EXPERIMENT TO PHYSIOLOGY.    61
—that we know the course and uses of the  lacteals and
other absorbent vessels, know that  they bring to the blood
nourishment from the  alimentary  tract,  as well as some
waste products and superfluous fluid from the tissues; and
know, too, that by their means foreign matter can be passed
into the system.   The  method of hypodermic injection of
drugs  rests upon the  knowledge  of  their presence and
efficiency; and what  a wonderful amount of  relief and
healing must be counted to that invention alone !  And if
the only result of these experiments had been to  make it
possible  for surgeons to use a catgut  ligature that  can be
absorbed, instead of one of silk or other material, which (as a
rule) must be removed with pain and risk, after many months
of irritating delay, they would have conferred a very great
boon upon surgery, and even a greater upon surgical patients.
   The processes of Respiration were not so soon traced out     y
as'those of the two circulations.  The ancients believed that
the air passed through the lung into the cavity of the chest,
thence to pass on into the heart, where it mingled with the
blood.  This opinion was held in the beginning of the 17th
century, and by such men as Harvey, Hales, and  Boerhaave.
The mistake survived, because their knowledge  was taken
partly  from experimentation upon birds and partly from
the examination of bodies  after death—with which prac-
tical physiology is now enjoined to content herself.   But a
lung dead and collapsed is as like a lung living and inflated
as an empty balloon is like a full  one, and the  conclusions
drawn  from the  one  for the other  were proportionately
trustworthy.  Haller, however, carried out a series of expe-
riments which disproved this fallacy.   Malpighi's expe-
riments showed the vesicular texture of  the lungs, and the
manner in which the blood was exposed in a network of
minute vessels to the air which  they contained, and made 
62
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
the air-cells  familiar to physiologists.   The nature of the
change which took place in the capillaries of the  lungs
still, however, remained a mystery.
  Mayow, by acute reasoning, and a most carefully arranged
series of experiments (for the most part upon living animals),
arrived at conclusions far in advance of his time, when but
few of the chemical elements were known.  He pronounced
atmospheric air to be a compound,  containing as one  of its
elements a  body to  which he  attributed the properties
possessed by oxygen, but which he called (on account of its
relation to nitric acid) nitro-cerial spirit.  This alone it
was which made the air useful  for combustion and  respi-
ration.  The times, however, were not ripe for the reception
of his discoveries, and they were neglected.
  Later on, in the year 1759, Black showed by experiments
the presence of  what is now known as carbonic acid in the
expired air;  and  in  1770 Priestley proved in the same
manner the analogy of respiration  to combustion, and con-
cluded that air in  its passage through the lungs lost some
of its  oxygen.  But Lavoisier was the first to give an exact
explanation  of  the  chemical  changes which  occur  in the
process of breathing; and this he was enabled to do by his
skilful and diligent experimentation.  The more important
of his principles have been worked out and confirmed by
others, also experimentally ; so that we now know even the
exact  quantities of carbonic acid given off and oxygen used
up in  respiration.
  So much for the changes in the inspired air  worked by
its contact with the blood;  but what change in the blood is
effected by  the air ?   This question also was answered by
experiment.   The difference of colour between the blood in
the veins  and that in the arteries had been noticed from
the earliest times ; but the first real light thrown upon the
subject emanated from an admirable series of  experiments 
       THE RELATION OF EXPERIMENT TO PHYSIOLOGY.     63

made by Lower, who opened the thorax of a living animal,
and  discovered that the change in colour took place in the
capillaries of the lungs.   This discovery was not, however,
followed  up,  and  it  was  Priestley  whose  experiments
actually convinced the world that  the alteration was  due
to the purifying of the blood by means of the oxygen of
the air.
  Let us again sum up  our debt to experiment.  Imagine
any  doctor trying to treat  a consumptive patient  on the
supposition that the lungs let  the air through into the
cavity which contains them !  From such ignorance of facts,
and  all the consequent blundering in practice, experiment—
and  experiment alone—has delivered  us.   Haller thus de-
molished  the  pleural-cavity mistake ;  while  Malpighi  had
shown  the  texture of  the lungs, and the  manner in which
the blood and air were  brought into contact, by  observing
under the microscope the lungs  of a  living  frog; Mayow
learnt the action of oxygen; Black demonstrated the  pre-
sence of carbonic acid in  expired air; Priestley proved the
loss  of oxygen in breathing, inferred the analogy of respira-
tion to combustion, and confirmed  and explained Lower's
discovery that the change of colour in the blood took place
in the  capillaries of the  lungs;  Lavoisier gave a compre-
hensive explanation of the whole  process;  and  later ex-
perimenters have ascertained  the  quantities of  each gas
subtracted from or added to the air in respiration.  This is
what experiment has  taught  us.  If all this knowledge
about respiration could be wiped  out of our  minds,  and
we  were left  only to  what has been learnt  by bedside
observation, anatomy, and meditation,  where  would be our
improved ventilation, and what efforts should we make to
keep a proper amount of cubic space for a number of human
beings living clustered together ?  Would not the pestilences
known as gaol fever, war  typhus, and  hospital gangrene be 
64
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
still raging among our prisoners, our soldiers, and our poor,
because we should know no reason why the same air should
not be used again and again ?
  Various  theories on  the subject of digestion succeeded
one another before experiment acquainted us with its time
processes. It was at first attributed entirely to the moisture
and heat of the stomach, which produced an action  called
" concoction."   Next,  it was referred to a process analogous
to putrefaction, or believed to be the result only of tritura-
tion.   The stomach  had been supposed in turn to be  a
forcing-stove,  a rotting-place, and a mill; and we might
now have been thinking it a galvanic battery, if  experiment
had been unlawful some three  hundred years ago.   Spal-
lanzani and Stephens, however, proved by this  means  the
secretion of the gastric juice, and its effects upon different
kinds  of food.  They were the  first investigators in this
direction, and  it would be impossible to  name  all their
successors,—so numerous and so rich in results have been
their researches.  It must be enough to say that all  our
present accurate  knowledge of  the gastric juice, its effect
upon proteid food-stuffs, and its inertness for others, as well
as the wide-spread activity of the pancreas (the function
of which was  so  utterly unknown to the ancients), we owe
to experiment of comparatively recent date.
  The view of the nervous system held by the ancients was
that the brain was a large gland, secreting certain  animal
spirits, which  were distributed by the nerves to the di  rent
tissues  of the body.  " The  nerves," says Galen,  " like
streams from a fountain, convey to the muscles their power
from the brain."  Experiment had given him a rough  but
fairly correct  idea of the course of this stream of  power,
especially as conveyed by the spinal cord.   He gave public
demonstrations on the matter, using young pigs  as subjects,
that he might not shock the susceptibilities of the audience 
        THE RELATION OF EXPERIMENT TO PHYSIOLOGY.    65

 by employing the more human monkeys, which he would him-
 self have preferred. He showed the effects on the respiratory
 system and other movements produced by section  of  the
 cord in the region of  the neck;  and he pointed out  the
 results of section at other points, and in various manners.
 Considering how much he discovered concerning the spinal
 cord and its uses, it would seem incomprehensible that for
 seventeen centuries no important step in advance was taken
 towards understanding the true constitution of  the nervous
 system ; but then, they were seventeen centuries in which
 no accurate experiments were made upon this subject.
   Galen's idea that  the  nerves were  conduits of  a fluid
 termed " vital spirits " held the field for a long time; but as
 this vital fluid was difficult of  detection, it gradually ceased
 to be an object of belief, and the more correct  idea gained
 ground—that the  nerves  transmitted vibrations.   In their
 marvel  at  the first  discovery of electricity, people  were
 disposed  to attribute everything  to it, and it was  then
 believed  to  be the source of  these vibrations.   Indeed,
 makers of electric bands and stockings still continue to
 advertise that " Electricity is Life."  We are as far as ever
 from knowing what Life is;  but, in consequence of experi-
 ments, we now know that nerve-impulse is a chemical change
 —not an electric  current—taking  place in the protoplasm
 of the nerve, and transmitted from one molecule to another
 along its delicate central strand.
   As to the functions of the nerves,  little progress was
 made from the days of Galen to those of Sir Charles  Bell,
 Magendie,  and  Johannes  Miiller.  The  great idea  of the
 motor functions of the efferent  nerves, so brilliantly struck
 out by  Sir Charles Bell in his  few but valuable experi-
 ments,  was  worked  out,  confirmed,  and   developed  by
 Magendie into a  consistent  theory of the two classes  of
nerves with their distinct  functions ; and it was chiefly by
                           F 
66
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
investigating the roots of the spinal nerves,  in experiments
upon frogs, that Johannes Miiller arrived  at his accurate
conclusions as to the functions of the spinal cord.  While the
greatest credit is due  to Marshall  Hall  for originality in
discovering and persistence in teaching the laws  of reflex
action which really form the basis of our present knowledge
of the uses of  the  nervous  centres.   We now know some-
thing of  the actual  constitution of the  nerves; we know
their relation to the brain,  and the manner in which  they
bring impulses  to and  receive them  from it; we  are
acquainted with their reflex action,  and with the powerful
influence of the spinal cord;  and in the  brain  itself we
know the situations of the cells and groups of cells which
preside over many of our most important organic motions,
such as breathing, swallowing, &c.  At this point, investi-
gation has  been arrested  in England by  the  fiat  of the
Secretary of State.  But is it not obvious that without the
knowledge already gained by  this means,  there could be
no prospect at all of coping  with the  increasing nerve-
maladies of our time ?  It is  a  knowledge still very incom-
plete, but which will continue to advance, if—but only if—
experiment  is not obliged to stand still.
  Muscular action was attributed  by Galen and his suc-
cessors to the brain  and  spinal  cord.   "  This is  proved
distinctly," he says, " by the fact that if  you divide any of
the nerves,  or the spinal marrow itself,  the part above the
incision and in continuity  with  the brain will  still retain
its  powers; but the part below will be incapable of pro-
ducing either sense  or motion."  Glisson was the first to
dissent from this view; he applied the term irritability to a
muscle as distinct from its  nerve, and seems to have had an
idea of reflex  action.   Haller, however, (who, like Glisson,
was an  experimenter) explained the matter much  more
clearly.   He taught us that every  muscular fibre contracts 
       THE RELATION OF EXPERIMENT TO PHYSIOLOGY.     67

when  irritated, and that  it is thus distinguished from
vegetable  fibre,  which  has no such power.   This is  the
cause of muscular motions  after death, for the irritability
remains for a certain time, so that the muscles can be caused
to contract.  This irritability of the muscular fibre is inde-
pendent of the nerves, and  cannot be referred to any other
power; its origin is quite unknown to us. Its effects, however,
are not; and they form one  of the principal data of surgery.
   We have now gone in order through six of the principal
branches of physiology, and we have found that in each the
most important discoveries  have been made  by means of
experiment, and that to it we owe the accuracy and certainty
■of whatever knowledge we possess.   It  is impossible to lay
too much stress upon this point, for  it is the  stronghold of
the  case.   Those who defend physiological  experiment as
an absolute necessity to medicine do so—not because this or
that drug has been  discovered by its means, this  or  that
operation perfected  through its practice.   They defend it,
because without it medicine is based upon ignorance, and
every  doctor is  a  charlatan,  patching  at  a wonderful
mechanism of which he knows nothing.   They defend it,
because it  is the foundation upon which physiology as  a
science stands*  The pseudo-sciences rest upon theorizing,
guess-work,  and empiricism;  a true science  rests  upon
experiment.  If physiology be  deprived of this necessary
foundation, it will be degraded through no fault of its dis-
ciples ; it will not  fall to pieces, because  that which  has
been won cannot be taken  away, but  it will be unable to
encroach any further upon the morass of human ignorance,
because forbidden to lay a firm footing for its advancing
tread.   But, after all, interests differ.  There are some who
do not much care for that morass to be invaded.  " Quand on
veut dessecher un marais,on ne fait pas voter les grenouilles."f
   * See Appendix C.          t Madame Emile de Girardin.
                           f2 
68
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
                       CHAPTER  VII.

        'THE RELATION OF MEDICINE TO EXPERIMENT.

The subject a complicated one—An amputation in old times—An ampu-
  tation  at the present day—Facial nerves—Artificial respiration—
  Transfusion of  blood—Orthopaedic  surgery—Internal  operations—
  Chassaignac's e'craseur—Removal of one kidney—Removal of larynx
  —" Animal grafting"—Study of the processes of disease—Testing of
  drugs—Preventive medicine—Other benefits of experiment.

   The facts given in the preceding chapter form by far the
strongest proof of the value of  experiment  upon living
animals ;  because they show the part  that it has  taken in
building up—and therefore the part that  it is likely to take
in  perfecting—the science of physiology, upon which  all
true medicine is based.*

  * "Rational therapeutics must grow out of physiological knowledge,
as surely as a plant is the outgrowth of  its roots.  As the remote root-
lets are the exact  parts which are all-important for the nutrition of
the plant, so experiment feeds physiology, and thereby nourishes the
art of medical practice.  It would appear silly to ask to what  rootlet
any single fruit or flower on a widely-spreading tree owed its existence
or nutrition ;  and so it is idle to expect that each, or even any,  thera-
peutic agent or method of diagnosis should be traced to the definite
experimental discoveries that may have led to its adoption or use.  As
the branches  of our medical tree spread wider and wider, and its dia-
gnostic flowers and therapeutic fruits become more and more numerous,
we find that its physiological roots go deeper and deeper  in search of
pabulum, and the experimental rootlets become  still further removed
from the more obviously useful  and prolific part  of the plant."—Arris-
and Gale Lectures, DX, Lancet, August 5th, 1882, p. 175. 
        THE RELATION OF MEDICINE TO EXPERIMENT.     69

   In such an inquiry, it was not very difficult  to know
when we had found what we were seeking for.  Discoverers
have usually given clear accounts  of what they learnt, and
how they learnt it; and a fact in physiology can be proved,
tested, and verified, as  thoroughly as one in chemistry.
Either the lacteals do or do not empty themselves into the
thoracic  duct;  either the efferent nerve will convey motor
impulses, or it will not.  There may be a mistake about such
matters,  but there can be no uncertainty.   When the truth
has  once been found out, it is not likely to be questioned
again; and so it is comparatively easy to reckon up the debt
of physiology to experiment.
   The matter  is not  at all so simple when we come to
practical medicine.   Here,  experiment is  only  one out of
many factors which have combined to produce a certain
result; and if any one  chooses to believe  that the result
would have been produced equally well without experiment,
it is impossible to convince him.  The fact  remains, that it
was attained with it.   It is true that in physiological dis-
coveries  also, other processes are used  besides experimen-
tation ; but it is comparatively easy to assign to each its
distinct share.  But when the facts thus gained  come to be
used for the actual practical treatment of sick and suffering
human beings, no two of whom are exactly alike, they have
to be  so cautiously applied,  one deduction has  to be so
qualified by another,  individual  peculiarities  have to be
so carefully  studied  and allowed  for,  with the constant
possibility of some unknown disturbing cause upsetting all
calculations, that when success has been attained, it is very
hard to  say  to  what it has been due.    It would not be
strange,  therefore, if nothing positive could be  said under
this  heading about experiments on living animals, except
that  whatever  increased  physiological knowledge must
improve  medical practice.  If this were  all, it would not be 
70
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
 a confession of defeat.  Suppose that no astronomer  were
 to be allowed to use a sextant,  until he could quote  some
 discovery made by its means  alone ;  or  that all thermo-
 meters were to be banished from  laboratories, unless it could
 be  shown that  whatever we know about heat had  been
 learnt from thermometers and nothing  else!   So  with
 experiment in medicine.  It is  not the sole instrument of
 discovery,  nor perhaps the most  important;  but it is  an
 extremely useful  instrument,*  and in  its own place indis-
 pensable.   Much  of its work  cannot   be  disentangled
 from  the general  results,  and put down to its separate
 account, but we  are not altogether unable to  trace  its
 action, and we  shall now see  what advances in practical
 medicine can be distinctly ascribed to it.
  At every step in an important surgical  operation, we arc
 reminded of the discoveries catalogued in the last chapter,
 and of others flowing out of them.-}-  Perhaps it will  be
 well to quote Ambrose Park's description  of  operations in
 his time, in order to help us to appreciate our privileges.
 " I  observed my  masters,  whose method I intended  to
 follow, who thought themselves singularly well appointed
 to stanch a flux of blood, when they were furnished  with
 various store of hot irons and caustic medicines, which they
 would use to the dismembered part, now one, then another,
 as they themselves thought meet.   Which thing cannot be
 spoken or but thought upon without  great horror, much
 less acted.   For this kind of remedy could not but bring
 great and tormenting  pain to the patient, seeing such  fresh
 wounds  made in the quick and  sound flesh are endured
 with exquisite sense.  .  .  .  And verily, of such as were
  *  See resolutions of the Medical Congress, held in London in 1881,
 and of  the British Medical Association of same year.  Appendix  C.,
 IT 1T 4 and 7.
  t  For answers to objections to this line of argument, see Appendix
E., "IF 2, a. 
        THE RELATION OF MEDICINE TO EXPERIMENT.      71

burnt, the third part scarce ever recovered, and that with
much ado, for that combust wounds with difficulty come
to  cicatrization;  for by  this  burning  are caused cruel
pains,  whence a  fever, convulsion,  and  oft-times other
accidents worse  than  these.  Add  hereunto,  that when
the eschar (scale) fell away, oft-times  a  new  haemorrhage
ensued, for stanching whereof   they were forced  to  use
other  caustic  and  burning  instruments.......
Through which occasion the bones were laid bare, whence
many  were  forced,  for the remainder of their  wretched
life, to carry about  an ulcer upon  that part which was
dismembered;  which  also  took  away  the  opportunity  of
fitting  or  putting to an artificial leg or arm, instead  of
that which was taken off."
   Compare with this hideous description the processes of a
modern amputation.   The patient is probably made uncon-
scious by chloroform, which was studied by  Simpson  in
experiments  upon  the lower animals* as well as on himself
and other men.  Some other anaesthetic may,  however,  be
used ;  or, perhaps, some peculiarity in the patient's  consti-
tution may make it dangerous to render him insensible.   In
this case pain may be saved  by the sub-cutaneous injection
of morphia,*]-  studied by Dr. Alexander Wood and the late
Mr. Rynd (of Dublin) upon sporting dogs, and by a com-
mittee  of the Medical and Chirurgical  Society^ upon
other animals.  The next  step  is to  empty  the limb  of
blood.   Experiment has shown that the blood-vessels have
a power of contracting; and they do  contract when the
pressure is reduced from any  cause,  such as raising the
  * Report of Royal Commission,  p. xiii.
  + "Sub-cutaneous  injection was used  in the  laboratory for years
before it was applied  in practice."—Memorandum of Facts, &c, pub-
lished  by the Association for the Advancement of Medicine by Re-
search, p. 11.
  X Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, vol. 51, p. 199. 
72
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
limb.  The  surgeon, therefore, holds it up for a time, and
it becomes comparatively bloodless.  Experiments made by
Brown-Sequard and others  having taught him how long
the tissues can be left completely deprived of blood without
risk of mortification, he  next ventures  to apply Esmarch's
elastic bandage, and almost completely empties the limb of
the vital fluid.
  The cutting being accomplished, the injured arteries are
firmly tied before any bleeding occurs,  in a fashion  which
is the result  of long discussions and many experiments.*
Although the  ligature itself is  of  very old date (definite
accounts of  it being found in the writings  of the Arabians
of the tenth and twelfth  centuries), yet the  right manner of
applying  it was  only arrived at by slow  degrees.   Up to
the beginning of the last century, the nerves used commonly
to be tied in,  together with the vessels, causing frightful
suffering, and  frequent  death from tetanus.   Going, then,
into the other extreme, the ligatures used were wide, and
they were loosely tied over corks, &c,  so as not  to  injure
the coats of the artery ; but they failed to stop the bleeding.
The experiments of  Dr. John Thomson, of  Edinburgh, and
of Dr. Jones, who followed him, proved that the best method
was to tie the artery extremely tightly, which caused the
blood within to coagulate, and deposit a clot of solid matter
that acted as a stopper to close the opening.   As the operator
is familiar  with  the action of the absorbent vessels (dis-
covered by experiment, as related in Chap.  VI.), he will
use a catgut ligature, which will not need to be pulled away
when the wound  is healing,-}- but can be left where it is to

  * See Appendix E., IT 2. e.
  t It is difficult for any one without experience to realize the annoy-
ance of the old ligatures.  Imagine three or four different strings
hanging out of one wound for months, sometimes for years, as occurred
in the case of Lord Nelson 1 
         THE RELATION OF MEDICINE TO EXPERIMENT.      73

 be gradually absorbed.  And adopting  Professor Lister's
 aseptic mode of treatment (chiefly based upon experiment),
 his  ligature—as well as the dressings which he will sub-
 sequently use—will be carbolized.*
   The  amputation  itself takes place, perhaps without the
 shedding of a drop of blood, certainly without the  least
 danger of haemorrhage.   Deaths from this cause—once the
 surgeon's terror—are now almost unheard of.  The wound
 (kept perfectly clean, and free from all causes of irritation)
 heals naturally and healthily, with very little pain,—if the
 aseptic method be employed, with none.  There is no fever,
 no formation of matter, no fear  of bleeding coming on from
 the  ends of the cut  vessels; and the restorative forces of
 Nature have full play.
   " Look on that picture  and on  this," and remember that
 at every step experiment has  been the guide from  worse
 to better.  The brilliant discovery of  Lister was led up to
 by the  experimental  researches into wound-fever carried
 on by  Lee, Bennett, Pasteur,  Colin,  Toussaint, Weber,
 Breuer and Chroback, and Koch.  They investigated and
 experimented, finding out gradually  what the  fever was
 not, and what did not cause it; then what it was, and what
 did  cause it;  and  thus they  prepared  the field  for  the
 original genius that struck  out  the method of prevention.
 And if  any be inclined to object that hundreds of  animals
 were sacrificed in the process of discovery, let him think of
 the thousands of men who have been sacrificed for want of
 it, and who would in all future  ages—as long  as man is
 liable to disease  or injury, and particularly so long as war
 lasts—have  died miserably in festering hospitals of all the
 horrible  varieties of simple  or secondary wound-fever, and
 the other consequences of wound-infection.  The perfecting
of this  mode of treatment has  now been forbidden by the
                 * See Appendix, E., IT 2, y. 
74
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
Home  Secretary;  but enough had  been done before the
reign of " Zoophilism " in England  to secure a great saving
in human life, and the good work is being carried on in
other countries.
  Until within the present century, surgeons used to divide
one of the nerves of the face (the portio dura of the seventh
pair), in hopes of curing  neuralgia.  But as the nerve had
nothing whatever to do with sensation, the only result was
to destroy motion in that side of the face.  The experiments
which revealed the true functions of  the nerve, at last put
an end to this piece of stupidity.  This same nerve  often
loses its  power of  action from one of many various causes
affecting different portions of it; and the treatment must be
different according to the part affected.  This can only be
discovered from indications, the meaning of which has been
learnt  from vivisections,  in combination, of course,  with
anatomy.
  If a man has fallen into the water, and become insensible
before  he is  taken out,—or fallen down an old well,  or in
any other way has had his blood poisoned with carbonic
acid gas (which we call being suffocated), the best means to
restore him is artificial respiration.  But here we are again
indebted to experiment on living animals ; for this method
was  used  upon them by Vesalius, Hooke, Lower, and
others, long before it was applied to  the  resuscitation of
human beings.
  Suppose, however,  that he has been suffocated  by the
fumes  of charcoal; if the mischief  has  gone far, artificial
respiration  will not  bring him  round.   We may go on
trying  it until  all hope is lost, if we do not  know  what
Claude Bernard's experiments have proved,—that the car-
bonic oxide gas given off by burning charcoal makes a more
stable  compound with the colouring matter of the blood,
which prevents it henceforward from uniting with oxygen. 
        THE RELATION OF MEDICINE TO EXPERIMENT.     75

So that it is useless to pump in supplies of  fresh air; the
only thing to  be done is to get  rid at once of the spoiled
blood, and replace it with new.  This can be done by trans-
fusion, or injecting  enough blood from a healthy person to
keep the system alive  until it can produce more for itself.
In the same way, when life is all but lost from haemorrhage,
it can be recalled by a fresh supply of the vital fluid.  It is
only from repeated and careful experiments  that  surgeons
have learnt how to perform this operation with success.   It
is never done  except  as  a last  resource,  when  everything
else has failed; and  so far has saved  more  than  half the
cases in which it has been attempted.*
  Great improvements in orthopaedic surgery  are due  to
the physiological investigations of Stromeyer, Von Ammon,
Bouvier, Guerin, and others, in the present century.
  Tenotomy (or the  surgery  of  tendons) has only been
carried on in a scientific manner and with successful results
since the  subcutaneous method of  performing the operation
was perfected, and the  repair of tendons investigated  on
the lower animals by the same experimenters.f
  The  possibility of  operating with  the knife upon  the
stomach and  intestines was only proved by experiments
upon  animals,  especially by the easy  establishment  of
gastric  fistulae in dogs.  In the same manner, the methods
of  operation  were  studied ;  and,  consequently,  diseases
which were formerly considered hopeless are now brought
within  reach of amelioration or cure.|
  It sometimes happens  that tumours are situated either
where  they  cannot be reached by the knife, or where the
ha3morrhao-e when they  are removed  cannot be arrested.
In  such a case, nothing could be done for the patient until
the invention of  M. Chassaignac's e'craseur,  an instrument
            * See Appendix E., IT 2, t.
            t See Appendix E., IT 2, 17.
            J Heidenhain, loc. cit., p. 37. 
76
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
which slowly tears through the tissue instead of  cutting it.
In this way, there is almost no bleeding, and  the  operation
can be performed with safety.  It was necessary, however,
that he should test his instrument before using it on human
beings; and he  satisfied himself  of its value and safety by
experiments upon dogs, instead of upon hospital patients.
  No one would have supposed that a creature  could live
in perfect health with only  one  kidney, when Nature has
supplied it with  two, until the fact had been proved  upon
dogs.  This knowledge has emboldened surgeons  to attempt
the  operation of removal  in human cases; it has now
frequently been  performed, and repeatedly been  successful,
where all  other  means of prolonging  life or making it
bearable had failed.
  Billroth, the celebrated  Vienna surgeon, had  a  patient
who  was  threatened  with  sudden  death  from malignant
disease of  the larynx.   The only hope that  he  could see
lay in removing the entire organ; but the  operation had
never  been performed before, and  he could not venture
to attempt it for the first time upon a man.   His assistant,
'Czerny, - however, performed it successfully  upon  several
dogs;  and by using  his experience, Billroth was able to
save his patient's life. The man recovered, and with an
artificial larynx was able to breathe,  and even to speak in a
whisper.*
  In some very bad  cases of injury to the skin, especially
from extensive burns or scalds, when it has been completely
destroyed  over a large surface—the  patient would die of
exhaustion, before the cuticle could renew itself by the slow
process of  growth from the  edges  inwards.  But  in con-
sequence of experiments in animal grafting (as it is called),
pieces of cuticle can now be  removed from other parts of
the body and planted on the  denuded surface, where they
                * Heidenhain, loc.  cit., p. 39. 
          THE RELATION OF MEDICINE TO EXPERIMENT.      77

  will, as  it  were, take  root from, and cover it over.  On
  a  similar  principle   artificial noses  are  made,  and  a
  hideous  disfigurement  is  changed  into  a  very tolerable
  ugliness.
    These are some of the most distinctly quotable cases in
  which improvements in treatment can be directly traced to
  experiments upon living animals.  But as improved  treat-
  ment must almost necessarily follow upon increased know'-
  ledge of the disease, those series of experiments which have
  taught us more of the processes  of illness find their place
  in this  chapter.   So many different experimenters have
  contributed to the advancement of  this  department of
  pathology that it  would  be  impossible  to name  all  and
  invidious to name some,—especially as a discovery has often
  resulted from the work of  one man  combined with that of
  another, and  cannot justly be assigned  to any individual.
  It will be best simply to mention  some of the most valuable
  additions to our knowledge of this subject which we owe
  to experiment  upon living  animals.
    In few departments of medicine is there a greater advance
  to look  back upon, and to look  forward to—than  in the
  treatment of fever.  An accurate  knowledge of the manner
  in which it kills its victims is being attained by means of
  experiments upon animals * and  there is every reason to
    * These are the celebrated "baking alive" experiments.  The  term is
  an especial favourite, being a peculiarly unpleasant one, and it would also
  convey to most minds the false impression that the animals are put into
  a hot oven. The fact is that the temperature of their blood is gradually
  raised by heat, until they die,—exactly as our blood would be raised by
  fever, until we died. The symptoms are the quickening of the breathing
,  and the pulse, and then the gasping and panting with which the watchers
  by sick-beds are  only too painfully familiar, but which cannot  be de-
  scribed as acute suffering.   Finally, the animal falls into convulsions,
  when it becomes unconscious, and any sound which it may make denotes
  no pain. The process now usually lasts for  about two hours. Bernard,
  in these experiments, used two pigeons,  two guinea-pigs, less than
  twenty rabbits, and six dogs. (Sir William Gull in Nineteenth Century 
78
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
 expect that this knowledge will also supply  the means of
 saving them.
   There are  two  forms of dropsy, one  arising from dis-
 order of the nervous system,  and the  other from derange-
 ment  of the  secretions.   Until  experiments  upon  the
 mechanism of the circulation, and the effects of the nervous
 system  on it, enabled physicians  to  distinguish between
 the  two, they used to be treated alike, often  with fatal
 results.
   Apoplexy is often caused by a clot which has  formed  in
 the blood, and stops up one of the vessels  of the brain, thus
 preventing  that part from  obtaining its usual nourishment
 of blood.   Before this was understood,  an  apoplectic patient
 used to be bled, and robbed of a quantity  of the very blood
 for which his brain was starving.  Experiments on the effect
 of plugging arteries (embolism) made this clear, and ex-
 plained other obscure cases of  sudden death : and apoplexy
 is now treated in a more rational and successful manner.
   Formerly, if a bone was found to be diseased,  there was
nothing  to be done but to  amputate the  limb to which it
belonged.  But experiments on the mode of repair of frac-
tured or injured bone, particularly those of Duhamel (1740),
Sir Astley Cooper (1820), and  Syme (1831),—have now led
surgeons to content themselves with removing the diseased
portion  of  bone,  carefully leaving the membrane which
surrounded it  to produce (as  it will  in  time) a tolerable
substitute.  In this way, a healthy hand  may now be left

for March, 1882,  p. 460.)  A medical opponent  replies to this, that
zymotic diseases cannot be cured by medicine, though they can be pre-
vented by hygiene. If they cannot be directly cured by medicine, they
can certainly be alleviated and controlled by treatment; and how can
either treatment or prevention be thoroughly carried out, except with
a thorough knowledge of the nature and causes of the disease in ques-
tion?  Are we to understand that he declines to  treat  fever cases,
considering that "drugs are impotent ?"  (See Appendix E.) 
        THE RELATION OF MEDICINE TO EXPERIMENT.     79

at the extremity of an arm which has  lost a piece of its
bone, instead  of  an unsightly and comparatively useless
stump.
  Redfern, Cohnheim, von Recklinghausen, and others have
conducted experiments into the nature and origin of inflam-
mation, by which knowledge has been gained that is of use
almost at every turn in treatment.  It is not necessary to
dwell on the importance  of understanding  the most wide-
spread of all diseased symptoms.
  Another way in which  experiments upon living creatures
have contributed to  improvements in  treatment, is by the     /
testing  of various  drugs,  whose effects are tried upon the   '/
lower animals, in order to judge of their probable value or
uselessness to man.  It is  quite true that positive conclu-
sions cannot be drawn in  this way.  All drugs do not affect
all animals alike, any more than they do all men.  Rabbits
can eat belladonna, and be  none the worse  for it; while it
is dangerous to give chloroform to dogs, though most  men
and  women can take it safely. But these notable excep-
tions are noted because they are exceptions: on the whole,
a substance which will poison a cat will not agree with a
dog, and what will excite  the heart of a frog is likely to
do the same to a man.  In short, the effect of a drug upon
one of the lower animals  furnishes a strong presumption—
thouo-h not an infallible indication—of what its effect will
be upon a human being.  And in such a hazardous  pro-
ceeding as that  of introducing a new substance  into the
complex human  economy, it is surely necessary that there
should  be  at least a strong  presumption  that it will do
o-ood, and not harm.  But this could never be gained with-
out experiment; and by  means of experiment it often has
been gained, with the  result of  adding many  new  and
valuable remedies to the pharmacopoeia.  In this way chloral
hydrate was discovered;  and  the fact that it has been 
80
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
 sometimes misused does not make it the less soothing and
 useful when properly administered.  The use of atropin to
 check the flow of saliva was thus learnt, and great relief
 can now be  given to a most distressing feature in  some
 cases of paralysis  and fracture of the  skull.   The manner
 in which belladonna acts  as a poison  has been shown by
 experiments; and  so also has it  been  proved that a sub-
 stance extracted from calabar bean is its antidote.  The
 stimulating effects of strychnia upon the spinal cord were
 made out by Magendie's  experiments;  by the same means
 it  was tested for  practice, and established  as a  valuable
 nerve  tonic ;  and  by the  same means also,  Professor
 Haughton introduced nicotin  as  its antidote.  Very little
 could  be done for the agonizing  disease  called angina
 pectoris,  until it was  discovered that  nitrite  of  amyl
 causes general relaxation  of the blood-vessels, which in
 that complaint are  believed to  be  in a state of spasm; and
 it has proved a most valuable remedy.  Every new druo-
 introduced into the pharmacopoeia up to the  passing of the
 " Cruelty to Animals" Act, 1876,  might in fact be added
 to the list; but these are the most salient instances, and
 they  will  be  valuable for the guidance of  those persons
 who say they are determined not to avail themselves of the
 benefits  of  experiment.   They now know  a few of the
 remedies  they should avoid, in case of meeting with un-
 toward accidents  in the way of poisons and  diseases; and
 it will perhaps be kinder to increase their chances of life by
 not mentioning more.
  Besides the effect of experiment upon direct treatment,
 it has had an important influence upon preventive medicine.
 The investigations  which  have taught  us the origin and
processes of many  diseases,  both  of  animals and  man—
though they may not have supplied modes of cure—have
erected finger-posts pointing out what  to avoid, and  what 
        THE RELATION OF MEDICINE TO EXPERIMENT.     81

sources of disease to eliminate;  and, though it is a good
thing to know how to cure a disease when  you have got it,
it is a much better thing to know how to keep from getting
it.   Thus, it is of great importance to have learnt from ex-
periment that cholera is chiefly communicated by drinking
water,  and that consumption  is infective.  The aseptic
treatment already referred to is based upon researches of
this class,  and so is the method of  preventive inoculation.
This has  been  greatly  ridiculed  by writers  who have
affected to suppose that all sorts of disgusting diseases were
to be given to animals and men, in order to prevent their
catching them!   Any  treatment  can be  reduced to an
absurdity, if it  is supposed to be  used without common
sense  or  discretion; but sharp  weapons are for  skilled
hands.  Preventive inoculation would  only be used where
there was sufficient danger of contracting the actual disease
to make it worth while to  produce the milder  type.  In
small-pox  such a danger is constant;  in animal epidemics,
and probably some human maladies, the occasions for using
this preventive  arise from time  to  time, as a  wave of
infection swells  towards us.  By this and other means the
sources of silkworm  disease, small-pox  of  sheep,  cattle
plague, splenic fever, farcy, glanders, and  anthrax (both
among sheep and men),  can now  be  grappled  with,  and
degrees of success attained, varying from perfect immunity
to useful alleviations*   All  the  progress  hitherto made in
this direction is, of course, due to experiments upon animals
of the class concerned ;  all the progress to be made in future
depends upon whether  these experiments are continued or
stopped.
   The part of experiment in the progress of medicine is not
confined to such results as can be catalogued.   At every
turn it controls observations, corrects  deductions,  verifies
                 * See Appendix C. Section II.
                            G 
82
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
discoveries, tests improvements,  suggests inquiries, always
(as Professor Sharpey so well said before the Royal Com-
mission) " putting  a lamp in the  hand of the physician."
This lamp  has been  turned down rather  low in England,
but it  still burns.  Will the world be the better if it is
altogether  extinguished, and  the task of  shedding light
upon the onward path of medicine left to the torch-bearers
of other countries ? For it is inevitable that—if the present
anti-experimental  agitation  should prove  successful—its
history must  tend to force all physiologists into identifying
tenderness to animals with  unscientific sentimentalism, and
unreasoning disregard of the sufferings of men.  And that
injury to their finer feelings which is now supposed to have
resulted from the free exercise of their profession, must in
truth come to pass in some  measure from  its enslavement
in England. 
LEGISLATION : PAST, PRESENT, AND POSSIBLE.      83
                     CHAPTER VIII

        LEGISLATION : PAST, PRESENT, AND POSSIBLE.

General state of the law—Martin's Act—No English physiologist pro-
  secuted under it—The " Hand-book to the Physiological Laboratory"
  —The Norwich experiment — Appointment of the Royal  Com-
  mission—Its  conclusions from the evidence—Recommendations—
  The  Act of 1876—Its principal provisions—Defects—Autocracy of
  the Home Secretary—Mode of proceeding under the Act—Action of
  the Home Secretary—Bill for the Total Abolition of Vivisection—
  Desirable modifications in the working of the Act—Responsibility
  to be left to the  signatories—Certificates unnecessary for inocu-
  lations—Licenses held by medical instructors to hold good for their
  term of office—What is abstractly desirable.
   Every one may not  be acquainted with the exact state
of  the law at present,  as regards cruelty to animals, and
scientific experiments.   It is very curious and interesting,
and has the great  merit of being peculiarly British.  That
is to say, it is not  trammelled by any principle previously
laid down, or hindered by any consideration of reasoning or
consistency.   To found a new law upon a distinct principle,
from which its enactments develop logically,  has  a Con-
tinental flavour about it displeasing to the  national mind,
and reminds us  in some way of centralization.   We prefer
to make  a fresh  regulation  every now and then, when it
occurs to  us,  or when  somebody makes a  fuss, and it is
necessary to  do something.  In this way a state of things
has come about, in which it is penal to use domestic animals
                            g2 
84
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
 in any way cruelly, but in which any one may torture wild'
 creatures in whatever fashion he likes, provided it be not
 for  scientific purposes; while any  invertebrate animal is
 given up to whatever any one chooses to inflict, for any or
 no reason.   The older law against cruelty to animals,  com-
 monly known  as  Martin's Act, applies only to those which
 we call domestic.  It did not therefore need the Act of  1876
 to protect horses,  asses, and mules, cats and dogs,  from
 cruelty ; while, now that it has  been passed, an otter may
 be killed by inches to amuse a crowd of men, or boys may
 roast a rabbit  to death for fun; but if there be a serious
 scientific reason for giving pain to  a rat, the  operator is a
 criminal, unless he is shielded by  a fence of licenses and cer-
 tificates.  Thus, Mary Ann, the housemaid, may kill all the
 mice in  the house with the horrible poison of phosphorus,
 and no  one will  interfere with her ;  but if Mary Ann's
 master, the surgeon, injects snake-poison  into  one of them
 in hopes of  discovering an antidote for it, he becomes liable
 to a £50 fine.  And if Mary Ann, being tender-hearted, and
 disliking smells behind the wainscoting, has recourse to live
 traps, and is then  puzzled  to know how to dispose of her
 prey, she may give it to the stable-boy to amuse his terrier
 with, but she must not give it to  the surgeon to experiment
 on.  Nothing makes it  criminal  to give pain to  a  wild
 animal,  except having  sufficient justification.  In  a  new
 sense, qui s'excuse s'accuse.  Briefly, the case stands thus i
 You must have a good reason for hurting a tame creature \
 you  must  not have  a good reason for  hurting a  wild
 creature; and you need have no reason at all for hurting
 an invertebrate creature.
   Before physiologists  and  invertebrates had been  thus
 unfavourably distinguished  from their  fellow  creatures,
Martin's  Act was the only law upon this subject; but it was
amply sufficient to protect domestic animals  from anything 
        LEGISLATION :  PAST, PRESENT, AND POSSIBLE.     85

that could be really called cruelty.  The Royal Society for
the  Prevention of  Cruelty  to Animals exists for the very
purpose of prosecuting  such acts.  As we find it later on
proposing legislation  for the purpose of  restricting  expe-
riment, we naturally expect to find that it first  exhausted
the  powers of the  existing law.  We expect to learn that
its numerous prosecutions  against  those  who  "tortured"
■cats and  dogs failed  to repress the odious practice, either
because it was so  widespread as to  be  irrepressible, or
because the  sentences  which  could  be  imposed  under
Martin's Act were not sufficiently severe.   But it is not so.
We  look  vainly  for  the prosecutions, vainly for the sen-
tences, most vainly  of  all  for the  evidence of " tortures"
needlessly  inflicted by  any  English  physiologist.   The
S. P. C. A. itself tells  us* that they have employed " the
surveillance  of   detectives,  and  vigorously  pursued  the
prosecution of  offenders;"  but we learn from the same
authority  that " the only prosecution ever instituted against
vivisectors under a  penal  statute  [was]  the   celebrated
Norwich proceedings."  After all, detectives and vigour are
.not all that is needed  for an action at law; there must also
be something to  be detected.  Up  to the sitting of  the
Royal  Commission  in 1875, evidence had not been forth-
coming to bring  a charge of cruelty  to animals home to
.any English physiologist.  The Society attributes this to the
difficulty of obtaining entrance to laboratories, or evidence
.of what goes on there.   But the laboratories at Westminster
Hospital,  St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Guy's  Hospital, the
Brown Institution, and St. George's  Hospital,  were opened
to its agents when they applied  for  admission (a privilege
•of which they seem only to  have availed themselves in two
.cases out of the five); and considering the  large number of
  * Vivisection,  Introduction, p.  5. Published for the Royal Society
ior the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 
86              PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
students and servants who must be privy to whatever
horrors are supposed to go on  in  other  laboratories, it is
incredible that no evidence could have been forthcoming in
any single  case, if cruelty had  really been practised to an
extent calling for special legislation.  Whatever explanation
may be  put forward, these  are  the plain facts—that the
Society never instituted a prosecution for cruelty to animals
against one  of the English physiologists,  and that—both
in the temperate statement  above  quoted, and  in the
evidence before the  Royal Commission of the Secretary,
Mr. Colam (already referred to)—it was admitted that, as a
general rule, they used anaesthetics wherever possible  con-
sistently with  the experiment, and could not be convicted
of a single case of wanton cruelty.
   Matters stood thus previous to the meeting of the British
Medical  Association  at  Norwich in 1874.   Considerable
feeling had  been  excited in  the lay public by a  work
written  by Drs. J. Burdon Sanderson and Michael Foster,
entitled  " Handbook to the Physiological Laboratory," and
published in 1871.   This book was intended for " beginners"
in  experimental  physiology  (who  must necessarily  be
advanced students in the ordinary science  of medicine); it
was meant to be used under supervision in a regular labo-
ratory ;  the use of anaesthetics  was taken for granted, just
as it would be in a book on operative surgery ; and descrip-
tions were inserted of experiments which  had been made,
but which it would not be necessary to repeat.  When such
a work  was read by excited  and sensitive lay men  and
women, ignorant of  qualifications which would be obvious
to the people  for whom it  was intended—they leaped
to the conclusion that  raw medical students were beino*
encouraged to  repeat for their pleasure every experiment
that had ever yielded results, careless whether the subjects 
        LEGISLATION : PAST, PRESENT, AND POSSIBLE.      87

were conscious or unconscious of pain.   This misconception
did a great deal to raise the temperature of popular feeling.
At this time, then, an " Anti-Vivisection"  agitation was in
the air, but  it had not gathered  to a  point; the vigilant
S. P. C. A. had its detectives  at  work, but had detected
nothing ;  and physiologists were going on with their busi-
ness, unlicensed and unlibelled.  Then occurred the Norwich
incident, when Dr. Magnan injected absinthe into the veins
of one dog, with the  effect  of producing  epileptic  convul-
sions,—and alcohol into those of another,  with the effect of
making it drunk.  The object was  to show the different
action of  the two drugs,  in order to enable  doctors to
diagnose  their use, and to  show the dangers of absinthe
drinking.  The  S. P. C. A. now instituted  their first pro-
secution,  but it  was not  a successful  one.  Dr. Magnan
was beyond  the jurisdiction of  English courts, and the
English doctors who were arraigned with him could not be
proved to have taken  any  part  in  the experiment.  The
public mind, however, was highly excited; and the agitation,
which  had been simmering, rose, and boiled over into the
newspapers.   Letters appeared, describing proceedings  in
foreign laboratories,  in which the experiments were dwelt
upon  in  painful detail, and nothing was said about their
objects, which were probably not known to the writers.
And it was concluded that everything which had been done
in Florence or Paris was, or would be,  repeated in London,
because one  dog had been made epileptic and another drunk,
in the presence of a body of scientific men.
   Many persons  who thoroughly appreciated the  value of
experiment  upon living animals, yet  felt that it was  a
practice  liable to  abuse,  and needing to  be  guarded by
certain restrictions; the medical profession, as a  whole, had
a clear conscience, and courted investigation; and therefore 
88
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
 no opposition was made to the appointment of a Royal
jCommission to inquire into the matter.   This Commission
 was appointed in June  1875, and  reported on January 8,
 1876.   It consisted of Viscount  Cardwell, Baron Winmar-
 leigh, the Right Honourable W. E. Forster, Sir John Burgess
 Karslake, Professor Huxley, Mr. Erichsen, and Mr. Hutton
 (editor of the Spectator).   After having examined a large
 number of medical and other witnesses, and received all the
 evidence that was laid before them  by the Societies for the
 Prevention  of Cruelty to Animals, and the  Total Abolition
 of Vivisection, the  Commission  arrived at the  following
 conclusions:
   The  number  of persons systematically engaged in the
 performance of experiments upon  living animals did  not
 exceed 15 or 20.   (Report, page viii.)  A general senti-
 ment of humanity on this subject  appeared to pervade all
 classes in this  country, not  excepting  medical students,
 physiologists, and scientific men  in  general.  (Ibid., p.  x.)
 The evidence of medical instructors was unanimous to the
 effect that students would  not tolerate the  performance of
 cruel  demonstrations before them.*  It would require a
 voluminous treatise  to  exhibit in a consecutive statement
 the benefits that medicine and  surgery have derived from
 the discoveries of the circulation of the  blood, the lacteal
 and lymphatic system of vessels, and the compound function
 of the spinal nerves, made by experiments on living animals.
 (Ibid., p.  xiii.)  "It is not possible for us to recommend
 that the  Indian Government should be prohibited from
 pursuing  its  endeavours  [by  experiment]  to discover  an
 antidote for snake-bites; or that, without  such an effort,
 your Majesty's Indian subjects should be left to perish in
 large numbers annually from the effects  of these poisons;
nor can we say that new  medicinal agents ought, in  the
               * See Appendix A,  HIT  7 and 8. 
        LEGISLATION : PAST, PRESENT, AND POSSIBLE.      89

first  instance, to be tried upon man,  when the risk to
human life might  have been prevented by a previous trial
on animals.   We cannot  recommend  that  criminals  like
Palmer should be permitted  to escape,  or persons  sus-
pected  be deprived  of the means  of  establishing their
innocence."  (Ibid., p.  xiv.)  "We cannot recommend the
total prohibition of experiments of [the inoculatory] class."
{Ibid. p. xv.)
   In short, to quote Lord  Sherbrooke (then the Right Hon.
Robert Lowe), " the Commission entirely acquitted English
physiologists  of the  charge of cruelty.  They pronounced
a well-merited  eulogium on the humanity of the medical
profession in  England.  They pointed out  that medical
students were extremely sensitive to the infliction of pain
upon animals, and  that the feeling of  the public at large
was penetrated by the same  sentiment.  They then pro-
ceeded to consider to  what  restrictions  they should subject
the humane and excellent persons in whose favour they had
so decidedly reported.   Their proceeding was very singular.
They acquitted the accused, and sentenced them to be under
the surveillance of the police for life."*
   When the Commission  arrived at the practical part of
their report, they declared it to be  impossible to abolish all
experiments on living animals, impossible to limit it  to the
"immediate application of an  expected discovery to some
prophylactic or therapeutic end," and undesirable to forbid
all such demonstrations to  students.  But they advised that
the latter should only be exhibited with anaesthetics (in  which
they only repeated a resolution passed by the Physiological
section of the British Association in 1871,t  and approved
by the leading scientific and medical men of the day) ; and
their chief recommendation was  that the whole matter of
            * Contemporary Review, October, 1870.
            t See Appendix A, U 9. 
90
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
making experiments upon living animals should be placed
under the control  of the  Secretary of State, who should
have power to grant and withdraw licenses for their per-
formance.   The holders of licenses should be  bound by
conditions, the breach of which should  render  the license
liable to  forfeiture;  and the general scope of  these con-
ditions should be " to ensure that suffering should never be
inflicted in any case  in which it could be avoided, and
should be reduced to a  minimum where it could not be
altogether avoided.  In the administration of the system
generally, the responsible  minister would  of  course he
guided by the opinion of advisers of competent  knowledge
and experience, selected  by himself, whose names should
be made  known to the  profession  and  the  public.   The
appointment of an  inspector or inspectors will be necessary,
(who) must be persons  of such character and  position as
to command the confidence of the public no less than that
of men of science.  The holder of a license, when  he receives
notice that the Secretary of State intends to withdraw it
during the period  for which it has  been granted, should
be at liberty to demand a public enquiry," and if successful,
might be allowed  " the reasonable costs  of his defence."
(Report, pp. xxii. and xxiii.)*
   Mr. Hutton,  who  takes a  prominent  part in opposing
experiments  on  living  animals, and  who  throughout
the  inquiry acted  as examining counsel for the "Anti-
Vivisectionists," appended to this report one of his own, in
which he  urged that dogs and cats should be altogether
exempted  from  experiment  of  this kind.   But as he
expressed no dissent from the principles of the joint report,
which he  signed, it appears  that—however strongly pre-
judiced an intelligent person  may be on the anti-scientific
side of the question—he finds it impossible (when brought
                   * See Appendix F, IT 2. 
        LEGISLATION : PAST, PRESENT, AND POSSIBLE.      91

face to face with the evidence) to deny the necessity of
such experiments to  physiology, medicine, and surgery, or
to recommend its total abolition.                            ,
   In the course of the same year (1876), an Act was passed
through Parliament, based upon the report of the Commis-  /
sion, but departing from  it in some important particulars.
The following is a summary of its principal provisions.
   § 2. A person shall not perform or take part in perform-
ing on a living animal any experiment calculated  to give
pain, except subject to the restrictions imposed by this Act;
under a penalty not exceeding £50 for the  first offence, and
for the  second, or any subsequent offence,  a penalty not
exceeding £100, or imprisonment for a period not exceeding
three months.   §  3. A permissible experiment  "must be
performed with a  view to the  advancement by new dis-
covery of physiological knowledge, or of knowledge which
will be useful for saving or prolonging life  or  alleviating
suffering," by  a person  holding such  a  licence as is subse-
quently prescribed.   The animal must during  the whole
of  the experiment be under some anaesthetic of sufficient
power to prevent its feeling pain ; and if the pain is likely
to continue after the  effect of the  anaesthetic has ceased, or
if any serious injury  has been inflicted upon  the animal, it
must be killed before it recovers from the influence of the
anaesthetic.  The experiment shall not  be performed as an
illustration of lectures in medical schools, hospitals, colleges,
or elsewhere, or for the purpose of attaining  manual skill.
The following exceptions are made : Experiments may be
performed as  illustrations to lectures,  if  anaesthetics  are
used, and if a  certificate, as subsequently described, be given
that the proposed experiments are  absolutely necessary for
the due instruction of the persons to whom  such lectures
are delivered—with a view to their acquiring physiological
knowledge, or knowledge which will  be useful to them for 
32
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
saving or prolonging  life,  or  alleviating suffering; anaes-
thetics—in experiments for purposes of discovery—may be
dispensed with under a certificate that their  use  would
frustrate the purposes of the experiment; the animal need
not be killed before recovery from  the anaesthetic, if  it is
certified that its death  would frustrate  the object  of the
experiment, provided  it be killed  as soon  as such  object
has been attained ;* and experiments may be performed in
order to test a previous  discovery alleged  to  have been
made for the advancement of physiological knowledge, &c,
under certificate that such testing  is absolutely necessary
for the advancement of such knowledge.  § 4. Curare is not
recognized as an anaesthetic.  § 5. Painful experiments are
not to be performed upon horses,  asses, or mules—or upon
dogs  or cats  without anaesthetics—except  with a  special
certificate that no other animal is suitable and available for
the experiment.   § 6. All exhibitions of experiments to the
general public are  illegal, and subject any one  taking any
part in promoting them to a penalty.  § 7. All experiments
performed for the purpose of instruction shall be carried out
in a  registered place; and the  Secretary of State, when
granting the license for any experiment, may insert in the
license a provision that it shall be performed in a registered
place. § 8. The Secretary of State may grant this license to
" any person whom he may think qualified," " for such  time
as he may think fit";  and it may be revoked by him on his
being satisfied that such license ought to be revoked. There
may be annexed to such  license any conditions  which the
Secretary of State may think expedient for the purpose of
better carrying into effect the objects of this Act, but not

  * If the object of the experiment were to study a mode of treatment
for some disease, or the best method of performing some operation,—
the animal would (according to  this section) have to be killed as soon
.as it was obviously recovering. 
        LEGISLATION : PAST, PRESENT, AND POSSIBLE.      93

inconsistent with the provisions thereof.   § 9. He may
direct any person performing experiments under this Act,
from time to time, to make such reports to him of the result
of such experiments, in such form and with such details as
he may require.  § 10. All registered places shall be visited
by  inspectors  appointed  by  him.   §11. Any  application
for a license under this Act, and all  the certificates above
referred to, must be signed by one or more of the presidents
of the Royal Society, the Royal  Society of Edinburgh, the
Royal  Irish Academy, the  Royal Colleges of  Surgeons in
London, Edinburgh, or  Dublin,  the Royal  Colleges of
Physicians in the same cities, the General Medical Council,
and the Faculty  of  Physicians  and Surgeons of  Glasgow
(and in the case of veterinary experiments, by the president
of  the  Royal  College of Veterinary  Surgeons, or of  the
Royal Veterinary College, London); and also  by a professor
of  physiology,  medicine, anatomy,  medical  jurisprudence,
materia medica, or surgery,  in a university in Great Britain
or  Ireland, or in University  College,  London,  or in  a
chartered college  in  Great Britain  or Ireland, unless  the
applicant be himself such a professor.  If he be one of  the
presidents named, however, he will still require the signature
of another president.  A certificate may be given by the per-
sons specified for any time or any series of experiments they
may think fit.   A copy of any certificate under this section
shall be forwarded to the Secretary of State, but shall not
be  available  for a week afterwards; and the  Secretary of
State may at  any time disallow or suspend it. § 12. The
powers  conferred by this Act of granting a license or giving
a certificate may be exercised by an order in writing under
the hand of any judge (as specified), when he is  satisfied
that it is essential for the purposes of justice in a criminal
case to make  such experiment.  §§ 18 to 19  specify the
manner, &c, of legal  proceedings.  § 20. In the application 
94
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
of this Act to Ireland, the term " Secretary of  State " shall
be construed to mean the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieu-
tenant for the time being.  § 21. A prosecution under this
Act against a licensed person shall not be instituted except
with the assent in writing of the Secretary of State.  § 22.
This Act shall not apply to invertebrate animals.
  The persons in the Act who correspond to the "com-
petent advisers," by whom the Commissioners advised that
the Secretary of  State should be  guided, are evidently the
eminent men who are empowered to  recommend the issue
of licenses and to grant  certificates ; and it would certainly
seem to be the intention  of the Act that they should be the
judges of the matter, and that the Secretary should be ruled
by their opinion.   But if so, it is very faultily expressed,
as it actually leaves  him  at liberty entirely to disregard
their  advice.  Also, there is no provision  made for appeal
on  the  part of a  licensee who may consider  himself
aggrieved  by the withdrawal of his license.  In these two
respects, the legislation now in force is much more unfavour-
able to experimental physiologists than that recommended
by the Royal Commissioners.
  When we come to investigate what is theoretically per-
mitted by this remarkable Act, we find that the  principle
which I have laid down in Chapters III. and IV. is (after all)
tacitly conceded  in clause  3;  for it is there enacted that
(upon the recommendation of certain specified persons, and
with the consent of the Secretary of State) an  experiment
may be  performed, and performed without anaesthetics-
provided that it be for the  advancement or testing of phy-
siological knowledge, or of knowledge  which will be useful
for  saving or prolonging life, or alleviating suffering, and
that anaesthetics are inadmissible in the case.  Now here is
the very   point.   Physiologists do not wish  to perform
experiments for  any other object except  the  advance  o£ 
        LEGISLATION :  PAST, PRESENT, AND POSSIBLE.      95

 physiological and  medical knowledge; they are perfectly
 ready and  willing  to use anaesthetics  whenever possible;
 they can, therefore, have no objection to this clause, as a
 matter of principle.  But it is a very important practical
 question: Who is to  be  the judge of  what  experiments
 will promote such  knowledge ?  The Commissioners  say
 the Secretary of State, guided by competent  advisers.   In
 practice,  it is the  Secretary of State  of his own know-
 ledge and wisdom.
   The result of placing an  uncontrolled discretion in  the
 hands of  one man is that the effect of the  law in question
 depends almost  entirely upon the  manner in which it is
 administered.  In fact, it is plain that—for the regulating
 of experiments—the  State  is the  Home  Secretary.  He
 could, if he chose, as a  matter of course, grant every license,
 and disallow no certificate—thus leaving the real power to
 the  heads of the medical and surgical authorities  nomi-
 nated in the Act; or he could refuse every application, and
 practically  carry out  the views of  the  extremest anti-
 vivisectionists.  No one  can interfere with him, and he is
 responsible  to no one.   The law means as much or as little
 as he  chooses to make it mean; but  this it always means
 with no uncertainty—that a layman  selected for his political
 views, and his qualifications for revising  sentences, keeping
 Local Boards in order,  attending to every one's grievances,
 and generally doing the odd jobs of the nation—is appointed
 Dictator over the Medical Profession.  He, in the last resort,
 is the supreme judge  as  to whether  a certain experiment
 will or will not promote physiological knowledge, or whether
 it will do so in a degree sufficient to justify the infliction of
 pain.
   A man ignorant  of medicine—or even  whose medical
 knowledge has not been duly  tested  and  certified—is
punished if he prescribes physic, and  attempts to cure 
96              PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
other men; but the same ignorance—if he only be Home
Secretary—need not prevent his stopping the researches of
other men, when they are seeking fresh modes of cure.  It
is no  new experience  in the world—that  knowledge is
needed to do  good, but  none to hinder it;  still, it seems
strange  to find the fact embodied as a principle  of  an
English law.  The chief fault, therefore, of the Act of 1876
is that it lays in  the hands of a single and irresponsible
man a power requiring skilled knowledge in its use, with-
out  making any provision that he shall be qualified to
exercise it.  Let us now inquire in what manner it has been
exercised.
   The actual mode of proceeding under the Act is this.  If
a medical man is engaged in any inquiry requiring  him to
make an experiment upon a living animal, for which it is
likely  to be any the worse  afterwards  (say, to be blind or
deaf, or to have some kind of disease),  and to keep  it alive
to watch the  effect—he finds  that it  is first necessary to
purchase  a printed  form of application for license, from
Messrs. Churchill and Co., New Burlington-street.  Having
filled this up duly, he  must  get  the signatures  before-
mentioned, and then send  it  in to the Home Secretary.
After waiting about three weeks, he may get  his license, or
he may not.   If he gets it, he must then go about getting his
certificate, have it also signed, and forward it.   According
to the Act, if he received no  answer to the contrary within
a week, he would be at liberty to act upon it; but a nega-
tive  answer is always sent at once, that the Home Secretary
may be  on the safe side, and he then takes his time to
think  over the matter.  Perhaps in  about  another three
weeks, the applicant may receive the permission which the
Secretary of  State's " competent  advisers"  have already
long since granted to him; but  if he has had  inoculatory
matter or disease-germs waiting  all  the  time, he  has 
         LEGISLATION :  PAST, PRESENT, AND POSSIBLE.     97

 probably ceased to  concern  himself greatly  about  the
 result.
   Although very few applications for a license  have been
 ultimately refused, yet such  applications have  been  re-
 fused  at  first,  and   certificates  disallowed ;  and  they
 have only subsequently been  granted or  allowed  after
 long delay, and by the help of strong pressure upon  the
 Home  Office.   Some certificates have been absolutely dis-
 allowed, and in several cases experiments have been pre-
 vented  by intimations that application would  be useless.
 Up to December,  1881,  seven certificates had  been dis-
 allowed ; a delay, which defeated the object of the applica-
 tion, and amounted to practical refusal, took place in  six
 cases;  and in five the applicant was deterred  from making
 a formal request.*  In this manner, the Medical Dictator has
 prevented researches into antidotes  to snake poisons, the
 multiplication of septic organisms,^ the physiology of the
 brain,  the  functions  of the spleen,  the  method  of  renal
 secretion, aseptic dressing of wounds, the actions of certain
 poisons,  intestinal  secretion and  movements,  ligatures  on
 arteries,  and other matters.  To such a  simple  practical
 issue has the matter been brought, that men are left to die
 of poison, wounds, and disease,  for want of the knowledge
 that can only be obtained at the expense of animals.  And
 the  course  adopted by the  Home Secretary  is the more
 striking,  because one of these very classes of  experiments
 (that on snake bites)  is  instanced  by the  Royal Com-
 missioners as an argument against the entire prohibition of
 what is  called  Vivisection.   Thus the very  investigation
 whose importance was  considered  by them to be a raison

  * Memorandum of the Physiological Society, 1881.
  t The microscopic vegetable growths which give rise to putrefaction
in  all its forms, and therefore to the inflammation of wounds, and
many diseases.
                            n 
98
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
 d'etre for experiment on living animals—has been simply
 prohibited by the executive  authority.  In a controversy
 where strong language has so much abounded, it is best to
 restrain indignation, yet it is difficult to write  coolly of this
 deliberate shortening of the hand stretched out to save life.
 Just as Dr. Brunton has been forbidden to seek for antidotes
 to snake-bites, so has Professor Fraser been checked  in his
 attempts to study the  nature of the poison used by  the
 natives of Borneo upon their arrows, in hopes of providing
 some safeguard for the English colonists now moving in
 that direction; while  Professor Lister has  had to  leave
 England in order to carry on his researches.  And besides
 the list of stifled  investigations already given,  how  many
 more are left unattempted because of the difficulties thrown
 in the way ?   And in the face of all this knowledge already
 refused, and  help  and  healing shut away from suffering
 men,  we are  threatened in   the  name of  religion and
 humanity with a still  further curtailing of  the working
 powers of physiology!   One  spoke  long ago  in the  name
 of religion and humanity as no other can  claim  to  speak
 after Him; but what He said must sound out of tune to
 our modern  "Zoophilists."   For, as has been  quoted by
 Prof. Yeo,* His estimate was : " Ye are of more value than
 many sparrows ;"f and  it was  in conclusive certainty that
 he asked: " Is not a man better than a sheep ?"j
  If the whole state of  the law about  cruelty to animals is
 anomalous, and that part of  it which controls  scientific
 experiment  was  unjustly framed, and is harshly  admi-
 nistered, what is now to be recommended ?  We know of
one simple and sweeping proposal, that of  the  Bill  intro-

       * Fortnightly Revieio, March, 1882, p. 366.
       t St. Luke, xii., 7.
       J St. Matthew, xii., 12. 
          LEGISLATION :  PAST, PRESENT, AND POSSIBLE.      99

  duced into the House of Commons in February, 1882, by
  Mr. Reid, Sir Eardley Wilmot, Mr. Samuel Morley, and Mr.
  Firth, and known as " The Vivisection Abolition Bill."  If
  that Bill should become law, it will not be lawful to subject
  any animal to vivisection, that is to say," to perform on any
  live animal, with or without the use of anaesthetics, any
  experiment or demonstration for any medical, physiological,
  or scientific  purpose."  (Clause 2.)  It is  only fair to say
  that in  general  the supporters  of  this  measure propose,
  when they have abolished hurting animals for the sake of
  knowledge, to  consider if they cannot attempt to abolish
  hurting them for the sake of amusement.  As the British
  public is keenly alive to the benefits of sport, but not  so
  sensitive to those of  science, the second task would probably
  be harder than the  first.  But it is to be hoped that the
  same public  has  still enough common sense left to render
 •even the destruction of experimental physiology no easy
 work.
    On the other hand,  the defenders of Medical  Research
 ask for no such sweeping measure on their side. They have
 not demanded the repeal of the Act  39 and 40 Vict. ch. 77,
 whose short and insulting title is " The Cruelty to Animals
 Act, 1876."  They would be content if it were administered
 in a spirit which takes  for granted  more humanity in
 experimenters, less omniscience in Home  Secretaries,  and
 more trustworthiness in their advisers—than  the present
 system implies.   The Royal Commissioners—we know—
 presumed that the Dictator would  be  guided by  " com-
 petent advisers;" and the Act provided them for him, in
 the persons of the heads of the medical and surgical pro-
 fessions, who  have the power of certifying that a certain
 person is a suitable  one to hold a license, that a certain
experiment is necessary for instruction, cannot be performed
without anaesthetics,  requires  the keeping  alive  of the
                          h2 
100
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
 animal after  it is concluded, or is necessary for testing a
 previous discovery.   It is surely absurd that an unqualified
 person should have the power of going behind the opinions
 of these high authorities, and contradicting them upon their
 own ground.  On the contrary, the Home Secretary's pro-
 fessional advisers ought to be, like the Queen's, responsible
 for all technical points; and licenses  ought  to be granted
 and certificates  allowed, as  a matter of course, to properly
 recommended applicants.  In cases of abuse, he will always
 have the power of withdrawing the license,—a power which
 ought to be  exercised—not autocratically, but (as advised
 by the Royal Commissioners) after a formal investigation.
 In fact, the Act is at present worked on the principle  that
 medical men  are not to be trusted, their leaders' certificates
 not  to be depended upon, and that cruelty would be the
 rule, if it  were not made  impossible.   But the profession
 was tried for cruelty before the  Royal  Commission, and
 was acquitted.  It would only be  fair, therefore, to act on
 the  basis  of  that acquittal, and admit that abuse of their
 very restricted liberty is to be  looked for  as the  exception
 and not the rule.  Therefore let the determination of who
 is to be licensed, and for what, rest with those who under-
 stand  the subject-matter of the  decision.   They are the
 best judges of  the value of what is proposed to be done,
 and the sense of responsibility to the nation, and the  public
 opinion of their own profession, will be amply  sufficient
 safeguards against too great laxity.  Probably the members
 of the " anti-vivisectionist" societies  do  not believe that
 there is any such professional public opinion ; but there is,
 and it is an  effectual, though quiet check on the few who
need it.  But if any influence from  outside could injure
it, it would  be  the constant ignoring and denying of its
existence.   It is not generally found an incentive to honesty 
        LEGISLATION : PAST, PRESENT, AND POSSIBLE.     101

to tell a man,  " You would be  a thief  if you  could,  and
therefore  I shall  keep all my goods under lock  and  key
when you are  about, and have  my eye  on you when  you
don't expect it."  Weak honesty grows  strong when leant
upon; but even strong humanity, insulted and  disbelieved
in, may hear itself called callousness until it ceases to care
for the charge.
  Again,  it is an absurdity  that an array of certificates
should be necessary for  inoculating, or injecting under the
■skin. Such operations are almost painless, and their results
are particularly valuable ; so  that any person who holds a
license ought to be allowed to perform them without any
'further ado.  Of all classes of experiments, they need the
least safeguarding.
  It is a purely annoying thing  that a teacher holding an
office the duties of which require that he should take out a
license, should  be obliged to renew it every year.   No harm
could follow from its being granted for the term of his
incumbency, as it could always  be withdrawn if abused.
The Act imposes no restriction as to the length of time for
which licenses  shall stand good; but the Home  Secretaries
have hitherto made a practice  of only  granting  them for
one year.
  These  practical suggestions are merely the conclusions
which must  follow  from considering the actual value of
physiological experiments, the  manner  in which they are
dealt with by the law as it is administered, and the prospects
of obtaining any modification in  such  administration.  If
the whole subject were to be considered  de novo, the field
cleared  of all  existing legislation, and  a new law passed
grounded on reason and principle, I should put forward
very different  proposals.  Then I  should urge the equal
claim of  all sentient creatures to be protected from human 
102
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
cruelty, and saved from needless suffering, while  admitting
the  superior claim  of men  to their use  for his own ad-
vantage.  And I should propose that it be a legal offence  to
illuse,  cruelly  treat,  or  torture,  any  creature  whatever.
This broad principle being  laid  down, special provision
should be  made  for  the various  cases in which it  was
necessary or allowable to inflict pain upon animals (among
which scientific experiment would  be one), and the needful
conditions for each should  be  specified.   But the day  of
such rational  and consistent  law-making as  this,  seems
very far away.


  Note. —While these pages have been passing through the press, the
" Vivisection Abolition Bill"  referred to on page 99,  has again been
presented to  Parliament.  The second reading was moved by Mr.
Reid, on April 4, supported by Mr. George Russell, and opposed by
Mr.  Cartwright, Dr: Playfair, and Sir William Harcourt.  The dis-
cussion had not closed when the hour for the suspension of the debate
arrived, and consequently no division was taken.  This is  much to be
regretted,  as there could be little doubt of the result.   It  would
have shown that the common sense of the British Parliament now sees
that zoophilism has had more than its fair share of influence, and that
it  is now the turn  of philanthropy.  Sir W.  Harcourt took this
opportunity of mentioning that it was now his practice only to allow
certificates upon the recommendation of the '' Association for the
Advancement of Medicine by Research," a body consisting of the most
eminent medical men in the kingdom. 
CONCLUSION.
103
                     CHAPTER IX.

                   CONCLUSION.

Summary of previous argument—Supposed demoralization of experi-
        menters—Where the real danger lies—Conclusion.
  Let us now bring together  the conclusions to which we
have been led by this  inquiry, which we  may accept  as
proved, and use as grounds of action.   We shall see that
we  have  gathered no  scanty harvest  of  facts  and rea-
sonings.
  Pain is caused by the  excessive stimulation of  a nerve ; it
can only be recognized  by consciousness, and is  felt keenly
in a  rough proportion to the  mental (which  is part  of
the  nervous)  development of the  individual.   The  lower
animals suffer absolutely much  less than man,  in varying
degrees.
  The infliction of pain without justification—or with in-
sufficient  justification—is cruelty.   Sufficient justification
consists in the attainment by  such infliction  of a good
which more  than  counterbalances the evil of  the pain
given.  Long  life, activity, and health, are  benefits which
counterbalance pain even to the same individual; when the
benefits accrue to an individual of  a higher class,  and  the
pain falls upon one of a lower, it is  still more fully counter-
balanced ; when the benefits  are to many  of  the former, 
104
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
and the pain to a few of  the latter, the advantage is still
further increased; and  when (the  other  conditions  con-
tinuing the same) the benefits are  permanent, and the pain
transient, there can remain no doubt that the justification
is sufficient.  Such is the case with all experiments  which
advance physiological knowledge.  The longer life, restored
health and activity, of an incalculable number of men and
women, extending  over  a considerable  time for the indi-
vidual, and—for the  race—over the whole period of its
existence, are gained  by  the endurance for a short time  of
varying degrees of annoyance, distress, and pain, by a com-
paratively small number of the lower animals.  There  is,
therefore, no cruelty in  the performance of  such experi-
ments.  If a physiologist makes an experiment which has
no beneficial result, the act has proved in itself a cruel one,
and is to  be regretted; but he  himself was  not  cruel  in
performing it, if he merely committed an error of judgment,
and thought that it would prove useful.  On the other hand,
if he  has been indifferent to the pain caused, and careless
whether  or not he  gave  more than was  necessary—he has
been cruel, and there is no defence  for his conduct.
  There  are other moral considerations  besides cruelty in
this question.  It is  alleged that  the  practice of  experi-
mentation tends to harden the heart of the operator, and so
demoralize him ;  but  if  the act itself be not wrong,  there
can be no demoralization in practising it.   The mere wit-
nessing of pain habituates the nerves to resist agitation, but
does not  necessarily make the heart indifferent to suffering*
as is seen every day in the case  of surgeons.  There  is no

  * Professor Ludwig, of Leipsic, who was recently President of the
local P.C.A.S., treats his dogs with the greatest kindness : and when
he is obliged to fasten them down, arranges little pads and cushions so
that they may be as little uncomfortable as possible.  He considers that
the being tied is generally what a dog dislikes most. 
CONCLUSION.
105
moral  injustice in  causing one creature to suffer for the
good of  another;  for it is one of the most  fundamental
of natural laws, and that out of which all the physical and
moral  perfections  of organic nature  have sprung.   The
absolute  condition of the life of animals as the friends and
servants  of man,  instead  of as his enemies—is that he
should be at liberty to apply this law to them for his own
benefit, instead of  leaving  the  struggle  for  existence to
enforce it  on them for that  of  their  race.  Among the
benefits which he seeks by its application, those gained for
him by physiology  are some of the greatest.  Consequently,
no moral consideration forbids him to seek them.
   The making of physiological experiments upon animals is
usually—but  incorrectly — called Vivisection.   It forms
but a small part of  the work actually done in physiological
laboratories in England.  It is always performed (where
possible) under anaesthetics, and  the number of cases in
which these  are  dispensed  with is very small.  There  is
always a distinct object for every experiment.
   All true medicine is founded upon an accurate knowledge
of the organs of the body, their working  in health, and
their derangements in  disease.   This cannot be obtained
without  experiment upon living bodies of a type generally
resembling the human.  The greater part of our knowledge
of the most important functions  of  our system has  been
o-ained in  this manner,  and rational treatment  would be
impossible without  it.
   The practice of the healing art has been directly assisted
also by experiments which have perfected treatment, tested
new drugs, &c, and introduced methods of prevention  as
well as of cure.
   Since, therefore,  experiment  upon living animals (with a
sufficient object) is  morally  justifiable,  and scientifically
necessary, we conclude that to check it is a  blunder, and to 
106
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
prohibit it would be a crime.   It is therefore to be desired
that  no further steps  should be taken towards abolition,
and that  the  present law should be  administered in a
manner  which would  give greater liberty to physiologists
of  recognized  character, while  maintaining the existing
safeguards against abuse  of  that  liberty by persons of a
different type.
  It  may be well to recur to a point upon which much
stress is  sometimes laid,  but which  has not  occupied a
large space in  our  argument.   This is  the effect of the
practice of such experiment upon the mind of the operator.
  There can scarcely be a more misleading expression than
that which describes experimental physiologists  " as persons
whose business it is known to be to inflict on animals any
amount of suffering  requisite for the special  purpose of
benefiting men."*  The business of a physiologist is to study
physiology.  In the course of that  study,  he  may  find
himself obliged to give pain; that is a disagreeable accident
of his profession, not its characteristic, still less  its essence.
This  book has been written  to very little purpose, if the
reader has still to  learn that  the  performance of painful
experiments forms  but  a  small part of the work of the
investigator;  and why should his whole character  take
its  tone from  one process  occasionally necessary to his
researches ?  A process, be it remembered, which we  have
assumed to be fully justified by his reason and conscience.
  There is no doubt that the  profession of a physiologist
has its moral  dangers; so has every other profession, or
position  in life.  Is there no possibility  that  a barrister
may weaken his love  of  truth and justice by doing his
utmost for the success  of his client, whether he be in the
right or in the  wrong ?   Are there no moral  pitfalls in the
way  of  the  attorney ?   Is  life  in the army free  from
  * Mr. Hutton, in the Nineteenth Century, January, 1882, p. 3-1. 
CONCLUSION.
107
temptation, and is a commercial career the best school of
honour and honesty ?  Is there no risk to the clergyman in
his daily familiarity with the highest aspirations and the
lowest vices ?  In fact, every  profession  has  its special
temptations,  and there is no reason to suppose that phy-
siology has more than  others.  Possibly, some experimental
physiologists are  rough and careless ; so are some  surgeons
and dentists.   Such men are probably coarse and cruel by
nature, and  their work—having to do with   suffering—
throws this fault into  strong relief; but there  is  no  proof
that they became cruel in consequence of pursuing it.  Even
granting—what is certainly probable—that the  necessity
of  inflicting  pain  may render  some natures indifferent to
it,  this is  no more  a reason  for abolishing experimental
physiology than for abolishing surgery or dentistry.  The
risk is not so great as  is believed by those who only view
the matter from  the  outside,  but at any rate it must be
encountered.
   It would be an endless task to go into all the work which
has been done by all experimenters, and apply the rules
which we  have laid down to each case.  Without entering
upon  any wholesale justification  or  condemnation of any
man or group  of  men, I have attempted to trace out what
experiment has been, need be, ought to be, and is in England,
which is  all that practically concerns us.  Wherever it has
been carried beyond  the limits which reason and justice
have marked,  it  is emphatically to be repudiated by all
just and merciful men,  but most strongly of  all by those
who owe allegiance to  the  noble profession which is thus
misrepresented.  It is one of the most disastrous effects of
the "anti-vivisection" agitation that it has rendered this
simple act a hard one, requiring  a moral  effort, instead of
springing spontaneously from a righteous indignation.  In-
 discriminate attack leads  to  indiscriminate  defence.   So 
108
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
 long as war was  waged only upon the abuses  of experi-
 ment, all those who recognized its uses were willing to join
 in the effort; but when experiment itself was attacked, and
 all  who practised it alike condemned as cruel,  they were
 all obliged to make common cause in its defence,  regardless
 of the differences which had been so conspicuous before.  And
 it is undeniable that  the effect of such comradeship is not
 good.   The real danger of " demoralization" to physiologists
 arises, then, not from practising their profession freely, but
 from being hindered  and calumniated  in pursuing it; and
 those philanthropists who  are  so anxious for  their moral
 welfare would best consult it by letting them alone.
   It is now clear  that  the total abolition of experiments
 on living  animals would be simply disastrous to the ad-
 vance of physiology, medicine, and surgery, and thus would
 greatly hinder the diminution of suffering—both human and
 animal.  On the other hand, the interests both  of man and
 beast would be furthered by a more enlightened and liberal
 treatment  of  experimenters,  at present kept under police
 surveillance as members of " the dangerous classes." Cruelty
 is intolerable,  and cannot be  tolerated.  The resolutions
 passed  by the Physiological Section of the British Asso-
 ciation  in  1871,  already referred  to, are  the authoritative
 acceptance by English  physiologists of the  principle that
 no  avoidable pain  should ever be inflicted  upon animals.
 And, indeed, any other course is simply immoral.
  There is only too much suffering in the world already,
 and the man who adds  a needless  grain  to that terrible
 mountain, is a murderer in posse.  The use of  anaesthetics
 {where  possible) follows  as a matter of course.   Painful
 experiments should never be attempted by  unskilled per-
 sons ; the marvellous vibrations of sentient nerves were not
•made to be clashed into discord by the hand of a blunderer. 
CONCLUSION.
109
And even the  skilled  inquirer should call for  that  keen
response only with a sufficient and clear reason.
  But, when all these  limitations  have been laid down,
experiment will still be seen to remain absolutely necessary
to certainty and security in medicine.  The phenomena of
the human body can be only imperfectly studied while it is
living, and  only  the arrangement  of  its parts can  be
perfectly studied when it is dead.  Thus, deductions drawn
both from bedside observation and dissections, may remain
vague and  inconclusive, while one  series  of experiments
upon a  living  animal would either  confirm  or disprove
them.*   But at the touch of experiment theory crystallizes
into fact.  It  affords  the  only  solid ground upon which
Medical  Science  can  stand;  it  alone gives Physiology a
right to  be called a science  at all.  Only of what has been
tested by experience can  we really say—we know; and
every first experience is an experiment.
   A striking example of the success and failure of the two
opposite methods of inquiry is furnished us by Sir Charles
Bell, the eminent physiologist, who  lived  and worked
about seventy  years ago.  At that time, no one  thought of
interfering with the use  of the  lower animals for purposes
of  investigation; but the  feeling against the dissection of
human bodies was very strong. In his anxiety to uphold the
study of human anatomy, he rather neglected and decried (by
comparison) experimental work ; he did in  many cases what
the Zoophilists now tell us that physiologists ought  to do
in aii:—endeavoured to prove his theories by anatomical de-
duction  alone.   What was the result ?   He spent years of
his valuable life in trying to establish a natural system of
nerves;  it was for a time accepted,  but has now proved to
be not  only mistaken, but useless.   For want of making
experiments, he wasted  priceless time and labour upon  a
                    * Appendix C, IF 2. 
110
PHYSIOLOGICAL CRUELTY.
 false track.  But, on the other hand,  in his investigations
 into  the origin  and functions  of the motor and sensory
 nerves, he did test  his theories  by experiments on  living
 animals; and this portion  of his work remains as one of
 the keystones of Nervous Physiology,  and alone renders his
 name illustrious.  These are his own  words :  " These expe-
 riments satisfied me that the  different roots  and different
 columns from  whence  these roots arose were  devoted to
 distinct offices, and that the notions drawn from Anatomy
 were correct."*
   Now that we have learnt something of what  Physiology
 owes to experiment, we can see more clearly  what  she
 would  be without it,—a vague  and hazy  pseudo-science,
 working  by guess,  rashly trying by-paths  in the dark,
 or  timidly  standing still  for fear of making a mistake,
 blundering about among human lives,  taking up a theory
 to-day and dropping it  to-morrow, nebulous, inconsequent,
 untrustworthy.   We can hardly realize the picture, because
 we have never  seen her so.  Hitherto she has  advanced,
 like other true sciences, hand-in-hand with experiment and
 observation,—sometimes slowly, it is  true,  and sometimes
 making  mistakes; but  always  advancing,  and  always
 gaining increased power to  cure  sickness and soothe pain,
 and also to  lessen or prevent the sufferings of  those very
 classes of animals by whose means so much has been learnt.
 Is  it Physiological  Cruelty to  help this  advance, or to
 check it ?
  Nothing now remains to add, except to commend this
 difficult subject  to the  dispassionate  consideration of all
 who  can place  Truth  above Feeling, still more—above
 Prejudice; who can put aside the  attraction of desire, and
the yet stronger attraction of abhorrence, in order to see,
  * An Exposition of the Natural System of the Nerves of the Human
Body, dec. By Charles Bell, &c.  Spottiswoode, 1824, p. 31. 
CONCLUSION.
Ill
not what  they wish to see,  or what they dread to see, but
what is ;  and whose real benevolence can heartily rejoice—
with no arriere pense'e of  disappointment—when a fascina-
ting horror, seen by the torchlight of excited imagination,
fades in  the  daylight of fact into one of the many dis-
agreeable—but not particularly appalling—duties of life.
Such persons will scarcely need to be once more reminded
that it is  no true humanity  which is willing to perpetuate a
great mass of obscure misery, out of sight and out of mind,
in order  to spare itself the recollection of a few cases  of
suffering, the details of which it exaggerates and dwells
upon with an ignorant and morbid sensationalism.  Nor
will they be  at  any loss to answer  the question: Where
and what is Physiological Cruelty ? 
APPENDIX   A.
             \f POPULAR FALLACIES ABOUT EXPERIMENT.

   It cannot be denied that our present legislation with regard to expe-
 riment is in a much greater  measure the result of an excited state of
 popular feeling than of the evidence laid before the Royal Commission
 and Parliament.  It seems  therefore  desirable to show that this state
 of feeling was at the  time  known by  competent  judges  to be exag-
 gerated ;  and that many of the ideas about "Vivisection" on which
 it was founded  and by which it  has  been maintained  are  simply
 fallacious.

   IT 1. In a letter addressed, by command of Her Most Gracious Majesty
 the Queen, to the President  of the Royal Society for the Prevention of
 Cruelty to Animals, by Lieutenant-General Sir T. M. Biddulph, K.C.B.,
 the  following sentence occurs, which shows that Her Majesty's kind
 heart  has been  needlessly  pained by the unfounded assertions that
 have appeared in print:—"The Queen hears and reads with horror
 of the sufferings which the  brute creation  often undergo from the
 thoughtlessness of the ignorant, and  she  fears also sometimes from
 experiments in the pursuit of science."
  Should  this little work ever be honoured by the perusal of Her Most
 Gracious  Majesty, it is earnestly hoped that it will have the effect of
 dispelling her fears,  and convincing her that no class of her subjects
 are more anxious to prevent the sufferings of  animals than  those who
 perform experiments upon them, and that her suggestion as to the uso
 of anaesthetics had been anticipated.

  IT  2. The Royal Commission appointed in 1875 "to inquire into the
practice of subjecting live animals to experiments for scientific pur-
poses," recognized the errors brought about by hearsay evidence. On 
APPENDIX  A.
113
■page  ix. the Report says :—"Much allowance  must be made for the
misunderstanding and exaggeration to which reports on such a subject
are necessarily liable when not critically examined and not based upon
the evidence of eye-witnesses."

   IT 3. The able Secretary of the Royal Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals, who has always been so earnest an opponent
of cruelty of all kinds, says in the work published under the auspices
of the Society ("Vivisection," page 11)—"Again, a random accusation
to the  effect that Vivisection is Vivisection, and its practice attended
with as much pain whenever and wherever and by whomsoever  con-
ducted, all difference in the methods used by operators notwithstanding,
and that English physiologists are equally cruel in their operations on
animals as  foreign experimenters, has been made admittedly without
proof,  and certainly  against  the common  experience   of  persons
acquainted  with the  facts.   Again,  descriptions of  experiments,  of
implements of experiments, of conduct  and conversations of experi-
menters in laboratories, have been published in papers in  reference to
the  present agitation  in  England,  conveying impressions that  such
matters relate to  English vivisections.    Exposures  of  cruelty  are
valuable provided  they do not mislead.   It is not always convenient
to identify ; but, in a discussion on English practices, it is incumbent
on a writer to exonerate English physiologists when narrating particular
and definite circumstances in which he knows they are not blameable,
-while certain foreign physiologists are, instead  of leaving  them under
the stigma of his terrible recital. Such omissions may serve a temporary
purpose, but when  discovered, like actual misstatements, they lead to
unfavourable conclusions."

   IT 4.  Sir George Burrows, one of  the most respected fathers of the
medical profession, who cannot be said to  have  any bias in  favour of
vivisection, says, in his evidence before the Royal Commission : " I do
think, from the conversations I have had—not with  scientific people,
but with humane  people whose feelings are very acute, and who are
horrified at the idea of cruelty being practised on dumb animals—that
they have an idea that the  practice of what  is called vivisection is
carried out to a much greater extent  than it  really is ; and I believe
that many of  those persons (who are persons of strong feelings, and
very humane in their  nature)  are under an impression that vivisection
means the dissection of living animals ; they think that these opera-
tions upon the living body are somewhat analogous to that of dissection
on the dead bod}'.  I am sure that there is a confusion in their minds on
the subject, and it ought to be made well  known to the public  that
really what is called vivisection very often is something so  trifling that,
as your Lordship put  it to me just  now,  you would never think of
                                 I 
114
APPENDIX A.
  employing an anaesthetic to perform it; and also experiments that are-
  performed on animals very often do not imply any cutting at all; no
  instrument is used ; you have to  administer a medicine or a poison to<
  see what the effects are. Now we know pretty well what the effects-
  of strychnine on an animal are ; but an experiment might be performed
  to show the effects of strychnine on the nervous system or the muscular
  system, and there  is  no cutting.  So also an experiment  might be
  performed to see the effect  of inoculation ;  you might inoculate an
  animal; if you inoculated a human being to  prevent some particular
  disease, you would hardly call that vivisection."   (Question 155.)

   1 5.  One of the  members of the Royal Commission seems  to have
  shared the popular view concerning the meaning of the word vivisection,
  since in one question (No. 3592) he asked, " Have you cut  up any dogs.
  or cats by vivisection ?"

   TT 6. Ideas almost incredibly wide of the truth seem to be present in
  Lord  Coleridge's  mind concerning physiological  experiments.  He
  says (Fortnightly Review, Feb.  1882) :—" Suppose it capable of proof
  that by putting to death with hideous torment  3,000 horses you could
  find out the real nature of some feverish symptom, I should say without
  the  least  hesitation that it would  be unlawful to  torture the 3,000
  horses."  Such a thing never has  been done,  nor  is it in  the least
  degree likely ever to be done ;  but Lord  Coleridge would  hardly have
  thought the case worth putting if he had known it to be  absurd, and it
  therefore fairly measures his acquaintance with the subject.

   IT 7. In some people's minds the cruelty of wanton young men and boys
 has been confounded with experiment for scientific purposes, and there
 are  some who actually  believe that students of  medicine  cut up
 live animals.   Upon this point the following passages  occur in the
 Memorandum published in 1882 by the Association for the Advance-
 ment of Medicine by  Research, an  association  consisting  of  the
 leaders of the medical profession :—
   " It has been imagined that students of medicine perform operations
 upon living animals,  in order to gain manual dexterity : such a practice
 would be as useless as it would be  reprehensible, and has never, we
 believe,  been thought  of.  For our veterinary surgeons it would be
 quite unnecessary, and they have always reprobated the practice.
   "It has also been supposed that students might, for amusement,
 perform  physiological experiments upon  living animals.   This would
 be practically impossible, since not only  are  knowledge and  skil
 necessary, but a properly equipped laboratory and  suitable  appliances.
 If, however, any ill-disposed person without scientific object or train-
ing should be guilty of cruelty most alien from  the  practice and the 
APPENDIX A.
115
 training of the profession, there is no doubt that every member of it,
 teacher, or student,  would help to detect  and punish such conduct.
 The case has never arisen ; if it did, it could  be efficiently dealt with
 under the law known as ' Martin's Act.'"

   IT 8. These statements are fully  borne  out by the Report  of the
 Royal Commission and the evidence elicited by them from the teachers.
 Referring to this point, they say in their Report (p. xvii.) : " So far as
 our evidence goes,  such cases appear  to have  been  exceptional  and
 abnormal.".....
   In  his answers  to questions 2034  and 2062  Dr.  Pavy  states:
 " No  class  of  students,  if  I  know  anything about medical  stu-
 dents, would  tolerate the introduction of a  living  animal into the
 theatre, and a vivisection performed on that animal, whilst the animal
 was not under the influence of some anaesthetic.     ....
 At the commencement of my course, I am almost obliged to give a little
 apology for saying that the course will be an experimental one.   I see
 upon the faces of the students sitting before me a feeling which leads me
 to consider it necessary to make some explanation, and to tell them at
 once  that no  experiment will be introduced which will wound the
 feelings of the most sensitive amongst them."
   The following statement is made by Dr.  Burdon-Sanderson  in his
 answer to question 2613 :—" I have had a great deal to do with stu-
 dents at different periods of my life, and have now a great deal to do
 with them, and I must say that I have  never  met with any tendency
 on the part of students to make experiments."
   Dr. Purser, Professor of Physiology  in Trinity  College, Dublin,
 says  in  reply to question 4884 :—"I think there is an impression
 abroad that medical students are  very fond of performing experiments
 on animals, and that performing experiments  on living animals is a
 very amusing occupation,  and a thing which not only all students but
 all doctors also are very anxious to do.  Now my experience is quite
 the reverse of that; my experience is that as  a rule students have no
 taste  whatsoever for such  pursuits.   The operations ire extremely
 disagreeable to perform, extremely difficult, and extremely expensive ;
 and I think  that all those reasons would make students not take to
 them.  Besides  that, I think students would not  care to perform
, operations which they did not think  themselves competent to perform,
 and which they did not think that some good would come from ; and I
 am  sure that any  student in our  schools  thinking of performing
 experiments would come to the professor and  take his advice and get
 his assistance, and, if the professor thought it necessary, do it  under
 his  supervision."  And similar evidence  is  given  by  many  other
 teachers.
   In answer to question 1550, the Secretary to the Society for the
 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, says:—"With regard to London,
                                I 2 
110
APPENDIX  A.
I have enquired at every school, and I have not found a single  place
where experiments  are actually  performed before students.    The
animal is operated on in the laboratory,  and brought  out  thence in a
narcotized condition, and then it is examined by the students."
  It has been urged that the mere witnessing  of experiments must be
injurious to the medical student's character.   No evidence in support
of the statement has been given,  and it is not believed by the Royal
Commission, for on p. 10 of the Report  we find the following :—
   " But the  tendency to demoralization is connected, as the shadow
with the substance, with the Tightness or wrongness of the thing  itself,
and the evidence we have quoted above  seems to show  conclusively
that at the medical schools where such  demonstrations are exhibited
under anaesthetics, the sense of humanity in the students is not in fact
impaired.1'   Report of Royal  Commission, pagexviii.
   "Dr. Rutherford told us,  speaking of the students at Edinburgh,
that if an animal has been  suffered  to come out  from anaesthesia, the
students at once resent it."
   "Dr. McDonnell,  speaking of  the students in Dublin, says, that
unless he  was able to give 3ome good reason for doing away with the
anaesthetics,  the students would not tolerate the occurrence ; the public
opinion of the students would be strongly  against it."

   After a sareful consideration of  the entire subject,  the  Royal  Com-
missioner concluded :—" That the abuse of the practice by inhuman or
unskilful persons,—in short, the infliction  upon animate of unnecessary
pain— i3 justly abhorrent to the moral 3ense of your Majesty's subjects
generally, not least so of the most distinguished physiologists, and the
most eminent surgeons and physicians."

   IT 9.  A most independent proof of the fact that scientific men  are as
anxious as others to prevent the unnecessary infliction of pain for the
ends of science* is afforded by the following resolutions  passed by the
Physiological  Section of the British Association so long ago as
1871, even before popular feeling wa3 excited in the matter.
   1. "No experiment which can be performed under  the  influence of
an anaesthetic ought to be done without it.
  2. "No painful experiment  is justifiable  for the  mere purpose of

  * The following quotation from a Manual of Physiological Experiment by a
well-known Continental physiologist, will serve to show that  humane con-
sideration for animals  is not confined to this country:  "An experiment
involving vivisection should never be performed, especially for purposes of
demonstration, without previous  consideration whether its object may  not be
otherwise attained;" and, as a second rule, " insensibility by chloroform or
other drugs should be produced whenever the nature of the experiment does
not render this absolutely impossible."—Cyon, Physiologische Methodik, p. 9.
  [Note on  page 7 of Memorandum of Association for the Advancement of
Medicine by Research.] 
APPENDIX A.
117
 illustrating a law or fact already demonstrated : in other words, expe-
 rimentation without  the  employment of anaesthetics is not a fitting
 exhibition for teaching purposes.
   3.  "Whenever,  for the  investigation of new truth, it is necessary
 to make a painful experiment, every effort should be made to ensure
 success, in order that the sufferings inflicted may not be wasted.   For
 this  reason, no painful  experiment ought to  be perfcrmed by an
 unskilled person,  with insufficient instruments and assistance, or in
 places not suitable to the purpose.
   5.  " In the scientific preparation for  veterinary practice, op erations
 ought not to be performed upon living animals fcr the mere purpose of
 obtaining greater operative dexterity."

   IT 10. In a memorandum drawn up by sixteen of the leading Teaceeks
 of Physiology in England, Scotland, and Ireland, before the passing of
 the Act in 1875, the following protest occurs :—
   '' We repeat the statement which most of us have made before the
 Commission, that within our personal knowledge, the abuses, in con-
 nection with scientific investigation against which in this Bill it is pro-
 posed  to legislate,  do not exist, and never have  existed  in  this
 country."

   IT 11. Another favourite fallacy is that the practice of performing ex-
 periments upon living animals brutalizes the operators, and renders them
 callous to the sufferings that they inflict; but of this there is no evidence,
 and the well-known characters of some famous experimenters are proof
 to the contrary.
   Haller, the father of experimental physiology, was equally renowned
 for his  piety, gentleness, and humanity.   Harvey, Sir Charles Bell,
 and many others, express deep regret at being  obliged to operate upon
 living animals.   So far from becoming hardened in the course of their
 work, the tendency among physiologists seems to be  in the opposite
 direction, towards increased sensitiveness and sympathy.  Sir William
 Fergusson,  speaking to the Rcyal  Commission  of  Mr. Syme, said
 (Question 1028): "He lived to express an abhorrence of such operations,
 at all events if  they were  not useful:" and also remarks : "I would
 not perform some of the operations at this present  time  that I per-
 formed myself  in earlier days."   Many physiologists  have renounced
 the practice on account of the pain it caused them. With the improved
 methods,  and  the abundant anaesthetics of the present  day,  this
 deterrent cause  is not as  strong as it was : but the fact remains that
long practice was far from hardening the nerves even of noted operators.
And it  must be  observed that the capital which has  been (often un-
truly) made  out of the repentance of vivisectcra is inconsistent vmh
the argument that the practice is brutalizing. 
118
APPENDIX A.
  Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson well says : " There have been perhaps few
circumstances brought to light in the recent discussion on the subject
of vivisection  more humiliating than the ease  with which  a certain
section of the public can conceive it possible that the performance of
painful experiments may have in it an element of attractiveness to the
operator.  It might have  been expected that those who for the first
time learned that  such things were occasionally done would, judging
from their own sentiments, have at once felt it  to  be impossible that
any should  undertake them, excepting  under  motives  of compelling
duty strong enough to overcome a natural repugnance of  the most
potent kind.   What we have witnessed has been, however,  somewhat
different; and  the revelation that  there are amongst us many who
believe  that there must be  something intrinsically pleasant in the
infliction of suffering is by no means one of an encouraging character."
—Fortnightly Review,  September, 1876, note on  p. 311.
  IT 12. The "International Association for Total Suppression of Vivi-
section," has lately re-published the Memorandum of the "Association
for the Advancement of  Medicine by Research," with  criticisms and
answers—or what are intended as such.   Most  of these  relate to
matters already treated of in the present book, and do not call for any
additional remark.  One point, however, must be noticed, as it seems
to be considered  a strong  argument.  The "Memorandum"  says:
" It is true that there are  special difficulties in the study of the natural
laws of living bodies."  The comment on this  is: "This is true, but
it has nothing to do with Vivisection.  The  latter is the study of
artificially-induced conditions in living bodies—a distinct and wholly
superfluous field of observation" (page 4).  Therefore, we are to under-
stand that if a man falls into a well containing carbonic oxide gas, his
symptoms are the  result of a natural law ; but  if a  dog is put into a
receiver full of the same  gas, his symptoms being the result of "arti-
ficially-induced conditions" constitute a  " distinct field of observation,"
and no conclusion  can  be  drawn from the one for the other!  "Na-
ture is made better by no mean, but  Nature makes that mean," and
go also with those  means by which she is made worse.  A condition of
any kind can only  be induced by the use of existing natural influences ;
and when they have been brought  into action, that action  is just as
natural, and just as subject to law, as if the circumstances had arisen
Spontaneously, 
APPENDIX B.
119
APPENDIX  B.
                 AMOUNT OF SUFFERING INFLICTED.


  The following quotations from the published  statements of persons
who must be accepted as the best judges on  the subject, show clearly
that, since the introduction of anaesthgjjcs,  the amount of pain actually
inflicted in  experiments upon_ living animals is insignificant.   They
relate, of course, to England alone.


  IT 1. Mr.  Charles Darwin, in his evidence given  before the Royal
Commission, says (Question 4670) :—"From all I can learn, the ex-
ceptions are extremely few in which an animal cannot be experimented
on in a state of entire insensibility."
  Mr.  Darwin's known impartiality and strict accuracy give additional
weight to his judgment.
  Sir  Thomas Watson  said (Question 19) :—" I believe that most
of the experiments may be  conducted with very little expense of pain
to the animal."
  The Report itself states that:—"By  the use of  anaesthetics in
humane and skilful  hands, the pain which would otherwise be inflicted
may, in the great majority of instances, be altogether prevented, and
in the remaining cases greatly mitigated."


  T 2. That anaesthetics are actually employed in the cases where their
use is possible appears from the  following  extract from the evidence
of Mr. Colam, Secretary to the Society for the  Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals:—
  "1543. In the cases in which it would have been  possible, so far as
time or the object was concerned, do you consider that anaesthetics
liave been used always 1 
120
APPENDIX  B.
   "I believe that  generally  the English  physiologists have  used'
 anaesthetics  where  they think  they can  do so  with safety  to the
 experiment.
   " 1544.  Then may the Commission take your belief to be that there
 is a desire on the part of the scientific men in this country so far to get
 rid of the infliction of pain as is compatible with  the  scientific object
 which they have in view ?
   " I should say so generally, but in some cases there  appeared to be
 some  heedlessness with  regard to the  suffering  of the animal: for
 instance, in some of Brown-Sequard's experiments, when animals were
 kept for weeks in suffering.*
   "1545.  May I take it to be your view that the general tendency
 of the English scientific world is not at variance with humanity ?
   "I believe it  is very different indeed from the practice  of  foreign
 physiologists.
   " 1546.  So that you would treat cases of wilful cruelty, if  they  exist
 at  all in  this country,  as  exceptional cases,  rather  than as fairly
 chargeable upon  any want  of  proper sentiment  on the part  of the
 profession ?
   "Undoubtedly with regard to wanton  cruelty.  I do not  know that
 I know of a single case of wanton  cruelty, by which I mean suffering
 caused without any object, except to gratify a cruel mind.
   "1547.  Then you give the scientific men of  this  country credit for
 using anaesthetics, and dealing tenderly with animals so far as  is com-
 patible with the objects which they have in view ?
   " Yes, I think so, speaking generally.  As regards  tenderness I have
 no evidence to prove that they are tender to animals.
   "1548.  That the cases where that is not so  are exceptional cases,,
 and not cases fairly chargeable to the profession generally 1
   "I think so."


  IT 3. The following extract from the Memorandum published  by the-
 ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF MEDICINE BY RESEARCH further
 illustrates the feeling of the profession on this point:—" But speaking
 of this country,  and of  modern times, it  may safely be said that no
 charge of wanton, needless, or excessive sacrifice of animals can be, or
 indeed has been, seriously  alleged against the  small  number  of ex-
 perimental physiologists  and pathologists  at work in the three king-
 doms.  Science has herself  provided  the means  by  which pain  is
 reduced to a  minimum.  The beneficent  discovery  of anaesthetics is
one cause of the  great difference between  the sufferings inflicted by
 Harvey,  Boyle, Hales,  Haller, Hunter, Magendie, and Bell, and the-
generally painless experiments of a modern laboratory."  (p. 5 et seq.)

        * M. Brown-Sequard is a distinguished French  physiologist. 
APPENDIX B.
121
   "0" 4  The most conclusive evidence is that laid before Parliament by
 the Home Office in the form of the following Reports :—


                  ENGLAND AND  SCOTLAND.

                          32, Harley-street, W., 30 January, 1879.
   Sir,—In accordance with the instructions contained in Mr. Liddell's
 .etter of the  19th December, 1878, I  have the honour to submit the
 following Report upon—
     I.  The Total Number of Experiments performed during the Year
           1878, under the Act 39 & 40 Vict. c. 77.               .__
    II.  The Number of Experiments, with the Names of those who do
           not object to the Publication of their Names.
   III.  I have  endeavoured,  as  far as is  possible, to determine the
           number of Experiments in which there is reason to believe
           that Pain or Suffering of an appreciable kind was inflicted.


                             Report.

   1.  The total number of licenses in force during any part of the year
 1878, was 45 ; but as, of these, it  would seem that 18 were not acted
 upon, the number of licensees who need be specified is  reduced to 27,
 a list of whom is subjoined ; together with a list of those licensees who
 do not appear to have performed any experiments.
   2. The total  number  of experiments performed under these  27
 licenses and the certificates, according to the returns I have received
 from each licensee,  was about 481.
   3. Of these, 317 were performed under the restrictions of the license
 alone ; 87 under certificates specified in Column 2; 30 under certificates
 in  Column 3 ; and  47 under certificates in  Column 1 ; five of the
 licensees  also held  certificates in form specified in  Column 4, one of
 whom held two such certificates; the experiments (about 18 in number)
 under these  certificates are included  in  the number of those placed
 under the head of certificates in Column 2.
   4. As regards the painful or painless nature of the experiments, it is
 necessary to  refer only to those which were performed under certifi-
 cates  in Columns 2 and  3, the  former  of which allows the use  of
 anaesthetics to  be  dispensed with where their administration would
 render the experiment valueless ;  and  the other permitting the animal
 to survive the state of anaesthesia in cases where otherwise the object of
 the experiment would be frustrated.
  5. With respect to the experiments  under certificates in Column 2,
it would appear from the descriptions of them with which I have been 
122
APPENDIX B.
furnished, and also in part from what I have myself witnessed, that in
the majority of cases the only actually painful part of the proceeding
was done under anaesthesia, an anaesthetic being administered when-
ever it was admissible.
  Upon full consideration of all these experiments,  and the mode in
which they were performed, I am of opinion that the extreme number
of cases in which an amount of suffering worth notice was inflicted
could not have exceeded 40.  I would state, however, that in 24 of these
cases  the animals did not suffer from the actual experiments,  but, as in
the experiments instituted for  the investigation of certain epizootic
diseases, from the after consequences only.  In 16 cases alcne, so far as
I am able to judge, and these were confined to two sets of experiments,
is there reason to believe that any considerable  amount of suffering
was directly inflicted.
  6. As regards the experiments under certificates in Column 3, it is
less easy to form a correct estimate of the actual amount of  pain that
may  have  been  caused.   Taking, however, all the  circumstances
connected with them  into consideration, I  believe that the amount of
suffering, where any at  all was inflicted, must have been very slight,
in the majority of cases not  being greater probably than that which
necessarily attends the  presence and the healing of a wound of the
integument.
  7. In the remaining experiments,  inasmuch as they were all per-
formed either whilst  the animal was in a state of insensibility from the
previous exhibition of an anaesthetic,  or were experiments regarding
the action of  agents in themselves  having narcotic  or anaesthetic
properties, there is no  reason to suppose, from any particulars that
have come to my knowledge, that any appreciable pain was inflicted.
As a  matter of fact, moreover, I would  beg to  observe that of the
experiments  performed  under the license alone, at  least 200 appear
scarcely to come within the scope of the Act at all, and might probably
have been performed  independently of it,  as not being calculated to
oive pain ; but as they were performed under the license, they are
included in this Return.
  8. The number of experiments or demonstrations of physiological
facts, performed under certificates in Column 1,  is 47.  This number
distributed amongst 11 Physiological  Schools, gives an average of less
than five for the instruction of each class, although  the discretion of
the teachers is unlimited as to the number of such demonstrations they
may consider necessary.
                   I have the honour to be,  Sir,
                                    Your obedient Servant,
  The Right Honourable the Secretary of  State.        Geo. Busk. 
APPENDIX B.
123
                          IRELAND.

                      Claremont House, Dublin, 19 March, 1879.
  Sir,—In compliance with the  instructions contained in your letter
of the 8th instant, I beg to submit, for the consideration of  his Grace
the Lord Lieutenant, the following Report upon—
    I. The Total Number of Experiments performed in Ireland during
        the year 1878, under the Act 39 & 40 Vict. c.  77.
  II.  The number of Experimenters, and the Names of those who do
        not object to their Publication.


                            Report.
  1. The total number of licenses in force during any part of the year
1878 was 10 ; in five instances  the  license  was not acted upon ; the
number of experimenters was consequently reduced to  five.
  2. The total number of experiments under the five licenses amounted
to 24.
  3. Of the 24 experiments performed, four were under the restrictions
of  the  license  alone,  and  the remaining 20  under  Certificate C,
Column 1.
  4. From the returns received from  the  several experimenters  it
would appear that in no case has pain been inflicted, and that some  of
the experiments might have been legally performed without the license
under the Act.
                             I have the honour to be,
                                     Your obedient Servant,
                                                W. M.  Burke.
  To  the Right Hon. the Chief Secretary,
             Dublin Castle.


                 ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

                           32, Harley-street, W., February, 1880.

  Sir,—In accordance with your instructions, I have the  honour to
submit the following Report upon—
    I. The names of all persons who held Licenses and Certificates
        under  the  Act 39 and 40 Vict. c. 77, during  any part of the
        Year 1879, together with the Registered Places  at which the
        Experiments were performed.
    II. The Total Number of Experiments performed under the Pro-
visions of  the Act during the same period, and
   III. The Number of Experiments in which there is reason to believe
        that any appreciable suffering was caused. 
124
APPENDIX B.
                             Report.
  1. The names of the licensees are given in the two subjoined Tables,
in one of which are entered the names of those who performed any
experiments ; and, on the second, the names of  those who performed
none.
  2. The total number of experiments  performed under the licenses
and certificates was about 270.  Of these, 126 were performed under
the restrictions of the license alone ; 61 under certificates in Column 1 ;
35  under those in Column 2 ;  and 24 under those in Column 3.  No
experiments were performed under any other certificate.
  3. The number of  experiments  in  which there is reason to believe
that any material suffering was caused appears from the statements I
have received from the operators themselves, and from my own con-
sideration of the nature and probable effect, as regards the  production
of pain, of  the experiments under the certificates in Columns 2 and 3,
to have been about 25.
  Of these, 15 were cases in which disease followed the inoculation of
infectious  matter, but in which no painful operation was performed ;
and 10 were experiments upon as many frogs, in which an  incision of
the skin was required for the introduction beneath it of a medicinal
substance.
  In none of  the other experiments under these certificates, as I am
assured by  the experimenters, was any appreciable suffering inflicted.
  4. As in  all other experiments, except those done under the above
certificates, the whole proceeding is conducted whilst the animal is in
an  unconscious condition, no pain is inflicted if  the provisions  of the
Act are duly observed, and this there is no reason to suppose was not
in all cases carefully attended to.
                           I have the honour to be,  Sir,
                                     Your obedient Servant,
                                                   Geo.  Busk.
  The Right Honourable the Secretary of State.

                           IRELAND.
                         16, Harcourt-street, Dublin, 22 May, 1880.
  Sir,—I have the honour to submit the Report desired  by you, on
the experiments performed on living animals in Ireland,  during the
year 1879,  under the Act 39 and 40 Vict. c. 77.

                             Report.

  It will be perceived, on reference to the accompanying Tables, that
the total number of persons holding licenses under the Act in Ireland,
during any part of the  year 1879,  was eight;  and that only  in one 
APPENDIX B.
125
instance was a Certificate granted, viz.,  one allowing experiments on
living animals, in illustration of lectures, the use of anaesthetics being
obligatory.
  Under the Licenses 15 experiments were performed, and  under the
Certificate 8, being a total of 23, all of which were free from pain.
  I believe the pr >visions of the Act have in all cases been scrupulously
observed,  that no abuses in its working have taken place, and that all
the experiments and observations made during the year have been of
a class eminently  useful to science, and calculated to lead to ends most
beneficial  to humanity.
                        I have the honour to be,  Sir,
                                 Your obedient Servant,
                                       Wm. Thornley  Stoker.
  To the Right Hon. the Chief Secretary
               for Ireland.


                 ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

                             32, Harley-street, 18 February, 1881.
  Sir,—In  accordance with  my instructions,  I  have to submit the
following  Report  upon—
     I. The Names of all  Persons who held Licenses  and Certificates
        under  the  Act 39 and 40 Vict. c. 77,  during any part of
        the Year 1880, together with the Registered Places at which
        the experiments  were performed.
    II. The  Total Number of  Experiments performed  under the Pro-
        visions of the Act for the same period, and
   III. The number of Experiments in which there is reason to believe
        that any appreciable  suffering was caused.

                             Report.

  1. The names of the licensees are given in the subjoined  Tables, in
one of which are entered  the names of those who performed any expe-
riments ; and, in  the second, the names of those who performed none.
  2. The total number of experiments performed  under the licenses
and certificates was about 311.  Of these, 174 were performed under
the restrictions  of the license alone ; 60 under  the  Certificates in
Column 1; 79 under those in  Column 2 ; 35 under those in Column 3  ;
and 42 under the  certificate in Column 5 ; but these latter are enume-
rated with those done under the license, having been performed under
the same restrictions.
  3. The only experiments in which there is the least reason to believe
that any  appreciable suffering would be caused, are among  those
enumerated under certificates  in Columns 2 and 3. 
126
APPENDIX  B.
  Under the former head the total number of experiments was 79,  of
which, however, 69 consisted in simple inoculation (no more painful
than ordinary vaccination),* which in 38 cases was  followed  by no  ill
effect whatever.  But in about 30  instances, viz., 19 guinea-pigs and
10 or 12 mice, disease appears to have ensued, which, during the brief
period the animals survived, may have caused slight suffering.
  In  the  remaining 10 experiments  under this certificate,  either no
operation of any k nd involving pain was  performed, or one consisting
merely in the passage of a needle through a fold of  the skin in rabbits,
and attended with no more pain than would be thus caused.
  4. In the 35 experiments performed under  certificates in Column 3,
18 also consisted in simple inoculation or the hypodermic injection of
morbid secretions,  with the view of tracing the development of morbific
germs in the blood ; and no painful effect from the proceeding appears
to have been produced during the two or three days during which the
animals were kept alive.
  In the remaining 17 cases in which incisions through the integument
were required, as those which constituted the only  painful part of the
proceedings were made under anaesthesia, and the  animals afterwards
suffered nothing beyond confinement until the wounds healed, or until
killed, no appreciable suffering can be said to have been inflicted.
  5. As all the other experiments, either under the license alone,  or
under the certificates in Column 1, were performed *n  animals pre-
viously rendered insensible, these experiments were necessarily pain-
less, as there is no reason to doubt that the provisions of  the Act with
respect to the administration of anaesthetics, were in all cases faithfully
carried out.
                      I have the honour to be, Sir,
                                    Your obedient Servant,
                                                     Geo. Busk.
  The Right Honourable the Secretary of State.


  IT 5. Commenting on these reports, Prof. Gerald Yeo says:—"From
the figures in these reports, I have calculated that about twenty-four
of every  hundred of the experiments might have  given pain.  But of

  * With  reference to these G9 experiments, it should be stated  that they
consisted of two series, directed to two important objects.
  One set of experiments, 29 in number, and undertaken  at the instance of the
Royal  Agricultural Society, were devoted to the investigation of the nature
and prophylactic treatment of tho disease termed "Anthrax," or "Splenic
fever" of cattle and sheep.
  The other series (40 in number) were undertaken at the direct request of the
Medical Department of the Local Government Board,  and were directed to
the elucidation of an obscure  and  fatal disease, affecting more  especially
persons engaged in wool sorting, and now found to be  identical  in nature with
"Anthrax."
  The results of these inquiries have been most important, and cannot fail to
prove highly beneficial, both to man and domestic animals. 
APPENDIX B.
127
those twenty-four,  four-fifths are like vaccination or the hypodermic
injection of morphia, the pain of which is of no great moment.  In
about  one-seventh  of the cases,  the  animal only suffered from the
healing of a wound, having been completely under chloroform when
the incision was made; and in about one-twentieth of the twenty-four,
pain equal to that  accompanying an ordinary  surgical  operation on
the human body is inflicted.  In other  words,  we  learn from the
reports that in one hundred vivisections we should find the following
numbers, arranged to show the amount of pain inflicted :—
       Absolutely painless    ..................75
       As painful as vaccination    ...............20
           ,,   ,, > the healing of a wound     .........  4
           ,,   „   a surgical operation  ............  1
                                                       100

  Pain forms  then but a rare incident in the work of a practical
physiologist in England; and when it is necessary that any be inflicted,
every precaution is  used to reduce  it to a minimum."—Fortnightly
Rcvieiv, March, 1882.


                 ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

  Sir,—I  have the honour to  submit the following  Report,  em-
bracing—
    I. The Names of all Persons who  held  Licenses and Certificates
        under the Act 39 & 40 Vict.  c. 77, during any part of the year
        1881, with a statement of the Registered Places for which the
        Licenses were valid.
   II.  The Total Number of Experiments performed  under the  Act
        for the same period, and—
  III.  The Number of Experiments in which there was any reason to
        believe that appreciable Suffering was caused.

                             Report.

  1. The names of the 38 persons who held licenses are  given in the
subjoined Tables, in one of which are  entered  the names of those
licensees who performed any experiments ;  and in the other,  the
names of those who  performed none.
  2.  The total number  of experiments performed during the  year
under the licenses and various certificates was about 270.  Of these,
59 were performed  under the restrictions of the license alone ; 90
under certificates in Column 1; 29  under certificates in Column 2;
92 under those in Column 3; and 1 under the certificate in Column 4.
  3.  The only experiments in which  it is likely that any appreciable 
128
APPENDIX  B,
suffering would be caused, are amongst those performed  under the
certificates in Columns 2, 3, and 4.
      (a).  In all the experiments under the  first  and third of these
    heads  the only operation consisted either in simple inoculation
    with a morbid virus, or in its introduction by hypodermic injec-
    tion ; the proceeding  in either  case being no more painful than
    the prick of a lancet or needle.
      (b).  Of the experiments under the  second head,  68 also con-
    sisted  in simple inoculation with a morbid virus, or the introduc-
    tion by hypodermic injection of various substances of a poisonous
    or medicinal character.
      (c).  In most of the inoculation experiments no effect was appa-
    rently produced, whilst in those  in which the inoculation took
    effect,  either death speedily ensued or the animal was killed after
    a very brief interval.
This  was the result in about 20 or 25 cases, amongst which are  in-
cluded eight (seven mice and one frog), caused by poison in the prose-
cution of a recent criminal investigation.
  4. In the other experiments of different kinds performed under the
certificates in Column 3, the only pain caused would  be that attending
the healing of the wound  and the necessary confinement, or in some
cases produced by the action of  drugs administered.  The number of
<iases in which trifling suffering of this kind was caused might be 10
or 12.
  5. As in the experiments  performed under the license alone,  or
under certificates  in Column 1, the animals are placed and kept in a
state  of anaesthesia,  no pain need  be inflicted ; and I have every
reason to be assured as regards the due administration of anaesthetics
that the provisions of the Act are fully carried out.
  Of  this I have on several occasions had  an opportunity of  satisfy-
ing myself from personal observation in  my visits  to the  registered
places.
  It may, therefore, be confidently  stated that during the past year
no case has arisen in which it was found necessary to inflict pain,
except  of the  most trivial nature,  in the  prosecution of  scientific
inquiry.
                     I have the honour to be,
                                        Sir,
                                Your obedient Servant,
                                                    Geo. Busk.
  The Right Honourable the Secretary of State.

  The Report for the year 1882  has not yet been published, but there
is no  reason to suppose that it differs in its character from those of the
four preceding years. 
APPENDIX C.
120
APPENDIX   C.
   ^NECESSITY OF EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH, FOR THE WELFARE OF MAN
                    AND OF THE LOWER ANIMALS.               r*

   The Evidence proving not only the utility but the absolute necessity
 of making experiments on living animals is so voluminous that the
 only difficulty is in selection.  Out of a great mass of material, it may
 suffice to give the following extracts, beginning with the Report of the
 Royal Commissioners,  whose conclusions, drawn from the mass  of
 -evidence laid before them, must necessarily carry great weight.


                    Section I.—Utility to Man.

   IT 1. "It would  require a voluminous  treatise to exhibit in a con-
 secutive statement the benefits that medicine and surgery have derived
 from these discoveries.   Let us take for our example the discovery of
 the  circulation  of  the blood,  and the various improvements  in the
 treatment of diseases, and in the safe method of performing surgical
 operations on  the  human  subject,  that  have  resulted from it.  In
 medicine it is obvious that a knowledge of  the nature of—and  of the
 proper treatment to apply in—the large and important class of diseases
 of the heart and blood-vessels, could not have been acquired without a
 knowledge of  the mechanism of the circulation.  In surgery this dis-
 covery has exercised a still  more direct  influence;  and the narrative
 of the improvements in practice directly referable to it would lead us
 by gradual and successive stages from the time when, after an amputa-
 tion, red-hot irons were applied to staunch the bleeding vessels, to the
 employment of the carbolised ligature of the present day.  If Harvey's
 experiments, and those upon the lacteal system, were to be performed
 now, the animals would first be rendered insensible to pain ; and even
in the case of Sir Charles Bell's experiments, where  sensation was the
immediate subject of the investigation, by far the  most severe  part
                                K 
130
APPENDIX C.
 would also be performed while the animal was in a state of complete
 anaesthesia."—Royal Commission Report, page xiii.
   "The production of  disease in animals has been already, and is
 likely to become still more,  the source of knowledge prophylactic as
 well as therapeutic, tending in the most important  degree to the pre-
 vention  as well as to the mitigation  and the cure of  disease in  the
 human family."—lb., page xiv.

   "Important knowledge has also been acquired in respect of tuber-
 culosis, that  fatal malady which  causes the loss of one-tenth of  the
 whole number of the human family who  die in the United Kingdom.
 This knowledge may be expected to receive fresh development, and to
 lead, if not to the suggestion of any cure, at least to the  avoidance of
 many of the causes which now occasion the production of the malady
 in the human subject.   For  other instances of  a like nature, we must
 refer to the evidence.   The  deduction we draw from them is that,
 whether we look to the possibility of cure or to  the probability of
 prevention, we cannot recommend the  total prohibition of experiments
 of this class.   It consists in subjecting a comparatively very small
 number of animals to diseases not generally involving severe pain—and
 from the observation of these diseases results are likely to be derived
 tending to the mitigation, or possibly even the  removal of some of the
 severest scourges which afflict the human race."—Lb., page xv.

   IF 2. Professor Wm. Sharpey quotes the following sentence from
 Haller, in his evidence:—" But it is not sufficient to make the dissections
 of the dead bodies of animals.  It is necessary to incise them in the living
 state.  There is no action in the dead body; all movement must be
 studied in the living animal, and the whole of physiology turns on  the
 motions, external and internal, of the living body.  Hence no progress
 can be made in investigating the circulation of the blood and its more
 recondite movements,  or the  respiration, or the growth of the body
 and the bones, the course of the chyle, or the motion of the intestines,
 without  the sacrifice of living animals.  A  single  experiment  will
 sometimes refute the laborious speculation of years.  Haec crudelitas
 ad veram physiologiam plus  contulit, quam omnes fere aliae artes
 quarum conspirante opera nostra scientia convaluit."—(Question 591.)

   IT 3. In giving evidence before the Royal Commission, Mr. Darwin
 says : " The first thing that I would say is, that I am fully convinced
 that physiology can progress  only by the aid of experiments on living
 animals.   I cannot think of  any  one step which  has  been made in
 physiology without that aid."—(Question 4668.)
   The following extracts from other  sources will show the practical
unanimity of professional opinion upon this point. 
APPENDIX  C.
131
  IT 4. At the Sixth General Meeting of the International Medical
Congress,  held in London in 1881, when 3181 medical men were
gathered from  all parts  of  the world,  the following Resolution was
passed unanimously :—"That this Congress records its conviction that
experiments  on living animals have proved of the utmost service to
medicine in the past, and are indispensable  to its  future  progress.
That, accordingly, while  strongly  deprecating the infliction of unne-
cessary pain, it is of opinion,  alike in  the  interests of man and of
animals, that it is not desirable  to restrict competent persons in the
performance of such experiments."—Transactions of the International
Medical Congress, 1881, vol.  I., page 101.

  IT 5. In addressing  the Section of State Medicine, Mr. John Simon
said:—'' Let me now briefly refer to the fact that during the last quarter
of a century all practical medicine (curative as well as preventive) has
been  undergoing a process of transfiguration under  the influence of
laboratory experiments on living things.  The progress which has been
made from conditions of  vagueness to conditions of exactitude has, in
many  respects,  been greater in these twenty-five years than in the
twenty-five centuries  which preceded them ; and with this increase of
insight, due almost  entirely to scientific experiment, the practical
resources  of our art,  for present and future good to the world, have
had, or will have, commensurate increase.  Especially in those  parts
of pathology  which  make  the foundation of preventive medicine,
scientific experiment in these years has been opening larger and larger
vistas  of hope ; and more and more clearly, as year succeeds year, we
see that the time in which we are is fuller of practical  promise  than
any of the ages  which  have preceded  it.   It is solely by means of
experiment that we  can hope so to learn the causes of disease as to
become  possessed of resources  for preventing disease."—British
Medical Journal, August 6, 1881, pages 220 and 221.

  IT 6. In  his opening address to the Section of Materia Medica and
Pharmacology, Professor Fraser said :—" It is clearly appreciated by
all who are actively interested in the progress of pharmacology, that it
is essentially an experimental method.   This method, indeed, is as old
as science itself ; and although it has been the instrument by which all
true progress in medicine has been  achieved, during a long period in
the history of medicine it had been distorted by  the importation of
metaphysical phantasies, and dominated by the contending theories of
the schools.  From data of the most insufficient  description theories
were  evolved  of wide application ; and  in no department of medical
knowledge  was this more strikingly  manifested than in pharmacology
and therapeutics.
  " I have  already defined pharmacology as the science of the action of
                               K  2 
132
APPENDIX  C.
 remedies, and pointed  out that,  like every other science, it must bo
 founded upon experiment;  which from  the  nature of its  problems
 must be performed upon living beings."—British Medical  Journal,
 August 6, 1881.

   IF 7.  At the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association
 held at Ryde in August, 1881, the following resolution was passed (with
 one dissenting voice) :—" That this Association desires to express its
 deep sense  of the  importance  of  vivisection  to the advancement of
 Medical Science, and the belief that the further prohibition of it would
 be attended with serious injury to the community, by preventing in-
 vestigations which are calculated to provide the better knowledge and
 treatment of disease in  animals  as well as in man."—British Medical
 Journal, August 20, 1881, p.  332.

   IT 8.  In addressing the meeting on the subject of  the above resolu-
 tion,  Professor Humphry said:—"It was our duty who know the
 real importance of  vivisection to the advancement of our profession
 and the welfare of the community, it was our duty  in the interest less
 indeed of our profession than  of the general welfare of the public, that
 we should speak out and state  what we think distinctly.   The first
 argument raised against vivisection is—What good has it done ?  To
 one who surveys the progress of medical science from its beginning,
 this question seems scarcely to be possible for persons to  ask.   Why,
 the truth is,  that  almost  every advance in  the  knowledge  of  the
 workings of the human body has been made through vivisection.  Our
 knowledge of the movement of the blood, our knowledge of the mode
 of action of the heart, and the other processes by which the circulation
 of the blood is effected, of the functions of the  nervous system, of the
 functions  of the brain,  of the functions of the spinal cord,  of every
 nerve which passes from the brain and spinal cord,  of the influence of
 those nerves over  every organ  and structure of the  body,  over the
 heart, over  the lungs,  over  the  stomach, over the  pulse,   over  the
 kidneys, over the bladder, over the skin, over  the  muscles,  is  almost
 entirely due to vivisection.  What has been the influence of this upon
 medical treatment %  Almost all real and great advance in medical
 treatment has been due to better medical knowledge,  and that better
 medical knowledge is greatly due to the advancement of physiology.
 Take away the knowledge which we have received through vivisection,
 and conceive what a chaos would be our knowledge of the human body,
and our ideas of the treatment  of the diseases of the human body.
 You can scarcely conceive to what we should be reduced.  Every man
 in the  whole history of medicine, every man who has  made real
advances in  the knowledge of the workings of the human body,  has
done it through vivisection.   From Galen to Vesalius, to Harvey, to 
APPENDIX C.
133
Hunter, to Hope, and Brodie,—for this, the most practical of modern
surgeons,  was a vivisector ; every  one of these men,  and they are
few  among the many, has made  his  greatest discoveries  through
vivisection."

  IF 9. The medical profession in America is equally unanimous on
this point, as is  shown by the following resolution, passed by the
Medical Society of the State of New York :
  '' That it is the unanimous opinion of the members of this society
that  the   unrestricted performance, by qualified  medical men,  of
scientific  experiments upon animals is essential to the maintenance
and progress of the science and art of medicine."

  IF 10. Sir James Paget writes :—" Speaking generally, it is certain
that there are few portions of useful medical knowledge to which expe-
riments on animals have not contributed.  The knowledge* may be now
familiar, so that the sources from which parts of it were derived may be
forgotten  ; or what was first found by experiments may now have other
evidences ; or, experiments may only have made sure that which, with-
out them, was believed; but the whole history of medicine would show
that whatever useful or accurate knowledge we possess  we  owe some
parts of it to experiments on animals.
  "A clear instance of its utility may be found in the tying of arteries,
whether for the cure of aneurism or for the stopping of bleeding.
  "Before Hunter's time, that is, about a hundred years  ago,  it is
certain that 95 out of 100  persons who had aneurism of the  principal
artery of a lower limb, died of it. A few more may have been saved by
amputation above the knee, but at that time about half the patients who
submitted to that operation, died.  At the present time, it is as certain
that of a hundred persons with the  same disease less than ten die.
  "In the same time there has  been a great diminution in the deaths
from bleeding after large operations : I remember when  such bleeding
might be called common;  it is now very rare.
  '' By  these improvements in surgery some hundreds of  lives are
annually saved in this  kingdom ;  lives  of which it may be deemed
certain that, less than a century ago, ninety per cent would  have been
lost.  Looking back over  the improvements of practical medicine and
surgery during my own observation of them  in nearly  fifty years,  I
see great numbers of means effectual for the saving of lives and for the
detection,  prevention,  or quicker  remedy of  diseases  and physical
disabilities, all obtained by means of knowledge to the acquirement or
safe use  of  which experiments on animals have  contributed." —
Nineteenth Century, Dec,  1881, pages 925 and 927.

  ^F 11.  Sir Wm.  Gull says : " Until Dr. Marshall Hall's vivisections,
at the beginning of  this reign, nothing was really known of the con- 
134
APPENDIX  C.
vulsive state ;  but his experiments made it clear that a convulsion is a
mechanical nerve process, the beginning of which may be some trifling
and removeable  irritation, which propagates itself along nervous lines
to their centres,  to issue again in various directions to the muscles and
other parts, much after  the manner of the electrical force telegraphed
to a central office, and thence outward in different lines."—Nineteenth
Century, March, 1882, page 465.

   IF 12. Bacon, in his " De Augmentis," Book IV., Chap. I., speaks of
vivisection thus  : " Of that other defect in anatomy (that it has not
been practised on live bodies) what need  to speak ?  For it is a thing
hateful and inhuman, and has been justly reproved by Celsus. But yet
it is no less true (as was anciently noted) that many of the more subtle
passages, pores,  and perforations  appear not in anatomical dissections,
because they  are  closed and latent  in dead bodies,  though they  be
open  and conspicuous in live  ones.  Wherefore, that utility may  be
considered as well as humanity,  the  anatomy of the living subject is
not to be relinquished altogether, nor referred (as it was by Celsus) to
the casual practices of  surgery ; since it may be well discharged  by
the dissections of beasts alive, which, notwithstanding the dissimilitude
of their parts to human, may, if judiciously performed and inter-
preted sufficiently, satisfy this enquiry."—(Ogle's Harveian Oration,
1880, Note, page 140.)

                 Section II.—Utility to Animals.

   IF 1. With regard to the benefits which the lower animals gain from
experiments,  we  are given  much   information by  Mr.  Fleming,
P.R.V.C., who  says : "It may be as well to state that every advance
made in physiology, pharmacology, and other branches of medicine,
benefits animals  as well as man."
   "The benefits  which  these  experiments  on  living animals have
yielded  are already great; while prospectively the same method  pro-
mises to change  half the art of  medicine, from a curative system, with
all its difficulties and uncertainties, to a preventive or protective  one,
applicable no less to animals than to mankind.  How much pain and
sickness will the world then be spared !   How much loss, embarrass-
ment  to commerce, and danger to human and  animal life will then  be
averted  !"
   " The contagious and infectious disorders are those which have ever
been most  destructive and intractable.  Some of these are special to
the human race, others to one or more species of  animals, while some
again are widely transmissible from species to species.  Many of these
affecting the  lower creatures  can be  conveyed  to man,  as  rabies,
glanders, anthrax, foot-and-mouth disease, and  probably tuberculosis
and diphtheria.   There  are  also the parasitic  diseases of animals, 
APPENDIX  C.
135
several of which may be transmitted to ourselves, as trichinosis, and
those due to various kinds of worms and vegetable parasites."
   .  .  '' The agents in the transmission of contagious diseases—proved
in some cases, and probably present in all—are minute organisms, which
need almost the highest magnifying power of the microscope in order
to  examine them.   They are endowed with most marvellous powers
of  multiplication, which enable them to act with deadly energy in a
very short space of time.   Their discovery as lethal agencies was only,
could only be, determined by means of experiments on living animals."
   .  .  " Inoculation had to  be  made to test the potency of the culti-
vated germs, and to ascertain to what extent their diminished energy
was compatible with the existence of the inoculated creature, and with its
immunity from the original disease.   Experiments and control experi-
ments,  very numerous no  doubt, were  absolutely essential in order to
arrive at conclusions, and the result has been the greatest discovery
of this century."
   .  .  "The two diseases of the lower animals in which the experi-
mental method  has hitherto led  to the  most  complete results  are
anthrax and chicken-cholera."
   " The value of this new method  cannot be exaggerated, even if it
were applicable  to anthrax alone.....By means of this dis-
covery, made through experiments on living animals in the laboratory,
this scourge, hitherto irrestrainable and incurable, is now completely
under the control of man all over the world."
   "Rabies and  hydrophobia (if we may employ  the two designations
for one disease) are only too familiar to the public by the terror they
inspire.
   " Much of the knowledge we possess with regard to rabies, particu-
larly as to its symptoms and latency, has been derived from inoculation
experiments on animals."
   "By experiments in pathology, disease and mortality have been
vastly diminished, and  continued  experiments in the same direction
will cause further diminution.  If mankind benefits, so do animals."
   "The pain of  inoculation is usually no greater than that caused by
the  prick of a  pin."—Nineteenth  Century,  March,  1882, page 470,
£t seq. 
136
APPENDIX D.
APPENDIX  D.
       I the fundamental discoveries due to experiment on
                         living animals.
  There is  no foundation for the doubts which have been cast by a.
few writers on the actual dependence on vivisection  of the great dis-
coveries of the circulation of the blood and lymph ;  but as such doubts
have been published to the world, and as the matter is of such great
importance,  it seems worth while to devote some  space to making it
perfectly clear, except to wilful misunderstanding.

       IF 1.—Harvey and the Circulation  of the Blood.
  Persons have been found to dispute the fact that experiments upon
living animals played any important part  in  Harvey's great discovery,
or even that he made any discovery at all.   On the first  point, Har-
vey's  own evidence  must be decisive.   In addition to  the passage
quoted in the text (pp. 56, 57),  I  now give an almost word-for-word
translation  of two others, which distinctly show  Harvey's method.
He first collected his facts, making large use of experiments both upon
dead and living animals ; and having learnt  from the latter the con-
tractile action of  the heart, the quantity of blood which  it expelled,
and the arrangement for its transmission, he then reasoned upon these
data, and deduced from  them his great discovery of the circulation of
the blood.   But  the facts on which it rested were all  drawn from
experiment.

          "Of the Motion of the Heart  and  Blood.

Chapter II.—What  the heart's  motion is, from the dissection of living-
                            animals.
  First, therefore, in the hearts of all heretofore living animals, when
the breast is opened and the  capsule which  immediately envelops the 
APPENDIX D.
137
heart is dissected, one can observe that the heart is sometimes moved,
at others is at rest, and that there is a time in which it is moved, and.
in which it is devoid of motion.  These things [are] more manifest in
the hearts of the colder animals, as  toads, serpents, frogs, crabs, and
Bnails,  shell-fish, prawns, and all small fish.   All things become even
more manifest in the hearts of the warmer animals, as the dog, the
pig, if  previously you shall have attentively observed how the heart
commences to be moved with force, and to be moved more languidly,
and as it were  to  fade  away ; for then you will  be able  distinctly
and clearly to trace  the pauses of the motion itself, becoming slower
and fewer and further between, and one can look  into and determine
more easily both what the motion is, and in what way  it takes place.
In repose, the heart remains as  in death, loose, flaccid, nerveless, and
as it were prostrate.

"Chapter VIII.—Of the amount of the blood passing through the heart
    from the  veins  into the arteries, and of the circular motion  of the
     blood.
   Up to this, of  the transfusion of the blood from  the  veins into the
arteries, and of  the ways by which it passes, and how from the beating
of the  heart it is transmitted and dispensed ; about which things there
are some who before, either induced by the  authority of Galenus or
Columbus or the reasons of others, say that they agree with me. Now
indeed when I shall speak of the amount and propulsion of the passing
blood which remain (subjects very worthy of consideration), they will
appear to be so novel and unheard of that not only shall I  fear some
harm to myself from the envy of some, but  I  shall dread lest I shall
make all men enemies.   So much does habit, or  learning  [teaching]
once drunk in,  and deep-rooted like  a  second nature, sway all men,
and a venerable  respect for antiquity compels most  men to oonsider
things new as naught.  However, now the die is cast, my hope [is] in
the love of truth, and in  the  fairness of learned minds.  Afterwards
indeed, as well  from the  dissection of living things for the sake of
experiment, and the opening of arteries, by various research, as well
from the symmetry and magnitude of the  ventricles  of  the heart and
of the vessels coming into  and going from [it] which nature  (doing
nothing without a purpose) has not made proportioned in vain to these
vessels, as well from the precise and careful workmanship of the valves
and fibres,  and the  rest of the heart's construction,  as from many
other things, I often and seriously would consider with myself, and the
longer I would revolve it in my mind how great forsooth might be the
amount of the transmitted blood, and how in a short time it is trans-
mitted ; nor however could I think that it could be supplied from the
juice of food absorbed, but that we would have the veins empty and en-
tirely exhausted, but the arteries burst by the too great influx of bloody 
138
APPENDIX D.
unless the blood somehow should return again from the arteries into
the veins, and come back  to the right ventricle of the heart.  I began
to consider with myself whether it had a certain circular motion, which
I afterwards found to be true, that the blood is pushed  forward and
propelled from the heart, through  the  arteries, into all  parts of the
body, by the pulse of the left ventricle of the heart, thence into the
lungs through the arterious vein from  the right;  and  again by the
veins into the hollow vein, and thence return to the right auricle, and
from the lungs  by the artery called veinous to the left ventricle—as is
before mentioned."

  Words can be no plainer—statements cannot be more positive—than
these.   If Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood at all, he
discovered it by reflection upon facts supplied to him by vivisection.
  But did he discover it at all ?  It is asserted that he was anticipated
by Servetus, Columbus (Realdus), and Cesalpinus.  Both  Servetus
KJid Columbus  had a very clear  conception of the pulmonary circula-
tion, i.e., the flow of blood from the right  ventricle of  the heart to
the lungs, and its return into the left auricle by the pulmonary artery;
but they had no knowledge of the circulation through the rest of the
system, and I have not even seen any distinct assertion that they had.
The real dispute  is as  to the  amount of knowledge possessed by
Cesalpinus of  Arezzo,  for whom some Italians  claim the honour
which the rest of the medical world awards to Harvey.
  Cesalpinus's  chief  treatise  ("Questionum Peripateticarum,  libri
qumque") was published in the year 1571.  In the year 1598, Harvey
became a student at Padua, and  probably learnt whatever was then
known upon the subject from his anatomical teacher Fabricius, a man
of high reputation.  What he had to teach was "that  the purpose of
the valves  in  the veins was not to favour the passage  of  blood to
the heart, but to prevent  over-distension of the veins by the blood in
its passage through the venous  trunks to their branches, and also to
retard the current of blood, so that time might be given for each part
to take up its proper nutriment; and  he states  that  valves are not
required in the arteries, because, on account  of  the thickness and
strength of their  coats,  they are  not  liable to  be over-distended.
Neither are valves required to retard the stream of blood, because in
the arteries there is a perpetual flux and reflux of blood."*   This was
the best explanation that could be given by the first anatomist of Italy,
more than thirty  years after Cesalpinus was supposed to have dis-
covered the circulation of the blood.
  Let us now glance at some of Cesalpinus's own statements  on the

  * Dr. George Johnson, in his Harveian Oration, delivered June 24, 1882, to
which I am indebted for most of the information contained in this note.  The
passage referred to  will  be found in the work  of Fabricius " De Venarum
iEstiolis," p. 2, published in  1603. 
APPENDIX D.
139
subject of the motion of the blood, bearing in mind that in his time,
the pulmonary circulation  was  fairly well known, while the prevalent
idea was that in the veins and arteries of the rest of the body the blood
moved backwards and  forwards, the fluid in the  former being of  a
nutritive nature, that in the latter what was called auctive—or ener-
gizing.  He says :  " The vena  cava and the aorta, after entering all
the viscera except the heart, pass beyond  them, or if any come to an
end, they are resolved into capillamenta, and do not pour their blood
into a cavity, for nowhere except in the heart is the blood contained in
a cavity out of a vein."*  From this passage two things are evident:
firstly, that he considered the  vena cava  as  conveying (instead of col-
lecting) blood, equally with the aorta;  secondly, that his capillamenta
are not our capillaries (which moreover he could not have discovered
without the microscope), because they were  not vessels at all, but the
supposed hair-like terminations alike of veins and arteries.
   Again, Cesalpinus  agrees with Aristotle that the main function of
the brain is to cool  the blood collected within it.  "For this purpose,
not a few and large, but many small veins from the aorta and  the cava
are distributed to the brain, which is supplied with blood, not gross and
thick,  but thin and pure."t  Here we have the vena cava again con-
ducting blood.
   " A nerve," he says,J  "is nothing more than the extremities of the
aorta."  But, " if the spirits  are conveyed through the nerves for the
purposes of sensation, it does  not follow that the sentient part is of  a
sanguineous  valve,  for the nerves do  not  convey blood."§   Conse-
quently no blood at  all passes out at the extremities of the arteries !
   " But the vena cava distributes branches throughout the whole body,
in order that, together  with the  arteries, they  may nourish  every
part."||  "As rivulets draw  water from  a fountain,  so do the veins
and arteries draw blood from the  heart. "IF   " The fountain of blood
in the heart being  distributed  into four vessels—viz., the vena cava,
the aorta, the pulmonary vein,  and artery—irrigates the whole body
like the four rivers proceeding out of Paradise." **
  Is it necessary any further to multiply quotations,  in order to
show that Cesalpinus was ignorant of the  facts that  the blood in
the arteries  and  in the veins  flows in opposite  directions, that it is
transmitted from one to the other through  minute vessels, and that
the veins bring blood to the heart, instead of carrying it away from
that organ ?  The only apparent evidence of any force to  show that he
really was acquainted with the systemic circulation consists in a kind
of cento from his writings, composed by Dr.  Del  Vita, in  which sen-
tences from different parts of his different  works are strung together,

     * Qucest. Per. lib. v. p. 116 A.     §  Quasi. Per. p. 130. F.
     t Ibid. p. 120 A.                II Ars Medica, p. 488, ed. 1670.
     X Ibid. p. 120, E. F.              IF Queest. Per. p. 116, A.
                        ** Ars Medica,  p. 1. 
140
APPENDIX  D.
so as to form a distinct description of what  the  above extracts have
proved him to be ignorant of.   Eighteen distinct passages are used in
this fashion, to compose about  nine  short printed lines.  Upon this
plan, any doctrine might be proved out of any book, and so discreditable
a device only  shows the weakness of the cause it was  intended  to
support.

                IF 2.—Discovery of the  Lacteals.

  The discovery of the lacteals by Asellius has also been disputed,  on
the ground that the  old anatomists of Alexandria  had made a vague
allusion  to some such vessels.   These vessels were certainly not gene-
rally recognized, or at all understood, until Asellius called attention to
them.   He describes his discovery in the following words :
  "Having thrown back the intestines and the stomach towards the
pelvis, all at once  I  saw a number of very  fine white cords scattered
over the whole mesentery, and spreading over the intestines by means
of an infinite number of delicate rootlets.  At first, thinking them to1
be nerves,  I did not pause.   But I soon remarked that the nerves  of
the  intestines  were quite distinct from these white threads, and ran
a different course.  Being  struck with the novelty  of this fact,  I
remained a moment silent, thinking to myself of the controversies,  no
less full of  asperity than words, which were kept  up by anatomists  on
the subject of mesenteric veins and their functions.  When I came to
myself, in  order to satisfy myself  by an  experiment, I pierced one of
the largest cords with a sharp scalpel.   I  hit  the  right point, and at
once observed  a  white liquid like milk escaping  from  the severed
vessel.   At this sight I could not  restrain my joy, and,  with Archi-
medes, crying ' Eureka !' invited those present to enjoy the spectacle,
which was  so wonderful  and unique that it  struck  them all  with
astonishment."—Daremberg :  "  Histoire de la Me'decine."
  But Asellius did not know the true destination of the vessels he dis-
covered ; he thought they carried nutriment  to the liver.  His failure
to demonstrate this theory made some anatomists altogether doubt the
existence of the vessels.
  In commenting  upon this point, a writer in  an antivivisectionist
journal,  says :  ....   " Vivisection  had accidentally blundered upon
an  important discovery.   Vivisection  promptly recovered  from  its
accident, and triumphantly proved  the discovery a blunder.  And so
the ' discoverer' Aselli died—in his ignorance of the true bearing of  his
discovery.  And twenty years later the anatomist  Pecquet  blew the
theories of  the vivisectionists to the winds, and freed science for ever
from one more set of the  ' errors'  which experimental physiology had
done  its best  to  perpetuate."—"Physiological Fallacies,  II.  The
Lacteals."—Zoophilist.  June 1, 1881, p. 37.
  The  extraordinary incorrectness of these assertions cannot  be better 
APPENDIX D.
141
shown than by giving the exact words of Jean Pecquet, as quoted b
Daremberg, in his " Histoire de la Me'dacine" :
  '' I had removed the heart of a dog and  placed  it on the table, and
was thinking of nothing but counting the systoles and diastoles which
the last efforts of its spirits produced, when  I perceived a white sub-
stance like milk flowing from the ascending vena cava into  the peri-
cardium, at the  place where the right auricle of the heart had been.
I examined the white substance, and not being able  to find an  abscess
which might, as I thought, have produced it,  I opened the veins above
and below the heart, and I found that this substance (which  had no
other taste, smell, colour, or consistence than milk or chyle  such as I
had seen pressed out of the lacteal veins) came from the subclavian
branches, and a little beyond the jugular I found the  opening where the
liquid entered into the vein. I thought the mesentery might have sent
this milk to this part by channels hitherto unknown, and that it was
advisable not to neglect the  knowledge a divine Providence had given
me of a fact so useful to the practice of medicine.   I placed my hand
on the mesentery of the  animal, which  was still pretty warm,  and
whose lacteals were not yet exhausted.  I had scarcely pressed when I
could see the milk flow from the two sources I had already remarked
in the subclavian.....I continued the search for these vessels in a
number of dogs, which I  opened for this purpose.  I found them all
along the dorsal vertebrae lying on the spine below the aorta.   They
swelled below a ligature, and  on relaxing the same I  recognized the
milk carried to the holes I had observed in the subclavian veins."
  Pecquet's contributions  to the subject are therefore all  based upon
vivisections. 
142
APPENDIX E.
APPENDIX  E.
                     the medical minority.

   The expression of an opinion by a regularly qualified medical man
against the practice of experiment on living animals is so rare and un-
authoritative as to be conspicuous by its insignificance. It is a question
on which the profession is practically united, and cannot be relegated to
the decision of ignorance as one upon which " doctors disagree."
   In  Appendix C. some evidence has been given of  the singular una-
nimity of their judgment on the point.  A very few dissentients, how-
ever,  constitute a minority ; and  it may now  be  useful to  make an
attempt to estimate their number, and the value of their opinion.

      11.—Evidence given before the Royal Commission.

   Forty-seven skilled witnesses  were  examined  before  the  Royal
Commission in 1875.  These were selected, either on account of their
general eminence in medicine and surgery, or on account of their being
working physiologists, or because they had been communicated with by
some  of the anti-vivisection societies.   If  persons of  repute existed in
the ranks of the  medical profession willing to give adverse  evidence,
we may fairly suppose that they were called for on that occasion.
   In  reply to the question : "Are experiments necessary for original
research?"—we find the following majority answering, " Yes."

   Sir Thomas Watson, Bart., M.D.,  F.R.S., Physician in Ordinary to
the Queen.
   Sir George Burrows, Bart., M.D.,  F.R.S.,  President  of the  Royal
College of Physicians.
   Sir James Paget, Bart., F.R.S., President of the Royal Medical and
Chirurgical Society.
  Professor William Sharpey, M.D., F.R.S., LL.D.
  George W. Humphry, F.R.S., Professor of Anatomy in  the Uni-
versity of Cambridge.
  Henry W. Acland, M.D., F.R.S.,  Professor of Medicine in the
University of Oxford. 
APPENDIX E.
143
  Sir William  Fergusson,  Bart.,  F.R.S., Sergeant-Surgeon to the
Queen.
  Alfred S. Taylor, M.D., F.R.S., Professor of Medical Jurisprudence
at Guy's Hospital.
  George Rolleston,  M.D., Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at
Oxford.
  John Simon, C.B., F.R.S., Medical Officer of the Privy Council.
  Arthur de Noe Walker, M.D.
  Lawson Cape, M.D.
  Rev. S. Haughton,  M.D., F.R.S., Professor of  Physic,  Dublin
University.
  A. H. Garrod, Prosector to the Zoological Society of London.
  F.  W. Pavy, M.D.,  F.R.S.,  Professor  of  Physiology,  Guy's
Hospital.
  P. H. Pye-Smith,  M.D., Lecturer on Physiology, Guy's Hospital.
  J. Burdon Sanderson, M.D., F.R.S., Professor of Physiology, Uni-
versity College.
  M. Foster, M.D.,  F.R.S., Prelector of Physiology, Trinity College,
Cambridge.
  John Anthony, M.D.
  William Rutherford,  M.D., Professor   of  Physiology,  Edinburgh
University.
  William Turner, M.B., Professor of Anatomy, Edinburgh University.
  J. Crichton Browne,  M.D.
  David  Ferrier, M.D., Professor  of Forensic Medicine, Kirg's
College.
  George Hoggan, M.B.
   G. Klein, M.D., Assistant Professor at the Laboratory of the Brown
Institute.
   E. A. Schafer, M.R.C.S., Assistant Professor of Physiology,  Uni-
versity College.
   J. G. McKendrick, M.D., Professor of Physiology at Edinburgh.
   J. Lister, M.B., F.R.S.,  Professor of Clinical  Surgery, Edinburgh
 University.
   R. McDonnell,  M.D., F.R.S.,  Professor  of Anatomy  and  Phy-
 siology.
   T. Hayden, Professor of  Anatomy and  Physiology in the  Catholic
 University of Ireland.
   J. Cleland, M.D., Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Galway.
   Charles Darwin, F.R.S., &c.
   Francis Sibson, M.D., F.R.S.
   J. M. Purser, M.D., Professor of  Medicine, Dublin University.
   Wickham Legg,  M.D., Professor of Anatomy, St.  Bartholomew's
 Hospital.
   A. Gamgee, M.D., F.R.S.,  Professor of Physiology, Owen's College,
 Manchester. 
144
APPENDIX E.
            G.  J.  Allman,  M.D.,  Professor  of  Natural History, Edinburgh
          University.
            Sir William W. Gull, Bart., Physician Extraordinary to the Queen.
            W. B.  Carpenter, C.B., M.D., Registrar of the London University.
            T. Lauder Brunton, M.D., F.R.S., Professor of Materia Medica at
          St. Bartholomew's Hospital.
            A. J. Sinclair, M.D., Examiner at the Edinburgh College of Phy-
          sicians.
            P. D. Handyside,  M.D.,  F.R.S.E.,  Professor of Anatomy, &c, at
          the Universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrew's.
            Wm. Williams, Principal of the Edinburgh New Veterinary College.
            Edward Crisp, M.D.
            George Henry Lewes, Esq.
            And the following minority answered "No" :
            George Macilwain, M.R.C.S., 1818 (retired from practice).
            Wm. Benj. Archibald  Scott, M.D.  Edim.  (late Surgeon Super-
          intendent of the New Zealand and United States Emigration Service.)

                            IF  2.—Subsequent Literature.
            A  third exception to the unanimity of medical men is  furnished
          by the author of a pamphlet which has lately been widely  circulated
          by an Anti-Vivisectionist Society.*   It proceeds from  the pen of a
          medical practitioner ; but it contradicts  not only the avowed  opinion
          of that profession, but also some of the  best-established facts in phy-
          siological science.
            The author was not one of the witnesses who appeared before the
          Royal  Commission; and the evidence which  the commissioners did
          not think it worth while to invite, or the anti-vivisectionist societies
          to invoke, need hardly occupy our attention, if it were not that this
          pamphlet has been largely read, and has obtained a considerable amount
          of credence among people who are unable to detect its blunders and
          misstatements.  I shall therefore examine in detail some of its state-
          ments.
                             a.—Preliminary Inquiries.
            The author repudiates the  possibility of coming to any just conclu-
          sion by reviewing the general improvements in medical practice which
          have followed closely in the  steps of physiological discovery ; and on
          the matter of improvement  in the performance of surgical observa-
          tions, he  says :  "It will not  do, as has  been the case in many of the
          arguments,  to draw such a  picture as  that of an amputation in the
          17th  century and one performed  last  year, and say that the change is

        f    * " On the uselessness of Vivisection upon Animals as a Method of Scientific
|       {  Research." By Lawson Tait, F.R.C.S., &c. 
APPENDIX  E.
145
due to vivisection.  We might just as well point to the prisons of the
Inquisition, and then to one of our convict establishments, and claim
all the credit of the change for the fact that our judges wear wigs."  I
venture to maintain that it will do very well, because experiments upon
animals have been one of the chief causes of the acknowledged change,
whereas a Spanish prison never has been changed into an English one,
so that the somewhat silly remark about judges' wigs cannot even be
squeezed into a parallel.  A catechism follows, to  the greater part of
which completely satisfactory  answers have been  given in  the  text.
'' The real questions are : What advances in detail  are due to  vivisec-
tion ?"  This point has already been fully discussed, see pp. 51 to 83.
" Could these advances have been made without vivisection ?" All that
we know is—that for many centuries they were not.  '' If vivisection
ivas necessary for elementary and primitive research, is  it any longer
necessary, seeing that we have such  splendid  and rapidly developing
methods in hundreds of other directions ?"  " Hundreds" is an absurd
exaggeration ; but, setting that aside, so long as millions die prema-
turely every year, or suffer from preventable sicknesses, all methods of
research  are necessary, until we know all that is  to be learnt of the
nature of disease, and  the means of its prevention and cure.   " Have we
made complete and exhaustive use of all other available methods, not
open  to objection ?"  Have Ave burnt out the last  of our pine-torches
before turning  on the electric light ?  No,—I do not think we have,
and I do not think we shall  wait  to do so either.   The value of other
modes of research is doubled and trebled when combined with experi-
ments on  living animals.   Time presses ;  Death does not wait; life is
short and precious,—the duty of the profession of  healers is to do all
in their power  to lengthen and improve  it.  "And, finally,  are the
advances based upon vivisection of animals capable of being adapted
conclusively  for  mankind,  for whose benefit  they are  professedly
made ?"  This question is difficult to answer, only  because it  is very
difficult to understand.  If the results of vivisection are " advances,"
they must be for the benefit of mankind, and must be capable of being
adopted for mankind, and adapted to it,—except in so far as they are
intended  for the benefit of the animal creation itself;  but what the
author is aiming at in the phrase  " adapted conclusively for mankind"
is  more than I can " conclusively"  explain.  If,  however, he means
to inquire whether  conclusions drawn from experiments  upon animals
can be applied  to human beings,  the question has been answered in
Chapter VIII.

 /3.—The Evidence of  Drs. Acland and Lauder Brunton before
                     the Royal Commission.
  Instead of general  results the  writer prefers "specific  instances"
and says  " they must  be analysed historically with great care."
                                L 
146
APPENDIX  E.
  His historical analysis opens with the consideration of " the alleged
discovery of the  circulation of the blood by Harvey,"  which  " our
insular pride" has  claimed for him.  .  . . He then states  " That ho
(Harvey) made any  solid contribution  to the facts of the case by vivi-
section  is conclusively disproved, and this  was practically admitted
before the Royal Commission by such good authorities as Dr. Aclaud
and Dr. Lauder Brunton." Where or by whom the conclusive dis-
proof is given is not divulged ; with great care therefore I turn to the
proceedings of the Royal Commission,  to seek for the admission of the
highly respectable authorities named.  And I find that neither of  these
gentlemen says one word on the subject, or even indirectly refers  to it.
I do not like to conclude that this is a deliberate mis-statement ; but,
after careful perusal of the pamphlet,  I  believe it to be a fair sample
of the "great care" expended by the author on his historical analysis.

                       y.—Carbolic Acid.
  He next proceeds categorically to contradict some of the evidence
of the leaders of modern medicine and surgery, as to the advances due
to experiment, and actually prints the following astounding sentence :
': I have shown in my published writings that carbolic acid has done far
more harm than good."  At a time when the immeasurable value  of
the aseptic method of treating wounds is daily making itself more and
more widely felt, when  all the medical world rings with the fame of
its discoverer, and when the use of carbolic acid has  changed the whole
routine of surgical practice ;—it is strange to hear this solitary voice
uplifted to say, plaintively : '' Perhaps it would have been better if we
had never heard of  it."   Perhaps it would have been better also, if we
had never heard of ligatures, or chloroform, or  any other of such
medical delusions ; but perhaps it would have been even better still—
for the author's reputation—if we had never heard of the " published
writings."

5.—Similarity or Dissimilarity of Human and Animal Physiology
                          and Pathology.
   It is extremely difficult  to deal with statements  in this  pamphlet,
because  they are only capable of  being contradicted; and a writer
desirous of observing the usual  courtesies of discussion is perplexed
to decide whether it is least offensive to suppose that the author knows
the real facts, or does not know them.  When, for  instance, he  states
that he has seen the leg of a dog amputated at the  hip-joint, and that
 "not  a single  vessel bled,"—it is only possible to ask: "Was it a
living dog?  Who  else saw  it?"  When he goes  on to  assert that
 " our arteries act in ways  altogether  different  from those seen  in the
 lower animals," he says what could only be believed for a moment by
 people  totally ignorant of physiology, and what  proves that  he is 
APPENDIX  E.
147
entirely careless as to whether better-informed persons suppose him to
be so or not.  It does not, however, require  even the smallest inde-
pendent  knowledge of the subject to detect the fallacies  in such
reasoning as that which follows.   " Their  (the  lower  animals') patho-
logy and physiology are absolutely different (from ours), as may be
seen  in  the frequency of  apoplexy and aneurism with  us,  and the
almost complete immunity from them of all the lower animals, even in
extreme old age.  Hunter tried  his best  to induce aneurism in the
lower animals, and failed.  Injuries to arteries in the lower animals are
repaired with the utmost certainty and readiness, but in man it is alto-
gether different."   That is  to say, because animals enjoy better health,
and have  sounder  tissues  than  most men possess under our highly
artificial conditions  of life,  therefore they are  differently constituted !
One might as well  say that the physiology of a robust ploughboy wras
radically difierent from  that of a confirmed valetudinarian, because he
would laugh at a blow, a scratch, or a draught, from which the other
would suffer for months.  Hunter tried in vain to induce  aneurism
in a healthy dog : granted, and so he might have tried in vain to induce
it in a healthy man.  With some  persons wounds and injuries of all
sorts heal rapidly and easily, with others  (of a defective  constitution)
there is great difficulty in inducing them to heal at all. Can we there-
fore conclude that "their pathology and physiology are  absolutely
different" ?

                          e.—Ligatures.

  The next remarkable  statement that we meet with is  a denial that
experiment has added anything to our present knowledge of  the best
methods  of tying blood-vessels, and the  author sneers  at the use of
catgut, now universal in the instructed medical world.  The fact calls
for no further remark.  He now says that he has himself made expe-
riments  upon  living animals, concerning the tying  and  torsion of
arteries, and found  them to be futile, and uncertain and untrustworthy
in their results.   This is fully credible, and also requires  no comment.
The experimenters named  in the text have, however, been more for-
tunate. AVant of acquaintance with what had been done by others may
perhaps account for this regrettable waste of the investigator's time, and
of his subjects' sufferings ; since he informs us that  his experiments
were directed to "getting quit"  of the ligature altogether, inconse-
quence of " the fact that after a vessel was tied, one  end of the liga-
ture was  cut off, and the other left hanging out of  the wound," of
course causing much inconvenience.   " The amazing thing,"  he adds,
" is that  with all the  experiments made upon  animals,  nobody ever
thought of cutting  the  ligature  quite short,  and closing the wound
over it."   It seems  a more amazing thing  that a  person who  comes
forward to speak with authority on the subject, as an  original investi-
                               L  2 
148
APPENDIX  E.
 gator, should not have known that  Sir William  Lawrence  (as well as
 many others) had thought of it and done it years before.  He writes
 thus : "The method I have adopted consists in tying the vessels with
 fine silk ligature, and cutting off the  ends  as  close to the knot as is
 consistent with security.  Thus the foreign matter is reduced to an
 insignificant quantity."*  On account of the abscesses and other evil
 results which followed this practice, it was  relinquished.   It can now,
 however, be done with safety, using aseptic catgut,—a method that the
 author classes among '' novelties, which speedily die out when applied
 to human beings."   The aseptic system is  certainly new,  but the use
 of animal ligatures is neither a novelty nor  likely to die out.   It was
 introduced in 1814  by Professor  Physick,  of Pennsylvania,  and im-
 proved by Dr. Jamieson, who states as  the  result of his observations
 and experiments upon sheep, dogs,  and  other animals—that a capsule
 will surround the ligature, or the vessel  will  be surrounded by an
 abundance of lymph, and the ligature destroyed, f  Can the writer of
 the pamphlet be ignorant of these facts in the history of surgery, and
 of this fact in its present condition—that any surgeon who discards the
 use of catgut for deep ligatures would be held by the majority of his
 profession to be a barbarous practitioner 1
   Strangely does the evidence on the subject given by Sir James Paget
 —one of the  greatest living authorities on surgical pathology—before
 the  Royal Commission  (Ques. 295)  compare  with  what precedes :
 "The whole process of the recovery of an artery after ligature, and
 the means essential to its  recovery, and the exact knowledge of all
 the process by which the artery is closed, could not have been ascer-
 tained without  experiments upon animals, because it is as essential
 to know the  whole process of  the recovery as it is to know the par-
 ticular manner in which the operation is to  be performed.   You might
 refer to a number of operations that were  done for  the  ligature of
 arteries (some of which were done by Hunter himself and some by
 those who followed him) which  failed,  and the patients'  lives  were
 lost,  simply  because at  that time surgeons had not  ascertained the
 whole nature of  the process for the repair of the injury done by the
 operation."

                   ??.—Subcutaneous Tenotomy.

   On this point, the author remarks that he cannot find  any record
 of Hunter's  vivisectional experiments upon the  surgery of tendons,
 "beyond the allusions to them by Drewry, Ottley, and Palmer in his
 life of Hunter." Had  he extended his researches to the Hunterian

  * Medico-Chir. Trans., vol. vi.—Delpech, of Montpelier, was in the habit of
using  this method in  1813-1814.  See Guthrie on Gunshot Wounds,  pp.  93
and 94.
  f Medical Recorder,  No. xxxvii., January, 1827. 
APPENDIX E.
149
 Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons (one would have thought not
 an unlikely place to begin them), he would have found in Section IX.
 in Special Pathology, No.  594, a specimen which is thus described in
 the catalogue :  "A  longitudinal section  of the tendo Achillis  and of
 part of the os calcis of an ass.  The  tendon was divided transversely,
 and—it is believed—by subcutaneous section.   Its divided extremities
 have retracted  to a considerable distance from each other, but are
 united by  a  firm and  compact  substance, pale though vascular, and
 presenting no appearance of  a fibrous texture.  A similar substance is
 diffused among the immediately  adjacent tissues.—Huuterian."
   The following note is appended.   "In the life of John Hunter by
 Sir Everard  Home, appended to Hunter's ' Treatise on the Blood,
 Inflammation, and Gun-shot  Wounds,' it is stated that he ruptured his
 own tendo Achillis, which turned his attention to the mode of union of
 broken tendons.   ' He divided  the  tendo Achillis of several dogs, by
 introducing a couching-needle through the skin at some distance from
 it, and  with the edge cut through the tendon ; in this way the  orifice
 healed up, and made it  similar to a broken  tendon.  The dogs were
 killed at different periods, to show the progress of union, which was
 exactly similar to that of a fractured bone when there is no wound in
 the skin.'  These  experiments  were performed  in 1767, five  years
 before Home began to work  under Hunter ;  but there is little doubt
 that this specimen is also the result of a subcutaneous section."
   No. 595 is—"The tendo Achillis of a deer, which was divided trans-
 versely, and, it is believed, by subcutaneous section.  Its interior  is
 shown by a longitudinal incision.  The divided extremities are not  so
 far apart as those in the preceding specimen ; and the substance uniting
 them, which is  of rather less diameter than the  tendon, is harder,
 paler, and obscurely fibrous, like the tissue of a firm and well-formed
 cicatrix.—Huuterian."
   No. 596 is—" The other section of the same tendon."
   The fact that these experiments failed to attract  notice has nothing
 to do with their purpose  or merit: it only causes regret that they were
 not followed up by others  of a  similar nature.  As it is, our author
 consents to attribute the commencement of scientific tenotomy to the
 work of Stromeyer, and thinks that by so doing he denies the experi-
 ments upon living animals any share in its credit.   He does not seem
 to be aware that Stromeyer's results rested upon a basis of vivisection ;
 since he only copied what veterinary surgeons (as the results of many
 experiments) had long been in the habit of doing upon horses.   In a
 foot-note upon p. 71 of his Operatiren Orthopoedil:,  Stromeyer himself
says: "From experiments  on the reproduction of tendons instituted
 by Herr Gunther,  Vice-Director of the Veterinary College here (Mag-
deburg), on horses, it has been further shown that—even after consider-
able loss of substance, e.g.,removal of one inch in length of the tendon
 __the same (reproduction)  so thoroughly takes place that in the inter- 
150
APFENDIX  E.
vening texture the silver-shining fibrillar substance re-appears.  These
experiments were moreover made with considerable exposure of the
tendon, and the reproduction followed by means of a process of sup-
puration and granulation.  Since, however,  reproduction  is much
stronger in a horse than  in man, the  conclusions drawn from these
experiments must be applied with great care."   Further on (p.  99),
the following note occurs:  " Herr Giinther has for many years per-
formed tenotomy in cases of ' Stelzfuss" in horses, in the same manner
as the Achilles tendon  is now cut, with the smallest possible skin-
wound.  The result is constant and brilliant, and the animals become
capable of doing the heaviest work.  Former experiments, which both
he and other veterinary  surgeons made  with tenotomy in  an open
wound, gave very unequal  and generally unfavourable results.   So
that, in the  case of the horse also, the  certainty of results depends
upon the tenotomy being subcutaneous."
  Stromeyer hesitated  at first to act  upon the results of  these vivi-
sectional experiments,  because he feared that  human tendons were
different from  equine  !  Some  fifty  years ago,  he had reached the
point of knowledge of comparative physiology where the writer of this
pamphlet now stands ; but happily for his science, he passed beyond
it,  and learnt  that the lower animals are, after all, the same " flesh
and blood" as ourselves.

                   t.—Transfusion  of Blood.

   On this point the author remarks : '' We hear a great deal  of cases
in which patients have survived  after transfusion, but we hear little
or nothing of its failures."   The following table of the result of 216
cases (see Lancet,  August  5th, 1882, page  174) answers  this re-
mark,  especially  when it  is  remembered that the  cases  in which
transfusion  failed must have  been lost, whether it was attempted or
not, and the lives saved must be counted altogether to the credit of this
operation.
Cases.	Number of Cases Treated.	Number Cured.	Per Cent. Cured.
Post-partum Haemorrhage ...... G eneral Haemorrha ge ... Intestinal Haemorrhage........ Carbonic Oxide Poisoning ......	108 75 18 15	63 38 10 6	58 50 55 40
  Mr.  Tait  is mistaken in stating that Andre Libavius performed
transfusion in 1594 ; he describes the process of transfusing arterial
blood from one person into the  veins of another,  but says that  the
physician who performs the  operation must be  out of his sense 
APPENDIX  E.
131
("parum  same mentis"), and  in need  of hellebore.   ("Appendix
necessaria syntagmatis  arcanaerum chymicarum."   Frankfurt,  1815.)
Only the numerous experiments performed upon animals have satisfied
the medical profession of the value of so startling an operation, and of
the best methods of performing it.  The latter may be found summed
up in the report on this subject presented to the Obstetrical Society of
London, in November, 1879, by Mr. E. A. Schafer, F.R.S.
  Enough evidence has now been  adduced to show that this publication
is equally  untrustworthy as to matters of fact and  matters  of phy-
siology, and appears to be intended only for  readers who are unac-
quainted with the first principles of that science. 
152
APPENDIX F.
APPENDIX   F.
                        Legislation.


  Setting aside the question discussed in the text—whether the passing
of any special statute  was called  for by the evidence given to the
Royal  Commission  in  1875,  or not, irrefragable arguments  can be
adduced to prove :—a.  That the Act 39 and 40 Vic. c. 77, is far more
stringent  than any  legislature  recommended by  the Commission ;
b. That the Act has been  administered with a rigour never  contem-
plated  by Parliament,  or expected by the profession of  medicine :
c. That the progress of physiology has  been  retarded in this country
by the operation of the statute.
    ^F 1.—Object of Legislation recommended by the Royal
                          Commission.

  The Royal Commission recommended that a legislative control should
be established, for two reasons : 1.  To prevent abuse accompanying
the  great  increase in  physiological  inquiry which they expected.
2.  To afford an antidote to the unjust  suspicions  and abhorrence that
had sprung up in the public mind.  The report says (p. xvii.) :
  '' Looking at the circumstance that a great increase is to be expected
in physiological inquiry,  it appears to us most  important that some
legislative control should be established to prevent abuse extending in
this direction.   It is, moreover, much to be regretted that a feeling of
suspicion, and even of abhorrence, should have been permitted to grow
up among a large and very estimable portion of the public against those
who are devoted to the improvement of medicine and to the advance-
ment of  science.  Publicity is the antidote of suspicion, and we look 
APPENDIX  F.
153
to the reasonable  superintendence of constituted authority as afford-
ing the  means of reconciling in the public mind the  sentiment of
humanity with the desire for scientific knowledge."
  That the expected increase in physiological inquiry  has  not taken
place appears  from the parliamentary reports given in Appendix B.
That  the antidote has had no remedial efficacy appears from the
expressions made  use  of by the very persons in deference to whose
opinion  the statute was passed.  At a  meeting of an antivivisection
society at Lord Coleridge's house, Cardinal Manning said :
   '' The history of the existing Act has shown  that it is futile to
attempt to separate the use of vivisection (if lawful use it have) from
abuse." . . .  "And believing, as I do,  that it  cannot be controlled,
that  we have endeavoured to control  it,  that  we have had  a most
elaborate commission and report, that commission and report laid down
the number of conditions under which this practice must  be admitted;
legislation was founded on that report, and I  believe not only has
that legislation been ineffectual, but that we have been entirely hood-
winked,  and the law has not been carried into effect."
   On the same occasion Lord Coleridge said :
   '' After considerable reflection on the matter, having read much that
I would ralher not have read, and having thought on the matter so
much as I had the power, I  have come to the conclusion that  control
it you cannot."—Zoophilist,  July 1, 1881, pp. 54-57.
     IF  2.  Scope of Legislation  Recommended by the Royal
                           Commission.

  The Commission had no intention of hampering in  their inves-
tigations men of recognized character who were working at physiology.
Their object was  to  establish a check upon the unskilful, the inhu-
man, and the inexperienced.   They say (Report, page xvii):  " Those
who are least favourable to legislative interference assume, as we have
seen,  that interference would  be directed  against the skilful, the
humane, and the experienced.  But  it is  not for  them  that law is
made, but for persons of the opposite character." ....
  "From  this  prepossession  (against interference) many  of those
whose position and character  entitle them  to the greatest weight are
wholly free ;  and it  has always  yielded to the  consideration that if
there be a proved necessity for legislative  interference to prevent
abuse, such interference will be right, provided that the teaching of
physiology and  the prosecution of research by competent persons be
not interfered with."—Royal Commission Report, p. xv.
  Fortunately,  the  class  of  experimenters against whom the Com- 
154
APPENDIX  F.
 mission wished to direct the law does not and cannot exist  in  this
 country.
   But, unfortunately,  the  law has been passed, and  put into force
 against competent persons,  so that the prosecution of research  has
 been materially impeded and interfered  with.  Here is what  the
 physiologists themselves say on the subject after five years' experience
 of the Act :—
   " Both licenses have been refused, and certificates have frequently
 been disallowed, and have only subsequently been granted or allowed,
 after long delay and  by the help of strong  pressure  upon the Home
 Office.   Moreover, some certificates have been absolutely refused,  and
 in several cases experiments have been prevented owing to intimations
 that  licenses or certificates would certainly not  be granted if applied
 for.
   The numbers are as follows :—
       Refusal  to allow  certificates, Seven cases.
       Injurious delay, amounting to practical refusal, Six cases.
       Deterred from application, Five cases."
   Memorandum adopted, by the Physiological Society, 8th  December,
 1881.

   So far as the doctors  themselves  are concerned, the  fact that they
 consented to the  passing of a law which they must have known to be
 superfluous,  and  might  have  known to  be injurious,  cannot  but
 diminish our sympathy for their personal loss and annoyance ; although
 it is  fair to remember that they were deceived by the substitution of
 the  expression  "invertebrate" for  "cold-blooded" animals  in  the
 final clause of the Act;  the then Home Secretary failing to appreciate
 the enormous practical difference which the change would make in  the
 operation of the Act.  But the  check put to  the progress of medicine
 is a  public loss, and  it  is not even compensated for by  the successful
 exorcism of the phantom against which this legislation was aimed ; so
 that the expectations under which the medical  profession supported
 the Bill have been in  every respect disappointed.

  As to the nature of the investigations intended to be affected, the
 Commissioners  say :
   " It has been proposed to  enact that the object in view shall  be
some immediate application of an expected discovery to some prophy-
lactic or therapeutic end, and that any experiment made for the mere
advancement of science  shall be rendered unlawful.  But this proposal
cannot be sustained  by reflection  upon the actual course of  human
affairs.  Knowledge goes before  the application  of knowledge, and
the application  of a discovery is seldom foreseen when  the discovery
is made.  The first origin of a great discovery is often,  like the «erm 
APPENDIX  F.
155
of the natural life in an animal or a vegetable, so small as to be scarcely
perceptible,  and  yet  it may contain in it the seeds of the grandest
results."—Report, page xviii.
  In spite of this clear expression of opinion on the part of  the  very
best authorities, we find when the  Act is passed that this is the  very
first restriction imposed :—
  Clause 3.  " The following restrictions are imposed by this Act  with
respect to the performance on any living animal of an experiment cal-
culated to give pain ; that is to say,
  (1.)  The experiment must be performed with a view to the  advance-
       ment by new discovery of physiological knowledge or of know-
       ledge which will be useful for saving or prolonging life or  alle-
       viating suffering."

  Again, the Commissioners report  :
  .  .   .   .   "In the case of professional education, as at one of the
medical schools, it cannot, we think,  be denied that there is much
force in the argument that teaching without demonstration, can scarcely
be considered teaching."—Report, page xviii.
  And the Act retorts  :
  Clause 3, par. 5.—"The experiment  shall not be performed as an
illustration of lectures in medical schools, hospitals, colleges, or  else-
where."

       ^F 3.—Manner in which the Act  is Administered.

  One of the recommendations of the  Commissioners is  as  follows :
" It may  be found desirable that one of the conditions to be  attached
to a license should be  that  the experiments should be  performed in
some particular place ;  but this is a detail which may  vary  with cir-
cumstances, and we think it ought  not to be stereotyped by statute."
—Report, p. xx.
  Yet  the following  clause of the Act is  administered,  by general
order,  in the most rigorous manner possible :
  '' 7.  The Secretary of State may  insert, as a condition of  granting
any license,  a provision in such  license that  the place in which  any
experiment is to be performed by the  licensee  is to be registered in
such a manner as the  Secretary of State may from time to time by
any general or special order direct ; provided that every place for the
performance of experiments for the purpose of instruction under this
Act shall be approved  by the  Secretary of State, and shall be regis-
tered in such a manner as he may from time  to time by any general
or special  order direct."
  Again, the Commissioners say :
  " We think that the holder of  a license,  when he  shall  receive 
15G
APPENDIX  F.
notice that the Secretary of State intends to withdraw it during the
period for which it has been granted, should be at liberty to demand a
public inquiry."—Report, p. xxi.
  No such liberty is granted by the Act of 1875.
  Sir William Fergusson, who has been much quoted against the value
of experiment, said in his evidence (Q. 1054) :
  '' No, I certainly would not go that length of restraining rational
men from doing that  which they thought right; but I  would enjoin
great caution."

  And yet«we find that the men who are actually harassed by restraint
are tlie  professors and teachers of physiology, men in whom our great
teaching establishments have complete confidence, and who have thus
been obliged to meet solemnly to  consider what could be done which,
'' without defeating the purpose of the Act to prevent wanton cruelty
to animals, would render  its  operation less injurious to physiological
and pathological science," and to  consult " as to the steps  most desir-
able to bring about these changes."—Memorandum of the Physiological
Society,  1881.
Printed at the Bedford Press, 20 and 21, Bedfordbury, Londor, W.C. 
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