[TO me EDITOR OF THE "SPEOTATOR.1 SIR,—If I may be
allowed a few lines in reply to your editorial note on my letter, I should like to observe that you are mis- taken in supposing that I would no more consent to endure one of Dr. Rutherford's experiments, than I "would consent to crucifixion." You justly point to these experiments as "some of the most cruel [? severe], disclosed by the evidence of the Royal Commission ;" and supposing curari not to be an anaesthetic, they are certainly more severe than anything in the way of vivisection which I have myself witnessed. But still, to compare them, in respect of pain, with crucifixion, seems to me an extravagant use of hyperbole. Even if we con- cede that curari is not an anmsthetic, I perfectly agree with Dr. Rutherford's answer to the question whether, upon this supposition, his experiments would not have involved " very groat pain." He said, " I do not think so ; certainly not very great pain. I question if anything more than very trivial
pain it would be half an hour of pain, I should not say very great." (2,025 and 2,931.) Therefore, although I can- not occupy your space by going into the physiology of the sub-
ject, I may say that, so far as the question of pain is con- cerned, apart from the knowledge I should have of the danger of the operation to life, I should not be unprepared "to endure one of these experiments for the end in view." But I should exceedingly object to undergoing the far greater amount of pain entailed by lingering for hours in the jaws of a spring-. trap, " for the end " of putting a shilling into a farmer's pocket.
[Dr. Rutherford's opinion of the severity of his own experi- ments was so obviously the product of his own wish, and so, contrary to the judgment of others, that we attach no import- ance to it. There is not a particle of evidence worth a straw for the suggestion that curari is, in any degree at all, an anostlietic, and assuredly M. Claude Bernard, who knew more about it than most of our own physiologists, believed it to be nothing of the kind. It was admitted by Dr. Rutherford that one of the dogs died under either the curari itself or the eight hours' torture.—En. Spectator.]
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