[TO THE EDITOR OF THE “1IpEarems.1
Sr.n,—I shall be glad if you will give me the opportunity of recording the impressions of an eye-witness as to vivisection.
It is scarcely necessary to say that, on the occasions when I was present, I never detected the least symptom of pleasure in inflict- ing suffering ; but, on the other hand, it always struck me that there was the most absolute callousness to the spectacle of such suffering. The operator seemed as impassive before his writhing victims as Torquemada at an auto-da-fd. Either a stern sense of duty or the enthusiasm of science rendered him superior to all vulgar emotions.
My experience leads me to donbt whether ansesthetics are administered so frequently as the advocates of vivisection would have us believe. Certainly, I have seen operations of the most painful nature performed on dogs without any such attempt to alleviate their sufferings, but care is usually taken that the ani- mal shall not interrupt the demonstrator by howling. Besides, as Dr. Walker well points out, certain experiments have for their professed object the effects of pain, and from these the employment of araesthetics is, ex hypothesi, excluded.
I am afraid, too, that a great deal of the vivisection which is now so fashionable is due less to a love of science than to the personal ambition of the operator. A young physiologist is naturally anxious to connect his name with same original researches, and the most fruitful field for these is that afforded by experiments on living subjects.
You ask whether men of science would advocate the vivisection of human subjects. There seems some reason to believe they would,—certainly they did something very like it, if it be true that not long ago, in Russia, they experimented a condemned criminal to death by deprivation of sleep, in order to study the physiological conditions of such a state. It is not disputed that men of science conveyed the germs of tape-worm into the stomach of another criminal in Berlin. Tliey have but one rule,—Fiat experimentum, and it is a mere accident whether this takes place in corpore viii or not.
For all this, I cannot venture to 13ay that vivisection is under no circumstances justifiable. If life be a balancing of good with evil, then for the attainment of some great boon to suffering humanity even such torture of the lower animals may be excusable. But this end must be distinctly in view, and there must be a fair probability of success.
On the other hand, the systematic torturing of helpless animals in a vague search for scientific possibilities, and to pamper the dilettanteism of discovery, is nothing short of revolting, whilst it furnishes one more proof of the hardening and demoralising effects of the specialisation of study.—I am, Sir, &c., A. EUBIJLE-EVANS.
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