V I V1SEOTION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:'] Sur,—Allow me to state that the memorial to Mr. Gladstone on Vivisection, to which you refer in your current issue, was
presented to him yesterday (the 20th), and that among the signatures attached to it were the following :—The Earls of Shaftesbury, Haddington, Ashburnham, Darnley ; Lords Leigh, De l'Isle and Dudley, Kinnaird, Clifford, Tollemache, Colville, Keane, Mount-Temple; the Primate of Ireland, and the Bishops of Winchester, Bath, Wells, Oxford, and Derry ; the Chief Justice of Common Pleas, the Lord Chief Baron, and Sir R. Phillimore ; Cardinal Manning, Canon Carter, Mr. Spurgeon, Dr. Adler, Dr. Jex Blake, Dr. Ridding, 1)r. Montagu Butler, Mr. Froude, Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Browning, Mr. Tennyson, &e. Your readers who may have been somewhat disturbed by the Bishop of Peterborough's speech last year iu the House of Lords, claiming for vivisection a beneficent discovery in surgery said to have been made by Mr. Spencer-Wells, ought to study a letter by Dr. Clay, in the British Medical Journal of July 17th, p. 110, wherein Dr. Clay appears to knock down this rather shaky basis for a great moral conclusion tolerably effectually.
After quoting the testimony of Dr. Simpson, of Edinburgh, and others to his own right to the discovery in question long prior to Mr. Wells' first case (in l and challenging Mr. Wells to• deny that he had thanked hint for showing him the operation for the first time iu 1857, Dr. Clay adds :—
" Allow me, before I conclude, to state that, in my opinion, Vivi- section has no more to do with advancing the success of ovarietemy than the Pope at Rome. I agree with what Sir William Ferguason expressed in 1675,—"That in surgery ho was not aware of any of these experiments on the lower animals having led to the mitigation of pain, or to improvement as regards surgical details.' " 1 Victoria Street, S.W., July 21st.
Previous page
