We call attention to a letter by Dr. Clarke in
another column, in which he remarks on some physiological experiments of Mr. C. Egerton Jennings, M.S., related in the Lancet of last week, but whether performed in this country or abroad—they may, perhaps, have been performed in Ghent—we are not informed. The original operations were made on dogs under anaesthetics; but it is obvious to those who have read the account in the Lancet, and have considered what it means, that the experi- ments must have entailed terrible anguish to the victims after the operation was over, and all, so far as we can judge, for the very minimum of inductive inference. That experiments so cruel should be made for such an end, and made apparently with the cordial approbation of the masters of the healing art, seems to us a condition of things likely to result in consequences far more injurious to the morale of that great profession than it can ever be advantageous to its command of therapeutic means.
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