THE MORAL CONSEQUENCE OF VIVISECTION. [To THE EDITOR OF THE
"SPECTATOR.") SIN—A school-boy charged with stealing apples is recorded to have vindicated himself, first, by denying that he had taken any apples, and treating the suggestion that any boys ever took apples as a "cruel calumny ;" secondly, by declaring that he stole them only and solely for the sake of his dear little brother ; thirdly, by boldly announcing that he had a right to the apples, since they were given to him long ago by the owner of the orchard. The school- master is said to have flogged this too-ingenious schoolboy, re- marking that if one of his excuses were good for anything, it proved the others to be false.
May I recommend this small anecdote to the attention of one of your correspondents who first waxed wrath with the people who were guilty of the " calumny " of charging American physiologists with the practice of Vivisection ; who next vaunted the same practice as an act of devotion to the interests of suffering mankind ; and who now ends by frankly stating that it is "the birthright of humanity," which has " fallen within the duty of physicians ever since the days of Galen ?" De deux choses rune. Let the vivisectors choose one line of defence, or the other. Either they never per- form any painful experiments worth mentioning ; or they both perform them and justify them on the plea of the interests of humanity. If they deny that they perform such experiments, we may ask them to explain the existence of those hate- ful octavos, the " Handbook of the Physiological Labora- tory," and tell us whether all the receipts for torture therein contained were never intended to be followed, and whether the pictures of all the instruments recommended were entirely drawn from the rich and playful fancy of the illustrator? Further, when one physiologist tells us in a published report how he tormented sixteen cats, and another how he mangled certain dogs, and a third how he has experimented on "thousands" of other animals in the course of his beneficent career, we must beg to be informed whether we are to take all these avowals as so many sprightly jeux d'esprit, having no reference to anything which has really happened in England in the nineteenth century ? If, on the contrary, the Vivisectors honestly confess that they do torture living brutes, and teach students to do the same, in the interests of humanity, then we join issue with them in fair, open field. We are extremely doubtful whether the lower physical interests of humanity are essentially advanced by such practices,* and we are perfectly certain that the nobler moral interests of our race are sacrificed by such base and heart-petrifying cruelties. To " do evil that good may come" seems to be just now the grand maxim of medical science. The lay conscience of mankind, however, prefers to adopt an opposite principle. " Let us be merciful in the first
• See, for the grounds of our doubts on this subject, the Addenda to Dr Walker's "Address on Vivisection," just published by Baillitre, Tindall, and Cox.
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