VIVISECTION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,-91.6 very temperate and reasonable letter of "An Oppo- nent of Vivisection," in this week's Specator, appears to request an answer from me. I have said that vivisection, as practised in this country, and so far as the suffering of animals is con- cerned, is "a harmless Will-o'-the-Wisp ;" and as proof of this, I observed that, during ten years' experience of the innermost workings of Dr. Sanderson's laboratory (and, I might have added, Dr. Foster's also), I have never witnessed any experi- ment which might not fearlessly have been shown to all the world. Your correspondent thinks this latter statement not sufficiently precise, and adds, "If Mr. Romanes had said that he had never seen any pain inflicted that he should have objected to endure himself for a fit purpose, then, indeed, I should have felt really enlightened and relieved." Well, after deliberately think- ing over all the experiments I can remember (and painful ones would not escape my memory), I feel that, with one or two reasonable reservations, I may conscientiously agree to have my previous statement put into this form. The reserva- tions that I should require to be made are two,—first, that a cold-blooded animal should not be assumed to be as sensitive as a warm-blooded one (therefore, not so sensitive as myself) ; and second, that I should not be called upon to endure in my own person all the pain that I may from time to time have seen inflicted on warm-blooded animals. But on any one warm- blooded animal, I certainly have never seen an amount of pain inflicted that I would not myself have willingly endured, for the purposes of the experiment. I am assuredly convinced that I have suffered much more pain in the hands of a dentist than I have ever seen any animal suffer in the bands of a physiologist.
Of course, I only speak of my own experience, and of vivisec- tion as practised in this country. The " exaggerations " of which I complained, as being promulgated by the agitators, consist in a searching-out of the worst abuses of scientific method that have occurred in foreign laboratories, and then presenting them as a type, more or less fair, of what goes on in our laboratories at home. This may be done in the spirit that used to lead to "pious frauds ;" but like them, it is none the less a gross mis- statement of facts. It has, for instance, been recently laid
down in the Times as an "obvious truth" that "vivisection is
everywhere the same;" and from this premiss, it was thought
sound argument to fish out a hideous account of " larding" an
animal with nails, and to present it as a case not unreasonably to be expected to occur in any physiological laboratory. As well might it have been argued as an "obvious truth " that marital quarrels are " everywhere the same," and therefore that wife- murder might be expected to occur in half the houses iu the kingdom. And my pleading throughout has been,—Now that the law prohibits the "larding," no less than the murder, is it not time to end the Jack-o'-Lantern chase, and make some use- ful endeavour to save the groaning and travail of the brute creation around us P If the "dumb animal" could talk, how eloquent might ho grow on the negative cruelty of the humane, in bringing all their energies to bear against his one imaginary
[Mr. Romanes limits his own view as unreasonably as he accuses his adversaries of extending theirs. We do not know how far the present law may have controlled the abuses which were undoubtedly revealed even in England, before the Act re- lating to Vivisection was passed. But Mr. Romance is perfectly well aware that some of the most cruel experiments disclosed by the evidence of the Royal Commission,—Dr. Rutherford's on 36 dogs under curari,—have been repeated since that Act was passed, under a licence given in conformity with its worst pro- vision, and that he himself would no more consent to endure one of those experiments in his own person for the end in view, than he would consent to crucifixion.—En. Spectator.]
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