LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
VIVISECTION.
[We republish with much reluctance the following painful letter to the Editor of Monday's Morning Post, as showing what the practice of Vivisection, when applied at least to the higher kinds of animals, really means. It has been conjectured, probably enough, that the laboratory referred to is not an English one. But whatever slight shades of difference the personal humanity of the physiologist who presides in such laboratories may make, the main characteristics of these vivisections, when performed on the higher orders of animals, like dogs and cats, cannot greatly differ, since they depend on the permanent conditions of the case. Let no one read the letter who has already made up his mind that the practice must be rigidly restricted or put an end to. For such a one it would be needless suffering.— En. Spectator.]
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " MORNING POST.)
" Sra,—If the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals intend to give effect to the Memorial presented to it on Monday, and do its utmost to put down the monstrous abuses which have sprung up of late years in the practice of Vivisection, it will probably find that the greatest obstacle to success lies in the secrecy with which such experiments are conducted ; and it is to the destruction of that secrecy that its best efforts should be directed, in the Legislature or elsewhere. It matters little what criminality the law may clearly attach to such practices. So long as the present privacy be maintained in regard to them, it will be found impossible to convict, from want of evidence. No student can be expected to come forward as a witness when be knows that he would be hooted, mobbed, and expelled from among his fellows for doing so, and any rising medical man would only achieve pro- fessional ruin by following a similar course. The result is that although hundreds of such abuses are being constantly perpetrated amongst us, the public knows no more about them than what the distant echo reflected from some handbook for the laboratory affords. On the other hand, if special knowledge be not forthcoming, and the publie mind be alone left to carry on the crusade against unnecessary vivisec- tion, feelings will be sure to take the place of facts, and the morbid, unreasoning excitement thereby created will either carry matters too far or fail altogether. As nothing will be likely to succeed so well as example in drawing forth information on these points from those capable but hesitating to give it, I venture to record a little of my own experience in the matter, part of which was gained as an assistant in the laboratory of one of the greatest living experimental physiologists. In that laboratory we sacrificed daily from one to three dogs, besides rabbits and other animals, and after four months' experience, I am of opinion that not one of those experiments on animals was justified or necessary. The idea of the good of humanity was simply out of the question, and would have been laughed at the great aim being to keep up with, or get ahead of, one's contemporaries in science, even at the price of an incal- culable amount of torture needlessly and iniquitously inflicted on the poor animals. During three campaigns I have witnessed many harsh sights, but I think the saddest sight lever witnessed was when the dogs were brought up from the cellar to the laboratory for sacrifice. Instead of appearing pleased with the change from darkness to light, they seemed seized with horror as soon as they smelt the air of the place, divining appar- ently their approaching fate. They would make friendly advances to each of the three or four persons present, and as far DE oyes, oars, and tail could make a mute appeal for mercy eloquent, they tried it in vain. Even when roughly grasped and thrown on the torture-trough, a low, complaining whine at such treatment would be all the protest made, and they would continue to lick the hand which bound them till their mouths were fixed in the gag, and they could only flap their tail in the trough as their last means of exciting compassion. Often when con- vulsed by the pain of their torture this would be renewed, and they would be soothed instantly on receiving a few gentle pats. It was all the aid or comfort I could give them, and I gave it often. They seemed to take it as an earnest of fellow-feeling that would cause their torture to come to an end—an end only brought by death.
"Were the feelings of experimental physiologists not blunted, they could not long continue the practice of vivisection. They are always ready to repudiate any implied want of tender feeling, but I must say that they seldom show much pity ; on the contrary, in practice they frequently show the reverse. Hundreds of times I have seen when an animal writhed with pain, and thereby deranged the tissues, during a delicate dissection, instead of being soothed, it would receive a slap and an angry order to be quiet and behave itself. At other times, when an animal had endured groat pain for hours without struggling or giving more than an occasional low whine, ini.te.rd of lotting the poor mangled wretch loose to crawl painfully about the place in reserve for another day's torture, it would receive pity so far that it would be said to have behaved well enough to merit death, and as a reward would be killed
at once by breaking up the medulla with a needle, or pithing,' as this operation is called. I have often heard the professor say, when one side of an animal had been so mangled, and the tissues so obscured by clotted blood, that it was difficult to find the part searched for, 'Why don't you begin on the other side ?' or, Why don't you take another dog ? What is the use of being so economical ?' One of the most revolting features in the laboratory w as the custom of giving an animal on which the professor had completed his experiment, and which had still some life left, to the assistants to practise the finding of arteries, nerves, dm., in the living animal, or for performing what are called fundamental experiments upon it,—in other words, repeating those which are recommended in the laboratory handbooks. I am inclined to look upon anwsthetics as the greatest curse to vivisectible animals. They alter too much the normal conditions of life to give accurate results, and they are there- fore little depended upon. They indeed prove far more efficacious in lulling public feeling towards the vivisectors than pain in the vivisected. Connected with this there is a horrible proceeding that the public pro- bably knows little about. An animal is sometimes kept quiet by the administration of a poison called droorara,' which paralyses voluntary motion while it heightens sensation, the animal being kept allie by means of artificial respiration until the effects of the poison have passed off. "On the Continent, I have often seen animals operated upon in this condition before an audience, who, as they were incapable of showing the pain they felt, were supposed by those present to be insensible to it, while all the time the poor brutes were suffering double torture that the feelings of the audience might be spared. To this recital I need hardly add that, having drunk the cup to the dregs, I cry off, and am prepared to see not only science, but even mankind, perish rather than have re- course to such means of saving it. I hope that we shall soon have a Government inquiry into the subject, in which experimental physiolo- gists shall only be witnesses, not judges. Let all private vivisection be made criminal, and all experiments be placed under Government in- spection, and we may have the same clearing-away of abuses that the Anatomy Act caused in similar circumstances.—I am, Sir, your obedient
Previous page
