MORAL ASPECTS OF VIVISECTION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—If to bear false testimony were punishable in the same manner as the stealing of apples, "A Memorialist" would cer- tainly incur the punishment which befell the schoolboy of his apologue.
He utterly misstates every line of the argument which he assumes to summarise and to answer. Briefly that argument was, that experiments on animals can only be described as "cruel" when they can be shown to be useless ; that the infliction of necessary pain on animals by the physiologist is not more cruel than the infliction of necessary pain on man by the surgeon.
The infliction of pain is always cruel when not proved to be necessary. The charge against American physiologists, which was repelled as a foul calumny, was that they inflicted gratuitous and needless pain by using " living animals instead of dead,"—thatis, for any purpose for which a dead animal could serve. As to the moral effects of experimentation on animals, the physiologist does not, I believe, suffer morally from his pursuits more than the surgeon, and for the same reason, that both are conscious of the great objects which sanctify their studies and labours. If I were to name some of the greatest English physiologists, I should name men who, as exemplars of tenderness and virtue, are ornaments to their country and their profession.—I am, Sir, &c.,
59 Queen Anne Street, TV., April 7 . ERNEST HART.
[Mr. Hart, then, does not think the operation on the poor girl which was the origin of this correspondence " cruel "? Assuredly it was not " useless "any more than the original operations of Dr. Ferrier on his lower victims. It was worse than useless to the subject of it, but so were they.—En. Spectator.]
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