CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND VIVISECTION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR,") SIR,—We have just seen the last sentence of the law carried out on a fellow-creature. Our sense of the sacredness of human life has been shown by the decision that certain actions render the agent unworthy of retaining it ; we have not shrunk from the terrible practical assertion that it is possible to forfeit the right to breathe the air we all breathe as our common posses- sion. Why, I would ask your readers to consider, do we stop here ? Why, when we are told that science needs living material, when we thence infer that many victims to disease might be restored to a health they have never abused by the sacrifice of one whose very life is forfeit to justice, do we not take advantage of this opportunity, happily so rare, to make the death of one the advantage of many ? The right to take life, we have been told, includes the right to inflict pain. A few extra pangs, to the worst of criminals (and none beside will in England ever be condemned to the gallows), might (if the same authorities speak truly) save the health of the most virtuous of mankind. On any consideration of the least pain to the smallest number, the argument for prolonging the life of many good men, by adding a few days' suffering to the death of one bad man, is irresistible. Physiologists want organisms to experiment on which approach our own most nearly, and here is a specimen of our own. They want to benefit their kind, and here is a man who has done nothing but injury to his kind, and has in death the op- portunity of making some atonement. Why does the notion of giving up such a one to Vivisection awaken a horror which, were it once provoked by any serious proposal, would be expressed in an outcry from one end of the kingdom to the other ? It is because we all see, where human suffering is concerned, that the infliction of torture is not justified by any consideration whatever but the immediate good of the sufferer. It is a case where the maxim that we may not do evil that good may come
(which often seems to me very much abused) is felt to be un- answerable. To know what is going on inside the living bodies of men and women might be the greatest possible gain to science and to medical art, but if this inestimable boon can be attained only at the price of a single pang to the worst of criminals, we must " let that alone for ever."
Why is the case wholly changed when we deal with innocent brutes instead of guilty men ? Surely, all obvious considerations, both of morality and of science, brought forward as arguments for the vivisection of animals, would appear to tell far more strongly in favour of the vivisection of criminals. On the side of science, we might urge that a knowledge of the living human organism must, for the purposes of healing that organism, be more valuable than a knowledge even of those organisms which approach it most closely. On the side of morality, we might touch on more than one consideration. if the few are to suffer for the many, do not the guilty few seem more appro- priate than the innocent few ? If torture is to be inflicted, had it not better be inflicted where it should serve as a de- terrent from crime ? If anguish must be endured, is it not fitting that it should follow guilt ? Every reason by which men justify the vivisection of brutes applies to that of con- victs condemned to capital punishment, and applies muck more forcibly. There is more to be said for the practice which we could not bring ourselves to contemplate, than for that which is generally tolerated. I wish I could bring your readers to ask themselves if there is any reason at all for this marked distinc- tion, except that animals are helpless. They cannot resist, they cannot remonstrate, they cannot appeal. Therefore, the justice and mercy which in the case of every other suffering class have been reinforced by threats and entreaties have here to stand alone. It is a painful discovery that we who make an appeal for these helpless creatures find ourselves thereby in antagonism to the whole Medical profession, but it is quite explicable, without supposing them to care more for human suffering than most people, or less for animal suffering. Let us grant that vivisec- tion aids medical science. I do not myself believe that it has proved advantageous to us in any adequate proportion to the torture it has inflicted on our subject fellow-creatures. When I bear of the beneficial results of Professor Ferrier's experi- ments on the brains of apes, I cannot but remember how, a short time ago, we were told everywhere of the experiment
which had "saved the lives of hundreds of women," and which, in fact, was made many years after an American, in the words of Mr. Spencer Wells, "enriched modern surgery with the ope- ration" which it was said to have rendered possible. And when I read that " to vivisection we owe almost all our knowledge of the processes of disease and the action of our most powerful re- medies," I am sure that the physician who makes this statement is exaggerating the facts, nearly as much as when he tells us that " some of the bitterest hours " in the lives of his professional brethren " are those in which they are appealed to for help which they cannot afford." But I do not base my appeal on the exaggeration of statements like these. I should still make it, if they were proved accurate. I merely cite them to show that professional utterances, on this subject, should be received with as much caution as attention. May we, indeed, not say this of all professional utterances ? No corporate bond seems to me to involve so little of the blessing and so much of the danger involved in all which tends to make selfishness vicarious, as that which associates men on the basis of their interests. I do not forget that the word interest has a high as well as a low meaning ; it would lose half its danger, if the vulgar temp- tations it suggests were not akin to lofty aims. Trades-unions may be very good things, but trades-unionism is a very dan- gerous thing. And its dangers never seem to me to have been exhibited more clearly than in the recent attitude of the Medical profession towards Vivisection.
It is but a little way that in this world we can see into the meaning of Pain. Perhaps the tendency of our day is to exaggerate its evil, to forget all that is elevating, all that is softening, in its influence. But it is elevating, it is softening, only for us. For the creatures beneath us, it would appear pure evil. Shall we, who may find in it the waters of purifying, condemn those to whom it seems but as the scorching flame to taste its utmost bitterness P We recoil from doing it when the sufferer would be human, even though he be the guiltiest of human beings ; even though, as far as human eye can see, to suffer would be the best thing for him. Why should this horror vanish when we deal with those for whom suffering, as far as we can see, is the worst thing ? If we can say that we know anything of the purpose of pain, it is to make the suf- ferer more merciful, more tender. Shall we strip it of this divine meaning, and condemn the creatures whose only good seems happiness to agonies that the best of men would refuse to face, and from the infliction of which the worst is absolutely secure ?
—I am, Sir, &c., AN OPPONENT OF VIVISECTION.
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