We are happy to state that both Professor Schiff, and
his assistant, Mr. Herzen, in the physiological laboratory at Florence, assert in the strongest way that their physiological experiments, whenever they anticipate the probability of pain, are per- formed under amsthetics which completely exclude it. Pro- fessor Schiff writes that he. has always put the animals on which he experimented into a profound sleep, that he kills them before they sufficiently recover to experience pain from the result of what he has done, and that the greater number of his experi- ments are performed, not on living, but on dead animals. All that is perfectly satisfactory, if we could completely rely on the judgment of these vivisectors as to what may and what may not be expected to give pain, and as to what is and is not complete insensibility to pain, but we don't believe that we can. Indeed, if Dr. De Noe Walker's express statement is to be trusted, that he had seen cases in which Professor Schiff opened the windpipe in order to prevent the shrieks of the animal from being heard, it is quite clear that with regard to those cases Professor Schiff's memory has failed him. We give elsewhere the letters of Mr. Ray Lankester and Dr. Walker on the subject, and also some comments of our own upon them.
Previous page
