The Medical Council and the other medical gentlemen who signed
their petition to the House of Lords at the soirée of the Medico- Chirurgical Society the other night, are somewhat defi- cient in political sagacity, when they ask, as they do, for the transformation of Lord Carnarvon's Vivisection Bill into a Bill which would give new and great moral facilities for the practice of vivisection, instead of putting very serious limitations upon it. They might fairly petition for the rejection of the Bill altogether, but to ask for its metamorphosis into a guarantee that no physio- logist who has once got a license to practise vivisection, shall be disturbed or hampered in his researches by any limitation whatever, except the occasional visit of a brother physiologist of probably exactly similar views to his own, is not common-sense. As we understand the Medical Council's requisitions, they object to all limitations on the animals used, to all limitations on the places where they may be operated on for purposes of research, to the prohibition of curara or urara as an anesthetic, except under the general provision that nothing may be used as an anesthetic which is not proved to be an anesthetic,—proved to whose satisfaction they do not say,—they object to the demand of a careful register of the course and results of every experiment made,—a demand originally suggested by eminent physiologists as a security for the knowledge by all of what each had done,— and to any inspection whatever except that of one of their own class, who will not know where to find them at work, unless they tell him. In fact, they object to every substantial restric- tion contained in the Bill, except the necessity for obtaining a licence, which is hardly a restriction at all. We are not surprised, though we think the Medical Council silly. But why not candidly propose to change the title of the Bill into one "for the protection of physiologists against the bigoted and ignorant humanity of popular opinion ?"
