The British Medical Journal says that the Scientific Grants Committee
of the British Medical Association, at a meeting held on Wednesday, appointed Mr. Callender, Dr. Burdon Sanderson, Dr. Lauder Brunton, and Mr. Ernest Hart, a Committee of investigation into the cause, pathology, and treatment of rabies and hydrophobia. We only hope that the Home Secretary will not grant permission for any serious experiments on the artificial production of rabies in dogs, any more than on the production of hydrophobia in men,—though the former disease can be pro- duced, and indeed has been produced, by injecting the saliva of dogs into the veins of other healthy dogs,—but will beg the Committee to confine themselves to experiments on the mode of curing it where it exists. it seems to be a comparatively easy task to produce fatal diseases in the lower animals, and we have never understood the kind of pride which the profession take in doing so. With slight and comparatively painless diseases, this may be justifiable, in order to get a sufficient average of observa- tions, but with the more acute and perilous diseases, especially those which are liable to propagate themselves, it is both cruel and impolitic to multiply the evil on the infinitesimal chance of finding a remedy. Indeed, in this matter the doctors are only too' like the " Man of Thessaly," who jumped into the quickset-bush and scratched out both his eyes, in the vain hope that when his eyes were out, by jumping again into the quickset-bush, he could. scratch them in again.
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