VIVISECTION IN ENGLAND.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE niSPEOTATOR."1 SI11,—My attention has just been called to a passage in the Lancet of September 27th, which I think deserves to be noted by those optimist persons who imagine that the Vivi- section Act has stopped the cruelties of the practice in England, and that it has (as the Bishop of Carlisle recently affirmed), pro- hibited the use of the abominable drug curare. The writer in the Lancet reviews a reprint of the several memoirs read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh by Professor Rutherford, and this is what he tells us :—" Professor Rutherford found the Dog to be, on various grounds, the animal by far the best adapted
for experiments The introduction of a small dose of cm-are prevented irreg ular muscular movements It was necessary of course to maintain artificial respiration." (Quaere,— Is it a emall dose of curare which necessitates artificial respira- tion P Does not its use imply that the animal was in the state of total paralysis of the motor nerves, accompanied by hyper- sesthesia, of the nerves of sensation, which, Claude Bernard says, occasions "the most atrocious sufferings which the imagination of man can conceive P")
In this curarised state, the dogs were treated. in Professor Rutherford's usual way, by the injection of drugs into the duodenum, an operation of which Dr. Hoggan gave the follow- ing account to the Royal Commission (Minutes, 3464) :— "Therefore, those animals were kept under curare 8, 7, 6 and 5 hours, suffering pain, in consequence of an operation being performed which opened their abdomen ; an operation made to find out the bile-duct, and separate it from the other structures.
A glass citnnula is then tied in the bile-duct, and the bile drops by means of a tube. All that human beings know is the pain there is when gall-stones are passing down the bile- duct, and that is known to give excessive torture. Merely a little bit of fat passing down gives us intense pain, and we can form an opinion that to take out the duct and disturb all these parts would cause more intense pain." s And now I ask how man hapless animals have been this
year sacrificed in this manner by Professor Rutherford P I find in the Return of Licences for 1879 that he holds a licence, and
has received,-1. Certificate enabling him to dispense with
anesthetics; (2), dispensing with the obligation to kill the animal before recovery ; (3), permitting experiments on cats and dogs. But these certificates, we now perceive, must be made to cover dozens of separate experiments, since the Lancet proceeds to say (page (471) :—" It is impossible even -to mention the various drugs which have been the sub- ject of experiment, and which are at least fifty in Izionber." Are we to understand, Sir, I beg to ask, that "at least fifty " dogs have been curarised, and then subjected to -this frightful torture, for the periods of from five to eight hours, to which Professor Rutherford's experiments extend P Or did the same wretched animal sometimes survive, to suffer twice the same martyrdom P Sir, I think the Victoria Street Society is justified, after this, in pronouncing the existing Act, as now worked by the Home Secretary and his inspector, to have utterly failed to fulfil the object of legislation, as set forth by the Royal Commission, namely, to "reconcile the claims of science and humanity," and think we are justified in demanding that the whole practice may be stopped, since, after such " restriction " as we could obtain, such experiments as these are still performed, under the 'very sanction of the law.—I am, Sir, Ste., FRANCEs POWER C01311E, Hon. Sec. S.P.A.V. 1 Victoria Street, S.W.
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