THE LAST WORD OF A GREAT SURGEON.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Permit me to call the attention of your readers to the testimony given by the late most eminent surgeon, Mr. Lawson Tait, to the validity of our contention (even on purely scientific grounds) against the practice of vivisection. In the Medical Press Circular of May 10th, p. 498, Mr. Tait wrote as follows to the editor :—" You seem to think that my conver- sion to anti-vivisection views is of recent date, but it is a matter of nearly thirty years old Some day I shall have a tombstone put over me and an inscription upon it. I want only one thing recorded on it, and that is to the effect • that he laboured to divert his profession from the blunder- ing which has resulted from the performance of experiments on the sub-human groups of animal life, in the hope that they would shed light on the aberrant physiology of the human groups.' Such experiments never have succeeded and never can ; and they have, as in the cases of Koch, Pasteur, and Lister, not only hindered true progress, but have covered our profession with ridicule."—We are, Sir, &c.,
FRANCES POWER COBBE,
President British Union for Abolition of Vivisection ;
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