The Utility and Morality of Vivisection. By G. Gore, LL.D.,
F.R.S. (J. W. Kolckmann.)—Mercy and Truth v. Cruelty and Contradiction : a Reply of the Bristol and Clifton Anti-Vivisection Society to Mr. E. D. Girdlestone, B.A. (Simpkin and Marshall, London ; J. Baker and Son, Clifton. 1884.)—The argument of the former of these pamphlets, if it be good at all, justifies experiments on human beings wherever they could be legally made, and justifies their legalisation wherever the State has any right to interfere, much more efftictually than it justifies the torture of animals ; and for this simple reason— that it proceeds entirely on the instruction which they may afford us as to modes of treatment and on the general scientific knowledge which those experiments may bring ; and it is obvious enough that a very few well-directed experiments, say, on criminals who have incurred severe penalties, would be a hundred times as instructive as experiments on animals so far removed from man as dogs and cats. Dr. Gore advances no argument in favour of inflicting scientific torture on animals when it is likely to be instructive, which is not still more applicable to the case of similar experiments on human beings. If he does not justify the latter, when they are excessively painful, why does he justify the former ? Will he say that the moral mischief of cruelty to man outweighs the advantage of new knowledge ? Well, that is just what we assert of the moral mischief of cruelty to animals also. The second pamphlet is a very able answer to Mr. Girdlestone, especially directed to his admis- sion that only painful experiments as restricted in England by the Act of 1876 should be permitted. The writer shows that these restric- tions greatly hamper the experimental method as a mere scientific method, and so much restrict its usefulness, that the results boasted of as derived from unrestricted experiment cannot be expected from the restricted experimenting now permitted. And he further shows that the justice and mercy which have justified the restrictions, justify very much stronger restrictions than are at present legal.
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