Vivisection is taking more and more hold of our English
physiologists, and there can be no doubt that the scruples which were felt eleven years ago by a very large number of British medical men, are now felt by comparatively few of them. We have spoken of the proposal to found a new and ambitious laboratory, for physiological and pathological research at the College of Surgeons with Sir Erasmus Wilson's bequest,—a proposal which there is every reason to believe is being pressed on, though whether the surgeons of the College will really carry out the cynical idea of connecting this cruel institution with the Jubilee of a Queen who is known to feel the keenest aver- sion to the practice, there may be reasonable doubt. At Edin- burgh, also, a Committee of the Edinburgh College of Physi- cians has proposed and sanctioned a laboratory of the same kind, for which 21,000 is asked for at once, and a Superin- tendent, with a salary of 2200 a year, is also proposed. Again, at Cambridge, the Senate of the University has just sanctioned the preparation of plans for a physiological laboratory, the cost of which is to be 210,000. Both these last incidents are men- tioned in the last number of the British. Medical Journal. By the time that the new school of physiologists and pathologists have got their agencies for prosecuting research well at work, they will probably find, to their dismay, that they have lowered the whole tone of what was once, and what ought always to be, the humanest of all professions.
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