A suit, reported in the Roman letter of the Times
of Wed- nesday, has taken place at Florence, which shows how little account Italy as yet takes of the sufferings of the lower animals. A German physiologist of the name of Schiff, who is Professor of Physiology in the Royal Superior Institute of that city, has for years back conducted a great series of vivisectional experiments in the Museum, which have so filled the whole neighbourhood with the shrieks of the victims as to render the houses in that quarter unwelcome residences, and to lower their letting-price. The suit was not commenced in the interest of the wretched victims of Professor Schiff's prurient scientific curi- osity, but solely in the interest of the owners of the adjoining property, but the Echo of last Tuesday, which has an excellent article on the matter, and evidently writes on private informa- tion supplementing that of the Italian newspapers, asserts that the counsel for the plaintiffs stated that to his knowledge 700 dogs had been given over to Professor Schiff's cruel hands by the direction of the municipality, who had instructed the police to pass on to him all the lost dogs found in the streets. The official who formerly had the skins of these dogs as his per- quisite has been heard to lament that those skins are now of no use, being so hacked by the operator that they no longer fetch the usual price. Yet it does not seem that the Italian law has any punishment for cruelty such as Professor Schiff's, who, with chloroform in his hands, does not scruple to make Florence ring with the screams of his living subjects. We trust, at least, that Professor Schiff may convey a warning to English physio- logists of the loathsome insensibility to which the habit of vivisection is apt to lead. We are always told that chloro. form makes these vivisections quite painless. We reply that vivisections undertaken on light grounds,—demonstrational vivisections, for instance,—even when at first undertaken with the aid of chloroform, tend so to harden the heart, that the operators are before long quite content to remit the chloroform, and study the results of the treatment not only on the physio- logical frame, but on the sensibilities, of the animal. To our minds, conduct like that attributed to Professor Schiff represents the most hideous depth of human hard-heartedness.
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