VIVISECTION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TILE SPICOTATOR.1
Sin,—It would really seem as if Vivisection were not a good educational process, in more ways than one. Professor Herzen has been for many years the assistant of Professor Schiff at Florence, and now holds the same position in the Physiological Laboratory in that city. It is almost beyond belief that he should not have read all the principal works on his own subject pub- lished in Europe. It may be said to be absolutely incredible that he should never have read the chief standard treatises of the present day, or been acquainted with a vast class of experi- ments made by such men as Magendie, Delaroche, Berger, and Claude Bernard. Were any one to charge him with such ignorance, he would probably feel himself highly insulted, for the learned Professor has actually written to the Times (July 24), to affirm that " Vivicoetion," which, be says, "is the proper term for boiling, baking, roasting, and frying living animals," are processes, "to our knowledge, never yet applied to scientific experimentation." The opponents of vivisection naturally refer Professor Herzen to Dr. Carpenter's" Principles of Physiology " (p. 486, 7th edition) ; to Dr. B6clarch's 64 Tread," &c. (p. 483) ; and finally, to M. Claude Bernard's 44 Lecons sur la Chaleur Animale " (Paris, 1876), half of which latter volume consists of records of such "scientific experimentation," with diagrams of the stoves wherein he has, by his own account, baked to death
twenty-two rabbits and 107 dogs.—I am, Sir, &c., F. P. C.
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