170 THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECT•TOR."1
Sta,—That secrets which have been whispered in the ear should be " proclaimed on the housetops " has, no doubt, always been -an nnpleasing prophecy for guilty consciences. It was reserved, however, I think for Vivisectors to entertain the liveliest aversion to finding their operations, performed in closed laboratories, discussed in Parliament, and diagrams intended to illustrate sumptuous manuals for fellow-physiologists posted life-size over the hoardings of London. Professor Owen was so impressed by the disagreeability of this kind of thing, that he wrote last year a vivid, albeit fanciful, description of a certain " Vision of Judg- ment " which he experienced in Seven Dials, where the opinion of -the inhabitants on experimental physiology was expressed with a candour which obviously startled their venerable auditor. Now, we find Professor de Cyon, in the Contemporary Review, still suffering, after five years, from the same short burst of street 'celebrity; and as his statements on the matter require some little correction, and were the only ones left unanswered in the second article in the same review, I will beg your kind permis- sion to reply to them in the Spectator.
The great importance of the distinction between an " illustri- ous " and an " illustrated " physiologist must be keenly felt by M. de Cyon, since he dedicates, first, half a page (p. 500), and then a whole page (p. 502-3) to his wrongs in the matter, and tells as frankly he " shall never forget the painful impression" he re- ceived some years ago, when one of his most eminent fellow- labourers in London sent him a letter in which he excused him- self for keeping silence about his book, much as he wished to speak of it, on the ground that he was afraid of exasperating public opinion." And yet while Professor de Cyon was thus snuffed out by his "eminent fellow-labourer," he was, oh, cruel fate ! denied the benefit of this "modest effacement," for his book did not escape the Anti-Vivisectionists, who utilised the plates, which they got up after a fashion of their own, and placarded in all the railway stations, with the taking title, " The Horrors of Vivisection !"
I must here remark that if the " eminent fellow-labourers " in England with whom M. de Cyon is in such close communication told him that " The Horrors of Vivisection " were placarded in the railway stations, they must have treated him even as they are wont to treat the profane and vulgar public, with statements " accurate enough for scientific purposes," but for no other. I happen to know that no illustrations of vivisection, good, bad, or indifferent, were ever admitted for exhibition at the railway stations.
But to proceed. M. de Cyon next tells us, in the following page, returning to the painful subject, that some years ago "his English friends," (how many friends has not a Continental vivisector, even the worst in England, so that, like Goltz, he may even dedicate a book to them P) sent him a placard purport- ing "to contain drawings from his Physiologisclte Methodik, as they had appeared in certain illustrated papers. These placards had been posted up by hundreds of thousands in every corner of the kingdom."
Now, Sir, whether the circulation of the Police News reaches " hundreds of thousands," or extends to every " corner of the kingdom," I am not competent to affirm ; but it was, to the best of my knowledge and belief, exclusively in that " certain illustrated paper" that there appeared the clever though somewhat rough sketches of sup- posed scenes in a vivisector's laboratory. The Professors and students were depicted (of course out of the moral con- sciousness of the Police News' artist) decidedly in an unflatter- ing manner ; but the condition of their victims was copied fairly enough from M. de Cyon's work. I regret that at this distant date I do not know where to lay my hand on these now historical woodcuts, though at the time I procured a good many clean ones, which afforded delight to our Central and East-London allies, in whose shop windows, I believe, they occasionally formed an attraction. Little did I imagine that the illustrious—and illustrated—Professor would ever come forward, and in the pages of the great Contemporary Review pen such a complaint against them as this delicious morceau,,—" The Professor who is supposed to represent me," says M. de Cyon, " is a shabby old man, with a pimpled face and spectacles. I was thirty-two when my book appeared !" Alas ! poor injured M. de Cyon ! Not only presented to the English public in "hundreds of thou- sands" of pictures, engaged in his favourite occupation of cutting np living animals—bad as this would be, divine philosophy might help him to bear it—but to be represented as a "shabby old man, with pimpled face and spectacles," and this when he was only thirty-two ! It really was more than French physiological nature would be expected to -bear. But then, likenesses of the characters who usually figure in the Police News are, I fear, seldom appreciated by their originals.
Seriously, the real blow struck at N. de Cyon, and through him at Vivisection, was the exhibition iu February, 1877, of three hundred large posters over the hoardings of London. These posters were life-sized transcripts, carefully made under the supervision of an experienced physiologist, of the plates in M.
de Cyon's great " Methodik." When a writer in the Globe news- paper ventured to describe them disparagingly, I publicly offered him in the same journal 210 from my own pocket to point out a single line exaggerated or altered in any way from the original. Needless to say, the challenge was never accepted.
It is enough to look at the plates (which we retain, for possi- ble future use) to be quite sure that they, at all events, do not,
as M. de Cyon would have his readers believe, merely reproduce diagrams of dead animals intended for anatomical study. Even vivisectors, I presume, do not muzzle with elaborate apparatus, or continue to pump air into the lungs of dogs and rabbits whose agonies are over for ever. The experiments in question are, moreover, altogether familiar things ; for it must be re- membered that these hideous operations are not the exceptional and casual resource of a baffled physiologist, but the regular stock studies, which each tyro in succession, as he takes up one branch or other of the subject, goes through, just as a student of music plays his scales and exercises.—I am, Sir, &c., ONE or M. DE LYON'S HYSTERICAL OLD MUDS.
1 Victoria Street, S.W., April 5th.
[We understand, then, that the placards complained of by M. de °you were not issued by the anti-Vivisection Society at all, and that no each Society was in any way responsible for the misrepresentations complained of by the French physiologist.— ED. Spectator.]
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