VIVISECTION IN THE UNITED STATES. I To THE EDITOR OF THE " SFECTATOR."1
SIR,—Mr. Ruskin's resignation on account of the recent vote of Convocation is the latest, but not the least, of his services to Oxford and to England. Another recent resignation of the same kind (with a difference) deserves to be recorded as marking the present acute stage of the Vivisection controversy.
Mr. Rendel Harris, of Clare College, Cambridge, has been teaching New Testament Greek at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, since 1882, first as Lecturer, and afterwards as Professor. The study of Animal Physiology, and particularly of its experimental side, has been especially encouraged and cultivated at this University from its opening in 1876. Mr. Harris ventured to protest publicly in Baltimore against what he believes to be the profound immorality of painful experiments on animals for scientific purposes. Solely in consequence of these protests, he was obliged, only last month, to resign his Professorship, under pressure from the Board of Trustees. These facts are thrown into clearer relief by the following official extract from the Johns Hopkins University " Circular," May 12th, 1882 ;—" The Johns Hopkins University is an nnsectarian.
foundation It lays down no test or creed for the assent of students or professors. The Trustees have expressed a desire to see the University pervaded by a spirit of enlightened Christianity ; the ethics taught is Christian ethics ; the daily religious service is Christian worship."
The creed of enlightened and unsectarian Christianity may be doubtful. But at Baltimore its first and necessary clauseseems to be—" I believe in vivisection."—I am, Sir, &c., Crosby, Liverpool, May 1st. T. HERBERT DARLOW.
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