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 LlacDonald, GrovilXe, 1056- 1S44:# 
 
 ExtractG from an article entitled "ViviGOction 
 and progress; a statement and an appeal/ pub* ix 
 the Contemporary review for June 1905, by Gre- i 
 villo LlacDonuld... printed for the Vivisection 
 reform nocioty, 1906 • 
 
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 EXTRACTS 
 
 FROM AN ARTICLE ENTITLED 
 
 (( 
 
 VIVISECTION AND PROGRESS: 
 
 A STATEMENT AND AN APPEAL," 
 
 PUBLISHED IN 
 
 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW 
 
 FOR TUNE, 1905 
 
 BY 
 
 GREVJLLE MacDONALD, M. D. 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE 
 
 VIVISECTION REFORM SOCIETY 
 
 1906. 
 
THE VIVISECTION REFORM SOCIETY 
 has been incorporated as the exponent of the principle which 
 demands not the total abolition of a scientific method, but prevention 
 of the abuses which pertain to it. Within certain limitations, and for 
 certain definite objects, it regards such experimentation as legitimate 
 and right. Carried on beyond these bounds, vivisection becomes 
 monstrous and cruel, a menace to humanity, an injury to the cause 
 of science. 
 
 This Society will continue to oppose the atrocities of human 
 vivisection, which it has brought to light, with the hope that they 
 may some day be equally reprobated and condemned by the entire 
 medical profession. 
 
 The vivisection of animals, carried on without legal regulation, 
 sometimes constitutes a form of scientific torture, which, in the words 
 of the late Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, of Harvard Medical School, "is 
 more terrible, by its refinement and the efforts to prolong it, than 
 burning at the stake." We shall aim to make this cruelty impossible, 
 except as a crime. 
 
 To suppress such abuses as are admitted to exist, and to effect 
 this without interference with any form of research conducted under 
 State supervision and guarded against abuse, is the object of the 
 Society. 
 
 The Vivisection Reform Society appeals, therefore, for 
 encouragement and support to all who have at heart the honor and 
 interest of scientific advancement and the prevention of injustice 
 and cruelty. 
 
 The fee for annual membership is $2.00; for life membership, 
 52^.00. 
 
 VIVISECTION REFORM SOCIETY 
 
 Incorporated in 1903, under the Laws of the United States. 
 
 / 
 
 PRESIDENT 
 
 DAvin H. Cochran, Ph. D., LL. D. 
 I. ate President of tbc Polytechnic Institute. Brcokiyn, N. Y 
 
 SECRETARY 
 
 Sydney Richmonp Tabf.k, 
 
 5J2 Monadnock Block, Chicago, 111. 
 
 TREASURER 
 
 Al.FPr.!i MlI.LARD, 
 
 V. 5. National Bank, Omaha, Neb. 
 
 DIRECTORS 
 
 David H. Cochran, Ph. 0., LL. D 
 
 Hon. James M. Brown, Counsellor at Law . 
 
 Titus Munson Coan, M. D 
 
 Sydney Richmond Tahkr, Counsellor at Law 
 
 Brooklyn, N. V. 
 
 Tfiledo, Oliio 
 
 New Voilv City 
 
 . Chicago, III. 
 
 VICE-PkESIDEMTS 
 
 Hiv Eminence, Cardinal jamfs Gifbons Baltimore, .\I<L 
 
 Prof. GoldwIn Smith, D, C. L., LL. D. . . Toronto 
 
 Prof. John Bascom, D. D., f-L. D., ex-Prc?idcr.t of Univrrsirv ot Wisconsin, Williamstown, Mass. 
 
 Hon. Jacob N, GAi.LiNrKR, \LD., U. S. Senator Concord, N. H. 
 
 Hon. Area N. Watkrman, LL. D., ex-Judge of Illinois Appeiiate Couit . . Chic.;go, 111. 
 
 F:;ancis Fisher Browne, Editor of "The Dial'' Chicago, 111. 
 
 Edward H. Clement, Editor of "Evening Transcript" Boston, Mass. 
 
 Henry M. Field, M. D., late Eineritus Professor of Therapeutics, Dartmouth 
 
 Medical College * Pasadena, Cal. 
 
 Charles W. Dulles, M. D., Lecturer on History of Medicine^ University of 
 
 Pennsylvania Philadelphia 
 
 Alfonso David Rockwell, M. D New York City 
 
 Samuel A. Jones, M. D Ann Arbor, Mich. 
 
 Rev. Frederic Rowland Marvin, M. D Albany, N. Y. 
 
 James H. Glass, M. D,, Surgeon of Utica City Hospital Utica, N. Y, 
 
 Rev. Francis H. Rowley, D. D., Pastor of First Baptist Church, . . , Boston, Mass. 
 
 Rev. Levirett W. Spking, D. D., Professor of English Literature in Williams 
 
 College Williamstown, Mass. 
 

 
 VIVISECTION REFORM SOCIETY 
 
 Incorporated in 1903, under the Laws of the United States. 
 
 PRESIDENT 
 
 David H. Cochran, Ph. D., LL. D. 
 Late President of the Polytechnic Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y 
 
 SECRETARY 
 
 TREASURER 
 
 Sydney Richmond Taber, 
 
 532 Monadnock Block, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Alfred Millard, 
 
 U. S. National Bank, Omaha, Neb. 
 
 •A 
 
 DIRECTORS 
 
 David H. Cochran, Ph. D., LL. D Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 Hon. James M. Brown, Counsellor at Law Toledo Ohio 
 
 Titus Munson Coan, M. D New York City 
 
 Sydney Richmond Tabir, Counsellor at Law Chicago, 111. 
 
 VICE-PRESIDENTS 
 
 His Eminence, Cardinal Jamks Gibbons Baltimore Md. 
 
 Prof. Goldwin Smith, D. C. L., LL. D Toronto 
 
 Prof. John Bascom, D. D., LL. D., ex- President of University of Wisconsin,Williamstown, Mass. 
 
 Hon. Jacob N. Gallinger, M. D., U. S. Senator . Concord, N. H. 
 
 Hon. Arba N. Waterman, LL. D., ex-Judge of Illinois Appellate Court . Chicago, 111. 
 
 Francis Fisher Browne, Editor of **The Dial" Chicago, 111. 
 
 Edward H. Clement, Editor of * 'Evening Transcript" Boston, Mass. 
 
 Henry M. Field, M. D., late Emeritus Professor of Therapeutics, Dartmouth 
 
 Medical College Pasadena, Cal. 
 
 Charles W. Dulles, M, D., Lecturer on History of Medicine, University of 
 
 Pennsylvania Philadelphia 
 
 Alfonso David Rockwell, M. D New York City 
 
 Samuel A. Jones, M. D Ann Arbor, Mich. 
 
 Rev. Frederic Rowland Marvin, M. D Albany, N. Y. 
 
 James H. Glass, M. D., Surgeon of Utica City Hospital Utica, N. Y. 
 
 Rev. Francis H. Rowley, D. D., Pastor of First Baptist Church, , . . Boston, Mass. 
 
 Rev. Lkvkrett W. Spring, D. D., Professor of English Literature in Williams 
 
 College Williamstown, Mass. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 In the Contemporary Review (London), for June, 1905, appeared 
 an article on the subject of Vivisection which especially deserves 
 consideration. The writer. Dr. Greville Mac Donald, is an eminent 
 London physician, and his paper seems to present the subject in its 
 opposing aspects with especial clearness. The essay is a long one 
 and only a portion is here presented. The Vivisection Reform Society 
 does not, by publishing this portion, endorse every sentence, but it 
 heartily approves of the admirable spirit which pervades the article, 
 
 532 Monadnock Block, Chicago, 
 July, 1906. 
 
 S. R. Taber, 
 
 Stcretary. 
 
 VIVISECTION AND PROGRESS 
 
 The question of vivisection concerns our welfare and progress, 
 our individual rights and national honor, more nearly than the man 
 of moderate mind supposes. * * * 
 
 I believe that any mentally well-balanced man, looking into a 
 physiological laboratory, would turn sick at the sights revealed, 
 even though he knew the animal under experiment was deeply 
 chloroformed or brainless. And when I specify a mentally well- 
 balanced person, I do not mean one who looks upon his natural feel- 
 ings as untrustworthy, any more than I mean one who regards the 
 facts of science as fraudulent because he does not like them. I 
 believe still more strongly that the moderate anti-vivisectionist has 
 much excuse for becoming immoderate; I even excuse his gross 
 exaggerations when he is faced by the untruthfulness, stupidity 
 and recklessness of suffering evinced by many who rank high in 
 physiological science; and I even sympathise with his use of brick- 
 bats when he realises the hopelessness of his task, opposed as he is 
 by the grim weight of authority, supported by popular apathy. 
 
 Thus both sides become untruthful and both angry. The mod- 
 erate man sees something of this, stands aside, and backs the winner. 
 His sympathies stand largely with the poor animals as long as he 
 and his children are healthy and enjoy the companionship of their 
 four-footed friends; but his feelings wax greedy for the gifts of 
 science when his little ones are down with diphtheria, or himself is 
 hopelessly fighting a cancer. 
 
 It is because of the difficulties with which the public are beset that 
 I am constrained to put the truth before them, impartially, as far as 
 possible, and imbued, I hope, with a full sense of my responsibility 
 in so doing. The task is not easy, because I have arrayed in oppo- 
 sition to me three classes, all prepared to withstand the world in 
 defence of their positions. 
 
 The first class holds the physiologists. They say that knowledge 
 is the outcome of experiment; that it is only by the knowledge of 
 nature that we can find the laws of disease; therefore, that if we 
 would know the laws of disease, we must experiment on the living 
 animal, and infect it with disease. 
 
 The second class comprises those who maintain that no perpetra- 
 tion of evil can ever bring good ; that the perpetration of cruelty is 
 evil; therefore that vivisection can bring no real, lasting good. 
 Indeed, they go further, and assert that it has done no good. 
 
 The third class includes most of the public. They are indifferent. 
 They hold that such questions are for the expert alone; that the 
 
public can never be expert; therefore, that they must leave the 
 scientific to their own ways, and give them all they demand. 
 
 It is my intention to review especially, though in brief, the claims 
 of the first two classes, and, having done so, to make appeals to all 
 three. But I must, in the first place, deny the claim of the indiffer- 
 ent, that the public, because they can never be experts, are incom- 
 petent to judge upon this matter. On the contrary, I believe that 
 not only is the layman competent to judge, but is bound to do so. 
 In other words, the question is one that the State must decide. 
 The whole principle of democracy is involved in the belief that the 
 people who are concerned in any question are most competent to 
 decide upon it. Yet, though in so believing they assert their right 
 to repudiate the assumed infallibility of authority, they dare not 
 pretend to legislate without honest examination of the evidence 
 brought before them by the agents of authority. It is true that the 
 people can scarcely understand the facts until explained by those 
 who have studied them ; but the intelligent lay mind can always 
 grasp the principles or laws deduced from those facts, and judge 
 of their value. Thus the advantages and dangers of vivisection 
 can be arrayed in intelligible order only by one who understands the 
 subject. But the public, having heard the evidence, must decide 
 whether or no the State shall more willingly sanction cruelty in the 
 secret laboratory than in the highway. It is indeed because of 
 these secret places, to which the public can gain no access, that 
 many exaggerate the horrors of physiology and tear their right 
 passion to tatters, instead of thrice arming it with justice and truth- 
 fulness. 
 
 The best method of enabling the reader to judge between the 
 physiologist and his opponent will be to put before him a few of 
 the more important facts. 
 
 I. — The Case for the Physiologist. 
 
 It is beyond all dispute that Harvey, who is generally credited 
 with the discovery of the circulation of the blood, substantiated the 
 inferences of older observers by vivisections. Nor is it to be dis- 
 puted that every discovery that has advanced medical science can be 
 traced back to its elemental parentage in this first great step out 
 of the dungeons of necromancy into the light of science. It is almost 
 impossible for us now to realise what difficulties of prejudice and 
 ignorance lay in Harvey's way. The m.echanism of the valves in the 
 heart and the veins, which valves could allow the blood to flow only 
 in one direction, in itself seems sufficient proof of the course of the 
 blood. Yet we must not only credit Harvey with this discovery, 
 but also accept his statement that it came to him through frequent 
 
 and patient experiments on the living animal . It is not to the point 
 to argue that this circulation was not actually demonstrated until 
 forty or fifty years later by Malpighi, who, by placing the lung of a 
 living frog under the new two-lensed microscope, demonstrated the 
 passage of the blood from the arteries into the many branched 
 capillary vessels, and from these again into the smallest veins. 
 The anti-vivisectionist argues that this fact is as readily seen in the 
 web of the frog's foot without any vivisection whatever, and that 
 it had been correctly assumed by Coesalpinus, a half-century before 
 Harvey. These points must be granted. Nevertheless, we cannot 
 deny that Harvey's experiment first proved the fundamental prin- 
 ciple of physiology and medicine. 
 
 Again, to use another instance, it is simple fact that John Hunter, 
 greatest of all history's surgeons, through vivisection put on a 
 scientific basis the cure of aneurism by tying the artery. We must 
 even admit that mere scientific curiosity, and not even the desire for 
 establishing an hypothesis or finding a cure for something, sug- 
 gested an experiment that ultimately proved a boon to humanity. 
 The story runs thus : Judging, from the heat and rapid growth of 
 the young buck's antlers, that the blood supply must be exceptionally 
 rich, he was curious to ascertain whether its growth could be 
 checked by tying the artery from which the antler draws its blood 
 supply. The buck was thrown, and the artery tied by an operation 
 involving but little pain, the immediate result being the cooling of 
 the antler and arrest of its pulsation. A week later he examined 
 the same animal, and found to his amazement that heat and pulsa- 
 tion were fully restored. He killed the creature, thinking that the 
 tying might not have been secure; and, upon ascertaining that no 
 fault could be found with the operation, he made this amazing dis- 
 covery: that minute arteries given off from the artery on the near 
 side of the ligature, which intercommunicate with similar small 
 vessels ramifying from the same artery beyond the ligature, had 
 become so much enlarged that the blood supply to the antler was 
 fully maintained. From this he inferred that when the main artery 
 of the leg becomes distended into an aneurism, as sometimes happens 
 behind the knee, he might safely tie the artery, where it is accessible 
 in the thigh, and cure the dangerous malady. It has been disputed 
 whether Hunter should be credited with the honour of this discov- 
 ery. But the evicience is overwhelming that he established its reason, 
 if not actually its practice, and thus brought it into the precincts 
 of scientific surgery. 
 
 One might give many instances of discoveries that have resulted 
 from vivisection, though to most of them a more or less plausible 
 contradiction is brought. The innumerable experiments made upon 
 
the brain and spinal cord, to ascertain the locality and co-ordination 
 of functions, give unequivocal evidence in favour of such experi- 
 ments. Nevertheless, no student of the subject can deny that Sir 
 Charles Bell and Charcot by the study of disease have taught us 
 infinitely more of nerve functions than has the more modern physi- 
 ologist, however skilfully he may have devised experiments to verify 
 their discoveries. * * * 
 
 II. — The Case for the Anti-Vivisectionist. 
 
 The case for the anti-vivisectionist is necessarily harder to justify 
 in terms that shall be logically satisfactory, just because he depends 
 upon sentiment rather than upon reason. The inevitable tendency 
 of all education is to favour the development of the intellectual rather 
 than the emotional functions, because the emotions, when undisci- 
 plined by reason, are so often untrustworthy. Nevertheless it does 
 not occur to many who most loudly acclaim the supremacy of reason, 
 that even reason becomes distorted unless inspired by those emotions 
 which are more surely part of our nature than the artifices of our 
 scholastic education. Nor must the scientific think the emotions are 
 to be discredited because they find their chief support in the apostles 
 of poetry and art. These are needed in this day, more than ever 
 perhaps in the world's history, because our material progress, boast- 
 ful and shameless, seems to endorse the fashionable contempt of the 
 simple virtues. I would even more strongly justify the fine spirit 
 of the anti-vivisectionists, though many of their methods seem to 
 discredit their fervour. But, notwithstanding the lack of logic in 
 feeling, there comes a point in which most physiologists overcome 
 their disparagement of sentiment. They argue that the capacity 
 for suffering stands in direct relation to the intellectual develop- 
 ment of the individual, and that, just as our more obtuse patients 
 do not suffer as acutely as the better educated, so the dog, having 
 lower intelligence, must be less sensitive to pain than a human being. 
 And from this the physiologist argues that it is absurd for the anti- 
 vivisectionists to gauge the feelings of a dog by their own. But 
 we have only to carry such a line of argument to its logical conclu- 
 sions to be brought face to face with the extraordinary phenomenon 
 of a physiologist being guided by his feelings. For most will main- 
 tain that a highly educated dog, one who loves his master so well 
 that he will risk his own life to save him, or die of grief on his 
 grave, must be more highly developed, both in mind and in feeling, 
 than the human infant. The latter, as every doctor knows, has but 
 small capacity for pain, and will wail as piteously for its mother as 
 it does when suffering from the wind, or during a surgical opera- 
 tion. Yet even the physiologist will allow his sentiment to interfere 
 
 between science and the vivisection of a baby; even though such 
 baby be a pauper orphan, and riddled, perhaps, with disease. This 
 granted, I ask of the physiologist to show me by what law he justi- 
 fies his own sentiment while he despises the sentiment of that man 
 who would stand between the needs of science and the suffering of 
 a dog. 
 
 Although I believe that every English physiologist would stop 
 short of human experiment, yet it is beyond all dispute that in some 
 Continental hospitals such practices are tacitly sanctioned. I can 
 give chapter and verse for that accusation. And I know from my 
 own personal observation that the treatment of hospital patients in 
 Vienna, where the physiological laboratories are possibly the most 
 cruel on earth, horrifies the right-minded English student.* I think 
 such facts lend very great weight to one most important claim of the 
 anti-vivisectionists, namely, that familiarity with vivisection must 
 have a demoralising effect upon the students, as well as upon the 
 vivisectors themselves. And, if this be conceded, the suspicion of 
 the anti-vivisectionists that animals while undergoing operation are 
 often not properly anaesthetised has much excuse. The unfortunate 
 animals are so rigidly bound, gagged and maimed, that it perhaps 
 matters little to the success of the experiment whether or no they 
 are unconscious. It is, I m.ost reluctantly admit, almost impossible 
 to get evidence upon such points, and for the reason that the things 
 which zve fear are practised in secret places. Nevertheless, it is 
 just because of this secrecy that the public have a right to make 
 trouble. But for John Howard's crusade against the horrors of 
 the prisons, the public had never known the truth, their infamies 
 had never been remedied; and the public have now as much right 
 to question the physiologist's repudiations as they had then to doubt 
 the denials of the gaolers. The evidence is sufficient to justify, in 
 my own mind, a large measure of sympathy with the anti-vivisec- 
 tionists, though I am not of them. And I agree with them in their 
 demand for legislation, on at least four points. The first is, that 
 vivisection ought to be prohibited for purposes of teaching, because 
 it is often misleading, and always demoralising. The second is that 
 the inspection of the physiological laboratories should be carried out 
 more systematically and always unexpectedly, and that the inspectors 
 should be largely increased in number. Thirdly, I would prohibit 
 all dissections, with or without anaesthetics, upon live horses and 
 dogs. Fourthly, I would make the administration of curara, for 
 purposes of experiments, a criminal act. The existing law forbids 
 its use in place of an anaesthetic ; but the fact that an animal, when 
 under its influence, though capable of feeling, is incapable of ex- 
 
 *NoTE BY Compiler.— On this point see "Illustrations of Human Vivisection," published by the 
 Vivisection Reform Society, price ten cents, postpaid. 
 
 
 y 
 
pressing its suffering in any way, makes it difficult to determine 
 whether or no the subject is really insensitive, even when chloroform 
 is administered. 
 
 These would comprise the limits of what is possible or wise in 
 amending the existing law. No Act of Parliament can eradicate the 
 spirit that makes cruelty possible. Legislation necessarily has in 
 view the protection of the weak from the strong, the peaceable from 
 the greedy, rather than the reform of the wicked. To prohibit vivi- 
 section altogether would be to invite its performance in such secrecy 
 as no system of espionage could unearth. Legislation can seldom do 
 more than compromise, because it cannot essay the impossible. It 
 cannot make all men equal. It cannot give liberty. It cannot even 
 hasten fraternity. And if it has to be content with putting all pos- 
 sible hindrance in the way of dnmkenness, prostitution and cruelty, 
 it must not be charged with sanctioning them. 
 
 III. — The Appeal. 
 
 And now I come to my appeal, which must deal with the three 
 classes : the physiologists themselves, the anti-vivisectionists, and the 
 indifferent public. 
 
 For the first of these I have but few words, for their claim that 
 out of the multitude of their unprofitable experiments more discov- 
 eries may yet come must be granted. John Hunter, as we have seen, 
 learned a most valuable fact through an experiment that was not 
 prompted by the wish to benefit humanity. Yet, notwithstanding 
 the success of his vivisections, he laid it down as a rule that no 
 experiment that had once established a fact should be repeated. 
 Perhaps he might think differently in these days of anaesthetics, 
 though I doubt if he would forgive the time spent on an elaborate 
 dissection to instruct students in a physiological law they had never 
 disputed. I suspect, moreover, that Hunter would have felt there 
 was some danger of lowering the students' conception of the sanc- 
 tity of life and wonder of physiological law by the gruesome display 
 of a sentient animal's entrails, especially if he had to admit that the 
 profit was problematical. 
 
 But my appeal has a more practical side, and one that seems to 
 me of utmost importance in the interests of the public, for whose 
 benefit, the physiologists so constantly tell us, their experiments are 
 chiefly made. 
 
 The physiologist is never a practitioner of medicine, and has no 
 close knowledge of the doctor's honoured place in the community. 
 He perhaps hardly realises how almost every family in the kingdom 
 is beset with tragedies, real or imaginary, great or small, yet trage- 
 dies, and in how many of them the doctor is the first looked to for 
 
 r 
 
 succour; and this not only in matters of medicine. The physiolo- 
 gist does not know how deep is the popular horror of his practises, 
 and how they are tacitly accepted only because of the people's trust 
 in the profession. They know how ignorant they are of their 
 maladies. They must either accept our treatment or find comfort 
 in their ignorance; and if they too readily accept the statement of 
 the physiologist that experiments must be made on the living animal, 
 though they hate them, they cannot be much blamed. Neverthe- 
 less, in the minds of many there is rising a grim distrust of the 
 doctors ; while among the poor, chiefly, I do not doubt, because of 
 the horrors related by the anti-vivisectionists, a real fear of the 
 hospitals threatens to over-ride the sufferers' needs. And this dis- 
 trust and fear are, I think, a real danger: they may, indeed, be 
 responsible for the growing apprehension of disease that saps our 
 mental vigour and makes us wild in the hunt for quack or legitimate 
 remedies. 
 
 So that I would ask the physiologist not to disparage the senti- 
 ments of the people, partly for the sake of the public sanity, partly 
 for the sake of the authority that doctors wield. In teaching physi- 
 ology I would beg him not to forget the plastic minds of the boys and 
 girls whom he teaches, nor to miss opportunity of making them 
 realise in practice, no less than in theory, the purpose of their 
 future — namely, the relief of pain. I believe that familiarity with 
 forms of suffering, that not only cannot be eased but are actually 
 inflicted for purposes of teaching, must, even when an animal is 
 brainless or deeply narcotised, produce some lowering of the stu- 
 dent's sense of his obligations. 
 
 It is, moreover, a question how far the teaching of physiology is 
 helped by living dissections. The vivisection of an animal can 
 scarcely be styled an observation of nature ; and the experiment' for 
 instance, often employed to show that the secreting power of the 
 salivary glands is independent of the blood pressure, is easily proved 
 as a vital principle, without even the destruction of an animal. Nor 
 is it necessary, after having established a biliary fistula for measur- 
 ing the secretion of bile, to punish the dog unrighteously and leave 
 him alone in his mental misery for hours, in order to prove that grief 
 will check the flow of digestive juices. What a pretty experiment! 
 What a noble use of the emotion of sorrow as a scientific weapon for 
 discovering the mysteries of life ! Does not every wife and mother 
 know how grief spoils digestion, without using as an instrument of 
 precision the chief means of higher education to a dog, of salvation 
 to a man ? The student can never grasp vital processes by vivisec- 
 tions as he would physical laws by chemical and mechanical experi- 
 ments; not even with all our scientific makeshifts for compelling an 
 
outraged life to remain in a dismembered body. But he can dissect 
 the dead body ; he can understand chemistry, as matter of experi- 
 ment and proof; he can master the laws of physics. And he will 
 grasp the laws of life, I think, better by studying the nature of man 
 than by dissecting the living dog. All experiments on the living ani- 
 mal tend to mechanicalise the conception of vital energy, while true 
 teaching will ever idealise life as the master of its own chemical 
 changes and mechanical powers. In one word, I would ask the 
 physiologist whether, considering the future of his pupils, it would 
 not be better to discontinue teaching by demonstrations on living 
 animals. And, when he remembers how many of his experiments 
 fail altogether to prove the very points for which the dog is sacri- 
 ficed and often tortured, he cannot deny our right to question the 
 need of them. 
 
 Next comes my appeal to the anti-vivisectionists. I have already 
 asserted my belief in the right of the public to decide upon all points 
 of national importance, and that I hold vivisection to be one of 
 them. The cause of the anti-vivisectionist is so good that I believe 
 it will prevail when at last we understand that true progress of the 
 human race depends more upon its humanity than upon speed, 
 money and technical education. But, though this understanding be 
 as yet far from attainment, I am sure that the tactics of the anti- 
 vivisection societies are doing harm to their cause. They fight 
 with any weapons they can lay hands on: soft-nosed bullets and 
 Greek fire, as well as weapons of fine steel. Whereas if they would 
 use the peaceful measures of truth, and shun, because hurtful to 
 their cause, all things that are not true, they would enlist on their 
 side numbers of m.en and women, doctors and scientists, parsons and 
 teachers, who now stand on one side, and, because both sides are 
 wrong, let them fight it out between them. I know well the help- 
 lessness of the anti-vivisectionist, the impossibility of his getting 
 information first hand ; I know well the irritation of the gibes with 
 which he is baffled by his opponents. * * * 
 
 And now I come to the third class : the indifferent. It numbers 
 m.any who consider themselves tender-hearted, yet whose tender- 
 heartedness is comprised in a dislike to being hurt. It numbers the 
 lazy, the comfortable, and those whose courage is sapped by the fear 
 of disease. It numbers, too, without doubt, all those who uphold 
 the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, because they themselves 
 have survived. 
 
 ^ The indifferent shelve the question of experiments on animals 
 either because they think that the lower animals are given into our 
 hands for our uses, or because they look upon man's might as his 
 right. The former, for the most part, will call themselves Christians, 
 
 and the latter will justify their point of view because they think it is 
 scientific. And, because I would have all understand that vivisection 
 is a matter of national honour, and therefore of patriotism and 
 progress, I must tell them some home truths. 
 
 The scientific indifferent I take first. The so-called law of survival 
 of the fittest does not summarise the law of evolution, unless we 
 accept it in the sense that he lives most fitly who loves most truly, 
 who knows that the greatest privilege his strength has won for him 
 is its power of helping the weak. To take the law of survival of the 
 fittest in a lower sense is to prophesy an ultimate condition of so- 
 ciety that will inevitably compass the annihilation of those very 
 attributes which, by common consent of the human race, have been 
 accounted its essentials ; or we had never signified such big ideas in 
 that honoured word humanity. Our humanity comprises not only 
 that tenderness of heart which is charity, but the relinquishment of 
 the winnings of strength for the strengthening of weakness ; and if 
 the survival of the fittest in grosser sense is to be the final outcome 
 of our evolution, our hum.anity must slink away and hide ashamed 
 in the secret hearts of the unfit. Then all things that advance the 
 triumph of man over man, and man over beast, may be trumpeted 
 abroad as the orthodoxies of science. Then the ways of the crafty, 
 the logic of the pickpockets, the creeds of the mighty that sit upon 
 seats, may be acclaimed as justification of the great law that the 
 vulgarly fit shall survive, that the meek shall not inherit the earth.7 
 It is only in such belief, I say, that our assumed right to use beasts 
 lower than ourselves for draught, for pleasure, for food, can be 
 interpreted into a right to experiment upon their living bodies in 
 wanton contempt of Nature's secret depths. But this dogma ofj 
 survival is not scientific, because it is not based upon an understand- 
 ing of all the facts. For he who limits his study of evolution to the 
 dead bones of the museum or to the living wonders of the embryo, 
 will never know the meaning of evolution. So long as he ignores 
 the finer attributes of the highest outcome of evolution, Man, he 
 cannot be either scientist or prophet. The greater scientist, I affirm, 
 may yet come to believe that the progress of the race can in no way 
 be advanced by the perpetration of that most unscientific, that most 
 retrogressive crime against the law of higher evolution, crueltyr)— ' 
 I pray him who thinks his apathy on the subject of vivisection is 
 justified by science, to be truer to his science and less sure of the 
 infallibility of its set precepts. And I pray him ask whether the 
 concentration of our hope upon the physiological laboratories may / 
 not endanger that largeness of mind which has ever been the char- 
 acteristic of such men as Newton, Hunter, Darwin and Lister. 
 
 Now I come to my last words. And I would they could pierce the 
 
y 
 
 petrifying minds of those who, while considering themselves re- 
 ligious, are so comfortably indifferent to the suffering of the world 
 in which they live. If they call themselves Christians, is it too much 
 to pray them accept their faith as literal truth; so literal, indeed, 
 that no point in its teaching can be denied without disaster to the 
 whole? I would beg them, for the sake of consistency, remember 
 the two cheap sparrows, and that one of them could not fall on the 
 ground without the fact being known to the eternal Justice. It 
 cannot be other than an article of their faith that the love of God 
 is essential in the life of the lower animals ; science will never show 
 that it is not. They cannot forget that kindness done to the least is 
 divine service rendered; nor can they shut out the correlative fact 
 that he who offends one of the least is following Iscariot with torch 
 and stave to the great betrayal. These are but points in the 
 Christian's creed that are often forgotten. 
 
 The hope of the future, the possibility of progress, are bound up 
 in the understanding that increase of wisdom will arise and build 
 strength upon no other foundation than our inheritance of humanity. 
 The cruelty of fashion in feathers and furs, the barbarities of sport 
 in grouse-drives and pigeon-shooting, the inhumanities of trade in 
 slaughter-house and poultry cramming, cannot be separated in their 
 influence upon the race from the barbarities that sometimes, if they 
 do not commonly, figure in the physiological laboratories. Excuse 
 is found for all. The need of warmth and artistic adornment seem 
 to exonerate the woman of fashion ; the need of food and healthy 
 exercise appear to justify the healthier male; the hunger of the 
 multitude may make difficult mercifulness in slaughtering oxen ; and 
 the needs of science may seem to support the physiological labora- 
 tories. Yet one and all fall under condemnation of the sane and 
 pitiful, who believe that the progress of man can advance only 
 through the strengthening of his nobility. 
 
 It cannot be disputed that great discoveries have come from, cut- 
 ting into live animals. Nor can it be doubted that again and again, 
 in the history of nations and the story of individual lives, great good 
 has ultimately come, notwithstanding the wrong means that seem 
 to have brought it. Yet, though good so often comes out of, or in 
 spite of, evil, we dare not argue that evil is justified by a hope that 
 good may come out of it. Neither scientist nor Christian will dare 
 support such a doctrine. Though food is indeed got by cruelty to 
 Strasburg geese, none can justify the practice ; though Hunter got 
 knowledge from dissecting the buck, we need not endorse some ways 
 of the physiologists. Even if we grant in large measure the truth 
 of their claims, we may rather forego their gifts than endanger the 
 humanity of our race. Even the cure of disease is not the first point 
 in the health of the people ; and the nicer knowledge of physiological 
 laws will not contribute much to our sanity. 
 
FORM OF BEQUEST 
 
 I hereby give and bequeath the sum of. 
 
 .Dollars 
 
 to the VIVISECTION REFORM SOCIETY, a corporation 
 organized and existing under the laws of the United States, for its 
 corporate uses and purposes.