HX64099520 QP45 .G25 A brief synopsis of .»VI. ATlf 11^^910 of Ijroblem of \/iv>l6ection (a plea for proper Keflulatlon) College of ^IjpsJiciansf anh burgeons I.iljrarp Digitized by tlie Internet Arcliive in 2010 witli funding from Open Knowledge Commons (for the Medical Heritage Library project) http://www.archive.org/details/briefsynopsisofpOOsoci A Brief Synopsis of The Problem of Vivisection (A Plea for Proper Regulation) BT A. E. GAZZAM "It is manifest that the practice [of vivisection] is from its very nature liable to great abuse, and that since it is impossible for society to entertain the idea of putting an end to it, it ought to be subjected to due regulation and control." Report Signed by Thomas Huxley as Member of THE British Royal Commission on Vivisection. NEW YORK 1908 "We stand, in truth, face to face with a new vice — new — at least in its vast modern development, and the passion wherewith it is pursued — the vice of scientific cruelty." Frances Power Cobb. "The horrible suffering which man forces the ani- mals to bear is falling back upon him in suffering and death." Dr. Boucher. "Every living creature has his part of justice to de- mand on earth. Men are the elder brothers of the ani- mals. They work for us — let our reason think for them! Let our humanity give them at least a merciful death." Dr. Boucher. "Vivisection will always be the better for vigilant supervision and for whatever outside pressure can be brought against it. Such pressure will never be too great, nor will it retard progress a hair's breadth in the hands of that very limited class zvJio are likely mate- rially to advance knowledge by its practice." Henry J. Bigelow, LL.D. Introduction THIS synopsis of the subject of vivisection was originally prepared in the winter of 1907, with the view of giving a condensed but comprehensive and clear presentation of this important subject, and was from the beginning intended for some sort of widespread circulation. My earnest desire in the publication of this pamphlet — which represents many days of laborious but willing toil — is that it may serve to throw before the "general public," which, after all is the final judge in all matters of common interest, a ray of clear daylight upon this most important matter, in respect to which, many people have been completely in the dark ; and may thus help to emphasize the necessity for some legal regulation of the practice. Acknowledging that great good may have come and may still be coming through the practice of vivisection, but knowing that wanton and debasing cruelties have also been practiced under its convenient name, I have tried to strike the proper balance between the attitude of the fanatical scientist and the sentimental reformer. I have honestly endeavored to put the real facts of the case as recorded by careful investigators, and ungarnished by false emotions of any kind, before the eyes of the general reader upon whose intelligent discrimination so much depends. In regard to the atrocities of Alfort, I felt the grave necessity of distinctly emphasizing the fact that many of the most ghastly and uncalled for brutalities — perpetrated upon the lower orders of created life — have been enacted at a widely-famed Veterinary College with no semblance of a pretense of ameliorat- ing human suffering or prolonging human life. Many of them, in fact, were entirely useless and unnecessary even from the standpoint of any sane veterinary. It has actually been claimed at Alfort that the carte blanche given the students to commit these wanton deeds of blood render them more callous to suffering and thus better fitted for future usefulness in their work. One of the paramount evils of unrestrained vivisection wherever it exists, is its hardening and pernicious influence upon the natures of the students who witness or aid in this awful work. "Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; But seen too oft, familiar to the face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace." Public knowledge, and with it public sentiment, are at last being awakened and aroused to some extent in this vital subject, and I feel the time is now ripe when the really influential classes of the community should be given, in brief form, a fair- minded and unbiased view of the entire subject, instead of being compelled to depend on the fragmentary and ofttimes distorted information to be obtained from the newspapers in which, first the advocates of unlimited vivisection, and then the righteously indignant, but misinformed members of some society for animal protection, desiring its total abolition, alternately give vent to the expressions of their equally radical views. Before closing I wish to express my grateful acknowledg- ment to Dr. Albert Leflingwell, the eloquent advocate of the cause of reform to whose excellent work, entitled, "The Vivi- section Question," I am indebted for a very large part of my statistics, and to any others whom I may have had occasion to quote. In conclusion, I wish also to express my deep appreciation of the earnest, intelligent and untiring efforts of Frederick P. Bellamy, Esq., to secure legislation which would legalize the practice of vivisection on so sound a basis that it could no longer be either an object at which missiles of total destruction could "be hurled with some excuse, or a practice richly deserving our abhorrence and contempt; but instead, a dignified practice con- ducted only by competent, high-minded men, for scientific, high- minded purposes, in a high-minded way. At the end of this pamphlet will be found appended a copy of the bill which he espoused and which, although it may not accomplish all that could be desired, is a good beginning; and because of its excellent moderation, has met with the approval of a large number of the profession itself. I hope that the following pages will be read in the spirit in which they were written and that they may help on the cause of true Vivisection -E.eform. A. E. Gazzam. Cornwall-on-Hudson, August 12, 1908. INDEX. PAGE Introduction 5 I. Definition of Vivisection U II. Conscientious Moderation 12 III. Exaggeration of Utility 13 IV. Scientific Indifference 14 V. Opponents of Unlimited Vivisection 15 VI. Secrecy in Modern Vivisection 16 VII. Abuse of Vivisection 17 VIII. Atrocities of Vivisection ig IX. Unprincipled Experiments 20 X. Scientific Fanaticism 22 XL Equitable Sense of Proportion 23 XII. No Laws Governing Vivisection in the United States 24 XIII. Secrecy an Invitation to Excess 24 XIV. Admission of a Former Advocate of the Practice 25 XV. Curare 26 XVI. Vivisection at Harvard 27 XVII. Experiments on Cats 28 XVIIL Inconsistency of Medical Evidence 29 XIX, Brutalizing Tendency S3 XX. Omnipotent Justice 34 XXI. Callous and Defiant Indifference 36 XXII. Wanton Abuse 37 XXIIL Now Mark the Contrast 37 XXIV. How Far Shall Demonstration be Carried? 38 XXV. American Physiologists 39 XXVI. The Just Moral Proportion 40 XXVII. Vivisection in Public Schools 41 XXVIII. Vivisection for Veterinary Purposes 42 XXIX. A Strong Moral Arraignment 44 XXX. Injury to Science 45 XXXL Conclusion 46 The Problem of Vivisection (A Plea for Proper Regulation.) I. Definition of Vivisection. "^HE word "vivisection" is a most comprehensive one. It may mean the injection of some loath- some disease into the system of some unsuspecting human patient, or the use of some new or rare, and most dangerous drug, that the over-zealous practitioner of the ''healing art" may note the effect produced. It may on the other hand merely imply the inocula- tion of countless myriads of guinea pigs, rabbits and even dogs, with the virus of the dread and terrible cancer, or of hydrophobia — that disease in which all sufferers, whether human or otherwise, are doomed to die in appalling agony. If any successful remedies for these particular maladies should ever be discovered I personally doubt the probability of this most desirable end being attained by means of such wholesale cruelty toward these dumb hosts of sentient beings. Yet we must all admit that experiments of this nature are supposed to be made with the ultimate end in view, of alleviating the suffering and prolonging the lives of human beings Although physicians differ very widely as to the value of antitoxin in diphtheria there are competent men among them who declare it to be not only practi- cally useless but in fact one of the most abominable swindles ever practiced upon a too confiding public. II But the main branch of vivisection and the one which demands earnest attention and careful regula- tion is the cutting, burning and mutilating operations performed upon all varieties of animals, including reptiles, and extending up as high as monkeys, for the purpose of physiological experimentation or class dem- onstrations. This is the sort of thing to which the word vivi- section especially applies; but let it not be supposed that it necessarily implies either great pain or even death. It may mean death without any greater pain to the animal than the administration of an actual anaesthetic, or it may mean prolonged excruciating agony, and pain- ful mutilation not even mercifully terminated by death. II. Conscientious Moderation. There are some experiments upon animals which are undertaken by men of intrinsic worth and honor (as well as of high professional standing) with the sincere desire to contribute really useful facts to scien- tific knowledge, and who are scrupulously careful to inflict as little pain upon their victims as circumstances will possibly permit. "There are men who can stand above the lowest creature with such exceeding pity, such anxiety to spare it every needless throe, that not a pang is inflicted of which they do not count the cost. Such an investigator was Sir Charles Bell, who hesitated even to corroborate one of the physiological discoveries of this century at the price of painful experiments." III. Exaggeration of Utility. In his valuable volume entitled "The Vivisection Question," Albert Leffingwell, M.D., makes the follow- ing statement: "A great danger inherent in the prac- tice of vivisection, is the injury to science caused by an exaggeration of its utility. "For despite much argument, the extent of this utility remains still an open question. No one is so foolish as to deny the possibility of future usefulness to any discovery whatever; but there is a distinction very easily slurred over in the eagerness of debate, between present applicability and remote potential service. "Only let me use the pacifying shibboleth of certain writers, and claim that all of the investigations are in the general line of researches made to mitigate human suffering and prolong human life, and there is hardly any extremity which the public opinion of to-day will not sanction and excuse." Sir William Gull, M.D., was questioned before the Royal Commission whether he could enumerate any therapeutic remedies which have been discovered by vivisection, and he replied with fervor: "that cases bristle around us everywhere." Yet, excepting Hall's experiments on the nervous system, he could enumerate only various forms of dis- ease, our knowledge of which is due to Harvey's dis- covery two hundred and fifty years ago! The question was pushed closer, and so brought to the necessity of a definite reply, he answered: "I do not say at present our therapeutics are much, but there 13 are lines of experiments which seem to promise help in therapeutics." On the other hand, Dr. Herman, the great German apologist for vivisection, tells us frankly and honestly that "the advance of our knowledge and not practical utility to medicine is the true and straightforward object of vivisection. "No true investigator in his researches thinks of practical utilization. "Science can afford to despise this justification with which vivisection has been defended." IV. Scientific Indifference. "I do not believe," says Dr. Charles Richet, professor of physiology in Paris, "that a single experimenter says to himself, when he gives curare to a rabbit or cuts the spinal cord of a dog 'here is an experiment which will relieve or cure disease.' "No ; he does not think of that : He says to himself, *I shall clear up an obscure point; I will seek out a new fact: "And this scientific curiosity which alone animates him, is explained by the idea he has of science. "This is why we pass our days surrounded by groan- ing creatures, in the midst of blood and suffering, and bending over palpitating entrails." In his excellent work. Dr. Lefiingwell says: "The vivisector promises to inflict no unnecessary pain. " 'But your experiment will be absolutely useless/ one remarks. " 'Yes,' answers he, 'so far as the treatment or pre- vention of disease is concerned; but suppose I do not 14 admit that the gratification of my scientific curiosity on any point is absolutely useless to myself if a certain intellectual satisfaction is thereby secured ?' " V. opponents of Unlimited Vivisection. It is true there are those, who, aroused with indigna- tion and horror at the many utterly useless and ghastly tortures carried on under the name of scientific investi- gation, with the sham pretense of possible benefit to mankind declare that they would welcome any law for the total abolition of a practice from which many humane physicians claim to have derived much useful instruc- tion. But if the out-and-out antivivisectionists may be called extremists or even fanatics, what would one say of Dr. Watson and those "physiologists" Flint and Crile? In recent years several societies have been formed in the United States in direct opposition to the practice of vivisection which obtains so generally throughout the country. Many of the physicians look upon these people as fanatics, who have found nothing better to employ their time than to try, in their ignorance of the facts, to throw a serious impediment in the path of science. Many physicians are themselves, however, far more ignorant of the diabolical and useless extremes to which even many American experimenters have been known to go, than are those kind and sincere laymen, who are letting their own hearts bleed in order that they may look into a most painful but important subject in defence of the innocent and helpless, and are bravely and per- 15 sistently following the war-path with endless patience in the face of long continued discouragement, against a most formidable and subtle adversary. The practice of vivisection is now conducted with much secrecy. VI. Secrecy in Modern Vivisection. Heartless experimenters, as a rule, have learned whom they can trust within the walls of their modern star chambers of torture, and the more useless the experi- ment and extreme the torture inflicted upon their help- less victims, the more cautious and secretive they will be in regard to its practice. It is no wonder that all fanatical advocates of vivi- section unlimited and unrestrained should he particu- larly hitter and ardent against opening their doors to any legal inspection even though the law appointed kind- hearted and conscientious vivisectors to fulfil that urgently needed ofJUce. To-day it is practically impos- sible for any known opponent of unlimited vivisection to gain access to any laboratory where it is conducted. The general public I think it may be said without exaggeration scarcely know even the meaning of the word vivisection, and in many cases, w^ien some rumors of horrible cruelties have reached private individuals, they have been horrified and seized upon their first opportunity to make inquiries upon the subject of their own kind family physician in whom they have the utmost confidence. He is very apt to give them soothing assurances of little or no needless cruelty being employed in the prac- tice of vivisection, and they will soon forget they ever i6 heard of it. It is possible for men to have graduated m medicine from some of our colleges without having been witness to these scenes of wanton brutality, and many of these good doctors who thus advise are really them- selves ignorant of a great deal of the abuse of a system from which they have been taught to believe they have derived valuable instruction, and some of them will emphatically declare that the accounts of these fearful atrocities are most unusual and generally greatly exag- gerated. They will go on to say that they cannot believe that there exist in the medical profession in this enlight- ened day many men, who have become sufficiently depraved to perform useless cruelties, or who have sunk so low that they have become completely infatuated with the morbid pleasure of inflicting pain. VII. Abuse of Vivisection. It is, however, from the medical profession that our best evidence of existing abuses is obtained. Even vivi- sectors sometimes make mistakes in whom they admit, although as a rule so cautious as to what experiments to perform only in the presence of such men as can pretty surely be expected to keep the knowledge of them very closely to themselves. However, much has leaked out through their occa- sionally daring to give public exhibitions of their awful cruelties to indiscriminate professional assemblies. Many private experiments of the most ghastly description are made by fanatical vivisectors solely for the purpose of gratifying mere idle curiosity, or to satisfy their personal vanity by enabling them to write a paper or lecture upon some mere abstract fact 17 which bears no conceivable relationship to the treat- ment or cure of disease. But there are certain temperaments, as is especially frequent among the Latin races, which revel in the sight of blood, and fall deeply victim to an unholy lust for torture. In one of his works, Dr. George M. Gould, the present editor of ''American Medicine," and one of the leading medical writers of the country says: "If a very limited use of vivisection experiment is necessary for scientific and medical progress, it must he regulated by law, and carried out with zealous guarding against excess and against suffering, and the maimed animals painlessly killed when the experiment is com- plete. ' "The practice carried on hy conceited jackanapes to prove over and over again already ascertained results, to minister to egotism, for didactic purposes — these are not necessary and must be forbidden." Dr. Gould has also admitted that "there are men now practicing vivisection in this country who are a disgrace both to science and humanity." Dr. Theophilus Parvin, one of the professors in Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, speaking of physiologists says: "there are some, who seem, seek- ing useless knowledge, to be blind to the writhing agony, and deaf to the cry of pain of their victims, and who have been guilty of the most damnable cruelties without the denunciation by the public that their wickedness deserves and demands; these criminals are not confined to Germany or France, but may be found in our own country." On page 194 of Dr. Lef!ingweirs book is to be found 18 the following: "I but touch the shadow of an awful mystery when I say that one of the most horrible forms of mental and sexual perversion is displayed in the tor- ture of animals and human beings." Dr. Krafft-Ebing of the University of Vienna, declares that there are "numerous cases of beings in human form who care only for the sight of suffering." . The rest of the sentence decency will not permit me to repeat. Again I quote from Dr. Leffingwell's book: "Dr. Rolleston, Professor of Anatomy at Oxford University, but hinted at the truth when he told the Royal Commis- sion 'that the sight of a living, bleeding and quivering organism, most undoubtedly acts in a particular way on the nature within us' — that lower nature which we possess in common with the carnivora." VIII. Atrocities of Vivisection. Dr. Leffingwell himself has declared: "No facts of history are capable of more certain verification than the tortures which have marked the vivisections of Magendie and Bernard, of Bert and Mantegazza and a host of their imitators. *It is not to be doubted that inhumanity may be found in persons of a very high position as physiologists; we have seen that it was so in Magendie.' " The abuses of research include every form of excru- ciating and lingering torment that can be conceived. In the august name of science, animals have been subjected to burning, baking, freezing; saturation with inflammable oil and then setting on fire; starvation to 19 death ; skinning alive ; larding the feet with nails ; crush- ing and tormenting in every conceivable way. "Experi- ments on animals," says Dr. Thorowgood, "already extensive and numerous, cannot be said to have advanced therapeutics much." IX. Unprincipled Experiments. To exasperate pain Professor Mantegazza invented a machine, which he aptly called "a tormentor." With it, he explains, "I can take an ear or a paw and by turning the handle, squeeze it beneath the teeth of pincers. I can lift the animal by the suffering part. I can tear it or crush it in all sorts of ways." One experiment was on a guinea pig nursing its young. A rabbit, after two hours torment and a few moments' rest, has nails stuck into its feet in such a way that "a pain much more intense," than in some pre- vious experiment is produced. Two little creatures are subjected for two hours to the tormentor, then "larded with long, thin nails in their limbs." They "suffer horribly, and shut up in the machine for two hours more, they rush against each other and, not having the strength to bite, remain inter- laced, with mouths open, screaming and groaning." Mantegazza, devoted a year to the infliction of tor- ment upon animals, some pregnant, some nursing their young — in a long series of diseases, and which ended in the attainment of no beneficial or even instructive results. This so-called scientist himself admits to watching day by day the agonies of his victims "with much pleas- ure and extreme patience." Magendie declared of his 20 mutilated animals that 'Ht is droll to see them skip and jump about." Cyon of St. Petersburg admitted that he approached his vivisections with *'a joyful excitement." Was this feeling of delight any different from the unbridled blood-and-torture lust of certain imbecile and thoroughly barbarian African and Oriental monarchs? Schill cut the nerves of vocalization in his victims, in order to prevent them, as he tells us with diabolic humor "from delivering their nocturnal concerts." Klein of London appears to have been more nearly hardened to all sufferings not his own, than to actually find pleasure in going out of his way to inflict it. He frankly admits that as an investigator he held as entirely indifferent the sufferings of animals subjected to his experiments, and that, except for teaching purposes, he never used anaesthetics unless necessary for his own con- venience. He openly declared that he has "no regard at all" for the sufferings which he inflicted, because in the progress of his investigations in torture he had *'no time, so to speak, for thinking what the animal may feel or suffer." On page 194 of "The Vivisection Question" may be found the following: "Regarding the land (France) where vivisection is no more free than it is to-day in the United States, the charge has publicly been made that 'In France, they prolong the vivisection in order to pro- cure infamous pleasures.' " Dr. Elliotson has said, "I cannot refrain from ex- pressing my horror at the amount of torture which Dr. 21 Brachet inflicted. I hardly think knowledge is worth having at such a purchase." Dr. Anthony, speaking of Magendie's experiments says: "I never gained one single fact by seeing these cruel experiments in Paris. / know nothing more from them than I could have read." It has been said that human ingenuity has taxed itself to the utmost to devise some new torture, that one may observe what curious results will ensue. Dr. Brachet, of Paris, by various torments inspired a dog with utmost anger, and then, "when the animal became furious whenever it saw me, I put out its eyes. I could then appear before it without the manifestation of any aversion. "I spoke, and immediately its anger was renewed. "I then disorganized the internal ear as much as I could, when intense inflammation made it deaf, then I went to its side, spoke aloud, and even caressed it without its falling into a rage." The experiments of certain physiologists are those of inhuman devils says Canon Wilberforce of England, and I know all right minded physicians as well as laymen agree with him. X. Scientific Fanaticism. Yet "there has been in medicine, or surgery," says Dr. Leflingwell, "hardly any advance in modern times, but some zealot has attributed it solely to experimenta- tion upon animals ; there is not an experiment so hideous or brutal, but that some defender has arisen to excuse it, because perpetrated 'in the interests of sick and suffer- ing humanity !' " Why is it that this line of argument is 22 heard chiefly in England and America where vivisection is most severely challenged, and hardly, if at all, on the continent, where are practiced, as we are told on good authority, *'the more brutal methods of physiological experiments ?" "The aim of science," says Professor Slosson, "is the advancement of human knowledge at any sacrifice of human life. If cats and guinea pigs can be put to any higher use than to advance science, we do not know what it is. We do not know any higher use we can put a man to. "A human life is nothing compared with a new fact." Is this theory either safe, Christian or enlightened? XL Equitable Sense of Proportion. "Given an end the attainment of which is possible only through extreme suffering, and the question is not whether the pan^s are needless, but rather whether the object to be attained makes justifiable the infliction of the pain. "Wherever is conferred power without responsibil- ity there will follow — license and abuse. It is the rela- tion of cause and effect. "Perhaps we execrate unduly the heartlessness of a Nero or a Robespierre, a Magendie, or a Mantegazza. "They were but the natural product of the time which made them monsters of cruelty, by the gift of absolute power." But are such glaring abuses possible in America? Why not ? The realm of pain has here no boundaries which investigation is required to observe. 23 XII. No Laws Governing Vivisection in tiie United States. In no American State or Commonwealth is there any law, any statute of any kind whatever, which would prevent these experiments from being repeated here as often as desired. Now is it probable that in a country like ours, with a population drawn from every foreign source, experi- mental research, thus unrestrained, remains free from the excesses which have stained it everywhere else — in Italy, in France, in Germany? The absence of clear definite and reasonable limita- tions beyond which vivisection becomes cruelty, and should not go is of itself an invitation to abuse. And scientific fanatics have even been known to come to the United States to perpetrate acts of cruelty which they knew would not be allowed under the humane restric- tions of the English law. "In England, Scotland, and Ireland," says Dr. Lef- fingwell, "countries whose medical skill is quite equal to our own, a painful experiment for the illustration of facts already known has been prohibited for over fifteen years." It is said on good authority that some of the most painful vivisections known to the history of the world have taken place in our own country within the last dozen years. XIII. Secrecy an Invitation to Excess. Again I must use Dr. Leffingwell's most emphatic language : "Not merely the absence of legal limitations, 24 but the absence of all supervision is another invitation to excess. "Up to twenty years ago, when agitation against cruelty had just begun, it was the custom not only to show results of experiments but to perform even the most excruciating operations on living animals before a class- room of students, as aids to memory. There was no special secrecy about them: anyone able to find his way to the lecture-room could observe everything. "If there were indefensible cruelties, they were at any rate as unconcealed and as openly done as in Paris. Now all this is changed. Experimentation has vastly increased; but it exists largely in comparative secrecy, behind locked doors, guarded by sentinels. "It has been said that if a few of the most ghastly experiments perpetrated in some American institutions were performed on the public thoroughfares an infuri- ated humanity would instantly demand a law for the proper regulation of vivisection." XIV. Admission of a Former Advocate of the Practice. Dr. George M. Gould, late editor of the Medical News and a strong advocate of vivisection declares that it "must be regulated by law." In his address before the Senate Committee at Wash- ington delivered by Dr. Leffingwell, from whose work I frequently have occasion to quote, he said: "Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee : It is now about twenty-eight years since — touched by the protest of a man whom I greatly revered and one who has ad- 25 dressed you to-day — I came to question the rightfulness of unlimited vivisection. "As I look backward, it seems to me there was no phase of experimentation then in vogue that I was not eager to practice, either as an aid to memory or for the instruction of pupils, and filled with the confident enthu- siasm of youth, I had believed that nothing in vivisec- tion could be wrong that a man of science might approve. "From that day to this, I have thought much and both written and spoken somewhat on this question, but never a word against vivisection in and of itself; never without conceding its utility and rightfulness in certain directions. "A believer in vivisection, I know that the practice has been abused and it is solely against the abuses that have pertained to it, against practices that overstep the boundaries of humanity, that I have protested for the last twenty years." XV. Curare. There is a subtle poison called curare which is used by some tribes of South American Indians for poisoning their arrows. When introduced into the blood it causes complete paralysis of the motor nerves, without affecting con- sciousness, sensation, circulation, or respiration except indirectly. It has been claimed that sensibility is in a measure rendered even hyper-acute and is in reality greatly accentuated, although the victim himself is unable to move a muscle or utter the slightest sound, and is prac- tically locked within a living tomb. Curare or Woorari 26 is, however, a most convenient thing for the heartless vivisector for it secures his "cadaver" more absolutely than iron "holders" or leathern thongs, and he can work without fear of interruption by the creatures' agonized cries (and there is little fear of immediate death, or the need of administering further injections). Dr. Leffingwell says: "In a memorial issued a few years ago against legislation, a writer is quoted as say- ing that *It has never been claimed by any scientific man that curare is an anaesthetic' But it is used in every laboratory in America, where vivisection goes on to any extent, and one of the principal government vivi- sectors, who is not a physician but an experimenter, Charles Wardell Stiles, insists in his statement to Con- gress that its use *is a point which should be left entirely to the investigators.' " Is it any wonder that Tennyson spoke of this subtle poison and deadly paralyzer as "Hellish Oorali"? XVI. Vivisection at Harvard. This drug has frequently been employed at Harvard, though in many instances animals were secured by external means. Sometimes anaesthetics or narcotics were employed during a brief preliminary operation, and later on a dog or rabbit was fastened down without any attempt to alleviate the pain while its body was cut open. The following quotations may serve as sufficient examples: "November 20, 1894. Rabbit lightly nar- cotized with ether. Left phrenic nerve was seized near the first rib and torn out of the chest. ... I have 27 made such experiments on thirteen rabbits and one dog, and the result has always been the same." A beautiful engraving gives the respiratory curve of this rabbit, "the left phrenic nerve of which had been torn out . . . the stars denote struggling." "May 4, 1894. Spinal cord of rabbit narcotized with ether, cut on left side. Seven hours later he was in good condition and kicked vigorously as he was again put on the board." "The abdomen opened in the median line — phrenic nerve was now cut," etc. There is no mention of narcotic or anaesthetic during the latter part of the operation "seven hours later" when the rabbit kicking vigorously, "was again put on the board to have its abdomen opened." XVII. Experiments on Cats. Dr. Rutherford never performs an experiment on a cat or a spaniel if he can help it, because they are so exceedingly sensitive; and Dr. Horatio Wood, of Phila- delphia, tells us that the nervous system of a cat is far more sensitive than that of a rabbit. But though extremely sensitive they are in a sense extremely tenacious of life and their negative endurance is great. Dr. Brunton of St. Bartholomew's finds cats "such very good animals to operate with" that on one occasion he used ninety in making a single experiment. Dr. Bowditch after some preliminary experiments on the vaso-motor nerves of other animals "decided to use cats in this research, since adult cats vary less than 28 dogs in size, and are much more vigorous and tenacious of life than rabbits or other animals usually employed in physiological laboratories." The latter point is one of considerable importance in experiments extending over several hours. The animals were curarized and kept alive by arti- ficial respiration. "Death by curare," says Claude Bernard, "although it seems so tranquil, so exempt from pain is on the con- trary accompanied by the most atrocious suffering which the imagination of man can conceive. In that corpse without movement and with every appearance of death, sensibility and intelligence exist without change. "The cadaver that one has before him hears and comprehends what goes on about him, and feels what- ever painful impressions we may inflict." From another section of Dr. Leffingwell's most interesting work I quote the following: "The duty of the hour, it seems to me," says Dr. Leifingwell, "is the excitation of interest in this subject; the acquisition of knowledge about it; the encourage- ment of intelligent personal investigation." Have not American scientists been subject to an enthusiasm that, during investigation takes no account of the pain it inflicts? XVIII. Inconsistency of Medical Evidence. Look, for example, at that series of one hundred and forty-one experiments performed a few years ago in Jersey City, opposite New York. 29 The object of the experimenter was, as he tells us in his account of them : "to produce the greatest amount of injury to the spinal cord and its attachments without killing the animals outright ; and with this end in view a great number of dogs, with hobbled limbs, were dropped from a height of twenty-five feet, so as to effect all the severest injuries thus designed. . . ." Well, what judgment are we entitled to pass on these investi- gations ? What valuable discovery for the benefit of suffering- humanity accrued therefrom? The highest European authority on medical ques- tions pronounces these experiments as most stupid and. wanton. Another experimenter. Dr. A. Chauveau, of France, has described a series of vivisections which he had made for the express purpose of determining "the excitability of the spinal cord, and especially the convulsions and pain produced by working upon that excitability." The study was almost exclusively upon the larger domestic animals because "they lend themselves marvelously to the localization of excitation of the great volume of their spinal marrow." "I consecrated especially to this study more than eighty subjects. "After being immovably fastened, an incision about a foot long was made over the spinal column of the creature, the vertebrae are opened with the help of a chisel, mallet and pincers, and the spinal cord is ex- posed. The very nature of these experiments which were nothing but studies in sensibility would preclude 30 the possibility of any anaesthetic . . . and of course no mention is made of it." A great many examples of the poor creatures' ''atro- cious sufferings are given," of which I have space for only the following instances: "An old mare very docile. The electric excitors had hardly reached the edge of the posterior cord, when the animal . . . uttered cries of pain and mani- fested the violent suffering it experienced.' "To produce these effects, it was only necessary to make an almost imperceptible movement of the instru- ment. ... I provoked the manifestation over and over again. "An old horse, thin and feeble. In addition to the usual phenomena, other manifestations of extreme agony were evoked. The tongue is in constant movement, the globes of the eyes roll constantly in their orbits and the larynx opens and closes incessantly ; the lower jaw mean- time is fixed open." "Yet," says Dr. Leffingwell, "to nullify the charge of the stupid and wanton cruelty of the experiment of Dr. Watson on one hundred and forty-one dogs, to denote the greatest injuries to the spinal cord. General Sternberg implies that these experiments could not have been so very cruel or revolting, because — as he distinctly tells the Senate Committee — 'the spinal cord is not sen- sitive.' "If General Sternberg had said that certain parts of the spinal cord appear to be insensible to irritation which generally causes pain, he would have been scien- tifically correct. 31 "That, however, would not have answered the pur- pose of the denial." What shall we say to evidence like this — evidence based entirely upon vivisection ? Eighty horses and other domestic animals, worn out in the service of man, die in torment under the hands of Chauveau to prove the sensibility of the spinal cord; twenty species of animals in unknown and unreckoned numbers, are sacrificed by the prince of vivisectors, Brown-Sequard ; Dalton tells us, as the result of vivisec- tions that at certain points the sensibility of the spinal cord is unquestioned; Flint reporting the "positive results" of his own vivisections, tells us that a certain part of the spinal cord is very sensitive; and yet, to break the force of a charge of cruelty in which he was not concerned, the Surgeon-General of the United States Army dared to stand up in the presence of a committee of the United States Senate, and inform its members that "the spinal cord is not sensitive . . . there is no sensitiveness of the spinal cord." In the second place. General Sternberg suggests a doubt whether such experiments would be made by any surgeon or experimenter without the use of anaesthetics. Yet "Dr. Watson's pamphlet describing these vivi- sections is to be seen in the library of the Surgeon-Gen- eral, and it contains no intimation of their employment." It was Dr. W. S. Halstead, of New York, who per- formed a series of experiments on thirty dogs, recorded in the International Journal of Science, by cutting out pieces of intestines and sewing them in again, sometimes reversing the pieces. The dogs all died after various periods of agony. 32 Dr. Halstead said that he omitted many of his experi- ments from the record ''because most of them seem now rather absurd to me, and none of them admit of classi- fication." XIX. Brutalizing Tendency. These are a few instances of what is going on in private laboratories and in medical schools all over the country, and the torture of the animals is only one side of the matter. The other side is moral degradation that results to the experimenters. We have positive evi- dence of brutalization of medical students who are being carefully educated by thousands to forget every instinct of mercy. This brutalization follows them afterward in their hospital work, and well may indigent and help- less patients dread being placed in such hands as these. Many of the best physicians have declared that cruel experiments upon animals have not advanced the art of healing at all, and physiologists, in moments of candor, have repeatedly asserted that their object in prosecuting these researches was not the relief of suffering, but "the advancement of science." It is only when it becomes necessary to quiet the aroused consciences of the people that the plea is made of the necessity of these things that science may learn how to cure human ills. "I would shrink with horror," says Dr. Haughton, "from accustoming classes of young men to the sight of animals under vivisection. . . . Science would gain nothing, and the world would have let loose upon it a set of young devils." 33 "Watch the students at a vivisection," suggested the late Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, Professor of Surgery at Harvard University Medical School, "it is the blood and suffering — not the science — that rivets their breathless attention." "No one can visit a great slaughter-house," says Dr. Leffingwell, "without being saddened by the needless atrocity that seems now so often inseparable from the function of butchery." That the act of killing animals was of itself a danger Ovid pointed out nearly two thousand years ago in lines which Dryden has paraphrased: "What more advance can mortals make in sin. So near perfection, who with blood begin? Deaf to the calf that lies beneath their knife. Looks up and from her butcher begs her life ; Deaf to the harmless kid, that ere he dies All methods to procure thy mercy tries, And imitates in vain thy children's cries." XX. Omnipotent Justice. I once read of a young Episcopal minister who said that he found much more in the Bible to prove the future existence of animals than to the contrary. Who is there, at any rate, who can reasonably doubt the intelligence of many of the quadruped sub-races — the elephant, the horse, the bear, the monkey, the dog or the cat ? It is almost difficult to draw the line between the lowest savages and the highest monkeys. It is almost impossible to tell just at what point the vegetable merged into the animal kingdom. 34 We know that there are hving things, such as the sponge, which to us seem nearly inanimate, we also know that there are gorillas and chimpanzees which closely resemble human beings. Science and observation both show us that the ego in animals is not, after all, fundamentally different from the ego, or conscious personality in man. All animals, human or otherwise, have brains, even though the brain be as rudimentary as it is in the insect or the crustacean. Anim.als differ from man very much as infants differ from them. In them instinct exists in a larger proportion and the reasoning faculties are developed in a lesser de- .^ree than in the adult human being. And who knows but that the faithful and uncom- plaining mule that spends his weary days in the cheer- less recesses of the mine, the servant of human beings scarcely more fortunate than himself, and perhaps ends liis humble but useful career in a pit of seething fire caused by an explosion may not live again In The Great Hereafter ? "Not in your heaven, perhaps, O biped grasping, That may be true; But think you God's green pastures and still waters Are all for you? Let all the weary and the heavy laden Come unto me. And that poor, patient ass by Balaam beaten, Why may not she ?" The two cardinal elements of the Creator are Power and Righteousness, and to Him essentially "belong Absolute Justice and Infinite Mercy. We have 35 no right to be sure that everything that has once lived — even in the embryo — may not live again, and continue to develop. As Dr. Leffingwell has himself so eloquently and ably expressed it: "Only a few thousand years ago, and your ancestors and mine were the lowest type of savage barbarians, dwellers in caves, clothed in skins ; almost indistinguish- able — except by the guttural elements of vocalized speech — from the animals they hunted and upon which they fed. The scientist tells us even this was not the beginning. "Carry your imagination still backward into the awful abyss of uncounted ages; and there was a time when even your ancestors, O, Professor of Biology, and those of the dog beneath your knife, were of the same species of living creatures, speaks the science of to-day. "Out of the same black darkness, struggling for existence, you have emerged — in far different form, but yet closely related, not only by origin but in every func- tion of organized existence." XXI. Callous and Defiant Indifference. "A true physiologist," says Dr. Claude Bernard, "does not hear the animal's cries of pain. "He is blind to the blood that flows. He sees nothing but his idea, and organisms which conceal from him the secret he is resolved to discover. "The question of benefit to one's fellow-creatures need not for a moment enter into his thoughts." 36 XXII. Wanton Abuse. Again Dr. Leffingwell says : "Upon the expediency of total repression of all experiments on animals, pain- ful or not painful, there is a difference of opinion. But surely^ something might be done to lessen that needless torture which, as a custom, is spreading everywhere in America unchecked. "Is it an abuse of vivisection to freeze rabbits to death before a class of young men and women merely to illustrate what everyone knew in advance? "It is done annually." Dr. Michael Foster, of Cambridge University, who minutely described all the details of the experiment on recurrent sensibility in the "Handbook for the Physio- logical Laboratory," nevertheless tells us, "I have never performed it, and have never seen it done," partly, as he confesses, "from the horror at the pain." And finally Dr. Burton-Sanderson, physiologist at Univer- sity College, London, states with the utmost emphasis, in regard to the performance of this demonstration on the spinal cord, "I am perfectly certain that no physiolo- gist, none of the leading men, in Germany for example, . would exhibit an experiment of that kind." XXIII. Now Mark the Contrast. Now mark the contrast. This experiment — which we are told passes even the callousness of Germany to repeat; which every leading champion of vivisection in Great Britain reprobates for medical teaching; which some of them shrink even from seeing, themselves, from horror at the tortures necessarily inflicted; which the Z7 most ruthless among them dare not exhibit to the young men of England — this experiment has been performed publicly again and again in American Medical Colleges, without exciting even a whisper of protest or the faint- est murmur of remonstrance! In this country our physiologists are rather followers of Magendie and Bernard^ after the methods in vogue at Paris and Leipsic^ than men who are governed by the caution and conservatism which generally characterizes the physiological teaching of London and Oxford. XXIV. How Far Shall Demonstration be Carried? Every medical student in New York knows that experiments involving pain are repeatedly performed to illustrate teaching. Granting all the advantages which follow demon- stration of certain physiological facts, the cost is pain, pain sometimes amounting to prolonged and excruciat- ing torture. Is the gain worth this? . . . "The physician to the late Queen Victoria, Sir Thomas Watson, with whose 'Lectures on Physics' every medical practitioner in this country is said to be familiar, says : 'I hold that no teacher or man of science who by his own previous experiments . . . has thoroughly satisfied him- self of the solution of any physiological problem, is justified in repeating the experiments, however merci- fully, to appease the natural curiosity of a class of stu- dents or of scientific friends.' " 38 Sir George Burroughs, President of the Royal Col- lege of Physicians, says: "I do not think that an experi- ment should be repeated over and over again in our medical schools to illustrate what is already established." Sir James Paget, Surgeon Extraordinary to the Queen, said before the commission that "experiments for the purpose of repeating anything already ascer- tained ought never to he shown to classes. . . ." Dr. Rolleston, Professor of Physiology at Oxford, said that for class demonstrations, limitations should undoubtedly be imposed, and those limitations should render illegal painful experiments before classes. "If pain could be estimated in money," says Dr. Leffingwell, "no corporation ever existed which would be satisfied with such waste of capital in experiments so futile: no mining company would permit a quarter century of 'prospecting in such barren regions.^ "Once we admit the right to torture a living creature simply as an aid to memory, and where shall we put bounds to the cruelty one may inflict?" Again Dr. Leffingwell says: XXV. American Physiologists. "Dr. Gerald Yeo, the professor of physiology in King's College, London, in an article of the Fortnightly Review, protested against English physiologists being held responsible for the cruelties of other lands. 'Why repeat,' he says, 'the oft-told tale of horrors contained in the works of Claude Bernard, Paul Bert, Brown- Sequard, and Richet in France, of Goltz in Germany, Mantegazza in Italy, and Flint in America?' — coupling thus the name of an American physiologist with the 39 names of some of the most inhuman and brutal vivi- sectors that ever walked the earth." On page fifty of his book, Dr. Leffingwell says: "Take another instance of 'original investigations.' "Crile, an American physiologist, has recently dem- onstrated to what extent experimentation may be carried on here in America, where, as he, himself, tells us, 'there is no law governing vivisection.' "Experimenting upon one hundred and thirty-two dogs, he subjected them to every form of conceivable injury; cutting, tearing and burning the skin; cutting and crushing muscles; crushing the joints; crushing, tearing, cutting and burning the tongue; pouring boil- ing water within the abdomen; manipulating vital organs; burning and crushing the paws, tearing and crushing nerves — together with other operations too hideous for mention. "To the scientific ardor of this young man, even pregnancy of the animal suggested no reason for exclud- ing the creature from experimentation." XXVI. The Just Moral Proportion. "The animals as we see and know them as compan- ions, servants and friends, are but our younger brothers of creation and we should not wantonly and unnecessar- ily inflict upon 'the least of these' the slightest pang." I heartily agree with Dr. Leffingwell when he says, after having carefully weighed and considered the matter : "Our moral duty, to all living creatures, from the highest to the lowest form of life, is to treat them pre- cisely as we ourselves should be willing to be treated 40 for the same objects in circumstances of their condition and form. . . . While I can easily bring myself to the conception of a willingness to yield mere existence for the actual necessities of beings almost infinitely higher than myself, yet it becomes quite another matter when I try to imagine a consent to suffer — even in the lowest forms of life — the least useless pain. "I cannot do it. Judged from this standard of ethics, all forms of so-called sport, all that destruction of animal life merely for savage amusement and delight in killing something — must be regarded as immoral. . . That cruel sacrifice of song birds to the evanescent fashions of feminine adornment is not one that woman can justify to herself by this ideal of right and wrong. "Much that to-day accompanies the killing of animals for food, will sometime be deemed unnecessary and morally wrong. If society decides that for man's bene- fit it must continue to take the life of animals, death will then be inflicted with the utmost precaution against the addition of one needless pang. "Should if be impracticable to kill any creature except by the possible addition of extreme agony, we shall cease to use it as food." XXVIL Vivisection in Public Schools. Vivisection as practiced in the public schools is gen- erally performed upon animals thoroughly anaesthetized ; but is it a good thing for small boys and girls, most of whom will never be physicians, to become hardened to the sight of death and bloodshed? 41 From Dr. Leffingwell's chapter or paper on "Physi- ology in our PubHc Schools/' I quote the following para- graphs: "A quickly forgotten smattering of anatomy may indeed be learned by a child, dabbling its fingers in bloody tissues, but nothing which might not be better learned by other methods, without danger of moral per- version and at the cost of not a single pang. "Everything needful may be illustrated by colored charts and manikins." XXVIII. Vivisection for Veterinary Purposes. There is one branch of vivisection which cannot even attempt to hide behind the cloak of abstract scientific knowledge or remote possible utility to humanity. That is the vivisection of animals for veterinary purposes. Probably for the combined quantity and quality of torture inflicted there is no spot on our beauti- ful earth so hellish as Alfort in France, where there is a large and noted veterinary college. Many years ago there were protests against the barbarities enacted there, and now within the last several years many noble men and women, stirred to action by the knowledge of that den of horror in their own land, have been making des- perate efforts to put a stop to the wanton and reckless atrocities there perpetrated. It is said that students themselves are given carte blanche, and there is no attempt to discourage them in their diabolical pursuit, it having even been said that such practice helps to render them callous to suffering and indifferent to any pain they may afterwards inflict in their veterinary practice. 42 Some time ago the London Times published the fol- lowing: "At the veterinary College of Alfort, a wretched horse is periodically given up to a group of students to experimentalize upon. "They tie him down and torture him for hours, the operations being graduated in such a manner that sixty or even more may be performed before death ensues. The same authority, Dr. Guardia, of the Academy of Medicine, declares these tortures perfectly useless, and that the experiments might just as well be made on dead horses. . . . These students are scarcely tinder the control of any one — though a professor now and then makes his appearance, from the forenoon up to three o'clock, consequently they can do as they please. "From the rising of the sun until its setting, these iDloody deeds have been enacted, and every session the walls of that enclosure have witnessed an amount of ^slaughter and torture which far eclipses the gladiatorial shades of Imperial Rome. "Need I say that the sight furnished by these eight poor animals, when this so-called 'dexterity' has done its work, is not to be paralleled by a battle field when the excitement has passed away, or in the custom and ceremonies of the most savage nations. Their ghastly appearance is indescribable, and if any life is left, it but exaggerates and distorts their hideousness." Yet this Alfort is considered the greatest veterinary school in the world, and a graduate from it has been in charge of the Harvard Medical School, and another graduate has been exploiting himself with his French methods of instruction at or near Philadelphia. It is to stop such atrocities that the New England Anti- 43 vivisection Society has been organized and incor- porated?' The following are a few of the experiments per- formed by men who are well known to us, which still further illustrate that under the stimulus of scientific curiosity, they seem to have become oblivious to suffer- ing and to have lost all pity. . . . Professor Ott, of Johns Hopkins University, "opens the spinal column of cats (perhaps the most nervously organized of all living creatures) and applies electricity to the spinal marrow without anaesthetics." Professor Senn, of Chicago, "tears the pancreas of an animal in two. Animal is left for weeks to denote result." Dr. Walton, of Harvard Medical School, "excises epiglottis of dogs, observes for twenty-one days, chokes in swallowing liquids and solids at every trial." Dr. Crile publishes an account of experiments in surgical shock. In the book experiments are described such as "tearing and twisting the sciatic nerve, extirpa- tion of an eye and manipulation and bruising of the socket, injection of water into stomach to bursting," etc. XXIX. A Strong Moral Arraignment. "Cardinal Manning has expressed the situation most eloquently when he said: 'Nothing can justify — no claim of science, no conjectural result, no hope for dis- covery, such horrors as these. . . . Whereas, these torments, refined and indescribable, are certain . everything about the results is uncertain, but the certain infraction of the first laws of mercy and humanity.^ " 44 ''Let us remember," some one has most wisely said, that "what Lord Shaftesbury has called 'the insolence of physiological science' has in it perils peculiarly impor- tant to a republic, and especially deserving the attention of our legislatures. . . . Vivisection at its best, is an accused defendant. It has been arraigned in many lands, and condemned in some. At its best if exists under suspicion. A t its worst, it is a shame to the civil- isation of a Christian State/* XXX. Injury to Science. On page 151 Dr. Leffingwell says, "Science deserves better service than the sacrifice of accuracy to her imaginary interests. She stands in no danger except from such defenders; certainly the legal regulation of vivisection can do her no harm." Again he says : "The habit of mind which tends to exaggerate and magnify a fact is far more opposed to scientific progress than the mental scepticism which doubts, questions, debates, and yields credence only to overwhelming proof. "Some day it will be seen that blunders of scientists themselves, work greater injury to science than any assaults of honest ignorance; that fidelity to fact is the sincerest homage she can ever receive; and that no greater detriment coidd come to her than through the unreliability and disingenuousness of men who assume to defend her with exaggeration and untruth." On page 19 he says: "That is a worthy ideal of conduct which seeks 'Never to blend our pleasures or our pride with sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.' " Is not this a sentiment which even science may fitly share ? 45 Are we justified in neglecting the evidence she offers purchased in the past at such immeasurable agonies and in demanding that year after year new victims shall be subjected to torture, only to demonstrate what none of us doubt? That is the chief question. For, if all compromise be persistently rejected by physiologists, there is danger that society may confound in one common condemnation all experiments of this nature, and make the whole prac- tice impossible, except in secret and as a crime. XXXI. Conclusion. The following paragraphs are a few extracts from a statement made by Herbert Spencer, of England: ^'Within certain limitations we regard vivisection to be so justified by utility as to be legitimate, expedient and right. Beyond these boundaries it is cruel, monstrous, and wrong. Experimentation upon living animals we consider justifiable when employed to determine the action of new remedies; for tests of suspected poisons; for the study of new methods of surgical procedure, or in the search for the causation of disease — in short for any object where the probable benefit to mankind is very great, and the suffering inflicted not greater than that of instantaneous death nor more than the pain and dis- tress of human ailments, to alleviate which the experi- ment is made. "On the other hand, we regard as cruel and wrong the infliction of torment upon animals in the search of physiological facts which have no conceivable relation to the treatment of human diseases, or experiments that seem to be made only for the purpose of gratifying a 46 heartless curiosity. . . . We consider as wholly unjustifiable the practice of subjecting animals to tor- ture in the laboratory or class-room, merely for the purpose of demonstrating well-known facts. "We hold that the infliction of torment upon living animals under such circumstances is not justified by necessity, nor is it a fitting exhibition for the contempla- tion of youth." Dr. Cochran, Ph.D., LL.D., formerly President of the Polytechnic Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y., has expressed his opinion that all such exhibitions are of the most pernicious tendency and should not be witnessed by men under forty years of age. Frederick Treves, F.R.C.S. (formerly Surgeon-Ex- traordinary to H. M. the Queen, and Consulting Sur- geon to the London Hospital) says: "Many years ago I carried out on the Continent sundry operations upon the intestines of dogs, but such are the differences hetween the human and the canine bowel that when I came to operate upon men, I found I was much hampered hy my new experience, that I had everything to unlearn, and that my experiment had done little but unfit me to deal with the human intestine." From Sir John Eric Erichsen, F.R.S., I quote the following : "All experiments on living animals, if pain- ful, should be performed under anaesthetics. "Experiments on living animals are most carefully restricted in this country. . . . / acted as Gov- ernment Inspector of living animals for several years, and I can safely assert that the provisions of the act were vigorously enforced, and never to my knowledge contravened." And yet it has actually been claimed by 47 radical vivisectionists that no physician of any standing would be willing to inspect the laboratories. Will not every lover of justice and mercy in America, and every physician worthy of the name, lend his or her influence towards bringing the practice of vivisection within proper limits and placing it in the hands of men who are not as Dr. Gould says: "a disgrace both to science and humanity"? A gifted woman is quoted as saying: "Vivisection is only possible because the world — so merciful, but so careless, cannot endure to learn what vivisection means." From page 203 of "The Vivisection Question," I quote the following eloquent conclusion of Dr. Leffing- well, which I gladly adopt as expressing my own views : 'Tn the name of the ideal of science which Herbert Spencer represents, in the name of those whom the state would protect, in the name of humanity ; we ask not for the abolition of vivisection; not for the restriction against useful research, not for any impediment to the progress of medicine, but simply for such legislation as shall make vivisection subject to the law, prevent its abuse and stamp its cruelty as a crime." 48 APPENDIX The following is the full text of the "Davis-Lee" bill for the regulation of animal vivisection which was drafted by Frederick P. Bellamy, Esquire, intro- duced into the New York Legislature for the year 1908 by Senator Davis and Assemblyman Lee, and reported to the Judiciary Committee of both houses. The bill was publicly discussed before a joint session of the Judiciary Committees of the Senate and Assembly on March 25, 1908, and was subsequently reported favorably by the Senate Judiciary Committee and passed to a third reading. Owing to the adjournment of the Legislature before the bill was reached on the Senate Calendar it did not come before the Senate itself for its vote. This bill or another substantially similar to it will, it is hoped, be introduced in the coming Legislature. N. Y. Legislature of 1908. Senate Bill ^'jy. Assembly Bill 470. "An act to prevent cruelty by regulating experiments on living animals." The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows: Section i. Restrictions on the performance of experi- ments. — An experiment upon a living vertebrate animal of a nature calculated to cause pain or distress to such animal shall not be performed except subject to the following restrictions: I. Such experiment shall be performed only under the authority of a college, hospital or laboratory incorporated under 49 the laws of this State, or under the authority of the state com- missioner of health, or a board of health of a city. 2. The building or part of a building in which it is proposed to conduct such experiment must be registered with the state commissioner of health, who shall issue to the corporation or individual applying therefor a license or permit describing such building or part of a building and authorizing animal experi- mentation therein in accordance with this act. 3. The animal before the beginning and during the whole course of such experiment shall be sufficiently under the influence of a general anaesthetic to prevent it from feeling pain, excepting only that anaesthetics need not be thus employed : (o) In tests of foods or of drugs; (b) In so-called inoculation experiments; (c) In investigations regarding the communicability of human or animal diseases ; (d) During the process of recovery from any experiment pertaining to surgery or surgical method; provided, however, that the cutting operation must be done while the animal is in a condition of insensibility produced by anaesthetics. 4. Every animal subjected to such experiment, if serious pain is likely to continue after the effect of the anaesthetic has ceased, or if any serious injury has been inflicted, shall be killed immediately upon the conclusion of the experiment and while under the influence of the anaesthetic, except in surgical or pathological experiments where it is necessary for the success of the investigation to permit the animal to live. 5. The substance known as urari or curare shall not for the purpose of this act be deemed an anaesthetic. 6. The experiment must be performed with a view to the advancement of physiological knowledge or of knowledge which will be useful for saving or prolonging life or alleviating suf- fering. 7. Experiments shall not be performed for demonstrating facts which have already been proved except when thus per- 50 formed as part of the course of study in a regularly incorporated college, and such demonstrations shall be conducted so as not to involve the infliction of pain. Section 2. Reports. — Every corporation or person under whose direction experiments under this act are performed, shall make a report, in writing, in the months of January and July in each year, stating in general the methods and anesthetics used, the number and species of animals used, and the nature and result of such experiments performed during the previous six months, in such form and with such details as the state com- missioner of health may require, and shall file such report in the office of the state commissioner of health. All such reports shall be published in the annual report of the state commissioner of health, except that, in the discretion of the state commissioner of health, the publication of any report of a series of experiments not then completed may be postponed until his next annual report. Section 3. Violation of Act — ^Any person who shall per- form any experiment upon any living animal calculated to give pain or distress, without conforming to the provisions of this act, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment for not less than sixty days nor more than one year, or by a fine of not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars. Section 4. Experiments under order of court. — ^A judge or justice of a court of record may, by order, in a criminal case pending therein, if satisfied that it is essential for the purpose of justice, authorize the performance of experiments on living animals; but such experiment shall be performed, except as to the requirements of a license, in accordance with the provisions of Section i hereof. Section 5. Effect. — This act shall take effect on the first day of July, nineteen hundred and eight. 51 DATE DUE &ft: ^ fOfH? r\M<»i XL — ^^ '^^^'27 n% w ■ I Demco, Inc. 38-293 the