known facts, than is permitted to be done for
the same purpose in all the medical schools of Great Britain and
Ireland. And _cui bono_? "I can truly say," writes a physician who
has seen all these experiments, "that not only have I never seen any
results at all commensurate with the suffering inflicted, but I cannot
recall a single experiment which, in the slightest degree, has
increased my ability to relieve pain, or in any way fitted me to cope
better with disease."

In respect to this practice, therefore, evidence abounds indicating
the necessity for that State supervision which obtains in Great
Britain. We cannot abolish it any more than we can repress dissection;
to attempt it would be equally unwise. Within certain limitations,
dictated both by a regard for the interest of science and by that
sympathy for everything that lives and suffers which is the highest
attribute of humanity, it seems to me that the practice of vivisection
should be allowed. What are these restrictions?

The following conclusions are suggested as a basis for future
legislation:

_I. Any experiment or operation whatever upon a living animal, during
which by recognized anaesthetics it is made completely insensible to
pain, should be permitted._

This does not necessarily imply the taking of life. Should a surgeon,
for example, desire to cause a fracture or tie an artery, and then
permit the animal to recover so as to note subsequent effects, there
is no reason why the privilege should be refused. The discomfort
following such an operation would be inconsiderable. This permission
should not extend to experiments purely physiological and having no
definite relation to surgery; nor to mutilation from which recovery is
impossible, and prolonged pain certain as a sequence.

_II. Any experiment performed thus, under complete anaesthesia, though
involving any degree of mutilation, if concluded by the extinction of
life before consciousness is regained should also be permitted._

To object to killing animals for scientific purposes while we continue
to demand their sacrifice for food, is to seek for the appetite a
privilege we refuse the mind. It is equally absurd to object to
vivisection because it dissects, or "cuts up." If no pain be felt, why
is it worse to cut up a dog, than a sheep or an ox? Such experiments
as the foregoing might be permitted to any extent desired in our
medical schools.

Far more difficult is the question of painful e