e doubt, I think, that the sentiment of compassion
and of sympathy with suffering is more generally diffused among all
classes of Great Britain than elsewhere in Europe; and one cannot help
wondering what our place might be, were it possible to institute any
reliable comparison of national humanity. Should we be found in all
respects as sensitive as the English people? Would indignation and
protest be as quickly and spontaneously evoked among us by a cruel
act? The question may appear an ungracious one, yet it seems to me
there exists some reason why it should be plainly asked. There is a
certain experiment--one of the most excruciating that can be
performed--which consists in exposing the spinal cord of the dog for
the purpose of demonstrating the functions of the spinal nerves. It is
one, by the way, which Dr. Wilder forgot to enumerate in his summary
of the "four kinds of experiments," since it is not the "cutting
operation" which forms its chief peculiarity or to which special
objection would be made. At present all this preliminary process is
generally performed under anaesthetics: it is an hour or two later,
when the animal has partly recovered from the severe shock of the
operation, that the wound is reopened and the experiment begins. It
was during a class demonstration of this kind by Magendie, before
the introduction of ether, that the circumstance occurred which one
hesitates to think possible in a person retaining a single spark of
humanity or pity. "I recall to mind," says Dr. Latour, who was present
at the time, "a poor dog, the roots of whose vertebral nerves Magendie
desired to lay bare to demonstrate Bell's theory, which he claimed as
his own. The dog, mutilated and bleeding twice escaped from under the
implacable knife, and threw its front paws around Magendie's neck,
licking, as if to soften his murderer and ask for mercy! I confess I
was unable to endure that heartrending spectacle."

It was probably in reference to this experiment that Sir Charles Bell,
the greatest English physiologist of our century, writing to his
brother in 1822, informs him that he hesitates to go on with his
investigations. "You may think me silly," he adds, "but I cannot
perfectly convince myself that I am authorized in nature or religion
to do these cruelties." Now, what do English physiologists and
vivisectors of the present day think of the repetition of this
experiment solely as a class demonstration?

They have candidl