y expressed their opinions before a royal commission.
Dr. David Ferrier, of King's college, noted for his experiments upon
the brain of monkeys, affirms his belief that "students would rebel"
at the sight of a painful experiment. Dr. Rutherford, who certainly
dared do all that may become a physiologist, confesses mournfully,
"_I dare not_ show an experiment upon a dog or rabbit before students,
when the animal is not anaesthetized." Dr. Pavy, of Guy's Hospital,
asserts that a painful experiment introduced before a class "would not
be tolerated for a moment." Sir William Gull, M. D., believes that the
repetition of an operation like this upon the spinal nerves would
excite the reprobation alike of teacher, pupils, and the public at
large. Michael Foster, of Cambridge University, who minutely describes
all the details of the experiment on recurrent sensibility in the
"Handbook for the Physiological Laboratory," nevertheless tells
us, "I have not performed it, and have never seen it done," partly,
as he confesses, "from horror at the pain." And finally Dr.
Burdon-Sanderson, physiologist at University 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
physiologist--none of the leading men in Germany, for example--would
exhibit an experiment of that kind."

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 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, so far as we know, even a whisper of protest or the
faintest murmur of remonstrance! The proof is to be found in the
published statements of the experimenter himself. In his "Text-Book
of Physiology," Professor Flint says, "Magendie showed very
satisfactorily that the posterior roots (of the spinal cord) were
exclusively sensory, and this fact has been confirmed by more recent
observations upon the higher classes of animals. We have ourselves
frequently exposed and irritated the roots of the nerves in dogs, _in
public demonstrations_ in experiments on the recurrent sensibility,