or enabling him to make
statements of a humane character.' Even if it were conscientiously
administered at the beginning of an experiment, how little would
chloroform diminish the misery of Rutherford's dogs or Brunton's
ninety cats, whose long-drawn agonies extended over many days? How
little could it affect in any way the cases of starving, poisoning,
baking, stewing to death, or burning,--like the twenty-five dogs over
which Professor Wertheim poured turpentine and then set them on fire,
leaving them afterwards slowly to perish? If Dr. Pye-Smith was
thinking of morphia, the reader may refer to Claude Bernard's
_Lecons de Physiologie Operatoire_, where he will find that great
physiologists recommends its use; but at the same time mentions (as of
no particular consequence) that the animal subjected to its influence
still 'suffers pain.' I can hardly suppose, lastly, that Dr. Pye-Smith
was secretly thinking of _curare_, and that he is one of those whom
Tennyson says would

"Mangle the living dog which loved him and fawned at his knee,
Drenched with the hellish oorali."

It is bad enough to "mangle" a loving and intelligent creature without
adding to its agonies the paralysis of the powers of motion, and the
increased sensibility to pain occasioned by this horrible drug, which
nevertheless Bernard, in the work above quoted, says is in such common
use among physiologists, that when an experiment is not otherwise
described, it may always be "taken for granted it has been performed
on a curarized dog."

Finally, Dr. Pye-Smith says, "It was remarkable that the small residue
of experiments in which some amount of pain was necessary were chiefly
those in which the direct and immediate benefit to mankind was more
obvious. He referred to the trying of drugs on animals, to discovering
antidotes to poisons," etc. The bribe here offered to human
selfishness is an ingenious one. "Let us," the physiologists say,
"retain the right to put animals to torture, for it is very
'remarkable' that when we do so it is always in your interest!"
Unluckily for this appeal to the meaner feelings of human nature,
which these modern instructors of our young men are not ashamed to put
forward, it is difficult for them to hit on any one instance wherein
out of their "few" (million) experiments any good to mankind has been,
even apparently, achieved. As Claude Bernard honestly said, at least
as regards any benefit for suffering humanity, "_Nos