pression in the pages of any American
periodical favouring not the entire abolition of vivisection, but the
reform of its abuse.

My knowledge of vivisection had its beginning in personal
experience. Nearly forty years ago, while teaching the elements of
physiology at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, it occurred to me
to illustrate the statements of textbooks by a repetition of such
simple experiments as had come before my own eyes. Most of my
demonstrations were illustrative of commonplace physiological
phenomena: chloroform was freely used to secure unconsciousness of the
animal, and with the exception of one or two demonstrations, the
avoidance of pain or distress was almost certainly accomplished.

But what especially impressed me at the time was the extraordinary
interest which these experiments seemed to excite. Students from
advanced classes in the institute were often spectators and voluntary
assistants. Of the utility of such demonstrations as a means of
fixing facts in memory, I could not have the slightest doubt. Nor as
regards the rightfulness of vivisection as a method either of study or
demonstration, was there at that period any question in my mind.
Whatever Science desired, it seemed to me only proper that Science
should have. The fact that certain demonstrations or experiments upon
living animals had already been condemned as unjustifiable cruelty by
the leading men in the medical profession, and by some of the
principal medical journals of England, was then as utterly unknown to
me as the same facts are to-day unknown to the average graduate of
every medical school in the United States. It was not long until
after this early experience, and following acquaintance with the
practice in Europe as well as at home, that doubts arose regarding the
justice of CAUSING PAIN TO ILLUSTRATE FACTS ALREADY KNOWN. These
doubts became convictions, and were stated in my first contribution to
the literature of the subject, the paper in Scribner's. It is not the
position of what is called "antivivisection," for that implies
condemnation of every phase of animal experimentation. In the third
of a century that has elapsed since this protest was made, the
practice of vivisection has taken vast strides: it appears in new
shapes and unanticipated environment. But the old abuses have not
disappeared, and some of them, more urgently than ever before, demand
the attention of thinking men and women.

Of perso