ne unknown facts in physiology, pathology, and
therapeutics, whereby medical science may be directly or indirectly
advanced. When, therefore, any fact of this kind has been once
determined and positively acquired to science, all repetition of
experiments for its further demonstration are unnecessary, and
therefore unjustifiable.

"All experiments, therefore, performed before students, in classes or
otherwise, for the purpose of demonstrating known facts in physiology
or therapeutics, are unjustifiable. And they are especially
unjustifiable because they are performed before those who, being mere
students, are incapable of fully comprehending their value and
meaning. THEY ARE NEEDLESS AND CRUEL: needless, because they
demonstrate what is already acquired to science; and especially cruel,
because if admitted as a recognized part of students' instruction,
THEIR CONSTANT AND CONTINUED REPETITION, THROUGH ALL TIME, WOULD BE
REQUIRED. I need hardly say that courses of experimental physiology
are nowhere given in this country, and that these remarks apply only
to those schools i France and elsewhere where demonstrations of this
kind are delivered."[1]

[1] "Experiments and Surgical Operations on Living Animals: One of Two
Prize Essays." London: Robert Hardwick, 1866.

"ESPECIALLY CRUEL!" Little could Dr. Markham have imagined that this
"especial cruelty" which he thus so emphatically denounced in 1864
would spread from the Continent of Europe and become, within the short
space of a single generation, the accepted method of physiological
instruction in every leading college or university in the United
States!

Dr. Markham evidently fancied that with the larger acquirement of
facts the vivisection method would gradually become obsolete.
He says:

"A consideration of the conditions here proposed as requisite for the
rightful performance of experiments on living animals shows that
experiments of this kind must ever be very limited, because those
persons who are fitted for the due performance of them are of
necessity few in number; and that in proportion as new facts are added
by them to our knowledge, THE EXPERIMENTS MUST DIMINISH IN NUMBER...."

"Thus, then, we have seen that in the case of experiments legitimately
performed on living animals, ... such experiments must always, from
their nature, be comparatively few; that they must gradually diminish
with the advance of scientific knowledge, so that A TIME MAY COME WHE