t to either students or mankind, was illegitimate and
unjustifiable. But when it is considered that these same experiments
might have been conducted under the influence of an anaesthetic, so
as to minimize, if not remove, this needless suffering, this
cold-blooded, heartless torture can only be characterized as
contemptible and monstrous.

"From detailed accounts communicated to me by eye-witnesses of the
incidents related, I entertain no doubt that barbarous cruelty was
practised at that time in all the Parisian laboratories, though it is
probable that, for novel and horrible experiments, none could rival
the infernal ingenuity in this business of that master-demon, Claude
Be'rnard."[1]

[1] Extracts from letter to Boston Medical and Surgical Journal,
April, 1895.

Such is the memory which Be'rnard has left for posterity. It was by
useless cruelty that he impressed. And no American physiologist,
sounding the praises of free and unrestricted vivisection, has ever
yet ventured to criticize or to condemn either the man or his work.

Let us go back a little. By the year 1871, the agitation had gone so
far as to be deemed worthy of consideration by the leading scientific
body in Great Britain. At the meeting of the British Association in
Liverpool of that year, a committee was appointed to consider the
subject of animal experimentation, and the result of their
deliberations appears in the annual report. Regarding the practice,
they suggest four recommendations or rules:

"1. No experiment which can be done under the influence of an
anaesthetic ought to be done without it.

"2. No painful experiment is justifiable for the mere purpose of
illustrating a law or fact already determined; in other words,
experimentation without the employment of anaesthetics is not a
fitting exhibition for teaching purposes."

A third rule suggested that painful experiments should only be made in
laboratories under proper regulation; and a fourth rule condemned
veterinary operations for the purpose of obtaining manual dexterity.
It was evidently an attempt to allay agitation--there were no means of
enforcing the recommendations concerning practices which the law did
not touch.

One of the signers was Dr. Burdon Sanderson, a Lecturer on Physiology.
Early the following year he began the delivery of a course of lectures
in the physiological laboratory of University College in London,
illustrated by vivisections. During one of these