experiments
concerning the phenomena of life. Such experiments are made, FIRST,
for the demonstration, before students, of facts already known and
established; or, SECOND, as a method of investigation of some theory
or problem, which may be with or without relation to the treatment of
human ailments. Such experiments may range from procedures which are
practically painless, to those involving distress, exhaustion,
starvation, baking, burning, suffocation, poisoning, inoculation with
disease, every kind of mutilation, and long-protracted agony and
death."

A definition of this kind will cover 99 per cent. of all experiments.
The extreme pro-vivisectionist may protest that the definition brings
into prominence the more painful operations; yet for the majority of
us the only ground for challenging the practice at all is the pain,
amounting to torment in some cases, which vivisection may involve.
They are rare, some one says. But how do we know? The doors of the
laboratory are closed. Of practices secretly carried on, what can we
know? That every form of imaginable torment has at some time been
practised in the name of Science, we may learn from the reports of
experimenters themselves, and from the writings of men who have
denounced them. It was Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, of Harvard University,
the most eminent surgeon of his day, who declared that vivisection
sometimes meant the infliction of "the severest conceivable pain, of
indefinite duration," and that it was "a torture of helpless animals,
more terrible, by reason of its refinement, than burning at the
stake." Is the above definition of vivisection stronger than is
implied by this assertion of Dr. Bigelow?

We need constantly to remember that vivisection is by no means a
simple act. It may indicate investigations that require no cutting
operation of any kind, and the infliction of no pain; or, on the other
hand, it may denote operations that involve complicated and severe
mutilations, and torments as prolonged and exquisite as human
imagination can conceive. Experiments may be made, in course of
researches, of very great interest and importance to medical science;
and, on the contrary, they may be performed merely to demonstrate
phenomena about which there is no doubt, or to impress on the memory of
a student some well-known fact. They may be performed by men like Sir
Charles Bell, who hesitated to confirm one of the greatest
physiological discoveries of the la