se humane principles, so
long professed by English medical men. One leading journal, the
Medical Times and Gazette, thus suggests that very oversight of
vivisection which we are told is impossible:

"Just as the law demands that a teacher of anatomy should take out a
licence, and be responsible for the bodies entrusted to him, so a
teacher of physiology might be required to take out some such licence
as regards the teaching of practical physiology. We have never been
of those who advocate the wholesale performance of experiments by
students, especially on the higher animals, if they are of such a kind
as to require any degree of skill for their performance. When the
medical public seemed bitten with what was called `practical
physiology,' many were ready to advocate the performance of all kinds
of experiments on living animals by uninstructed students. Against
this notion we were first to protest, as being at once cruel and worse
than useless; for an experiment performed by bungling fingers is no
experiment at all, but wanton cruelty."

After explaining his position in favour of scientific research, the
editor refers to a recent discussion on vivisection in London:

"Dr. Walker declared that his desire was not to stop scientific
research, but the abuses which were connected with it. In the first
place, he would not allow vivisection to be practised by incompetent
students. This was nothing but wanton and unrighteous cruelty.
THEREFORE HE WOULD OBLIGE EACH VIVISECTOR TO OBTAIN LEGAL PERMISSION
FROM COMPETENT AUTHORITY. Another abuse related to operations
performed merely to demonstrate physiological phenomena already
verified and established. Again, the number of animals vivisected was
shamefully high. Persons unacquainted with physiological laboratories
could form no idea of the lavish way in which animals were made to
suffer days and weeks of anguish and acute pain. If the people knew
of these sufferings, they would insist that the number of animals
annually vivisected should be limited, and that no animal rearing its
young should be experimented upon. Nor should it be allowable to
operate on an animal more than once.... Lastly, every licensed
vivisector should be obliged to send in an annual return, showing the
number of vivisections performed, and the scientific results attained,
which would prevent repeated operations with the same object. Nothing
in any of these proposals, urged Dr. Walker, would int