s. He was professor of surgery in
Harvard University from 1849 to 1882, or a third of a century. When
he resigned the latter position, President Eliot in his annual report
referred to him as "a discoverer and inventor of world-wide
reputation, a brilliant surgical operator, a natural leader of men."
The faculty of Harvard Medical School also spoke of him as one "who
had done so much to render this school conspicuous and to make
American surgery illustrious throughout the world." This is high
praise. Let it be remembered in reading his opinions concerning
vivisection.

An abhorrence of pain was a marked trait in Dr. Bigelow's character.
Even to the infliction of necessary suffering he had an extreme
dislike. His gentleness to animals was akin to his tenderness for
children. He had a great respect for their intelligence, their
affection, their confidence in mankind. Toward the close of life he
had among his pets a number of the little animals most closely related
to human beings, and therefore the most-prized "material" of the
vivisector. But such was Dr. Bigelow's sympathy with his little
friends that he disliked to take visitors into their presence, and
when he did, always cautioned them to assume a smiling face. He was
unwilling to give his pets even the mental suffering of anxiety or
fear.

He died October 30, 1890, at the ripe age of seventy-two. It was
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, himself illustrious in science and in
literature, who referred to the name of Dr. Henry J. Bigelow as "one
of the brightest in the annals of American surgery, not to claim for
it A STILL HIGHER PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF THE HEALING ART."

Such a tribute was well deserved. His was the most eminent name in
the annals of American surgery. It was from this man, occupying such
a position in the medical profession, that we have one of the
strongest protests, one of the clearest, most discriminating, and
emphatic criticisms of unregulated and unrestricted vivisection that
the world has known. It is particularly valuable, because Dr. Bigelow
was never an antivivisectionist, if by that term we mean one who is
opposed to all experiments upon animals. But there are things done in
the name of Science which he utterly repudiated and condemned as
cruelty, and against which he made a protest that should never be
forgotten until the evil shall be condemned by the universal judgment
of mankind.

It is probable that Dr. Bigelow's first protes