animals
will be subjected to excruciating agony as one medical college after
another becomes penetrated with the idea that vivisection is a part of
modern teaching, and that, to hold way with other institutions, they,
too, must have their vivisector, their mutilated dogs, their guinea-
pigs, their rabbits, their chamber of torture and of horrors, to
advertise as a laboratory."

Nor this the only expression of Dr. Bigelow's opinions. In his work
on "Surgical Anaesthesia," he left on record an even stronger
condemnation of the abuses of vivisection and the cruelties which
pertain to it. As he quotes from Stanley's "In Darkest Africa," which
was published in 1890, it is evident that it represents his mature and
settled judgment, down to the very close of his long and distinguished
career. In this work he says:

"There can be no question that the discussion of vivisection arouses
antagonistic human instincts. It is no common subject which enlists
such earnest and opposite opinions. That there is something wrong
about it is evident from the way in which the reputation of inflicting
its torture is disclaimed. That for some reason it is a fascinating
pursuit is equally evident from the bitter contest made for the right
to practise it.

"There is little in the literature of what is called the `horrors of
vivisection' which is not well grounded on truth. For a description
of the pain inflicted, I refer to that literature, only reiterating
that what it recounts is largely and simply fact, selected, it may be,
but rarely exaggerated.

"Vivisection is not an innocent study. We may usefully popularize
chemistry and electricity, their teaching and their experimentation,
even if only as one way of cultivating human powers. But not so with
painful vivisection. We may not move as freely in this direction, for
there are distinct reasons against it. It can be indiscriminately
pursued only by torturing animals; and the word `torture' is here
intentionally used to convey the idea of very severe pain--sometimes
the severest conceivable pain, of indefinite duration, often
terminating, fortunately for the animal, with its life, but as often
only after hours or days of refined infliction, continuously or at
intervals."

It is here that Dr. Bigelow differs radically from the advocates of
free vivisection. To them there appears no reason why the science of
physiology should not "move as freely" in experimentation as the
scienc