self in a false position, the anti-
vivisectionist should bear clearly in mind that what he opposes is
PAINFUL vivisection only. For there have been wholly painless
experiments upon living animals which have led to useful results.
Some of the greatest discoveries in medical science were made with no
pain whatever.... And yet they have been often and sophistically cited
by the vivisector as plausible arguments for inflicting both excessive
and useless pain. The fact that a few able men have made discoveries
by certain painless experiments upon animals is used to justify the
demonstration of torture to medical students (to whom it is as
profitless as any medical information can be), and its practice by
them. The discovery of anaesthesia has been time and again quoted in
favour of vivisection. THIS IS SIMPLY PREPOSTEROUS. In making that
discovery, the experiments from the beginning were painless, and were
therefore wholly unobjectionable--as I happen to know, having seen the
first of them. The same is true of Jenner's vaccination, which was a
wholly painless discovery. Little pain was involved in all that was
needed to discover the circulation of the blood, which was inferred
from the valvular construction of the veins, and then easily
substantiated.... The greatest prizes in the lottery of physiological
and pathological discovery have involved little or no pain. But the
usual and staple work of a so-called `laboratory of vivisection,
physiology or pathology,' for the education and practice of medical
students in the unrestricted cutting of living animals, and for the
indiscriminate and endless repetition of experiments already tried,
where a live dog can be bought and its living nerves dissected, ... all
this is a very different affair. A distinguished vivisector once
remarked: `To us, pain is nothing.' When it is remembered that this
pain may be, and sometimes intentionally is, of the most excruciating
nature possible for human science to invent, and that in a large
majority of instances it is to little or no purpose, the remark of
this vivisector covers the objectionable ground."

In view of the foregoing quotations, it would appear almost impossible
for Dr. Bigelow's position to be misrepresented or misunderstood. He
cannot be regarded as an antivivisectionist, for he repeatedly states
that to painless experiments upon animals no objection exists. But of
the reality of the torment, and of the blunted sensibi