lations should be less stringent;
not an instance in which it was suggested that privileges of the
vivisector should be enlarged. That this should be the result of an
inquiry in this twentieth century, extending over five years, is
remarkable indeed. Perhaps there is no reason for surprise that all
these conclusions of the Royal Commission were never made known to the
American public by the periodicals of the day. Is it possible for
anyone to believe that such conclusions would ever have been attained
if the denunciations of State regulation of vivisection, proceeding
from the American laboratory, had been grounded in truth?

CHAPTER XI

THE GREAT ANAESTHETIC DELUSION

A popular delusion is often the basis of a great abuse. If at one
time witches were burnt by countless thousands, it was at a period
when implicit faith in the reality of diabolic conspiracy was
undisturbed by sceptical questionings. Human slavery existed for
centuries, not only because it was profitable, but because it came to
be regarded as the only conceivable permanent relation between the
negro and the white man. The Spanish Inquisition existed for ages,
because the pious Spaniard could not believe that the good men who
upheld, encouraged, and promoted its activity could be liable to
error, or actuated by other than the loftiest principles. Men find
themselves deluded not merely because of their faith in the integrity
of their fellow-men, but because they have also extended that faith to
the accuracy of their opinions.

There can be no doubt of the fact that public apathy regarding the
abuses of vivisection as now carried on without limitations or
restrictions is grounded upon the great anaesthetic delusion. This
misinterpretation of facts, this misunderstanding of scientific
statements, constitutes the most singular delusion of the present
time.

What is anaesthesia? It has been defined as a state of insensibility
to external impressions, sometimes introduced by disease, but more
generally in modern surgery by the inhalation of the vapours of ether
or chloroform. The discovery of the properties of these drugs
constitutes a very interesting chapter in the story of scientific
achievement; but in this connection the chief point of interest lies
in the fact that the most wonderful of all advances in medicine was
made without resort to the vivisection of animals. Sir Benjamin Ward
Richardson, an