our, even from men of the
highest personal character, and leave them free to reveal or to
publicly criticize whatever in the experiments upon animals there
conducted seems worthy of caution or reproof. Silence and
concealment, so far as the outer world is concerned--these are yet the
strange ideals of modern vivisection.

Within the realm of scientific literature, however, this reticence is
not maintained. Experiments may be there described in terms so
abstruse and technical, that, while clear enough to the professional
reader, they convey little or no meaning to the man in the street.
There would seem to be a growing tendency to state certain facts in
carefully shrouded phraseology, in complete confidence that the full
meaning will not be discerned. Within the past few years, therefore,
a large number of vivisections have been described in full--
vivisections which half a century ago would have aroused the horror
and execration of the English-speaking world--without exciting any
very general condemnation beyond the circle of those who ask for
reform. Experimentation of this kind, exhibiting the practice as it
is carried on to-day, seems worth of a somewhat careful examination.
It will not be necessary to go beyond the work of a single vivisector
who has made his name a household word wherever experiments upon
animals are discussed in England or America.

The principal point toward which inquiry must be directed is the
question of pain. One reason why they have been partly condoned by
the public is not difficult to discover. In language which seemed to
have no element of ambiguity, the experimenter apparently affirmed the
entire absence of sensation on the part of the dogs which he and his
assistants subjected to operations of various kinds and of an extreme
character. It is true that, as a general rule, this affirmation was
not as explicit as might perhaps be desired. He was writing for
professional men only, not for the general public, and it is quite
unlikely that any physiologist or medical reader could have been at
any time misled in the slightest degree. If the language used was
capable of more than one interpretation, if possibilities of
insensibility were exaggerated into definite assertions, nothing of
the kind was apparent to the general reader. Glancing at the
statement that "the animals were completely anaesthetized," his doubts
were abolished. Indescribably disgusting and hideous as were some o