f
the vivisections, if they were absolutely painless, their performance
was a matter of taste. Can we criticize the humaneness of one who, at
the butcher's bench, mutilates the body from which life has gone?
Complete and perfect anaesthesia, maintained till death, is
practically only premature death. Deprived of sensibility--a
deprivation that is never to cease--a living creature is beyond the
infliction of cruelty. But is it certain that all these various
experiments, made upon nearly five hundred dogs were without pain?
Reasons for doubt concerning some of them have been given. Let us now
look into the question so far as concerns vivisection in its relation
to the pressure of the blood.

A little over two centuries ago the Rev. Stephen Hales, the rector of
an obscure country parish in England, became interested in problems
pertaining to the circulation of sap in plants, and blood in the
higher animals. By various experiments he discovered that the blood
of a living animal is subject to a definite pressure, and with some
approach to accuracy he succeeded in measuring it. The subject seems
to have attracted but little attention for over a century after the
discovery of Hales; it was then again investigated by physiologists,
and certain conclusions definitely reached. Without going into the
subject at length, it suffices to state that this blood-pressure
constantly varies slightly, being somewhat influenced by every
disturbing condition, and probably by every physiological act. Any
injury tending to lower the tone of the general system, or to induce
the condition of shock, tends to cause the blood-pressure to fall. On
the other hand, if the animal is sensible to pain, the stimulation of
sensory nerves, or any sharp or sudden pang, TEND TO CAUSE A RISE IN
THE PRESSURE OF THE BLOOD, unless the creature has become exhausted by
the experimentation to which it has been subjected.

Upon this point the attention of the reader should be specially
directed. What authorities support this conclusion? Only a few need
be named, for there would appear to be no difference of opinion among
physiologists regarding the fact.

Sir Thomas Lauder Brunton, one of the leading medical writers in
England, in a contribution to the latest edition of the "Encyclopaedia
Britannica," tells us:

"IRRITATION OF SENSORY NERVES tends to cause contraction of the
bloodvessels, AND TO RAISE THE BLOOD-PRESSURE."[1]

[1] Enc. Brit., Art. "The