tances"; and when a vivisector has reached the stage where he
can hold that belief, he may define pain as something pertaining only
to human beings, and feel himself justified in declaring that
"VIVISECTION OF ANIMALS NEVER CAUSES PAIN," according to his
definition of the word. It is well for the world that with this
theory the vast majority of thinking men and women have no sympathy
whatever. The organized efforts for the protection of animals from
cruelty have no meaning if animals are without capacity for that
anguish which cruelty implies. We believe, on the contrary, that
many, if not all, of the higher species of animals, especially those
nearest to man in structure and intelligence, receive, when subjected
to the torment of fire or steel, precisely the same sensations that,
under a like infliction, a human being would suffer. At any rate, if
doubt be possible, should they not have the benefit of it?

If one were asked whether he surely could demonstrate the emotions of
any animal made incapable of movement, fixed immovably as in a vice,
and subjected to the stimulation of fire, he might confess that
inference and not proof was all he could offer. But if one goes
farther, and inquires whether in any of the experiments recorded in
this chapter there was evoked any sign of sensibility which delicate
instruments could detect and record, then, assuredly, we are on safe
ground. With startling uniformity we find recorded by the
experimenters themselves the fluctuations of blood-pressure following
the stimulation of exposed nerves, the crushing of pawes, the burning
of the feet, the scalding with boiling water, and other mutilations.
What is their significance? If, as Sir Lauder Brunton tells us, "the
irritation of sensory nerves tends to cause contraction of blood-
vessels AND TO RAISE THE BLOOD-PRESSURE"; if, as Straus affirms, "PAIN
INCREASES BLOOD-PRESSURE," so that in a healthy person the pressure is
increased even by pinching of the skin; if, as the physiologist Dalton
declares, the irritation of any of the sensitive nerves induces a
constriction of bloodvessels indicated by icreased arterial pressure;
if the professor of physiology at University College, London, being
asked if there were any means, other than the cries or struggles of an
animal, by which one could tell if the anaesthesia of an animal was
passing off, answered with scientific accuracy when he replied, "YAou
can tell by the blood-pressure," ad