, and that
their accurate quotation could not be impugned. Especially curious is
the fact that Professor Bowditch placed the beginning of criticism at
1864. Of the arraignment of cruel vivisections by English physicians
and English medical journals before that time, Dr. Bowditch apparently
never heard, and all the infamous atrocities which they condemned he
dismissed with a sneer as "blood-curdling stories." Yet, in his day,
the speaker was one of the leading physiologists of the United
States. We cannot believe that the suppression of material facts was
intentional; it was due rather to complete ignorance of the history of
that protest against physiological cruelty which England witnessed
during the first part of the nineteenth century, and of which some
account shall follow.

Take another instance. In the International Journal of Ethics for
April, 1904, there appeared an article in defence of animal
experimentation by Professor Charles S. Myers of the University of
Cambridge, England. Of any abuses of the practice, Dr. Myers gave his
readers no reason for believing that he had ever heard; and as an
indication, perhaps, of an animal's eagerness to be vivisected, he
tells us that "again and again dogs have been observed to wag the tail
and lick the hands of the operator even immediately before the
beginning of the operation." Commenting upon the singular conclusion
which this fact seemed to suggest to Dr. Myers, the present writer
quoted a sentence or two from an editorial which once appeared in the
columns of the London Lancet.[1] It would apparently seem that
Dr. Myers brought the quotation to the attention of someone in the
editorial office of the Lancet, on whose judgment he thought he might
safely rely; for, in a reply, he refers to it as a quotation
"attributed to the editor of the Lancet, which, AFTER SPECIAL INQUIRY,
I HAVE REASON FOR DOUBTING." Concerning a reference to some of
Dr. Sydney Ringer's experiments upon patients in a London hospital, he
is even more confident that they could never have occurred, and
indignantly rejoins, "I unhesitatingly declare SUCH ABOMINABLE
ACCUSATIONS TO BE FALSE."

[1] See p. 73 for this Lancet editorial.

Now, all this indignant scepticism was rather creditable to the
writer's heart. That an English medical journal like the Lancet
should denounce vivisection cruelties, or that a reputable London
physician should experiment on his patients with various poisons,
seeme