at no act of cruelty or wantonness is or ever
shall be committed here by a medical practitioner under the guise of
scientific investigation? Will they guarantee that such acts are not,
and never shall be, committed in this State? Will they guarantee the
humanity and the practice of the thousands of medical students who
annually graduate from the colleges? Will they enter into bonds to the
community for the acts of those who, from time to time, they expel,
for cause from the medical societies? Will they place their own great
reputations and highly esteemed characters behind, and as vouchers
for, many a practitioner with whom they would not meet in
consultation, and whom they would not allow to practice or malpractice
in the house of a friend or a patient? We think not--we KNOW they
would not, for such endorsements and guarantees would be impossible of
fulfilment. And if they will not and cannot, they wshould cease to
stand between the society that seeks `to know' and the evils it seeks
to expose and eliminate.

"Gentlemen of the medical profession, understand once for all that
this Society does not seek to abolish vivisection. It recognizes the
good, the great good, that has and that may come to the human race
from its careful, humane, and scientific use. But it aims to abolish
its ABUSES, and in that aim it is entitled to your advice and
co-operation."

Enough has been given to indicate the purpose of the present movement
for vivisection reform. It is not the same as antivivisection, and
although it has been persistently misrepresented as such by the
advocates of unrestricted freedom in the physiological laboratory,
perhaps we have no reason to expect from that quarter any other
course. Yet in expressing appreciation both of purpose and
accomplishment, it may perhaps be well to suggest a single caution.
The time is probably coming when those who have most persistently
opposed all appeals for more light concerning vivisection will
announce willingness to accede to the public demnad, provided the
vivisector may himself appoint the investigators, and define the
limitations of the inquiry. It needs but little discernment to
foresee that an inquiry so conducted may be no better than a farce,
and conduce to no real change in the present obscurity. To be of any
value the commission of inquiry regarding vivisection must be so
intelligent regarding all phases of the practice that it shall know
how to penetrate to hidde