no doubt. That he
misapprehended the effect of the law of 1876 we know; he imagined that
even the observation of the circulation of the blood in a frog's foot
under the microscope by an unauthorized investigator would render the
student liable to a criminal prosecution. We can be very sure that if
this were true, the Act of 1876 would never have escaped the
condemnation of the scientific men whose opinions have been quoted
from evidence given before the Royal Commission, men who found in this
Act no impediment to any reasonable investigation. But when the
reports of personal experience were brought to Lister's notice, he was
willing to correct their gross exaggerations; yet--to avoid
controversy, perhaps--he desired that the facts should not be
published, and during his lifetime, compliance was given to his wish.

The phase of untruthfulness in the defence of unrestricted
experimentation deserves far more attention than can here be
accorded. One is loth to regard as possible any intent to deceive;
the inaccuracy and exaggeration are undoubtedly due chiefly to
ignorance on the part of men who ought to be well-informed, because
the world looks to them for statements of fact concerning the benefits
claimed to be due to experimentation. Take, for instance, an
assertion made in testimony given before the Royal Commission by Sir
Victor Horsley, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the representative
of the British Medical Association. Referring to pyaemia, or blood-
poisoning, he was not content to affirm the disappearance of these
formidable maladies from the hospital to which he was attached, but
went on to declare their disappearance altogeher. "Anybody," said Sir
Vitor Horsley, "who would now be asked to write an article on pyaemia
or blood-poisoning in a dictionary of surgery, COULD NOT DO IT; THE
DISEASES ARE GONE!"[1]

[1] Evidence before Royal Commission, Question 15,669.

This statement is a most remarkable one. The witness was once widely
known as a ruthless experimenter upon living animals, and he was now
defending the practice by an enumeration of its gains. Apparently,
no member of the Commission questioned his evidence; the
representative of the British Medical Association solemnly affirmed
that as a result of vivisection certain diseases had so completely
disappeared that present observation or description was impossible,
and the Royal Commission accepted his word. The statement that these
septic d