f young men have entered the
profession, who have been carefully educated to regard all criticism
of animal experimentation as due to a sentimentalism worthy only of
contempt. I greatly doubt whether even one per cent. of the
physicians in America, under fifty years of age, have ever heard that
half a century ago, the feeling of the medical profession, in the
English-speaking world was almost unanimous in disapproval and
condemnation of methods and of experiments which now pass without
notice, and uncondemned. When men, educated to come into the closest
of relations with their fellow-beings, are thus prejudiced and
uninformed, should we wonder that their views are so widely accepted?
The wonder to me is rather that so large a minority are not to be
convinced that everything in a laboratory must be right.

Another element of the forces that to-day are marshalled against
reform, is the Press. Political journals, which even twenty-five
years ago endeavoured to hold an attitude of impartiality, now present
editorials almost every week in ridicule of any legal regulation of
vivisection, or of any opposition to laboratory freedom. The intimate
knowledge of medical matters sometimes exhibited by the writers, would
seem to indicate a closer relation between the physiological
laboratory of to-day, and the editorial sanctum, than existed forty
years ago. There are journals, so closely related, apparently, to
laboratory interests, that they do not permit correction of editorial
misstatements or mistake to appear in their columns, even when such
blunders are pointed out. The old impartial attitude of the Press
seems--except here and there--to have completely disappeared. Any
forecast of the future must take into account this vast and ever-
increasing influence.

Yet another impediment to the legal repression of any cruelty
pertaining to animal experimentation is one which we all deplore, even
though no remedy appears in sight. It is not the opposition of
enemies, but division among friends that constitutes, in my opinion,
the greatest present obstacle to any reform. It is as though against
some strong fortress, different armies were engaging in an attack,
each with its separate purpose, its own plan of campaign, its own
ultimate aim, and now and then crossing and recrossing in each other's
way, to the infinite delight of the enemy. Some of us make the demand
that ALL such inquiry on the part of Science shall be made a c