desert regions? What vast fortunes will have
been paid out to professional explorers, whose work will have been in
vain? What proofs will the laboratory then be able to adduce of
"priceless discoveries" made within its walls, proofs resting not upon
the heated enthusiasm of the experimenter, but demonstrated by
statistical evidence of a decreased mortaility from the scourges of
disease? THAT is the test of utility, which may one day be applied not
merely to Mr. Rockefeller's creation, but to every laboratory in
England and America. Then, perhaps, it may not suffice to set forth
discoveries, as useless to mankind, as would be the demosntration of
gold and silver in the moon. Before the tribunal of an intelligent
public opinion,--not of our day, but of some distant epoch, the
justification of secret vivisection will assuredly be demanded. Will
it be given? Against the vast cost in money, cost in depravation of
the instinct of compassion, cost in the lessened sensitiveness of
young men and young women to the infliction of torment, cost in the
seeming necessity of defending and justifying cruelty, cost in the
temptation to exaggerate facts, cost in the countless hecatombs of
victims, non-existent to-day, yet doomed to perish in pain of which no
record and no use can be found,--against all this, what profit will be
adduced? Something? Undoubtedly. BUT SUFFICIENT TO BALANCE THE COST?
When that accounting is made, will the enlightened conscience of
humanity then grant condonation, because of great achievement, of all
that will have been done in the name of research, and of demonstration
of well-known facts? I cannot imagine it.

What can we venture to forecast regarding the future of medical school
vivisections, made for the one purpose of fixing facts in memory? No
one qualified by any experience in teaching can doubt the value of
certain demonstrations. So far as they are performed upon animals
made absolutely unconscious to any senstation of pain, it is difficult
to suggest a condemnation that does not equally apply to the killing
of animals for food or raiment. But the medical school laboratory
seems to shrink from the public scrutiny. If there were no need for
secrecy, is it likely that every attempt to penetrate the seclusion of
the laboratory would be so strenuously opposed? OF WHAT IS THE
LABORATORY AFRAID? If the present methods of demonstration or teaching
of physiology are such as would meet general approval