tain matter,
he wrote:

"I thank you for your experiment on the hedgehog; but WHY DO YOU ASK
ME A QUESTION, by the way of solving it? I think your solution is
just, but why--WHY NOT TRY THE EXPERIMENT? Repeat all the experiments
upon a hedgehog as soon as you receive this, and they will give you
the solution. TRY THE HEAT. CUT OFF A LEG...and let me know the
result of the whole.
"Ever yours,
"JOHN HUNTER."

Even his own word, or the result of his own observations, he did not
wish to have accepted, when, merely at the cost of another tortured
animal, his friend could find the answer for himself. Is not this the
physiological ideal of to-day?

Again he writes to his scientific friend:

"If you could make some experiments on the increased heat of
inflammation, I should be obliged to you.... I opened the thorax of a
dog between two ribs, and introduced the thermometer. Then I put some
lint into the wound to keep it from healing by the first intention,
THAT THE THORAX MIGHT INFLAME; but before I had time to try it again,
my dog died on the fourth day. A deep wound might be made into the
thick of a dog's thigh, then put in the thermometer and some
extraneous matter.... IF THESE EXPERIMENTS WILL AMUSE YOU, I should be
glad they were made; but take care you do not break your thermometer
in the dog's chest."[1]

[1] Barron's "Life of Jenner," i. 44.

"IF THESE EXPERIMENTS WILL AMUSE YOU"--what a suggestive confirmation
of Dr. Johnson's charge that the torture of vivisection was then
regarded as an "amusement"! A century after, an Italian physiologist,
Mantegazza, devoted a year to the infliction of extreme torment upon
animals, and confessed that his tortures were inflicted, not with
hesitation or repugnance, but "CON MULTO AMORE," with extreme
delight.[2]

[2] "Fisiolgia del Dolore di Paulo Mantegazza," pp. 101-107.

Hunter does not seem to have regarded his own experiments other than
as an intellectual pastime. Mr. Stephen Paget, in his work on "Animal
Experimentation," refers to "one great experiment...that puts him
[Hunter] on a line with Harvey"--an experiment upon a deer in Richmond
Park. There is no reason for doubting that such an experiment may
have been made; but the curious thing is, that it rests only on verbal
tradition, for in his surgical lectures treating of aneurism Hunter
has not a word to say of the experime