ver listened, English
only by adoption, faced without flinching some of the most skilled
vivisectors and controversialists of Great Britain, who endeavoured in
vain to weaken the force of her testimony; and the examination of Miss
Lind-ap-Hageby by certain of the vivisecting members of the Royal
Commission seems to me a more brilliant instance of the presentation
of ideals under adverse circumstances than is afforded by any similar
examination of man or woman in modern times. Personal disagreement
with universal condemnation of all vital experimentation has been
sufficiently stated; but one view of the antivivisectionists applies
equally to the prohibition of painful experiments. "I believe," said
Miss Lind, "that the abolution of vivisection will be accompanied by
great changes and great developments in the whole science of medicine;
that new methods of healing will come in, and higher methods, as we
know that the coarser medication and the coarser drugging are going
out of fashion."[1] The same view was expressed by Dr. Kenealy,
another witness, regarding the prohibition of all animal
experimentation. "I think it would give the finest possible impulse to
medical science; that we are surrounded by all these problems of
disease and degeneration and suffering in human kind; and that if we
were to devote our attention to man, and to all the valuable human
material surrounding us, instead of wasting valuable time and talent
on dogs and guinea-pigs, we should make rapid and immense advance in
the relief of human suffering."[2] Somewhat the same sentiment has
been expressed by others not opposed to animal experimentation. "It
may be admitted," said Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, whose scientific
zeal, no one can question, "that whether painful experimentation be
useful or useless, it has had one indifferent effect; it has diverted
the minds of men too strongly from methods of research that not only
lie open to the curious mind, but which lie temptingly open." And
speaking of medical treatment for disease, he says: "Treatment at this
time is a perfect Babel.... Two men scarcely ever write the same
prescription for the same disease or the same symptom. I have watched
the art of prescribing for fifty years, and I am quite sure that
divergence of treatment is at this moment far greater than it ever was
in the course of that long period. The multiplication of remedies,
begotten of experiment, is the chief reason of so much disag