me time. One, under the above
title, was a collection of essays and contributions to various
periodicals from the pen of Dr. William W. Keen, which have appeared
during the past thirty years. The other was the first edition of the
present work.

The volume to which the reader's attention is called is chiefly an
exposition of the author's views on the scientific value of biological
experimentation. With some of his conclusions, there will be little
or no dispute among members of the medical profession. But in
defending the moethods of physiological experiment, has he been
scrupulously accurate and uniformly fair? Is there to be discerned any
tendency to exaggeration, to over-statement or to suppression of vital
facts? Eager as he is to charge inaccuracy upon others, has he been
always accurate himself? Has any authority cited been "garbled," so
that quotation conveys an impression inconsistent with the general
tenor of a writer's views? What cruelties of past experimentation has
this author emphatically condemned? What experimenters upon human kind
has he held up to the reprobation of the public? In the entire volume,
can one find a single instance wherein a cruel experiment has been
censured, or a cruel experimenter been condemned by name? Except in a
volume, it would be impossible to indicate all points to which
attention should be given; it must suffice here, to direct attention
only to a few.

I.

A personal criticism of the writer by Dr. Keen makes necessary a
record of the facts. Referring to a certain experiment of a German
vivisector, Goltz, Dr. Keen says:

"In 1901 Professor Bowditch called Dr. Leffingwell's attention to the
fact that no such operation was ever done. In Dr. Leffingwell's
collected essays, entitled "The Vivisection Question," on p. 169 of
the second revised edition (1907), there is, in a footnote a
correction admitting that no such operation was ever done(!), but on
p. 67 of the same edition, A DESCRIPTION OF THIS SAME OPERATION still
remains uncorrected, six years after Bowditch's letter had been
received and the misstatement acknowledged."[1]

[1] Keen's "Animal Experimentation," p. 271.

Truth and untruth are sadly intermingled in this paragraph. Let us
attempt to disentangle them.

On March 7, 1901, while the collection of essays, known as "The
Vivisection Question" was in the printer's hands and on the eve of
publication, a note was received f