the labour, whether affirmative or negative in its results has
never, at any point of it been pleasant. The results may, and often
have excited curiousity; they may have been important, and they may
have opened the way to new inquiry, but they have never been free of
anxiety nor of a sense that whatever came from them, THERE WAS
SOMETHING THAT WAS NOT RIGHT. I do not believe I am more sentimental
than any of my colleagues; yet I never proceeded to any experiment on
a living animal, though to the best of my ability doing everything
possible to save all pain, without feeling--what I think is the proper
expression,--COMPUNCTION.
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In the hands of the teacher, it (vivisection) may be rankly abused; of
scientific pursuits, it is the one most liable to error; it suggests
no end to itself, but seems to grow by what it feeds on, becoming by
repetition and contest more and more extended and multiplied; it is of
all pursuits the most disliked by the educated community; it brings
its best and most self-sacrificing professors into scorn; and for all
such reasons, even if it be occasionally useful, is calculated to lead
to what would be esignated intellectual and moral evil. At the same
time, let it be understood that I do not include in the criticisms
experiments which being devoid of pain, may cause the death even for
the service of man. Above all, I could not for a moment object to
experiment by a truly competent man for the purpose of inquiry into
some great theory that has been leisurely formed, and can be proved or
disproved by no other means, as for example, whether an important
surgical operation can or cannot be performed for the saving of human
suffering or human life.
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There are some simple and painless experiments which may be
demonstrated to any set of pupils, although living animals are the
subjects of them. The demonstration of the circulation through the
web of the frog; the demonstration of the different natural
temperatures of the bodies of animals, including man; the influence of
various anaesthetic vapours; the collection of the breath of various
animals for the purpose of analysis,--these are all free from
objection.... In a word, all experiments which are painless and
harmless, are, as I assume the most humane would admit, free from any
charge of error. But when we come to consider the application of
experiment of a