milar character, AND HE PUT THE ANIMALS TO DEATH,
FINALLY, IN A VERY PAINFUL WAY.... Some of his experiments excited a
strong feeling of abhorrence, not in the public merely, but among
physiologists. There was his--I was going to say `famous' experiment;
it might rather have been called `INFAMOUS' experiment upon vomiting
.... Besides its atrocity, it was really purposeless."[2]

[2] Evidence before Royal Commission, 1875, Questions 444, 474.

Of Magendie's cruelty we have thus the evidence of the best-known
English physiologist of his day. Even by his own countrymen
Magendie's pitilessness was denounced. Dr. Latour, the founder and
editor of the leading medical journal of France--L'Union Me'dicale--
has given us an incident which occurred in his presence, translations
of which appeared in the editorial columns of the London Lancet and
the British Medical Journal, August 22, 1863.

"I recall to mind a poor dog, the roots of whose vertebral nerves
Magendie desired to lay bare to demonstrate Bell's theory, which he
claimed as his own. The dog, already mutilated and bleeding, twice
escaped from under the implacable knife, and threw his forepaws around
Magendie's neck, licking, as if to soften his murderer and ask for
mercy! Vivisectors may laugh, but I confess I was unable to endure
that heartrending spectacle."[1]

[1] The London Lancet, August 22, 1863.

The proof of Magendie's ferocious cruelty to his victims seems
overwhelming. "In France," says Dr. George Wilson, "some of the most
eminent physiologists have gained an unenviable notoriety as PITILESS
TORTURERS, ... experimenters who would not take the trouble to put out
of pain the wretched dogs on which they experimented, even after they
had served their purpose, but left them to perish of lingering torture
.... It is pleasing to contrast the merciless horrors enacted by
Magendie"--with the reluctance manifested by Sir Charles Bell.[2]
Dr. Elliotson, in his work on Human Physiology, states that "Magendie
cut living animals here and there, with no definite object BUT TO SEE
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN."[3] In a sermon on cruelty to animals, preached at
Edinburgh, March 5, 1826, by the Rev. Dr. Chalmers, the speaker
especially alludes to "THE ATROCITIES OF A MAGENDIE," then recently
made known in England. The President of the Royal College of
Surgeons, Sir James Paget, once testified that Magendie "disgusted
people very much BY SHOWING CONTEMPT FOR THE PAIN OF ANIMALS."