entered, for it is doing violence alike to the fair name of science and the works of the Almighty to permit them thus to pass their time unchallenged. Put a stop to these idle and wicked workers, and vivisection would be deprived of nearly all its horrors. The extent of their cruelty, enormous as it is, can never be known, and, like their supposed contributions to human knowledge, humanity will be all the better for never knowing. Civilization and religion demand that the law take cognizance of their acts, that both be not mocked and disgraced by deeds which would overshadow the barbarities of a savage nation.

The constant repeating of experiments is another feature in vivisection which must be suppressed. The chief object of science is truth, and when it is supposed to be attained, why should mercy and sensation be outraged by rehearsing over and over again the most dreadful tortures that can be perpetrated? What merit is there in demonstrating at such a fearful cost truths which require no such demonstration?

How cften have I heard of—I will not say seen-division of the spinal cord performed by unfeeling, inquisitive men, and marvelled what pleasure or satisfaction there could be in seeing a poor animal in good health secured, a knife thrust into its back, and its body, after an amount of hacking and stabbing, reduced to the disgusting and painful condition which has been well described as "like a living head and dead trunk-dead to its own sensations, and to all voluntary over its movements."

And yet these artificial divisions of the spine could teach no more than the first one did, or than did those unavoidable accidents which so frequently happen to man, and some of the lower animals. Dogs and other creatures have been, and may be even now, sacrificed by dozens, to please idle and brutal curiosity, because it can be done with impunity, and because it is sanctioned by men of learning, who ought to know better. This evil is magnified a thousand times when the experiments are performed before people, who, in witnessing them, are either disgusted, or made hard-hearted and willing to become sharers in the common license to slay and torture by imitation.

The highest authority in the land, Professor Owen, is of opinion that no teacher of physiology is justified in repeating any vivisectional experiments merely to show their known results to his class or to others; that it is against abuses of this nature that humanity, Christianity, and civilization should alike protest.

Todd and Bowman speak in the same strain of such like

practices: "Nor can we nope that truth can be elicited from experiments and observations which are made before the public gaze, with more of the character of a theatrical exhibition than of a sober philosophical investigation.*

Looking, then, at the practice of vivisection in its scientific and moral bearings, the inevitable conclusion to which an impartial examiner will be brought is, that living dissections are not to be tolerated except upon the most urgent and imperative occasions; and when every other means has been exhausted. Therefore is the subject brought to those limits-that it is

*As an instance of the license permitted to these acts of cruelty, and the far from revolting light in which they are viewed by those who commit them, let me refer to a Mr. Wainde, surgeon, of Kirby Moorside, who could not be contented with his torturing proclivities in private, but must needs advertise them in the public journal of a fashionable watering-place. Writing to the "Scarboro' Mercury" in the early part of 1860, he says: "Having noticed the rapidity with which wounds grow up and heal in the lower classes of animals, I have often revolved in my mind the possibility of uniting, by keeping in strict approximation the raw surfaces of two animals not only of different species, but of totally different genera. With this view I have, at various times, endeavored to produce adhesive inflammation between two animals, by removing the whole of the true skin on a part of each, equal in extent, and then keeping the divided parts in approximation by means of bandages. In the last experiment of the kind that I made, I was eminently successful. Having had some time in my possession a rat, which had not quite attained its full growth, and which was to a great extent tamed, as it would permit any one to approach and caress it without any signs of fear, I determined upon making a final attempt, and I was confident of success. The next step was to procure another animal with which to unite it; and for this purpose I obtained a full-grown crow. Having removed the skin from the back of the rat, I with a scalpel removed a slice of the sub-cutaneous tissue, about two lines in thickness, so that the mouths of the minute bloodvessels might be opened. I then took off the feathers from the breast of the bird, and performed precisely the same operation, with regard to the size and thickness of the piece of flesh removed, which was one of an oval form, and about two-and-a-half inches long, by one five-eighths broad, or thereabouts. "After sponging the parts with a little cold water, I placed the crow with its legs across the back of the rat, and by means of a long, narrow bandage, kept them in such a position that they could not retract the incised surface in the least. I had them fed regularly every four hours, though for the first day the crow ate nothing. At the end of sixteen days I removed the bandages, and was delighted (!) to find that the whole surfaces were united, except at the extreme edges of the wound, the skin was beginning to unite. They now present a most peculiar appearance, and do not seem by any means disposed to part company. The crow scarcely possesses power of wing sufficient to lift its companion far from the ground, though it flutters along at the height of a foot or two, for several yards. Should any one be sceptical as to the fact, I shall have great pleasure in showing them the subjects of the experiment, if they will make it convenient to pay me a visit."

Is it not a matter for regret that the law did not admit of his first visitor being a police-constable, armed with power sufficient to keep this visitor in "strict approximation" to a cell in the nearest prison? Who can wonder after this that these amusing and delightful experiments should be the admiration of a certain class! Can we blame young people, and those who have the powers of life and death over harmless creatures, if they perform cruel acts, when they have such examples among the members of a humane profession, whose experiments are as aimless and unmeaning as they are disgustingly wicked?

in the highest degree unjustifiable to sacrifice animals, especially by torturing and causing them pain, for the mere name of advancing science; and, in a minor degree, for the purpose of extending our knowledge of disease or sparing human suffering, until every other department of science which can minister to this research has been exhausted thoroughly, and in vain; and then only when there is something like certainty, not mere speculation, that the experiment will confer some significant boon upon the healing art.

Until the practice can be entirely suppressed by legal enactments, these considerations, if acted upon, would circumscribe to the narrowest degree the present limitless system of needless punishment. Too much should not be left to the consciences of vivisectors. Conscience, with such a man as Magendie, would be no check, and what one man of a humane disposition would deem unjustifiable and heartless cruelty, another would pride himself in asserting publicly as scientific and laudable research, though he could find no other apology for it. For this reason, the temporary right to experiment on living animals should also be limited to a very few, and they should be men who are not only qualified by general scientific attainments for such a responsible and profound task, but by their humane and merciful characters.

Such a function should not be intrusted to one or two individuals, but in the words of Dr. Wilson, "a select jury of competent witnesses," such as Dr. Reid invited at his original researches, should always, if possible, be present, as one of the most certain modes of making a single experiment suffice for many observers. As an amendment to this, I would propose that no experiment should be undertaken until this jury was present, and not until every inquiry had been made as to the history, the object, and the probable result of the dissection, and then its very detail should be carefully noted.

While proposing the above restrictions, and recommending them to the kind consideration of the mercifully disposed, as consistent with justice to those physiologists who imagine living dissections are indispensible to the welfare of mankind, let it not be supposed that in principle I think them either necessary or justifiable. It is my firm conviction that they are not necessary-that instead, they are confusing and prolific of error, and that other sources of information are open to the observer which are not only legitimate but commendable. If there was not danger to the moral feelings of those who witness such experiments, physiologists themselves would not exclaim against their being publicly practised, and if there is danger to the spectator, why not to the operator? It is an open confession ofthe influence of vivisection on the human heart.

To plead compassion for mankind, while he unfeelingly tortures animals as exquisitely endowed with sensation as himself, and with little or any result, is surely unworthy of, as it is inconsistent with, the holy responsibility vested in the professor of medicine. To him, as to all others, we may apply the saying of Plutarch, in his life of Cato the Censor: "It ought to be esteemed a happiness to mankind, that our humanity has a wider sphere to exert itself in, than bare justice. It is no more than the obligation of our very birth to practice equity to our own kind, but humanity may be extended through the whole order of creatures, even to the meanest; such actions of charity are the overflowings of a mild good-nature on all below us." A public writer has also thus expressed himself: "Cruelty is the only wrong which a man can do to another animal, but no one doubts that a very one sided form of expediency-that form in which the convenience, the instruction, and even the amusement of the man outweighs the life of the animal-is the sole test of the moral qualities of the actions of men towards animals." Let us then give our humanity a wider sphere, and let us temper our one-sided expediency with a little more mercy; let justice be done in all our dealings with dumb creatures, who cannot tell us their wrongs, save by their screams and struggles. Do not have a law for punishing the poor man's cruelty to his bread-winner, and no law to punish the scientific amateur or professor, who can, without scruple of conscience or danger of interference, cause more suffering in a day than could be summed up in an enumeration of all the police-cases of cruelty to animals which are published for a month.

The poor coal-seller or porter could, perhaps, bring forward a far stronger plea of necessity and justification in working his debilitated, raw-skinned servant, while they were both hungry, and striving for their bread, than the gentleman who calmly and deliberately sets himself to torture to death his half dozen animals every now and again, simply to register a few facts under the name of science-facts curious enough, doubtless, but powerless to alleviate human misery.

Damaging alike to science, to the genius of humanity, and especially to the god-like functions of medicine, we submit the wrongs inflicted on the inferior creatures by vivisectors urgently demand redress, by the merciful interposition of legal restraint. That such is not far distant is certain, and it becomes every Christian and benevolent man—the lover of his own species, and of those beneath him in organization and intellect to hasten the advent of such a happy release from torture and suffering.

APPENDIX.-2d Proposition.

The following notes having been kindly supplied in writing by Dr. CARPENTER, one of the Judges, the Author, (unwilling to suppress arguments and statements against his own views,) thinks it due to the learned gentlemen to print them in this Appendix, with his own rejoinders.

(a.)

I entirely dissent from this statement. If we knock out of the existing system of universally-accepted physiological knowledge, all that has been learned from experiment, and what experiment alone can reveal, we should go back to a depth of ignorance, which must cause a most lamentable increase in human suffering, through the maltreatment of disease and injury which would be the result. I shall show that nearly the whole of our present knowledge of the functions of the nervous system has been obtained by experiment, and that the most minute anatomical research could never have disclosed it. The author has obviously a very erroneous conception of the relative shares of anatomy and experiment in Sir C. Bell's discoveries. This I shall show further on (c.) But he utterly ignores the great doctrine of reflex action, which rests entirely on an experimental basis. And he makes no allusion whatever into the recent researches of Brown-Sequard, and others as to the vaso-motor nerves, which I hold to be of the utmost therapeutic value. Again, the Hunterian treatment of aneurism by ligature, which has saved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of valuable human lives, was worked out by experiments on a comparatively small number of animals. Surely the humanity argument is here all in favour of judiciously-conducted experiments. What Sir A. Cooper did in regard to the operation of tying the abdominal aorta was to ascertain by experiment on a dog, whether he would be justified in trying the operation on the human subject, by the re-establishment of the circulation below the ligature through the collateral vessels. Will the writer affirm that he ought either to have operated on the human subject without this preliminary trial; or that he ought to have let the patient die for want of it? If I am not mistaken, the operation has been since successfully performed by Mr. Syme; at any rate, its partial success in Sir A. Cooper's hands showed that it affords a chance of saving life in a case otherwise desperate.

[I have simply to repeat, in reply to the first part of the above paragraph, that I have diligently searched in vain for the discoveries made through experimentation upon animals, without which there would now be "a lamentable increase in human suffering;" and I am assured by many medical practitioners that they are no more enlightened as to these discoveries than myself. It is a pity that, instead of this oftenrepeated assertion, we have not been furnished with satisfactory details which would convert the assumption into an established fact. With regard to Hunter's great discovery, which Dr. Carpenter attributes to vivisection, it will suffice to quote Professor Owen, who, in his opening address, at the

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