ODICUS CIBI MEDICUS SIBI OR NATURE HER OWN PHYSICIAN fOHN E. B. MAYOR M.A. FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE AND PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE MACMILLAN & CO. 1880 vpJtv (J.)i fj.fpinva.Tf rfj tyvxy v^wv, ri dyr)re 1) rt irirjTf MATT, vi 25. iridfa (JLOV rb CTW/J.O. Kal Sov\aytoyio i COR. ix 27. tv Se iropi(T/j.bs ntyas rj eucre/Seia yuero avrapKfias i TIM. vi 6. quod si quis vera vitam ratione gubernet, divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parce aequo animo ; neque enim est umquam penuria parvi LUCRETIUS v 1117 g. But is there yet no other -way, besides These painful passages, how -we may come To death, and mix with our connatural dust ? "There is" said Michael "ift&au well observe The rule of NOT TOO MUCH, by temperance taught In what thou eafst and drink 'st, seeking from thence Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight, Till many years over thy head return : So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease Gathered, not harshly pluckt, for death mature" MILTON, P. L. xi 527-537. sjmll %g fet m fym ST. JOHN'S Second Sunday in Lent, 1880 foaffiv, ftfftp ir\tov 7}/uru iravrtis, Kal a.a4\(j> /j.ty' ovtiap HESIOD op. et d. 40, 41. a\\a TTOTOV re /teTpoc Kal ffirov yvfj.vaff'i fjci] (TOfj.(Vois, iSidorats fj.fv TTJS larptKrjs, OVK ayvfivaaTois 8e rbi> \oyifffji.6v, viro- TiOffMai ToioaffSf p-f), Ka.Ba.iTfp ol iro\\ol Tv TO?S ireirai8ev/j.fi>ois (oi> yap ol rv^&vres yf Tavra avayvuffov- rai) (Tvfj.^ov\evca irapafyvXaTTeiv, virb -rivtav u(f>e\ovvTat Kal /SAair- rovraf (rvfj-^fffrat yap ovTcas OUTO?S eis 6\iya SflffBai. rcav larpwy, GALEN de sanitate tuenda vi 14 f. (vi 449, 450 Kiihn) . Tax^ yap KaTair'urTOVO'U' eirl rb Spav rb /*)] bv ol irai/ro Spcav- res a f6v. . . . ei yap Kal TO /uoAterTO evfKev TU>V avBptaircav fyfvtro TO. iravra, a\\' ov iraffi \pri i 6 rooms whole-meal bread, porridge and water, have been my staple fare. As a proselyte to the Vege- tarian society I have added fruit to farinacea and so become more luxurious. Yet from sheer ignorance and sloth I have con- formed to culinary customs which in my heart I have condemned as wasteful and irrational. Thus I am to blame, as much as any one, for the popular superstition which ranks fellows of colleges with alder- men as lovers of 'good things.' A guest of mine contrasts the plain living of Roger Ascham's days with the ' bloated luxury ' of our present Cambridge. 1 When I was a child, few Englishmen of any class took meat (at least in any quantity) more than once a day. The three heavy dinners (called breakfast, lunch, dinner) which ruin the health of the wealthy now and maintain an army of quacks, as yet were not. I remember many years ago being alarmed by the ignorance (I think) of Lord Clarendon, who, as a member of the Public Schools Commission, asked every headmaster whether his boys had meat three times a day. Nowadays philanthropists, in insti- tutions professing to help poor students, find it hard to make both ends meet, because forsooth brain work requires a ' generous ' diet of meat and strong drink. So entirely forgotten are the laws of health taught and practised by saints and sages of all time. Plutarch (vn sap. conv. 16 p. i6o, Holland's translation, p. 341) observes : "our eating and drinking is not only the meanes of our life, but also the cause of our death : for thereupon a number of diseases take hold of our bodies, which . . . proceed, no lesse from fulnesse than emptinesse, and many times we have more adoe to concoct, consume, and dissipate our food, than we had to get and provide it. And much like as if the daughters of Danaus were in doubt what to do, and what life to lead, or how to be emploied, after they were delivered and freed once from their servile task imposed upon them, for to fille their tunne boared full of holes ; even so doubt we (in case we were come to this passe, as to cease from stuffing and cramming this unsatiable flesh of ours, which will never say Ho, with all sorts of viands that land or sea may affoord) what we should do ? and al because for want of experience and knowledge what things be good and honest, we love all our life time to seeke for to be provided of necessaries : and like as they who have beene slaves a long time, after they come once to be delivered from servitude, do of themselves and for themselves the very same services, which they were woont to performe for their masters, when they were bound ; even so, the soule taketh now great paines and travel to feed the bodie, but if once she might be dispatched and discharged from this yoke of bondage, no sooner shall she finde herselfe free and at libertie, but she will nourish and regard her- 8 selfe, she will have an eie then to the knowledge of the truth, and nothing shall plucke her away, or di- vert and withdraw her from it." Suppose that Cambridge, this May term, set itself to teach plain living, by precept and example, to its gay visitors : no longer spending money for that which is not bread, and labour for that which satisfieth not. Suppose that our missionaries, instead of ' committing the great blunder of throwing too much drink and too much meat in the face of the Indian nation,' 3 taught our countrymen there that free living in a tropical climate is death. Suppose the clergy and schoolmasters, who go out from among us, had sat (like George Herbert and Nicholas Ferrar) in the school of Cornaro and Lessius; 3 what would hap- pen? Listen to the physician who has done more than any living man to make the laws of health popular, whose voice is always raised on behalf of temperance, chastity and mercy. Dr. Nichols tells us (Herald of Health, Mar. 1880, report of his first lecture in Cam- bridge, 30 Jan.) : " There is no reason why students should be compelled to eat a luxurious and unhealthy diet of flesh, or even to pay for it. 4 Every head would be clearer, the blood of every student would be purer, if they would live on sixpence a day, and they would study none the worse if they were obliged to earn it. A university ought to be a seat of learning and not of luxury, and there is room for great reforms not only at Cambridge and Oxford, but at Eton and Harrow. The Scottish students who carried their sacks of oat- meal to Edinburgh, Aberdeen or Glasgow, were not the worse students for their homely and frugal fare, and there is better brain food in a basin of oatmeal porridge, than can be found in sirloins of beef or legs of mutton. ... If the young men in schools and universities would live temperately, live like refined Athenians, if not like the more hardy Spartans, we should not see so many bloated and gouty aristocrats, nor so many ruined constitutions, among those who are foolish enough to follow bad examples." It would be well if our faculty of medicine, of which we are justly proud, and which is now on the point of being endowed at the expense of the colleges, following the example of Dr. Nichols and Dr. B. W. Richardson, would teach laymen the meaning of the golden rule pnte" &yat> in respect of meats and drinks. Surely they might make it impossible for any resident in Cambridge to have recourse to quacks. Meanwhile, such of us laymen as have made a rule of life for ourselves (and I for one, having never regulated my diet by professional 'order,' have not known ill- ness for forty-five years) may encourage others also to follow Galen's advice, 5 i.e. to learn by personal experiment what diet suits their constitutions. Plu- tarch (de sanit. 24 p. i$6e, Holland, p. 626) "Tiberius 10 Casar was wont to say : That a man being once above three-score years of age deserveth to be mocked and derided, if he put forth his hand unto the phy- sician for to have his pulse felt. For mine own part, I take this speech of his to bee somewhat too proud and insolent ; but me thinks this should be true : That every man ought to know the particularities and properties of his own pulse, for there bee many diver- sities and differences in each one of us : also that it behooveth no man to be ignorant in the severall com- plexion of his owne bodie, as well in heat as in drinesse : also to be skilfull what things be good for him, and what be hurtfull, when he useth them : for he that would learne these particularities of any other than of himselfe, or goeth to a physician to know of him, whether he be better in health in summer time than in winter ; or whether hee stand better affected in taking dry things rather than moist ; also whether naturally he have a strong pulse or a weake, a quicke or a slow ; surely hath no sense or feeling of himselfe, but is as it were deafe and blinde, a stranger he is dwelling in a borrowed body, and none of his owne : for such points as those are good to be knowen and easie to be learned; for that we may make proofe thereof every hower, as having the body with us continually. "Also meet it is, among meats and drinks, to know those rather which be good and holsome for the stomack, than such as be pleasant for the tooth; 6 and to have experience of that which doth the stomacke good, more than of that which is offensive thereto; as also of those things that do not trouble and hinder concoction, than which content and tickle the taste. For to demand of a physician, what is easie of di- gestion, and what not; what doth loose, and what bindeth the belly; me thinks is no lesse shamefull than to aske him, what is sweet, what bitter, what soure, tart or austere. But now we shall have many folke, that know well how to find fault with their cooks and dressers of meat for seasoning their broths or making sauce to their viands, being able to dis- cerne which is sweeter than it ought to be ; which is over-tart or too much salted : and yet they themselves are not able to say whether that which is put into the bodie and united therewith be light or no; and whether it be harmlesse, not offensive, or profitable. Hereupon it is that their pottage misseth not often the right seasoning ; whereas contrariwise, for want of well seasoning their owne selves, but daily faulting therein, they make much worke for physicians : for they esteeme not that pottage best which is the sweetest, but they mingle therewith many sharpe juices and soure herbs, to make it somewhat tart withall ; but contrariwise, they send into the bodie all maner of sweet and pleasant things, even untill it cry, Ho ; partly being ignorant, and in part not calling to 12 minde and remembrance that nature adjoineth alwaies unto things that be good and holsome, a pleasure not mingled with displeasure and repentance. Moreover, we are likewise to remember and beare in minde all those things that be fit and agreeable to the bodie, or contrariwise, in the changes of the seasons in the yere, in the qualities and properties of the aire, and other circumstances, to know how to accommodat and apply our diet accordingly: for as touching all the offences proceeding from nigardise, avarice and pinching, which the common sort doe incurre about the painfull inning and laborious bestowing or laying up of their corne and fruits; who by their long watchings, by their running and trudging to and fro, discover and bewray what is within the bodie, rotten, faulty and ulcerous : we are not to feare, that such accidents will befall to learned persons or students, nor yet to states-men and polititians, unto whom principally I have addressed this discourse ; but they ought to beware and eschue another kinde of more eager covetousnesse and illi- berall nigardise in matter of studie and literature, forcing them to neglect and not regard their owne poore bodies, which oftentimes being so travelled and outwearied, that they can doe them no more service, yet they spare them never the more, nor give them leave to be refreshed and gather up their crummes againe ; but force that which is fraile and mortall to labour a vie with the soule, which is immortall ; that (I say) which is earthly, to hold out with the spirit, that is heavenly. Well, the ox said unto the camell his fellow servant, who would not ease him a little of his burden : Thou wilt not helpe me now to beare somewhat of my charge ; but shortly thou shalt carie all that I carie, and me besides : which fell out so indeed, when the ox died under his burden : sem- blably it hapneth to the soule, which will not allow the sillie bodie (wearied and tired) some little time of rest and repose : for soone after comes a fever, head- ach, dizzinesse of the braine, with a dizzinesse of the sight, which will compell her to lay aside all books, to abandon all good letters, disputations and studie ; and in the end is driven to languish and lie sicke in bed together with it for company." Thus we are called by high authority to be phy- sicians to ourselves, and the vast experience accumu- lated by the Vegetarian society proves that it is feasible and easy, in every rank of society, even in this luxurious age, to live the life, as far as diet goes, of Socrates, or Curius, or St Paul. Thousands have tried (to speak with a paper-hanger, Vegetarian Mes- senger, i, 1851, suppl. p. 18) 'the new system of living without doctors or doctors' bills, and without butchers or butchers' bills.' It is self-discipline to which we are invited, and plainly we are at liberty to be a law unto ourselves. The case is different when we are urged to uphold 14 penal laws, affecting the health or happiness of other living creatures, of woman, or child, or 'the dumb animals,' whose impotence under torture is eloquent in the ears of mercy. Dr. Andrew Clark, addressing the students of the London Hospital in October 1876 (T. L. Nichols, Herald of Health, November 1876, p. 132) pro- tested against the law which regulates vivisection : he trusts that every member of this great profession, and every thoughtful man beyond its pale, will make this cause his own, and will offer to threatenings of fresh legislation such a united, earnest and implacable opposition that the statute-book of England shall never again be sullied by penal enactments against the just liberties of men. The highest heritage of humanity is in our keeping. All the past and all the future conspire to make us loyal to the sacred charge, and at whatsoei'er cost of whatsoei'er kind we must hand down the freedom of experimental inquiry unmortgaged to future genera- tions. The comments of Dr. Nichols (I.e.} will prove that the medical profession is not unanimous in this view of ' the just liberties of men.' Some years ago I met at Basel an enthusiastic young German physiologist. He complained that vivisection of the human subject was as yet forbidden, but looked forward to a millennium of science, when these shackles would be removed. He had probably never read Celsus, or he would have known that there 15 was once a golden age of free science, but Celsus hugged his chains. Vivisection of the human subject, which is now only a 'frommerWunsch,' was possible to the ancients : (Celsus i praef. p. 4 1. 35 Daremberg) the dietetics taught necessarium . . . esse incidere corpora mortuorum, eorumque -viscera atque intestina scrutari ; longeque optime fecisse Herophilum et Erasistratum, qui nocentes homines, a regibus ex career e acceptos, vivos inciderint, considerarintque etiamnum spiritu remanente, ea quae natura ante clausisset. Some condemned the practice as cruel (p. 7 1. 15) neque esse crudele, sicut plerique proponunt, hominum nocentium, et horum quoque pau- corum, snpplidis remedia populis innocentibus saeculorum omnium quaeri. The empirics regarded such torture as misleading no less than cruel (p. 7 1. 14) atque ea quidem, de quibus est dictum, supervacua esse tantum- modo; id -vero, quod restat, etiam crudele: vivorum homimim alvum atque praecordia incidi et salutis humanae praesidem artem non solum pestem alicui, sed hanc etiam atrocissimam, inferre; cum praesertim ex us, quae tanta violentia quaeranlttr, alia non possint omnino cognosci, alia possint etiam' sine scelere; (1. 34) ita mortui demum praecordia et viscus omne in conspectum latrocinantis medici dari necesse est tale, quale mortui sit, non quale vivi fuit. si quid tamen sit, quod adhuc spirante homine conspectui subiciatur, id saepe casum afferre curantibus. inter dum enim gladiatorem in harena i6 v el militem in ode vel viatorem a latronibus exceptum sic vulnerari, ut eius interior aliqua pars aperiatur, et in alioalia: ita sedem positnm ordinem figurant similiaque alia cognoscere prudentem medicum, non caedem sed sani- tatem molientem ; idque per misericordiam discere, quod alii dira crudelitate cognorint. ob haec ne mortuorum quidem lacerationem necessariam esse, quae, etsi non crudelis, tamen foeda sit: cum aliter pleraque in mortuis se habeant, quantum vero in vivis cognosci potest, ipsa curatio ostendat. Celsus himself (p. 12 1. 35) endorsed this censure: incidere autem vivorum corpora et crudele et stipervacuum est : mortuorum, discentibus necessarium : nam positum et ordinem nosse debent ; quae cadaver a melius, quam vivus et vulneratus homo, repraesentant. sed et cetera, quae modo in vivis cognosci possunt, in ipsis curationibus vulneratorum paulo tarditts, sed aliquanto mitius, usus ipse monstrabit. In the early days of the Royal Society, while bear- baiting and bull-baiting were still in fashion, all Cam- bridge was of one mind with Dr. A. Clark. Barrow exclaims ('oratio ad academicos in comitiis' in his opuscula 128-9 or ms works, Camb. ed. ix 46): quin et oculos auriculis succenturiatis ac duci rationi comitem adiungitis experientiam. quando enim, obsecro, a con- dita academia in tot canum piscium volucrumque neces ac lanienas sanguinolenta curiositas saeviit, quo vobis partium constitutio et usus in animalibus innotes- ceret? o innocentissimam crudelitatem et feri- 17 tatem facile excusandam ! So a Cambridge scholar, 15 Sept. 1648 (Sir T. Browne's works, 1836, i 360) : I have now by the frequency of living and dead dissections of dogs run through the whole body of anatomy. Of Matt. Robinson, elected fellow of St. John's 3 Apr. 1650, we are told (Life, Camb. 1856, pp. 31-2) in anatomy he was the most exquisite inquirist of his time, . . . insomuch that he was invited by some learned per- sons in other colleges many years his senior to shew them vivisections of dogs and suchlike creatures in their cham- bers, to whom he shewed the whole history of the circu- lation, the venae lacteae, the cutting of the recurrent veins in the neck, with many experiments then novel, to great satisfaction, and no augur ever was more familiar with bowels than he: every week having some singularity or other of this nature to search in. Insomuch that one morning having been busy in his chamber with anato- mising a dog, and coming to dinner into the college hall, a dog there smelling the steams of his murdered com- panion upon his clothes, accosted him with such an unusual bawling in the hall that all the boys fell a laughing, perceiving what he had been a doing, which put him to the blush. In the Menagiana, Amst. 1713, n pp. LII-LIII is an amusing squib on the ' old philosophy ' (in a ' requete a nosseigneurs de Mont Parnasse ') : Que le sang ne cir culer a plus, et que le coeur ne lui ouvrira plus la porte pour entrer au poulmon. Quelefoye sera re'integre dans i8 son premier office defaire le sang, sans que le cocur Ini ose plus disputer ledit office, et que le chile rira trouver tout dr oft par la veine porte sans s 9 am user a a Her monter vers les jugulaires, nonobstant aussi les oppositions experi- mentales de M. Pecquet, auquel il sera nouvelle- ment fait inhibitions et defenses de plus a 1'avenir faire ouverture des chiens vivans pour prouver le contraire. Has anything occurred since the seventeenth cen- tury to moderate raptures like Barrow's ? Or is every ' thinker ' bound to echo the war-cry of Dr. A. Clark ? Such books as Mr. E. B. Nicholson's ' Rights of an animal' (Lond. 1879) a recent lecture on those rights by Prof. Chandler at Oxford these and other symptoms prove that in "the hell of animals" conscience begins to own a duty to the lower creation. Assured- ly rank, even the highest, will not long screen the heroes of battues and the like cruelties from prosecu- tion. Few of us perhaps regret that our law prohibits entertainments such as those at which Matthew Robinson played the augur. With Juvenal 7 we see only degradation to woman in dallying with torture. But we may well doubt our competence to form an opinion on Dr. A. Clark's invitation. I have therefore sought professional advice. I will call the writer X, because I am forbidden to make the name public. It is not safe, in this nineteenth century, for physicians 19 to proclaim opinions counter to the fashion of the hour. "It is certainly possible," writes X, "as my own experience shews, to pass all the . . . examinations required . . . without even once witnessing a vivisection ; but it is impossible to escape studying these cruel experiments as recounted in the various books one has to ' get up ' for the examinations. I have several times been asked the method, results and inductions of vivi- sectional experiments, and have of course been compelled to reply. This fact however does not hinder me from asserting that whatever knowledge may have been attained by such means, could have been otherwise obtained in nine cases out of ten, and I do not consider that the tenth exceptional case compensates fairly from a scientific point of view for the mass of error and false induction to which the practice of vivisection has undoubtedly given rise. The obscurity surrounding the study of the localisation of the various motor centres of the brain is a good example of misleading tendency of vivisectional experi- ments. [Then follows a full explanation of this point.] It is clear to the student of nervous disease, that such experiments cannot have any real value, and that slow as may be the pro- gress of knowledge acquired by clinical observation, it is far better to wait for the development of such observations than to rush incontinently and impatiently to false and obscure con- clusions obtained by such experiments as Ferrier's "Of course, from a moral point of view, which is the only real standard of vision for a civilised person, vivisection is absolutely barbarous and abominable, no matter what may or could be expected from it. For my own part, I prefer to take my stand on the moral ground entirely, for if once one admits \h^ principle involved in vivisection as a legitimate one, I do not see where one is to draw the line. If experiments on animals can be admitted as allowable, because certain physiologists conceive that they may serve great ends in science, why not admit experimentation upon infants, lunatics, paupers and various 20 other comparatively low grades of the human race ? Remember that ' science ' would necessarily profit far more by such experi- ments than by those conducted on mere animals, and remember also, that the men who devise and perform vivisections recognise no difference whatever between humanity and the brute creation. For them, ' as one dieth, so dieth the other ;' every thing, in their creed, is soulless, irresponsible, ephemeral, and the mere outward aspect of form is all that divides the man from the dog. I fail then to perceive why they should respect the one more than the other. " For myself I hold a belief, I should say a ' knowledge ' of a far different kind, for in my creed all life is eternal, progressive, responsible, and the ' incorruptible Image of God ' is in all creatures, ' shining more and more unto the perfect day ' as its expression becomes more and more perfectly human and Christ- like." In a tract (entitled 'vivisection') issued by the international association for the total suppression of vivisection (25 Cockspur Street, Charing Cross), we read : " Man is man, in our view, chiefly because he can discern good from evil, not because he is a cleverer kind of monkey than other monkeys, or because he can recollect more facts and put them to better practical use than creatures in a lower stage of development. Humanity is, therefore, a word of which we fully accept the popular definition, and for us a man is human in pro- portion as he is humane. We do not admit a torturer to be a man ; he is simply an individual of the genus Simia an intelli- gent individual if you like, but he has nothing human about him. And when one of these animals says that 'cruelty is necessary,' it sounds in our ears precisely as if he had said, 'robbery is necessary' or 'deceit is necessary,' or any other babit of the lower grades which humanity has outgrown. " We have just witnessed in Paris an unparalleled spectacle, 21 the incongruity of which would be ridiculous if it did not also furnish melancholy evidence of the lack of understanding and thought prevalent in a nation which claims to rank among the most civilised in Europe. I refer to the part taken by M. Paul Bert, the most notorious vivisector of the day, in the discussion upon M. Ferry's Bill. What can be said of a state of manners which permits such a man as M. Paul Bert to pose as a moralist before the public a man whose whole career has been one long course of cruelties so varied and appalling that even here, under the shadow of the Ecole de Medecine itself, they have attracted special comment and associated the name of their perpetrator with all the worst of the barbarities of a fallen science ? This Paul Bert, who appears now before Paris as the champion of morals, is the same .who, at the Exposition last year, exhibited pictures of dogs undergoing the agonies of tetanos induced by the administration of various poisons at his hands, pictures, the public display of which excited expressions of censure and disgust in the columns of a well-known Parisian journal. This is the same too, whose laboratory is the scene of such awful horrors that persons living near the waste grounds surrounding it have more than once complained to the authorities of the shrieks and groans issuing from its walls, and even now, while I write these lines, the Parisian law courts are occupied with an action brought against this man by the proprietor of a neighbouring hotel for loss of clientele and other grievances, caused by the continual howling and cries of the dogs ' used ' in his experiments. " What better terms can be found to characterise the work of Paul Bert's own life than the words he himself used in the Chamber of Deputies : ' Such things as these, and such a method of teaching as this, inspire indignation and disgust ; they are like a bog in which one treads in mire ! ' " Paul Bert is himself one 9f the most distinguished of Jesuits, for he adopts in theory and carries into practice daily their distinctive doctrine, 'The end justifies the means,' and, in com- mon with all vivisectors, he argues that 'cruelty is necessary,' 22 that good may be obtained by evil, and that private and pro- fessional motives sanctify the perpetration of deeds which, if committed by the vulgar outside the profession, would be highly reprehensible, and punishable by law. In the view of these priests of materialism, public opinion has no right to set moral limits to the pursuit of material science ; knowledge, no matter how attained, is the one positive and good thing, and morality, being a mere question of national habit, is entitled to secondary consideration only, if, indeed, to any consideration at all. "By common consent, however, mankind, more truly in- spired, recognises as its highest ideal of development One whose greatness was not owing to scholastic learning or to retentive memory, but to those very attributes which materialistic experts (I will not call them 'philosophers') regard as derogatory and unbecoming in an age of enlightenment ; attributes such as mercy, gentleness, love, patience, sympathy with suffering and the like ; in fact, to the identical qualities which they label in a bundle as 'sentiment,' and thrust aside with contempt. "Are we to go back to our monkey ancestors then, and relinquish all the advantages we have gained, and for which we have toiled so hard and endured so much since the anthropolithic days of Haeckel ? God forbid ! The manhood in this English nation protests, and will not protest in vain, against the attempt which is now being made upon national morality by formulating into a legal principle the axiom that might is right. For man is man, not because he is a strong beast or a supremely sagacious beast, but because he has it in him to know and to love justice and to refrain from doing evil. And to such an one the plea that a method involving the torture of others is a right method because it has proved useful in the attainment of knowledge, carries no weight whatever. Is there any class of crime or any depth of baseness for which the same plea may not be urged ? Does not falsehood sometimes appear useful to liars, and may not violence, fraud, theft, or even murder find apologists on the same grounds? True, the policy of the liar, thief, or coward generally fails in the. long run, and so also does that of the pro- 23 fessional torturer. It is no secret that the practice of vivisection has given rise among scientists to dissensions, difficulties, and errors which are incessantly accumulating, and which "have sown the paths of physiology with a fruitful crop of false deductions and bewildering contradictions. And if among the millions upon millions of cruel experiments on living animals by means of which science has been well-nigh arrested, and true progress hindered so disastrously, some few have accidentally proved of service in the elucidation of a nascent discovery, no proof exists that such discovery would not have been vouchsafed by more legitimate means, nor do such isolated cases atone in the smallest degree for all the agony, heart-hardening, and degradation of manhood which they entailed on the miserable victims and their more miserable tormentors. " Vivisection useful ? Cowardice useful? Deliberate devilry useful? Sir, we who are men will not buy knowledge at the cost of our manhood, we will not sell for so pitiful a mess of pottage the divine birthright of humanity. As to our physical health that is not called in question, for no one who has been medically educated will seriously assert that the science of heal- ing is in any way related or indebted to the practice of physiolo- gical torture. "I have received my own medical education at the Faculte of Medecine in Paris. At the Ecole, Professors Beclard, Vulpian, and others vivisect almost daily. It is no exaggeration to say that the walls of that Inferno re-echo from morn to sun-set with shrieks and cries and moans, the supreme pathos of which no pen can render. When first I heard them, now long ago, I took them for the cries of children under operation, so terribly human were they in expression and appeal. And now, whenever I go there, knowing what they are, these cries strike and tear my heart and move me to a passion of indignation which is all the more terrible to endure because it is so impotent. ' ' I ask myself and you, sir, by what right do vivisectors thus outrage me and other men, and why are they permitted to make life intolerable to their superiors ? It is not only a question of 24 torturing horses and dogs and rabbits, it is a question of torturing men and women. I am tortured, and thousands of human beings are tortured with me every day by the knowledge that this in- famous practice is being carried on in our midst with impunity. For my own part and I know but too well that I express the feeling of a large number of my countrymen it is literally true that the whole of my life is embittered by the existence of this awful wrong. Since I have known that vivisection is, and how it is practised, I have moved, and slept, and eaten, and studied, under the shadow of it, and its effluvium has poisoned for me the very air of heaven. "I appeal in my own name and the names of all those men and women whom the vivisectors are torturing with me, I appeal to the English Parliament for personal relief and for ex- ample to the world, and I most earnestly press upon the members of both Houses not to regard this question as one having a merely technical or limited interest. The day on which England finally sweeps this curse of torture from her schools and affirms the principle that civilised man may not seek advantage for himself by means of the agony and tears of any creature whom God has made dependent on him, will be a day of mightier import to the advance of civilisation than any which has dawned since she, first of all nations, spoke the word which made free men of slaves through every land in Christendom. "There were vested interests then, there are vested interests now. But she made no sordid compromises then, she stooped to no half-measures. She faced the outcry of opposition fear- lessly, and she led the world. But now the old spirit seems wanting, and the only legislation she has dared to make on this new question of Right or Wrong is at once untenable and impo- tent. Here is an evil so base and so hideous that it has excited a national agitation, and the law, in order to satisfy the con- science of the country, restricts the perpetration of the offence to certain licensees. Why not treat burglary, arson, fraud, &c. , in a similar manner ? Either the practice is right or it is wrong. If right, interference is worse than impertinent ; if wrong, it is 25 as wrong for A as it is for B, and to license and protect the crime in A while condemning and punishing it in B is an insult to com- mon sense, and an outrage on the most elementary principles of morals, of law, and of civilisation. " "Behind the scenes" writes in the Parisian, 4 March 1880 : "I have no small claim to be heard in the matter, seeing that its theory and its bearings have almost exclusively occupied me for the past ten years, that I am one of the earliest agitators against vivisection in England, and that I have been medically educated at the Ecole de Medecine in this city. I am therefore, by study and by profession, probably better qualified to gauge the value of scientific torture than your correspondent at Naples, whom I take to be, in the view of the Faculty, a layman. Let me handle his two statements in order. " I. If the society or societies to which he alludes have re- cently directed their energies chiefly against the practice of vivi- section, it is because their members have perceived two im- portant points which totally escape your correspondent's acumen ; first, that vivisection is the worst kind of cruelty extant, inasmuch as it constitutes an organised system, and claims for itself a legitimate existence which no other form of cruelty has assumed ; and secondly, that it is logically inconsistent and impossible to punish minor barbarities in the lower classes while granting impunity to the infinitely worse atrocities of the so-called higher grades of society. Moralists have nothing to do with the motive for crime, they have to deal with the crime itself. Which is worse, the suffering inflicted on a horse by cruelly lashing it under a heavy load, or the suffering inflicted on the same creature by flaying it alive, dissecting out its nerves, and torturing them with hot irons or with corrosive acids ? . . . Why is the moralist to respect the excuse of the vivisector rather than that of the carter? With what face is he to say to the poor carter, ' I have nothing to do with your circumstances or with your motive, you are guilty of a barbarous and revolting action, 26 and you must go to prison,' while in the same breath he tells the vivisector, ' I a"m sorry for the torment of your victim, but your excuse is sufficient justification, proceed with your work'? Would not this be a crying example of the principle One law for the rich, another for the poor ? . . . . "2. This brings me to the second erroneous statement made by your correspondent. He says that vivisections have been useful to science. I answer boldly that they have more dis- astrously hindered science, and more completely degraded it than it is possible to conceive. Witness the innumerable con- tradictions, the wilderness of differing theories with which the literature of physiology and pathology teems, due to nothing more nor less than to the multiplication of vivisectional experi- ments ! The same experiment never gives exactly the same results in two different hands, and as exact results are necessary to the establishment of a theory, every vivisector has a theory of his own, on which he bases interpretations of clinical facts often utterly at variance with the results of the observations of practising physicians. And no wonder, for vivisectional experi- ments are not a serious method of investigation. If we share with animals the brotherhood of suffering, we yet differ widely from them in the higher and more subtle phenomena involved in the direct and reflex action of the nervous system ; the more widely, in fact, in proportion to the grade of mental and physical development we have attained. And the nervous system domi- nates, pervades, and controls all other systems and tissues of the body in such a degree that no phenomena occurring within the region of the vascular, muscular, cellular, or even the osseous systems, can be explained without intimate reference to the brain and spinal centres. This being so, no man will persuade me while I retain my senses that because certain effects have been observed by him in the healthy body of a dog or rabbit subjected to torture, and perhaps even 'curarized,' he can by that light in- terpret effects observable in the diseased body of a man, the springs and habits of whose nervous life and functions are so intimately different from that of the beast. I say that such a 27 pretence as this is not serious nor scientific, and that conse- quently it is for the purposes of serious science worse than worthless it is misleading. "I know of no subject now occupying human thought, and the history of our epoch, which goes so thoroughly to the very root of philosophy, and involves so deeply the issues of moral sentiment, as this of vivisection, and I venture to assert, from my own knowledge of the question and of its bearings, that it is precisely on the platform occupied by this question that the coming battle between Materialism and Philosophy will have to be fought out." In like manner Dr. Hogan, a London physician, sometime assistant 'in the laboratory of one of the greatest of living experimental physiologists' writes (Dietetic Reformer 1875, pp. 190-1)) : "In that laboratory we sacrificed daily from one to three dogs, besides rabbits and other animals, and after four months' experi- ence I am of opinion that not one of those experiments was justified or necessaiy. The idea of the good of humanity was simply out of the question. During three campaigns I have witnessed many harsh sights, but I think the saddest sight I ever witnessed was when the dogs were brought up from the cellar to the laboratory for sacrifice. Instead of appearing pleased with the change from darkness to light, they seemed seized with horror as soon as they smelt the air of the place, divining apparently their approaching fate. They would make friendly advances to each of the three or four persons present, and as far as eyes, ears, and tail could make a mute appeal for mercy elo- quent, they tried it -in vain. Even when roughly grasped and thrown on the torture-trough, a low complaining whine at such treatment would be all the protest made, and they would con- tinue to lick the hand which bound them till their mouths were fixed in the gag, and they would only flap their tail in the trough as their last means of exciting compassion. Often when con- vulsed by the pain of their torture this would be renewed, and 28 they would be soothed instantly on receiving a few gentle pats. It was all the aid or comfort I could give them, and I gave it often. They seemed to think it an earnest of fellow-feeling that would cause their torture to come to an end an end only brought by death. Were the feelings of experimental physiolo- gists not blunted, they could not long continue the practice. The Herald of Health (i May 1880, p. 352) gives from the Anti-Vivisectionist, the following letter from Dr. R. S. Butcher, of Dublin, University lecturer on Operative Surgery, ex-President of the Royal College of Surgery of Ireland, &c., &c. : "Dublin, Feb. 18, 1880. Sir, In answer to your letter, I beg to state that I firmly believe that no advantages to science can follow the cruel and demoralising practice of vivisection. Such an exhibition must be a disgrace to the cold, heartless, and would-be scientific professor; and most detrimental to the gentle and kindly feelings of the class of students that should be com- pelled to witness this sad cruelty. I hope you may bring opinion to bear so powerfully as to blot out this stain upon human nature." This was also the opinion of the late eminent surgeon, Mr. William Fergusson, as it is the opinion of many other men of the highest rank in medicine. This evidence, which might easily be multiplied, may suffice to shew that on this question 8 ' doctors disagree' so widely, that the laity cannot follow the rule unicuique credendum est in arte sua. The history of medicine denies to the physician an infallibility which Protestant churches no longer claim. How can we deliver heretics to the secular arm for compulsory cure, when (as in the case of vaccination 9 ) high 2 9 authorities regard the cure as worse than the disease, syphilis, 10 e.g. worse than small-pox? The great triumphs of medicine in this age, as in every age, the 'miracles of healing,' have been works of faith, hope and love ; witness the humanity which inspires the medical classics; witness names like Amalie von Lasaulx and (after every abatement has been made) Sister Dora; witness legions of de- voted women exorcising evil spirits and their works from army and navy, from the military hospital and the penitentiary ; witness martyrs of science and of mercy like Charles Murchison, with his self-chosen epitaph POST MORTEM VITA. Verily they who sigh for prayerless wards are fallen on evil times. In these true healers Hygieia is incorporate as an angel of light temperate, sober, chaste, merciful : all men know her voice and follow her bidding. But if she comes as stern Necessity, with iron scourge and tor- turing hour, with pains and penalties, inquisitors and spies, intoxicants and opiates, she forfeits quiet- ness and confidence which are her strength. And if acts arming her with exceptional powers, ne quid res publica detrimenti capiat, are smuggled incognito through the legislature, men will spurn her aid : e'xfywj' &5