An Ethical Problem | Page 3

some of the principal medical journals of England, was then as utterly unknown to me as the same facts are to-day unknown to the average graduate of every medical school in the United States. It was not long until after this early experience, and following acquaintance with the practice in Europe as well as at home, that doubts arose regarding the justice of CAUSING PAIN TO ILLUSTRATE FACTS ALREADY KNOWN. These doubts became convictions, and were stated in my first contribution to the literature of the subject, the paper in Scribner's. It is not the position of what is called "antivivisection," for that implies condemnation of every phase of animal experimentation. In the third of a century that has elapsed since this protest was made, the practice of vivisection has taken vast strides: it appears in new shapes and unanticipated environment. But the old abuses have not disappeared, and some of them, more urgently than ever before, demand the attention of thinking men and women.
Of personal contributions to the literature of the subject, during the past third of a century, nearly everything has been more or less polemical, called forth by either exaggeration of utility, inaccuracy of assertion, or misstatement of fact. Now it has been protest against the brilliant correspondent of a New York newspaper, who telegraphed from London an account of a visit to a well-known physiological laboratory, where he found animals all "fat, cheerful, and jolly," yet "quite unaffected by the removal of a spinal cord"--as sensible a statement as if he had referred to their jolly condition "after removal of their heads." Now it has been the manifesto of professors in a medical school declaring that in the institution to which they belonged no painful experiments had been performed--an assertion abundantly contradicted by their own publications. Now it is a Surgeon-General of the Army, defending one of the most cruel of vivisections in which he was not in any way concerned, by an exposition of ignorance regarding the elements of physiology; and, again, it has been a President of a medical association, making a speech, wherein hardly a sentence was not stamped with inaccuracy and ignorance. To some natures controversy is exhilarating; to myself it is beyond expression distasteful. Yet, when confronted by false affirmations, what is one's duty? To say nothing? To permit the untruth to march triumphantly on its way? Or, in the interest of Science herself, should not one attempt the exposure of inaccuracy, and the demonstration of the truth?
Approaching the end of a long pilgrimage, it has seemed to me worth while to make a final survey of the great question of our time. How was the cruelty of vivisection once regarded by the leading members of the medical profession? Shall we say to-day that the utility of torment, in the vivisection of animals, constitutes perfect justification and defence? How far did Civilization once go in the approval of torture because of its imagined deterrent effects?
What has been accomplished by the agitation concerning vivisection which has persisted for the last forty years? Has the battlefield been well selected? Have demands of reformers been wisely formulated? Is public opinion to-day inclined to be any more favourable to the legal abolition of all scientific experimentation upon animals than it was a third of a century ago?
What has been the result of vivisection in America, unrestricted and unrestrained? Has it accomplished anything for the human race that might not have been accomplished under conditions whereby cruelty should be impossible except as a crime? Has the death-rate been reduced by new discoveries made in American laboratories? Is it possible that utility is persistently exaggerated by those who are not unwilling to use exaggeration as a means of defence? And of the Future, what are the probabilities for which we may hope? What is being done in our century in the way of submitting animals to unlimited torture?
To throw somewhat of light on these questions is the object of this volume. I wish it had been in my power to write a more extended and complete exposition of the problem, but limitations of strength, due to advancing age, have made that hope impracticable. But as one man drops the torch, another hand will grasp it; and where now is darkness and secrecy, there will one day be knowledge and light.
AN ETHICAL PROBLEM
CHAPTER I
WHAT IS VIVISECTION?
Upon no ethical problem of our generation is the public sentiment of to-day more uncertain and confused than in its attitude toward vivisection. Why this uncertainty exists it is not very difficult to discern. In the first place, no definition of the word itself has been suggested and adopted sufficiently concise and yet so comprehensive as to include every phase of animal experimentation. It is a secret practice. Formerly more or less public,