Moral Principles and Medical Practice | Page 9

of the eternal law, which, in His wisdom, the Creator, if He created at
all, could not help enacting, and which He is bound by His wisdom and
justice to enforce upon mankind.
We are next to consider what are the duties which that higher law
imposes upon the physician. In this present lecture I will confine
myself to one duty, that of respect for human life.
A duty is a bond imposed on our will. God, as I remarked before,
imposes such bonds, and by them He directs free beings to lead worthy
lives. As He directs matter by irresistible physical laws, so He directs
intelligent and free beings by moral laws, that is, by laying duties or
moral bonds upon them, which they ought to obey, which He must
require them to obey, enforcing His commands by suitable rewards and
punishments. Thus He establishes and enforces the moral order.
Now the duties He lays upon us are of three classes. First, there are
duties of reverence and honor towards Himself as our sovereign Lord
and Master. These are called the duties of Religion, the study of which
does not belong to Medical Jurisprudence. The other classes of duties
regard ourselves and our fellow-men, with these we are to deal in our
lectures.
I. Order requires that the meaner species of creatures shall exist for the
benefit of the nobler; the inert clod of earth supports vegetable life, the
vegetable kingdom supplies the wants of animal life, the brute animal
with all inferior things subserves the good of man; while man, the
master of the visible universe, himself exists directly for the honor and
glory of God. In this beautiful order of creation, man can use all
inferior things for his own benefit.
This is what reason teaches concerning our status in this world; and this

teaching of reason is confirmed by the convictions of all nations and all
ages of mankind. The oldest page of literature that has come down to us,
namely, the first chapter of the first book of Holy Writ, lays down this
same law, and no improvement has been made in it during all
subsequent ages. Whether we regard this writing as inspired, as
Christians and Jews have always done, or only as the testimony of the
most remote antiquity, confirmed by the acceptance of all subsequent
generations, it is for every sensible man of the highest authority.
Here is the passage: "God said, Let us make man to our image and
likeness; and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the
fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping
creature that creepeth upon the earth." And later on in history, after the
deluge, God more explicitly declared the order thus established, saying
to Noe and his posterity: "Every thing that moveth and liveth shall be
meat for you; even as the green herbs have I delivered them to you."
But He emphatically adds that the lives of men are not included in this
grant; they are directly reserved for His own disposal. "At the hand of
every man," He says, "will I require the life of man."
All things then are created for man; man is created directly for God,
and is not to be sacrificed for the advantage of a fellow-man. Thus
reason and Revelation in unison proclaim that we can use brute animals
as well as plants for our benefit, taking away their lives when it is
necessary or useful to do so for our own welfare; while no man is ever
allowed to slay his fellow-man for his own use or benefit: "At the hand
of every man will I require the life of man."
II. The first practical application I will make of these general principles
to the conduct of physicians is this: a physician and a student of
medicine can, with a safe conscience, use any brute animal that has not
been appropriated by another man, whether it be bug or bird or beast, to
experiment upon, whatever specious arguments humane societies may
advance to the contrary. Brute animals are for the use of man, for his
food and clothing, his mental and physical improvement, and even his
reasonable recreations. Man can lawfully hunt and fish and practise his
skill at the expense of the brute creation, notwithstanding the modern

fad of sentimentalists. The teacher and the pupil can use vivisection,
and thus to some extent prolong the sufferings of the brute subject for
the sake of science, of mental improvement, and intelligent observation.
But is not this cruelty? and has a man a right to be cruel? No man has a
right to be cruel; cruelty is a vice, it is degrading to man's noble nature.
But vivisection practised