POST SCRIPTUM
In the various works, notices, discourses, etc., which have been published upon Vivisection, generally against Vivisection, I find various erroneous assertions which it is important should be pointed out. I will do so briefly.
There is, however, one assertion which appears fairly just to me. This is that in treatises on physiology, sufficient mention is not made of Vivisection, of its limits and of its abuses. At the beginning of a treatise on physiology, the author should distinctly declare there is always cruelty in vivisection conducted without chloroform or chloralose; the author should indicate that these anæsthetics ought to be administered under such or such conditions. Before initiating medical students into the study of life, it is also well to teach them to have respect for animal suffering. I would that it might be thoroughly understood that it is a matter of absolute necessity to operate upon the animal; and that when the physiologist resigns himself to this necessity he ought to perform the operation with sufficient humanity to prevent the animal from suffering. I willingly recognise that the absence of this first moral precept is a great gap in most treatises on physiology.
This, however, is about all I can concede to anti-vivisectionists; for truly they indulge in such queer, extraordinary assertions that we are completely disconcerted. Some of these fanatics pretend, for example, that physiologists should practise vivisection upon themselves. To torture a dog is as criminal as to torture a child, according to them; and animal suffering is as much to be respected as human suffering! Truly such a paradox cannot be taken seriously; if it were admitted, evidently the question is settled. But it cannot be admitted, and the whole of our argument rests upon this principle, which appears quite evident, that living beings occupy different positions in the hierarchy of nature.
Let us take a besieged city reduced to famine: will anyone pretend that the soldiers must be sacrificed before the horses, the mules, etc. Yet the case is exactly the same. It is in order to avoid the death of human beings that mice and guinea-pigs are put to death.
To deny the difference in rank of living beings is to deny evidence. A frog is a nobler animal than a sea-urchin; a dog is a nobler animal than a frog; for there are degrees in the intelligence, and consequently, in the capacity to suffer, and in the quality of suffering among the four animal groups: the sea-urchin, the frog, the dog, and man.
Anti-vivisectionists do not admit reflex movements (which, moreover, they do not understand); and they bewail the dogs that Goltz and Ewald subjected to cerebral mutilations which took away all intellectual spontaneity and prevented them from eating spontaneously. But in those very dogs, precisely because there is no spontaneity, so there is no longer any consciousness of pain. They are, therefore, of all the beings in creation those which deserve the least commiseration; for they are protected against pain by that very ablation of the brain, the seat of pain.
We are told that it is through cowardice, through the fear of disease, that vivisection is practised. But fear of disease is not cowardice. I am neither poltroon nor coward, but I would be very sorry to be attacked by tuberculosis or cancer. I do not blush to confess that it would be very disagreeable for me to be hanged, though hanging is much less painful than tuberculosis or cancer. If it were necessary to have a hanged victim, I would much prefer that a rabbit were taken in preference to myself; and I would certainly not put my own neck in the cord to save a dog from torture.
The state of mind of anti-vivisectionists appears to me rather singular, since they are not at all afraid of disease as far as man is concerned, but they have great fear of it for animals. If pain is but an empty word, according to the celebrated phrase of Zeno, why not apply that fine maxim to the animal?
Sir James Thornton (The Principal Claims on behalf of Vivisection, London, 1907), has endeavoured to compile a list of the contradictions to be found in the treatises of physiology. He could have added considerably to the length of this chapter, for the contradictions are innumerable; which only proves, not that vivisection is useless, but that it is difficult. What would chemists say if it were maintained that chemical analysis was absurd because of the contradictions between chemists? They would, and rightly so, continue to make analyses; for they know that analysis is a necessary, though an imperfect, instrument. In the same manner, we shall continue to practise vivisection, though we know right well that vivisection is an imperfect, though a necessary, instrument.
In the course of a recent debate on vivisection, a voice was heard to call out that Lister was a brute. That "crowns" everything, and one would think that nothing more inept could be imagined.
Alas! something more inept still has been said, and I hand over this prodigious and audacious assertion to the judgment of every man of heart and common sense. It refers to bacteriology. The author, after having said that microbes are not the cause of disease, takes refuge behind the opinion of Lawson Tait (quoted by Mona Caird, The Inquisition of Science, p. 20).
"Such experiments never have succeeded, never can: and they have, as in the cases of Koch, Pasteur, and Lister, not only hindered true progress, but they have covered our profession with ridicule."
That is something which may well confound us, is it not? and I believe those great benefactors of humanity, Koch, Pasteur and Lister, may indeed murmur: "Forgive them; for they know not what they say."
To sum up: the objections of anti-vivisectionists are irrefutable if we admit, (1) that man has not the right to kill an animal either in self-defence or for nourishment; (2) that the suffering of an animal is as worthy of respect as the suffering of a man; and (3) that the misery of one individual is as sacred as the misery of a thousand individuals. No logical reply can be made to these three assertions, which, according to my reasoning, constitute an offence against the most elementary common sense. But I doubt very much if we shall ever arrive at demonstrating that it is better to allow one hundred children to die from diphtheria rather than draw a little blood from a horse; or that we should practise vivisection on man so as to alleviate the diseases of dogs.
Concerning the polemics of anti-vivisectionists as to the uselessness of physiology, and the contradictions of physiologists, they are nothing but a tissue of error and ignorance.