"One of the most shocking facts with respect to unlimited vivisection—and that is the kind we have in this country—is that man's two most intelligent dumb friends, the dog and the horse, have been subjected to countless hours of inexpressible agony, and often not for the sake of investigation, but simply that students might become proficient in operating on living flesh, or witness the cruel demonstration of physiological facts already well establish…. The material presented in the book quoted makes the reader feel that in some respects scientific men have retrograded till they stand about on a level with the Iroquois Indian of two centuries ago." —Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.
"The volume is exceedingly precise and well written, fortifying itself with abundant particulars. It touches the hideous cruelties and devilish atrocities which are done upon various animals, and behind well-closed doors. One reads it with intense pain and a disgust which combines nausea with indignation toward the ruthless experimenters who, disclaiming the hindering use of anaesthetics, exhibit all the phenomena of nervous torment. Monsters of research would sneer aside all critics of such infernal `physiological' laboratories….
"The book is a protest against the careful and subterranean silence and concealment which seem to conspire to resist all legal inspection. To evade or baulk investigation while causing pain in order to exploit it, to jeer at the humane shudder of the layman, to utilize feeble-minded paupers and friendless young children, to sophisticate a too credulous public with an austere formula as to the sacred secrecy of the laboratory—all this is an attempted HYPNOSIS of critics who really want to be fair, but who as citizens insists upon the right to know what is doing.
"The title of the book—`An Ethical Problem'—is indeed justified by its array of evidence and argument. Particularly is it shown that on this question America is still in the dark ages. Reform demands a frank exactitude as to the practices which, if Dr. Leffingwell is substantially accurate, are a disgrace to humanity. State control cannot always be avoided by ridiculing the `sentimentality' of those who insist upon strict regulation. Painless vivisection for investigation may have its legitimate place; but to illustrate what is already well ascertained by exhibiting animals in agony is both superfluous and debasing, repellant to every mind not seared by a morbid curiousity."—Hamilton College Record
"`An Ethical Problem,' by Albert Leffingwell, M.D., is by far the most judicial and unimpassioned contribution to the study of the question that it has been our privilege to read. Dr. Leffingwell has long been known both in this country and Europe, as a writer upon this theme. No one, so far as we know, has brought to it at once so calm and balanced a judgment as he, or a more exact knowledge of the whole field in which biological investigation plays so large a part. This latest publication from his pen is the result of years of study, of unremitting toil in the great libraries of this country and abroad where every facility was at hand to obtain data and to verify facts. It is a book written without bitterness … which seeks to carry conviction, not by the force of unverified quotations, or the repetitions of utterances often made in the heat of controversy, but by arguments based upon demonstrable fact, and supported by authorities to which you are referred, chapter and verse….
"The time must come when physiologists as a body—as Professor James declares they should have done long ere this—will meet public opinion half-way, `and admitting that the situation is a genuinely ethical one … give up the preposterous claim that every scientist has an unlimited right to vivisect, for the amount or mode of which no man, not even a colleague, can call him to account.' When that time comes, and we believe it is not far distant, some legal regulation of animal experimentation will be had. For this end, the book we have reviewed has been written; and when at last such regulation is attained, none will have a larger share in the gratitude of all who will rejoice in it, than the author whose notable book we have been considering." —Dr. F. H. Rowley, in Our Dumb Animals. ——————————- "Dr. Leffingwell's `Ethical Problem' is vivisection, TO WHICH HE IS IMPLACABLY OPPOSED, and which he describes as antivivisectionists generally do."—The Syracuse Post-Standard.
"Probably the best-considered treatise on the subject now in print. The author does not take the position that experimentation upon animals is always wrong. He maintains, however, in the most convincing way, that such experiments should be permitted only by genuine scientists…. Anyone interested in this vital question will find much that is stimulating, suggestive, and convincing in Dr. Leffingwell's book."—Universalist Leader.