"I should be writing a third paper on the nerves; but I cannot proceed without making some experiments, which are so unpleasant to make that I defer them. You may think me silly, but I cannot perfectly convince myself that I am authorized in Nature or Religion to do these cruelties …. And yet what are my experiments in comparison with those which are daily done, and are done daily for nothing?"
Such extreme sensibility, such sympathetic hesitancy to inflict great suffering in an attempt to discover some fact, would be ridiculed at the present day in every laboratory in Europe or America. It is typical, however, of a sentiment that once prevailed. Are we any better because it has so largely disappeared?
For great cruelty was there ever great remorse? The cases are not many; before the self-condemnation of a dying man and the final scene, friendship may feel it best to draw the veil. Yet one case of this poignant regret is worthy consideration, and shall have relation.
CHAPTER V
A VIVISECTOR'S REMORSE
About the middle of the last century there died in Scotland in the prime of life a physiologist, now almost forgotten, whose fate excited at the time an unusual degree of compassionate interest. Born in 1809, John Reid received his medical degree when but twenty-one years of age. A part of the two years following he spent in Paris, where Magendie was at the height of his notoriety for the ruthless cruelty of his vivisections. What attracted the young man we do not know, but Reid seems to have become greatly interested in physiological problems. Returning to Scotland, he pursued his investigations with all the zeal of youth, and apparently with little or no regard for the animal suffering he caused. For instance, of experiments which he made to prove a certain theory, he tells us:
"I have exposed the trunk of the par vagum in the neck of at least thirty animals, and in all of these the pinching, cutting, and even stretching of the nerve WERE ATTENDED BY INDICATIONS OF SEVERE SUFFERING. It was frequently difficult to separate the nerve from the artery ON ACCOUNT OF THE VIOLENT STRUGGLES OF THE ANIMAL."[1]
[1] "Physiological Researches," by John Reid, p. 92. (In all quotations the italics are the compiler's.)
Regarding the pain inflicted by him in certain other vivisections,
Reid is equally frank in his admissions:
"In repeated experiments upon the laryngeal nerves, we found in all animals operated upon (except two dogs, which appeared CONSIDERABLY EXHAUSTED BY GREAT PREVIOUS SUFFERING) ample ground for dissenting from the statements of Dr. Alcock…. With the exceptions mentioned, VERY SEVERE INDICATIONS OF SUFFERING … ATTENDED THE PINCHING AND CUTTING OF THE NERVE."[1]