"that Dr. Reid is doomed to die by a disease WHICH REPEATS UPON HIS OWN BODY NOT IN ONE, BUT IN MANY WAYS, the pains which he had imposed upon the lower animals."[1]
[1] Reid's "Life," p. 252.
Undoubtedly, friends of the tormented vivisector attempted to comfort him with the assurance—so often repeated in our day—that his experiments on living animals had been carried on "for the benefit of sick and suffering humanity." But Reid was too honest a man to permit himself to be thus deluded while under the very shadow of death. For him the time had come when the specious apologies for the infliction of torture—so current in our day—could be of no avail in lessening the poignant feeling of Remorse. In the dying hour men speak the truth about their actions. It was so with Reid.
"He confessed to having thought much of Scientific FAME in his labours, and IT WOULD BE UNTRUE TO SAY THAT THE ALLEVIATION OF HUMAN SUFFERING was the motive always before him when he inflicted pain on the lower animals."[2]
[2] Ibid., p. 65.
An operation seemed to hold out hope of relief from his terrible agony. It was deemed best to perform it—as Reid had experimented— without anaesthetics, "that the sufferer, with every sensation and faculty alive, might literally become an operator upon himself." In the course of a second operation, Dr. Wilson tells us: "THE SAME NERVES and bloodvessels which had been the subject of Dr. Reid's most important inquiries WERE LAID BARE IN HIMSELF, BY THE SURGEON'S KNIFE." But all remedial measures were in vain. The two years of apprehension, suspense, recognition, despair, of slowly increasing physical torment and the agony of remorse, came at last to an end. In July, 1849, he found the long-wished-for peace.
Seventy years ago the religious sentiment of Scotland easily favoured that doctrine of Divine displeasure which seemed probable to Reid and his friends. In our day, however, we are less certain of being able to interpret the "judgments of God"; and if we regard it as a remarkable coincidence, it is as far as we may safely go. Coincidences of some kind are a universal experience.
That notorious vivisector, Dr. Brown-Se'quard, devoted many years of his life to experiments on the seat of all that is concentrated and exquisite in agony—the spinal cord. It was a curious coincidence certainly, that in his last days the vivisector was affected by a disease of the spinal cord, which at one time compelled him to go on all-fours like a beast. Even the remorse of Reid finds a parallel, for toward the end of his life, Haller, one of the greatest physiologists that ever lived, is said to have expressed in letters deep regret for the suffering he had inflicted upon living animals.
We cannot doubt, however, that the experience of excruciating agony affecting the very nerves upon which he had so often experimented must have brought to the dying man a deeper realization of the pain he had caused than he could otherwise have known. A noted surgeon, whose finger was the seat of a felon, asked his hospital assistant to lance it, at the same time cautioning him to be particularly careful to cause as little pain as possible. "Why, I've often heard you tell patients coming to the hospital not to mind the lancing—that the pain to be felt was really nothing at all," replied the assistant.
"Ah, yes," rejoined the surgical sufferer, "but then, remember, I was AT THE OTHER END OF THE KNIFE!" In watching the phenomena elicited by experiments upon animals, there have been vivisectors who forget what was felt "at the other end of the knife," and so became utterly oblivious to the suffering they caused. A leading physiologist of England once declared that he "HAD NO REGARD AT ALL" for the pain of an animal vivisected, and that "he had no time, so to speak, for thinking what the animal would feel or suffer"; that he never used anaesthetics, "except for convenience' sake." Can such a man realize the meaning of the word "PAIN"? Without sharp personal experience, can anyone, adequately comprehend what it signifies?