It is probable that no stronger denunciation of the cruelty of vivisection ever appeared than that contained in the leading editorial of the London Lancet of August 22, 1863. The writer was certainly not an opponent of all experiments upon animals; he admits that "if pressed for a categoric answer whether such a practice as vivisection were permissible under proper restrictions for the purpose of advancing science and lessening human suffering, the answer would be in the affirmative." But the practice is evidently spreading. It is asserted that experiments upon animals "are a common mode of lecture illustration," and that such investigations "have spread from the hand of the retired and sober man of matured science into those of everyday lecturers and their pupils." Against such extension of vivisection the editor of the Lancet enters an emphatic protest:
"If we were pressed simply for a categoric answer to the question whether such a practice [as vivisection] were permissible under proper restrictions and for the purpose of advancing science and lessening human suffering, we need hardly say that the answer would be in the affirmative. It is asserted, however, that the practice of vivisection and such investigations as are implied by this term, `have spread from the hands of the retired and sober man of matured science into those of everyday lecturers and their pupils,' and that such experiments `are a common mode of lecture illustration….'
"We will state our belief that there is too much of it everywhere, and that there are daily occurring practices in the schools of France which cry aloud in the name both of honour and humanity for their immediate cessation. About two years ago, our Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals became possessed of the knowledge that it was still the practice in the schools of Anatomy and Physiology in France for lecturers and demonstrators to tie down cats, dogs, rabbits, etc., before the class; to perform upon them operations of great pain, and to pursue investigations accompanied by the most terrible torture. THIS, TOO, FOR THE PURPOSE ONLY OF DEMONSTRATING CERTAIN FACTS WHICH HAD BEEN FOR LONG UNHESITATINGLY ADMITTED, and for giving a sort of meretricious air to a popular series of lectures. It learned, moreover, that at the veterinary schools of Lyons and Alfort, live horses were periodically given up to a group of students for anatomical and surgical purposes, often exercised with … extra refinements of cruelty…."
It appeared that at Paris the whole neighborhood adjoining the medical school—including patients in a maternity hospital—"were constantly disturbed, when the course of physiology was proceeding at the school, by the howling and barking of the dogs, both night and day." The dogs were silenced. "The fact was, the poor animals were now subjected to the painful operation of dividing the laryngeal nerves as preliminary to the performance of other mutilations! And what were these dogs for? Simply for the vain repetition of clap-trap experiments, by way of illustrations of lectures for first-year students! These facts becoming known, the general public has at length interfered, and, we think, with very great propriety. THE ENTIRE PICTURE OF VIVISECTIONAL ILLUSTRATION OF ORDINARY LECTURES IS TO US PERSONALLY REPULSIVE IN THE EXTREME. Look, for example, at the animal before us, stolen (to begin with) from his master; the poor creature hungry, tied up for days and nights, pining for his home, is at length brought into the theatre. As his crouching and feeble form is strapped upon the table, HE LICKS THE VERY HAND THAT TIES HIM! He struggles, but in vain, and uselessly expresses his fear and suffering until a muzzle is buckled on his jaws to stifle every sound. The scalpel penetrates his quivering flesh. One effort only is now natural until his powers are exhausted—a vain, instinctive resistance to the cruel form that stands over him, the impersonation of Magendie and his class. `I recall to mind,' says Dr. Latour, `a poor dog, the roots of whose vertebral nerves Magendie desired to lay bare to demonstrate Bell's theory, which he claimed for his own. The dog, already mutilated and bleeding, twice escaped from under the implacable knife, and threw his front paws around Magendie's neck, licking, as if to soften his murderer, and ask for mercy! Vivisectors may laugh, but I confess I was unable to endure that heartrending spectacle.' But the whole thing is too horrible to dwell upon. Heaven forbid that any description of students in this country should be witness to such deeds as these! We repudiate the whole of this class of procedure. Science will refuse to recognize it as its offspring, and humanity shudders as it gazes on its face."
In all the literature of what is known as "antivivisection" is it possible to find a more emphatic condemnation of scientific cruelty than this? The decadence of humane sentiment in the laboratory can hardly be more strikingly illustrated than by a comparison of this editorial utterance of the Lancet with some of the present-day expressions of opinion in medical journals. When a quotation from this editorial was brought to the attention of a professor in Cambridge University not long since, it seemed to him so incredible that he made "a special inquiry," and then felt safe in publishing a doubt of its authenticity. If, as one may perhaps imagine without undue violence to probability, this "special inquiry" was made in the editorial rooms of the journal in question, the incredulity which even there found expression only illustrates the gulf that lies between the present and the past. It is a marvel, indeed, that the human sentiment of that earlier period, before the dominance of Continental ideals became an accomplished fact in America and England, can be so utterly forgotten by the medical journals and medical teachers of the present time.
A week later the Lancet again discusses the subject always, it should be remembered, as the advocate of vivisection, provided the practice be carried on under humane restrictions. A few sentences of the editorial of August 29 are specially significant:
"… As a general rule, neither our [British] students nor teachers are wont to carry on experiments upon living animals even in a private way. The utmost that can be said is that perhaps some two or three— at the most six—scientific men in London are known to be pursuing certain lines of investigation which require them occasionally during the year to employ living animals…. Whilst the schools of medicine in this country are as a rule not liable to the charge of vivisectional abuses as regards the higher animals, we cannot altogether acquit them from a rather reckless expenditure of the lives and feelings of cold-blooded creatures…. The reckless way in which we have sometimes seen this poor creature [the frog] cut, thrown and kicked about, has been sometimes sickening…. We cannot help feeling there is both A BAD MORAL DISCIPLINE FOR THE MAN, as well as an amount of probable pain to the creature, in such a practice."
How strange such criticism as this appears to-day! Can one imagine a medical journal in America or England expressing in our time any sympathy for the suffering of frogs in a physiological laboratory? Can one fancy on the part of its editor a suggestion of "bad moral discipline" which the ruthless vivisection of animals of the highest organization or grade of intelligence might induce? To-day such criticism is unthinkable. Yet the capacity of animal suffering has not diminished. The number of victims is vastly larger. What change has occurred which makes it impossible to conceive on the part of a medical journal of the present time the expression of such a sentiment of pity for one of the lower forms of animal life?
The Lancet was not alone in such condemnations. No periodical of that day, devoted entirely to the problems of medicine, occupied a position of influence equal to that of the British Medical Journal. One of its earlier editorial utterances concerning vivisection appeared in its issue of May 11, 1861, three years before the date given by Dr. Bowditch as that of "the first serious attack."
"The Emperor of the French has received a deputation from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. We sincerely trust that this interview may be the means of putting an end to the unjustifiable brutalities too often inflicted on the lower animals under the guise of scientific experimentation. IT HAS NEVER APPEARED CLEAR TO US THAT WE ARE JUSTIFIED IN DESTROYING ANIMALS FOR MERE EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES; but now that we possess the means of removing sensation during experiments, the man who puts an animal to torture ought, in our opinion, to be prosecuted."