The following summer, on August 22, 1863, the Journal find space in its editorial pages for yet other quotations from French medical periodicals concerning the "enormous abuses" of vivisection.
"We are very glad to find that the French medical journals are entering protests against the cruel abuse which is made of vivisection in France. L'Abeille Me'dicale says:
"`I am quite of you opinion as to the enormous abuses practised at the present day in the matter of vivisection…. In the laboratories of the College of France, in the E'cole de Me'decine, eminent professors, placed at the head of instruction, are forced to the painful sacrifice of destroying animals in order to widen the field of science. In doing so they act legitimately, and suffering humanity demands it of them. Those experiments are performed in the silence of private study, and the results obtained are then explained to the pupils, or treated of in publications…. But to repeat the experiments before the public, to descend from the professional chair in order to practise the part of a butcher or of an executioner, is painful to the feelings and disgusting to the sentiments of the student…. Such public exhibitions are ignoble, and of a kind which pervert the generous sentiments of youth. An end should be put to them. Ought we to allow the e'lite of our French youths to feed their eyes with the sight of the flowing blood of living animals, and to have their ears stunned with their groans, at this time when society is calling for the doing away of public executions? Let no one tell us that vivisections are necessary for a knowledge of physiology…. If the present ways, habits, and customs are continued, the future physician will become marked by his cold and implacable insensibility. Let there be no mistake about it: THE MAN WHO HABITUATES HIMSELF TO THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD, AND WHO IS INSENSIBLE TO THE SUFFERINGS OF ANIMALS, IS LED ON INTO THE PATH OF BASENESS.'
"So writes L'Abeille Me'dicale. But here L'Union Me'dicale takes up and comments on the tale:
"`This is all excellently said; but we must correct a few errors. Magendie, alas! performed experiments in public, and sadly too often at the Colle`ge de France. I remember once, among other instances, the case of a poor dog, the roots of whose spinal nerves he was about to expose. Twice did the dog, all bloody and mutilated, escape from his implacable knife, and twice did I see him put his forepaws around Magendie's neck and lick his face! I confess—laugh, Messieurs les Vivisecteurs, if you please—that I could not bear the sight…. It is true that Dr. P. H. Be'rard, Professor of Physiology, never performed a single vivisection in his lectures, which were brilliant, elegant, and animated. but Be'rard was an example of a singular psychological phenomenon. Toward the close of his life, so painful to him was the sight of blood and the exhibition of pain, that he gave up the practice of surgery, and would never allow his students to witness a vivisection. But Be'rard was attacked by cerebral haemorrhage, and the whole tone of his character was thereby afterward changed. The benevolent man became aggressive; the tolerant man, irritable…. He became an experimenter, and passed whole days in practising vivisections, TAKING PLEASURE IN THE CRIES, THE BLOOD, AND THE TORTURES OF THE POOR ANIMALS.'"
The following week the Journal again refers to the subject, the "ATROCITIES OF VIVISECTION." It is a noteworthy phrase, proceeding from a medical journal, and should not be forgotten. Concerning the truth of the charges, the absolute heartlessness exhibited, there can be no possible doubt, for the evidence is cumulative. Has the phrase "atrocities of vivisection" appeared in the editorial columns of any medical journal during the past twenty years, unless in the way of ridicule or contempt? It may be doubted.
"The atrocities of vivisection continue to occupy the attention of the Paris papers. The Opinion Nationale says: `The poor brutes' cries of pain sadden the wards of the clinic, rendering the sojourn there insupportable both to patients and nurses. Only imagine that, when a dog has not been killed at one sitting, and that enough life remains in him to experiment upon him in the following one, they put him back in the kennel, all throbbing and palpitating! There the unhappy creatures, already torn by the scalpel, howl until the next day, in tones rendered hoarse and faint by another operation intended to deprive them of voice.'"
Again, only three weeks later, in its issue of September 19, 1863, the British Medical Journal presents in an editorial an account of the debate on Vivisection in the French Academy of Medicine. It is of interest, not only as an indication of English opinion at that day, but also as evidence of what was being done by vivisectors over fifteen years after the discovery of chloroform.
"Our readers are aware that the French Minister of Commerce submitted to the Academy of Medicine documents supplied to him by a London society…. A committee of the Academy examined these questions and issued a report, but they did not answer the simple questions put to it. A discussion on the report has naturally taken place in the Academy itself, and has given rise to some very interesting remarks. M. Dubois … refused to draw up the report because he differed somewhat in opinion on the subject of vivisections from many of his associates. He therefore reserved the liberty of speaking his mind freely on the subject before the Academy. His conclusions are well worthy serious attention. They seem to us to contain all that can be rightly said in favour of vivisection, and to put the matter on its true and proper footing. The greatest praise is due to M. Dubois for having had the courage to express his opinion so boldly and openly….
"In the first part of his speech, M. Dubois demolished the work of the report, showing that it did not answer the questions of the Government, and left things exactly in their previous state. He then proceeded to give his opinion as to what reforms should be made in the practice of vivisection. The greatest physiologists, he remarked, such as Harvey, Asselli, Haller, were parsimonious and discreet in their use of vivisection. To-day we have before our eyes a very different spectacle. Under pretence of experimentally demonstrating physiology, the professor no longer ascends the rostrum; he places himself before a vivisecting-table, has live animals brought to him, and experiments. The habitual spectators at the School of Medicine, the College of France, and the Faculty of Sciences, know how experiments are made on the living flesh, how muscles are divided and cut, the nerves wrenched or dilacerated, the bones broken or methodically opened with gouge, mallet, saw, and pincers. Among other tortures there is that horrible one of the opening of the vertebral canal or of the spinal column to lay bare membranes and the substance of the marrow; IT IS THE SUBLIME OF HORROR. One needs to have witnessed that sight thoroughly to comprehend the real sense of the word `vivisection.' Whoever has not seen an animal under experiment CANNOT FORM AN IDEA OF THE HABITUAL PRACTICES OF THE VIVISECTORS. M. Dubois drew an eloquent picture of these practices, become usual in the physiological amphitheatres in the midst of blood and of howls of pain, and he showed that under the dominant influence of the vivisectors, physiological instruction has gone out of its natural road. Himself an eminent pathologist, he treated without ceremony the unjustifiable pretensions of those innovators, who, regardless at once of the principles of physiology and those of pathology, try to transport clinical surgery to the table of vivisection.