"There is little in the literature of what is called the `horrors of vivisection' which is not well grounded on truth. For a description of the pain inflicted, I refer to that literature, only reiterating that what it recounts is largely and simply fact, selected, it may be, but rarely exaggerated.
"Vivisection is not an innocent study. We may usefully popularize chemistry and electricity, their teaching and their experimentation, even if only as one way of cultivating human powers. But not so with painful vivisection. We may not move as freely in this direction, for there are distinct reasons against it. It can be indiscriminately pursued only by torturing animals; and the word `torture' is here intentionally used to convey the idea of very severe pain—sometimes the severest conceivable pain, of indefinite duration, often terminating, fortunately for the animal, with its life, but as often only after hours or days of refined infliction, continuously or at intervals."
It is here that Dr. Bigelow differs radically from the advocates of free vivisection. To them there appears no reason why the science of physiology should not "move as freely" in experimentation as the sciences pertaining to any other subject. The closed laboratory evinces the desire and intention to "move freely," without criticism or restraint.
No physician in America of Dr. Bigelow's eminence has ever stated so distinctly the fact of torment in vivisection, and the reasons for its condemnation:
"A man about to be burned under a railroad car begs somebody to kill him; the Hindoo suttee has been abolished for its inhumanity; and yet it is a statement to be taken literally that a brief death by burning would be considered a happy release by a human being undergoing the experience of some of the animals who slowly die in a laboratory. Scientific vivisection has all the engrossing fascination of other physical sciences, BUT THE TRANSCENDENT TORTURE SOMETIMES INFLICTED HAS NO PARALLEL IN ANY OF THEM. As to its extent, we read that in course of ten years seventeen thousand dogs were dissected alive in one laboratory."
Why, then, does not a universal protest arise against such infamous cruelty? On this point Dr. Bigelow is very frank. It is because of the confidence which the general public places in the average scientist. Is he deserving of that implicit faith? Dr. Bigelow does not think so. He says:
"The difficulty is that the community, for want of time or opportunity themselves to investigate the subject, ARE WILLING TO RELY UPON THE DISCRETION OF SCIENTIFIC MEN. This is an error…. A recent distinguished writer, a good judge of men, makes the following observation: `Who can say why the votaries of science, though eminently kind in their social relations, are so angular of character? In my analysis of the scientific nature, I am constrained to associate with it (as compared with that of men who are more Christians than scientists) A CERTAIN HARDNESS, OR RATHER INDELICACY OF FEELING. They strike me as being … coolly indifferent to the warmer human feelings.'[1]
[1] Sir Henry M. Stanley, "In Darkest Africa."
"It should not for a moment be supposed that cultivation of the intellect leads a man to shrink from inflicting pain. Many educated men are no more humane—are, in fact, far less so—than many comparatively uneducated people…. The more eminent the vivisectionist, the more indifferent he usually is to inflicting pain; however cultivated his intellect, he is sometimes absolutely indifferent to it….
"But in order to oppose vivisection to best advantage, and especially lest he should place himself in a false position, the anti- vivisectionist should bear clearly in mind that what he opposes is PAINFUL vivisection only. For there have been wholly painless experiments upon living animals which have led to useful results. Some of the greatest discoveries in medical science were made with no pain whatever…. And yet they have been often and sophistically cited by the vivisector as plausible arguments for inflicting both excessive and useless pain. The fact that a few able men have made discoveries by certain painless experiments upon animals is used to justify the demonstration of torture to medical students (to whom it is as profitless as any medical information can be), and its practice by them. The discovery of anaesthesia has been time and again quoted in favour of vivisection. THIS IS SIMPLY PREPOSTEROUS. In making that discovery, the experiments from the beginning were painless, and were therefore wholly unobjectionable—as I happen to know, having seen the first of them. The same is true of Jenner's vaccination, which was a wholly painless discovery. Little pain was involved in all that was needed to discover the circulation of the blood, which was inferred from the valvular construction of the veins, and then easily substantiated…. The greatest prizes in the lottery of physiological and pathological discovery have involved little or no pain. But the usual and staple work of a so-called `laboratory of vivisection, physiology or pathology,' for the education and practice of medical students in the unrestricted cutting of living animals, and for the indiscriminate and endless repetition of experiments already tried, where a live dog can be bought and its living nerves dissected, … all this is a very different affair. A distinguished vivisector once remarked: `To us, pain is nothing.' When it is remembered that this pain may be, and sometimes intentionally is, of the most excruciating nature possible for human science to invent, and that in a large majority of instances it is to little or no purpose, the remark of this vivisector covers the objectionable ground."