In view of the foregoing quotations, it would appear almost impossible for Dr. Bigelow's position to be misrepresented or misunderstood. He cannot be regarded as an antivivisectionist, for he repeatedly states that to painless experiments upon animals no objection exists. But of the reality of the torment, and of the blunted sensibility of the professional tormenter, he seems to have no doubt. How may reform be promoted? By legal supervision and regulation. A few further extracts from Dr. Bigelow's writings will bring these points into prominence:
"There can be no question that the practice of vivisection HARDENS THE SENSIBILITY OF THE OPERATOR, and begets indifference to the infliction of pain, as well as great carelessness in judging of its severity.
"Indeed, vivisection will always be the better for vigilant supervision, and for whatever outside pressure can be brought to bear against it. Such pressure will never be too great, nor will it retard progress a hair's-breadth in the hands of that very limited class who are likely materially to advance knowledge by its practice.
"The ground for public supervision is that vivisection, immeasurably beyond any other pursuit, involves the infliction of torture to little or no purpose. Motive apart, painful vivisection differs from that usual cruelty of which the law takes absolute cognizance mainly in being practised by an educated class, who having once become callous to its objectionable features, find its pursuit an interesting occupation under the name of science. In short, though vivisection, like slavery, may embrace within its practice what is unobjectionable, what is useful, what is humane, and even what is commendable, it may also cover what is nothing less than hideous. I use this word in no sensational sense, and appeal to those who are familiar with some of the work in laboratories and out of them to endorse it as appropriate in this connection….
"`But burning was useless, while vivisection is profitable.' Here we reach the kernel of the argument of the pain-inflicting vivisector. The reply is that by far the larger part of vivisection is as useless as was an auto da fe'. It does not lead to discovery. The character of the minds of most of those who usually practise it makes this hardly a possibility. Real discoverers are of a different texture of mind, which you cannot create by schools; nor can you retard their progress by restrictions, put on all you may. But restrictions will and should cut off THE HORDE OF DULL TORTURERS WHO FOLLOW IN THE WAKE OF THE DISCOVERER, actuated by a dozen different motives, from a desire for research down to the wish to gratify a teacher or to comply with a school requisition."
How carefully and how clearly the writer has phrased his distinctions between what in vivisection is right and wrong! In all the literature of advocacy for free and unrestricted vivisection can we find anything resembling it? Certainly, I know no writer favourable to unlimited experimentation who has been equally fair. One surgical vivisectionist is fond of dividing the class interested in discussion of vivisection as "Friends of Research," and "Foes of Research," ascribing to the first all the virtues of good sense, and to the latter all the folly that belongs to ignorance. In which class, we may well wonder, would he place the first American surgeon of his time because he objected only to cruelty and abuse?
To Dr. Bigelow the legal supervision of the laboratory seemed the one practical method by which cruelty might be somewhat restrained, because in this way he believed the public would obtain some knowledge of the practice which is now withheld. He says:
"In order that painful vivisection may be as nearly as possible suppressed, not only by public opinion, but by law, IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT PUBLIC OPINION SHOULD BE FREQUENTLY INFORMED OF WHAT IT IS AND MAY BE. Here lies the work of the antivivisectionist. Further, every laboratory ought to be open to some supervising legal authority competent to determine that it is conducted from roof to cellar on the humanest principles, in default of which it should be, as slavery has been, uncompromisingly prohibited wherever law can accomplish this result."
Is the cruelty of unrestricted and unregulated vivisection a reality or a myth? Of his own views on this question we can have no doubt. He says: