This is a most remarkable recommendation. Can it imply anything else than distrust of the experimenter?
THIRD. "STRICTER PROVISIONS REGARDING THE PRACTICE OF PITHING." The operation must be complete; performed only under an adequate anaesthetic; and by a licensed person when made on a warm-blooded animal.
FOURTH. "ADDITIONAL RESTRICTIONS REGULATING THE PAINLESS DESTRUCTION
OF ANIMALS which show signs of suffering after the experiment."
To this recommendation and its suggested amendment by three of the
Commissioners, reference has already been made.
FIFTH. "A CHANGE IN THE METHOD OF SELECTING and in the constitution of the Advisory body to the Secretary of State."
SIXTH. "SPECIAL RECORDS BY EXPERIMENTERS IN CERTAIN CASES." On this point we have seen that three of the Commissioners went yet farther, and believed that in ALL cases of painful experiment—and, possibly, in all cases whatsoever, such reports should be made.
It is now upwards of thirty-five years since the Act regulating the practice of vivisection in England came into effect. During all that period, in the United States, the law has never ceased to be an object of misrepresentation and attack. Before Legislatures and Senate Committees, on the platform and in the press, by men of good reputation but associated with laboratory interests, the English law has been denounced as a hindrance to scientific progress and a warning against similar legislation in the United States. And yet nothing can be more evident that all these attacks were based upon ignorance and misstatement. We find a Royal Commission in England, composed almost entirely of scientific men, everyone of them favourable to animal experimentation, devoting years to an inquiry concerning not vivisection only, but the working of the law by which it is regulated. And the conclusions reached are in every respect opposed to the statements made by the laboratory interests here. THEY FULLY ENDORSE THE PRINCIPLE OF STATE REGULATION, WHICH EVERYWHERE IN AMERICA IS SO STRENUOUSLY OPPOSED. But this is not all. Every recommendation made for modification of the Act is in the direction of animal protection, and toward an increased stringency of the regulations relating to animal experimentation. In not a single instance was there recommendation that the regulations should be less stringent; not an instance in which it was suggested that privileges of the vivisector should be enlarged. That this should be the result of an inquiry in this twentieth century, extending over five years, is remarkable indeed. Perhaps there is no reason for surprise that all these conclusions of the Royal Commission were never made known to the American public by the periodicals of the day. Is it possible for anyone to believe that such conclusions would ever have been attained if the denunciations of State regulation of vivisection, proceeding from the American laboratory, had been grounded in truth?
CHAPTER XI
THE GREAT ANAESTHETIC DELUSION
A popular delusion is often the basis of a great abuse. If at one time witches were burnt by countless thousands, it was at a period when implicit faith in the reality of diabolic conspiracy was undisturbed by sceptical questionings. Human slavery existed for centuries, not only because it was profitable, but because it came to be regarded as the only conceivable permanent relation between the negro and the white man. The Spanish Inquisition existed for ages, because the pious Spaniard could not believe that the good men who upheld, encouraged, and promoted its activity could be liable to error, or actuated by other than the loftiest principles. Men find themselves deluded not merely because of their faith in the integrity of their fellow-men, but because they have also extended that faith to the accuracy of their opinions.