Of the absolute uselessness of the vast majority of these experiments much might be said, but it is aside from this inquiry. The question of utility is not here raised. The one matter of inquiry is the existence of pain.
If a vast number of the experiments recorded may have involved the keenest agony of the victims, how are we to explain the repeated assertions that sensation was absolutely removed? Among antivivisectionists there are those who belive that any human being who could thus subject animals to torment would not find it impossible to deny the fact. Such explanation implies an inveracity which it is not necessary to impute. Mankind is still liable to error; the false deductions of honest men have more than once led to mistaken affirmations of facts; and the most illustrious scientist that ever lived can hardly claim infallibility in matters of opinion. A distinguished philosopher and vivisector of three hundred years ago, Rene Descartes, put forth the theory that animals, being without souls, cannot suffer pain, and that their cries under vivisection were simply as the whirring of wheels in an intricate piece of machinery. We can easily imagine a modern follower of Descartes declaring, as the philosopher would have done, that "NO SUFFERING WAS FELT." A professor of physiology in Harvard Medical School, in course of an address before a State medical society, laid down the theory that "it is ENTIRELY IMPOSSIBLE to draw conclusions with regard to the sensations of animals by an effort to imagine what our own would be under similar circumstances"; and when a vivisector has reached the stage where he can hold that belief, he may define pain as something pertaining only to human beings, and feel himself justified in declaring that "VIVISECTION OF ANIMALS NEVER CAUSES PAIN," according to his definition of the word. It is well for the world that with this theory the vast majority of thinking men and women have no sympathy whatever. The organized efforts for the protection of animals from cruelty have no meaning if animals are without capacity for that anguish which cruelty implies. We believe, on the contrary, that many, if not all, of the higher species of animals, especially those nearest to man in structure and intelligence, receive, when subjected to the torment of fire or steel, precisely the same sensations that, under a like infliction, a human being would suffer. At any rate, if doubt be possible, should they not have the benefit of it?
If one were asked whether he surely could demonstrate the emotions of any animal made incapable of movement, fixed immovably as in a vice, and subjected to the stimulation of fire, he might confess that inference and not proof was all he could offer. But if one goes farther, and inquires whether in any of the experiments recorded in this chapter there was evoked any sign of sensibility which delicate instruments could detect and record, then, assuredly, we are on safe ground. With startling uniformity we find recorded by the experimenters themselves the fluctuations of blood-pressure following the stimulation of exposed nerves, the crushing of pawes, the burning of the feet, the scalding with boiling water, and other mutilations. What is their significance? If, as Sir Lauder Brunton tells us, "the irritation of sensory nerves tends to cause contraction of blood- vessels AND TO RAISE THE BLOOD-PRESSURE"; if, as Straus affirms, "PAIN INCREASES BLOOD-PRESSURE," so that in a healthy person the pressure is increased even by pinching of the skin; if, as the physiologist Dalton declares, the irritation of any of the sensitive nerves induces a constriction of bloodvessels indicated by icreased arterial pressure; if the professor of physiology at University College, London, being asked if there were any means, other than the cries or struggles of an animal, by which one could tell if the anaesthesia of an animal was passing off, answered with scientific accuracy when he replied, "YAou can tell by the blood-pressure," adding that when sensibility was returning "THE PRESSURE GOES UP"; if it be true, as Professor Dixon, of King's College, London, told the Royal Commissioners, "you can see whether you are giving enough (of the anaesthetic) BY LOOKING AT THE BLOOD-PRESSURE"; if the professor of physiology at Oxford was correct in stating that "A RISE OF BLOOD-PRESSURE" would tell an experimenter whether or not an animal undergoing vivisection was feeling pain, even though curare had rendered it so helpless that it could not even wink an eye, and that this rise of blood-pressure was the "ONE OBVIOUS WAY" of determining such sensibility; if we may depend upon the evidence of the professor of physiology at the University of Cambridge, that "PAIN WOULD CAUSE A RISE OF BLOOD-PRESSURE"; if the agreement of all these scientific authorities concerning the rise of blood-pressure as an indication of pain or returning sensibility can be accepted as scientific truth—then may we not be sure that all of the living animals whose vivisection we have here reviewed, in whose bodies, by fire and steel and every phase of mutilation, there was so constantly elicited this RISE OF BLOOD-PRESSURE, cannot be said to have attained a painless death? "A man about to be burned under a railway car begs somebody to kill him, yet iti s a statemnet to be taken literally, that a brief death by burning would be considered a happy release by a human being undergoing the experiences of some of the animals that slowly die in a laboratory." So wrote Dr. Bigelow of Harvard University, the most eminent surgeon that New England has yet produced; and were he living to-day, it is not improbable that he would point to some of the experiments here reviewed as examples of the vivisections he intended to condemn. It may be that although the present generation be indifferent, posterity will not condone, and that one day it will hold up some of the experiments of the twentieth century as involving the most prolonged, the most useless, the most terrible, the most cruel torments, that the annals of animal vivisection have ever supplied.
CHAPTER XIII
WHAT IS VIVISECTION REFORM?
Every reflecting man must recognize that the settlement of the vivisection question is a problem that must find its solution at some period in future rather than to-day. But the duty of the hour remains the same. Admitting the existence of the wrong, what can we do to promote reform? What should we ask with the hope that popular judgment will gradually come to approve? How may we be faithful to that ideal of justice toward our inferior brethren, which underlies all humanitarian effort, and lack nothing in fidelity to Science to whose achievements we reverently look for the amelioration of the human race? There are those who would oppose the slightest use of animals for any scientific purpose whatever. There are others who would grant to the vivisector the secrecy and silence, the complete irresponsibility and unbounded freedom which he demands as his right. There are those to whom a middle course seems the only one leading to ultimate reform. What is the most reasonable attitude toward the laboratory and its claims possible to an honest and clear-minded investigator who is anxious to protect all living creatures from cruel acts, and equally concerned in the conservation of every legitimate privilege which Science can claim?
Such a man stands, let us say, before some great biological laboratory, richly endowed, slendidly equipped, and in the present enjoyment of freedom that is without bounds, and in a secrecy that to-day is as complete as can be imagined. What can he learn with certainty of what goes on within? If he hears claims of superlative gains by the experiments there carried on, how is he to weigh and decide their value? If there is cruelty behind those barred doors, how is he to prevent its constant recurrence? What, in short, should be the reasonable attitude of every intelligent man or woman anxious to know the truth and to promote reform of abuse?
For many years I have insisted upon the necessity for a certain degree of scepticism regarding every claim put forth by the laboratory, unsupported by convincing proofs. We may judge the future by the past. Has there not been evinced a disposition to exaggerate achievement, to deny secrecy, to mislead regarding the infliction of pain? No intelligent person, it seems to me, can study the vidence carefully, year after year, without reaching this attitude of distrust and doubt in a great number of instances. This by no means indicates that every claim of utility is false. A great many statements are accurate. Some claims will be partly true, but magnified by the enthusiasm of youth far beyond what devotion to a strict veracity would require. And some claims may be doubted altogether. It may be doubted whether any reliabce whatever can be placed upon the assertions or protesting denials of any profession vivisector now drawing a large income from the vivisection of animals, whose interests would possibly be affeted by failure to produce startling results, or by removal of the secrecy that now enshrouds the laboratory. The defenders of absolute licence have not told us the truth on every occasion it has been sought from them, and it must be gained from other sources and by other means.
It would seem, therefore, that the first step toward reform must be the creation of a public sentiment, eager, not so much to pass condemnation as to know the facts. That the laboratory, of its own accord and initiative, will ever open its doors and give to the world a complete knowledge of what goes on within its sacred precincts, is more than we can expect. The doors will open only when public opinion so demands. The laboratory is perfectly aware of this. With ever yenergy that such consciousness gives, it will fight to keep everything that it now hides from the light of day. Take, for example, the question of vivisection in our institutions of learning. To what extent is experimentation carried on therein merely to demonstrate what every student knows in advance? It would appear that certain lines of experiment are now permitted in such institutions which hardly more than a generation ago were condemned as cruel by the medical profession of Great Britain. We ought to inquire why it is that experiments which scarcely thirty years ago were thus condemned, are less abhorrent to-day. The removal of secrecy is the first and most important step toward any true reform.
It is the fashion of certain apologists for vivisection without control to represent their opponents as guided by sentiment alone. Perhaps it would be well to quote the opinions of one whose work for science should absolve him from that imputation.