[1] Editorial in New York Times, January 28, 1913.
Now, this editorial utterance is not exceptionally misleading. In scores of newspapers throughout the United States just as ignorant and as prejudiced statements find editorial expression every year. It aims to justify the closing of the laboratory to all investigations whatever, and it attempts to do this by misstatements regarding historical facts. It tells us of an "outcry raised against the English doctors in the early seventies," forgetting to mention the attacks made by the British Medical Journal, the Lancet, and other medical periodicals, against the terrible cruelties of the practice long before the "early seventies." The Royal Commission of 1875, we are told, "found no material abuse." What is meant by the qualifying adjective "material"? Let us see how the inquiry impressed an impartial observer, the Lord Chief Justice of England.
"Is, then, the present law reasonable? It is the result of a most careful inquiry, conducted by eminent men in 1875, men certainly neither weak sentimentalists nor ignorant and prejudiced humanitarians, men among whom are to be found Mr. Huxley and Mr. Erichsen, Mr. Hutton, and Sir John Karslake. There men unanimously recommended legislation, and legislation, in some important respects, more stringent than Parliament thought fit to pass. They recommend it on a body of evidence at once interesting and terrible. Interesting, indeed, it is from the frank apathy to the suffering of animals, however awful, avowed by some of the witnesses; for the noble humanity of some few; for the curious ingenuity with which others avoided the direct and verbal approval of horrbile cruelties which yet they refused to condemn…. Terrbile the evidence is for the details of torture, of mutilation, of life slowly destroyed in torment, or skilfully prolonged for the infliction of the same or diversified agonies, for days, for months, in some cases for more than a year."[1]
[1] Fortnightly Review, February, 1882.
This was the view of the Lord Chief Justice of England of that day; and yet the unknown scribe, writing in a New York newspaper, without adducing a particle of evidence, would have his readers to believe that the Commission of 1875 "FOUND NO MATERIAL ABUSE."
Equally unfair and inaccurate is the editorial reference to the report of the Royal Commission of 1906. The conclusions set forth in this report cannot possibly be stated in a single sentence without leaving essential matters unstated. The six principal recommendations of the Royal Commission were all in the direction of reform, AND OF REFORM THAT IMPLIED THE EXISTENCE OF ABUSES that requierd change. The subject has been treated in a previous chapter, and need not occupy attention again.
But the worst misstatement in this editorial intended to incite prejudice against any inquiry in the State of New York was that which referred to the effect of the English law governing the regulation of vivisection. It is now nearly forty years since this law came into force. The editor speaks of it as "the calamitous measure of 1876"; and after declaring that "the doctors of England have for a generation had to flee to the Continent to prosecute their necessary labours," asks his readers whether "the experience of Great Britain is to be repeeated in the United States?" If this assertion were true, then assuredly the law would have been regarded with detestation and abhorrence by the medical profession of England, and by the teachers of medical science throughout the land.
Now, it so happens that the impression given is wholly false. It did not originate with the editorial writer; for many years the assumed evil results of the English law have been held up for our warning by those who desire a free hand in vivisection in America. But is it true that the law of 1876 is regarded in England as a calamitous measure, which Parliament should hasten to repeal? On the contrary, so far from being thus regarded, a large majority of the representatives of medical science in England are in favour of the law. Of course, every authority can suggest modifications for its betterment, but the principle which underlies the measure, of inspection of laboratories and the restriction of vivisection, they do not condemn. That it is a perfect measure, the leaders of the medical profession do not assert, but they evidently consider it as better than no law at all. It certainly is not considered, as the American editor calls it, "the calamitous measure of 1876."
The proofs of this attitude of the English medical profession may be found in the evidence given before the Royal Commission on Vivisection, the final report of which appeared in 1912. The misapprehension concerning the working of the English law is so widespread in America and is so sedulously cultivated by those who oppose any reform, that it seems worth while to show just how the law is regarded in the land to which it applies.
Sir Douglas Powell, President of the Royal College of Physicians, the physician to the King, and Senior Physician to Guy's Hospital, was asked whether the laws at present governing vivisection "have been in any way noxious to Science?" "No, I do not think so," was his reply. "I think, as administered at the present time, they have not interfered with the advance of Science." Sir Henry Morris, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, being asked substantially the same question, replied: "I think the present Act of 1876, under which vivisectional experiments are done, WAS AMPLY PROTECTIVE AGAINST CRUELTY, AND SUFFICIENTLY FREE AND LIBERAL FOR THE DUE PROSECUTION OF PROPER SCIENTIFIC AND PHYSIOLOGICAL INQUIRY." Considering their source, are not these remarkable testimonies concerning what is the fashion in America to designate as "the calamitous measure of 1876"?