"He was driven to Toulouse." The phrase is worth remembering. Fifteen years later the author of this statement appeared before the Senate Committee at Washington, D.C., to oppose a Bill regulating the practice of animal experimentation in the District of Columbia. In course of his address, delivered February 21, 1900, he again repeated the story:
"When Lord Lister, whose name is the most illustrious in the history of surgery, wanted to carry out some further experiments in Great Britain, where, as Dr. Leffingwell has expressed it, the `very moderate restriction of the law applies'—experiments for the direct benefit of humanity—HE WAS OBLIGED TO GO TO FRANCE TO CARRY ON HIS EXPERIMENTS for the benefit of the human race BECAUSE HE COULD NOT DO IT IN ENGLAND!"
Can one imagine any argument against the legal regulation of vivisection more weighty than this assertion, that the most illustrious man in English medicine was "obliged to go to France" because he could not make his researches on English soil? Could doubt of the story exist when it was related by the President of the American Medical Association before a committee of the United States Senate? This story alone may have indused the rejection of the proposed legislation.
The legend again found expression nearly three years later, in a letter written by the same person to Senator Gallinger, and telegraphed to the newspaper press throughout the country. In the Philadelphia Medical Journal of December 13, 1902, it appeared as follows:
"If the laws which you and your friends advocate were in force, the conditions for scientific investigation in this country would be quite as deplorable as those in England. For example, when Lord Lister, who has revolutionized modern surgery, largely as a result of such experiments, wished to discover possibly some still better way of operating by further experiments, HE WAS OBLIGED TO GO TO TOULOUSE TO CARRY THEM OUT, as the vexatious restrictions of the law in England practically made it impossible for him to continue there these eminently humane experiments."
Nearly a quarter of a century after the first appearance of this story, we meet it again. In an article entitled "Recent Surgical Progress," appearing in Harper's Monthly for April, 1909, we are told the same tale:
"To complete his beneficent work, LORD LISTER WAS COMPELLED TO GO TO
FRANCE, BY REASON OF THE STRINGENCY OF THE ENGLISH ANTIVIVISECTION
LAWS."
The law of 1876 has now multiplied into "laws" which obstruct and hinder even the researches of a Lister. And yet two years before, in his testimony before the Royal Commission, the President of the Royal College of Surgeons in England—Sir Henry Morris—had stated: "I think the present Act of 1875, under which vivisectional experiments are done, was amply protective against cruelty to animals AND SUFFICIENTLY FREE AND LIBERAL FOR THE DUE PROSECUTION OF PROPER SCIENTIFIC AND PHYSIOLOGICAL INQUIRY."[1] But of the readers of Harper's Monthly probably not one in ten thousand had ever seen this evidence in the Vivisection Report.
[1] Minutes of Evidence, Question 7,805.
It will be seen that no two of these accounts are precisely the same.
They agree, however, in stating that one of the most distinguished of
English scientists was compelled to leave England in order to do his
work; he "was driven to Toulouse."