And fifty years hence, if pressed for the proof of great achievement, of grand discoveries, what evidence will then be produced by the vivisection laboratory? How much of wealth will have been devoted to fruitless explorations in desert regions? What vast fortunes will have been paid out to professional explorers, whose work will have been in vain? What proofs will the laboratory then be able to adduce of "priceless discoveries" made within its walls, proofs resting not upon the heated enthusiasm of the experimenter, but demonstrated by statistical evidence of a decreased mortaility from the scourges of disease? THAT is the test of utility, which may one day be applied not merely to Mr. Rockefeller's creation, but to every laboratory in England and America. Then, perhaps, it may not suffice to set forth discoveries, as useless to mankind, as would be the demosntration of gold and silver in the moon. Before the tribunal of an intelligent public opinion,—not of our day, but of some distant epoch, the justification of secret vivisection will assuredly be demanded. Will it be given? Against the vast cost in money, cost in depravation of the instinct of compassion, cost in the lessened sensitiveness of young men and young women to the infliction of torment, cost in the seeming necessity of defending and justifying cruelty, cost in the temptation to exaggerate facts, cost in the countless hecatombs of victims, non-existent to-day, yet doomed to perish in pain of which no record and no use can be found,—against all this, what profit will be adduced? Something? Undoubtedly. BUT SUFFICIENT TO BALANCE THE COST? When that accounting is made, will the enlightened conscience of humanity then grant condonation, because of great achievement, of all that will have been done in the name of research, and of demonstration of well-known facts? I cannot imagine it.
What can we venture to forecast regarding the future of medical school vivisections, made for the one purpose of fixing facts in memory? No one qualified by any experience in teaching can doubt the value of certain demonstrations. So far as they are performed upon animals made absolutely unconscious to any senstation of pain, it is difficult to suggest a condemnation that does not equally apply to the killing of animals for food or raiment. But the medical school laboratory seems to shrink from the public scrutiny. If there were no need for secrecy, is it likely that every attempt to penetrate the seclusion of the laboratory would be so strenuously opposed? OF WHAT IS THE LABORATORY AFRAID? If the present methods of demonstration or teaching of physiology are such as would meet general approval so far as their painlessness is concerned, why fear to make them known? On the other hand, if animals are subjected to prolonged and extreme torment for the illustration of well-known and accepted facts; if students not only witness, but are sometimes required to perform for themselves experiments as agonizing and as useless as any that ever disgraced the torture-chambers of Magendie, we can well understand why immunity from criticism can only be secured by concealment and secrecy. Opposition to publicity or to investigation by the Government is quite conceivable, if there be something which must be hidden out of sight.
In the long-run, the policy of concealment must fail, and the whole truth be known. Then, indeed, we may hope for the beginning of reform. That fifty or a hundred years hence, all utilization of animals, whether for food or raiment or scientific ends will have absolutely ceased in England and America I am not able to believe. But I am very sure that before this century closes, the subjection of animals to pain for the demonstration of well-known facts will have come to an end; that agonizing experiments will have ceased; that every laboratory wherein animals are ever used for experimental purposes will be open to inspection "from cellar to garret," as Professor Bigelow of Harvard Medical School said they should be; and that except as a shield for crime, the secrecy which now enshrouds the practice will for ever have disappeared.
We are living to-day in a period of unrest and change, such as the world has never known before. A new social consciousness has awakened throughout the civilized world, a feeling that for those who are to come after us, life should be happier and better than it is. Humanity is advancing toward its ideals by leaps and bounds, where once it slowly crept. Every social problem, from the prevention of cruelty, the suppression of vice, the rescue of the submerged, to the abolition of poverty itself, is to-day more in the thought of humanity than ever before in the history of the world. We are but just beginning to learn our duties to human beings of other races; may we not be assured that the more sensitive conscience of the future will define with authority, our duties to the humbler sharers of this mysterious gift of life? Already, Science has told us, that far in the past, we had the same origin; and surely, when some higher ideal than utility to ourselves, shall dominate human conduct, there will be a new conception of JUSTICE toward every sentient being. It may mean extinction of species; but it will notmean their torment. You and I cannot hope for life long enough to see the realization of that dream. And yet, sometimes I have wondered whether it be so far distant as I have feared. But a little while ago, who of us could have imagined that in our day, the Government of the United States would listen to the cries of little birds, starving on their nests in the swamps of Florida, and prohibit the importation of the egret plumes? How much of hopefulness for the final triumph of th eprinciples of humaneness lies in the passage of such a law!
I fancy that one day, all noxious animals, and especially those which prery upon other creatures, will largely, if not entirely, disappear. It is calculated that ever grown lion in South Africa kills for food, every year, between 200 and 300 harmless animals, and each one of which is as much entitled as the lion to the happiness of existence. In great museums to-day, we see the remains of creatures, like the sabre-toothed tiger, that lived probably, over a million years ago. In a century or two, hence, the skeletons of the panther, the tiger, the leopard and the lion, will be found in the same halls of science, with those of other extinct species, that could exist only at the expense of others' lives.
Some day the question of vivisection will be merged in the larger problem, the adjustment of man's relations to animals on the basis of JUSTICE. We who are assembled here to-day, certainly are not forgetful of other cruelties than those which pertain to animal experimentation. In the awful torment endured for days by animals caught in steel traps in order that their death may contribute to the adornment of women and the luxury of men; in the killing of seals, accompanied by the starvation of their young; in the great variety of blood-sports; in the slaughter of animals, destined for human food, in all these, as well as in the cruelties that have pertained to physiological inquiries, we see exemplified man's present indifference to the highest ethical ideals. We do not oppose one phase of cruelty; WE OPPOSE THEM ALL. And we may be assured, that when the day dawns in which humanity shall seek to govern conduct by the ideal of universal justice, then in some more blessed age than ours, the evils of vivisection not only, but all phases of cruelty and injustice will for ever cease.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FINAL PHASE: EXPERIMENTATION ON MAN
There is one phase of scientific research which cannot be passed in silence. It is experimentation upon human beings. That "no experiments on animals are absolutely satisfactory unless confirmed upon man himself," a well-known vivisector has asserted; and no one acquainted with the trend of events, could doubt the coming of a time when opportunity for such "confirmation" would be given, and when a more precious and a less costly "material" than domestic animals would be used for investigations of this kind. Writing many years ago, a distinguished jurist declared that "to whomsoever in the cause of Science, the agony of a dying rabbit is of no consequence, it is likely that the old or worthless man will soon be a thing which in the cause of learning, may well be sacrificed."
It is necessary at the outset, however, to draw a careful distinction between those phases of experimentation upon man which seem to be legitimate and right, and those other pases of inquiry which are clearly immoral. It is, of course, to be expected that certain experimenters upon human being will endeavour to confound both phases of inquiry in the public estimation; and yet there is no difficulty in drawing clear distinctions between them. Let us see what differences may be perceived between the experimentation upon human beings which is laudable and right, and the other phase of inquiry which Society should condemn.