I. Any experiment or operation whatever upon a living animal, during which by recognized anæsthetics it is made completely insensible to pain, should be permitted.
This does not necessarily imply the taking of life. Should a surgeon, for example, desire to cause a fracture or tie an artery, and then permit the animal to recover so as to note subsequent effects, there is no reason why the privilege should be refused. The discomfort following such an operation would be inconsiderable. This permission should not extend to experiments purely physiological and having no definite relation to surgery; nor to mutilation from which recovery is impossible, and prolonged pain certain as a sequence.
II. Any experiment performed thus, under complete anæsthesia, though involving any degree of mutilation, if concluded by the extinction of life before consciousness is regained should also be permitted.
To object to killing animals for scientific purposes while we continue to demand their sacrifice for food, is to seek for the appetite a privilege we refuse the mind. It is equally absurd to object to vivisection because it dissects, or "cuts up." If no pain be felt, why is it worse to cut up a dog, than a sheep or an ox? Such experiments as the foregoing might be permitted to any extent desired in our medical schools.
Far more difficult is the question of painful experimentation. Unfortunately, it so happens that the most attractive original investigations are largely upon the nervous system, involving the consciousness of pain as a requisite to success. Toward this class of experiments the State should act with caution and firmness. It seems to me that the following restrictions are only just.
III. In view of the great cost in suffering, as compared with the slight profit gained by the student, the repetition, for purposes of class instruction of any experiment involving pain to a vertebrate animal should be forbidden by law.
IV. In view of the slight gain to practical medicine resulting from innumerable past experiments of this kind, a painful experiment upon a living vertebrate animal should be permitted solely for purposes of original investigation, and then only under the most rigid surveillance, and preceded by the strictest precautions. For every experiment of this kind the physiologist should be required to obtain special permission from a State board, specifying on application (1) the object of the proposed investigation, (2) the nature and method of the operation, (3) the species of animal to be sacrificed, and (4) the shortest period during which pain will probably be felt. An officer of the State should be given an opportunity to be present; and a report made, both of the length of time occupied, and the knowledge, if any, gained thereby. If these restrictions are made obligatory by statute, and their violation made punishable by a heavy fine, such experiments will be generally performed only when absolutely necessary for purposes of scientific research.
In few matters is there greater necessity for careful discrimination than in everything pertaining to this subject. The attempt has been made in this paper to indicate how far the State—leaning to mercy's side—may sanction a practice often so necessary and useful, always so dangerous in its tendencies. That is a worthy ideal of conduct which seeks
"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."
Is not this a sentiment in which even science may fitly share? Are we justified in neglecting the evidence she offers, purchased in the past at such immeasurable agonies, and in demanding that year after year new victims shall be subjected to torture, only to demonstrate what none of us doubt? That is the chief question. For, if all compromise be persistently rejected by physiologists, there is danger that some day, impelled by the advancing growth of humane sentiment, society may confound in one common condemnation all experiments of this nature, and make the whole practice impossible, except in secret and as a crime.