I shall now relate as succinctly as possible the history of the Anti-vivisection Movement, so far as I have had to do with it. Of course an immense amount of work for the same end has been carried on all these twenty years by other Zoophilists with whom I have had no immediate connection, or perhaps cognizance of their labours, but without whose assistance the Society which I helped to found certainly could not have made as much way as it has done. I only presume here to tell the story of the Victoria Street Society, and the occurrences which led to its formation.
In the year 1863, there appeared in several English newspapers complaints of the cruelties practised in the Veterinary Schools at Alfort near Paris. The students were taught there, as in most other continental veterinary schools, to perform operations on living animals, and so to acquire, (at the cost, of course, of untold suffering to the victims,) the same manipulative skill which English students gain equally well by practising on dead carcases. Living horses were supplied to the Alfort students on which, at the time I speak of, they performed sixty operations apiece, including every one in common use, and many which were purely academic, being never employed in actual practice because the horse, after enduring them, becomes necessarily useless. These operations lasted eight hours, and the aspect of the mangled creatures, hoofless, eyeless, burned, gashed, eviscerated, skinned, mutilated in every conceivable way, appalled the visitors, who reported the facts, while it afforded, they said, a subject of merriment to the horde of students. The English Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals laudably exerted itself to stop these atrocities, and appealed to the Emperor to interfere; not, perhaps, very hopefully, since, as I have heard, Napoleon III. was in the habit of attending these hideous spectacles in his own imperial person on the Thursdays on which they took place. This circumstance, taken in connection with the Empress’ patronage of Bull-Fights, has made Sedan seem to me an event on which the animal world, at all events, has to be congratulated.
Some years later Mr. James Cowie took over to France an Appeal, signed by 500 English Veterinarians entreating their French colleagues to adopt the English practice of using only dead carcases for the exercises of students. Through this and other good offices it is understood that the number and severity of the operations performed at Alfort, and elsewhere in France, were then greatly reduced. Unhappily the humane regulations made in 1878 are now evaded, and the dreadful cruelties above described have been actually witnessed by Mr. Peabody and Dr. Baudry, in 1895.
On reading of these cruelties I wrote an article, The Rights of Man and the Claims of Brutes, which I hoped might help to direct public attention to them. In this paper I endeavoured to work out as best I could the ethical problem (which I at once perceived to be beset with difficulties) of a definition of the limits of human rights over animals. My article was published by Mr. Froude in Fraser’s Magazine for Nov., 1863, and was subsequently reprinted in my Studies Ethical and Social. It was, so far as I know the first effort made to deal with the moral questions involved in the torture of animals either for sake of scientific and therapeutic research, or for the acquirement of manipulative skill. In the 30 years which have elapsed since I wrote it I have seen reason to raise considerably the “claims” which I then urged on behalf of the brutes, but I observe that new recruits to our Anti-vivisection party usually begin exactly where I stood at that time, and announce their ideas to me as their mature conclusions.
The same month of November, 1863, in which my article, (written some weeks before, while I was ill and lame at Aix-les-Bains), appeared in Fraser, I was living near Florence, and was startled by hearing of similar cruelties practised at the Specola, where Prof. Schiff had his laboratory. My friend Miss Blagden and I were holding our usual weekly reception in Villa Brichieri on Bellosguardo, and we learned that many of our guests had been shocked by the rumours which had reached them. In particular the American physician who had accompanied Theodore Parker to Florence and attended him in his last days,—Dr. Appleton, of Harvard University,—told us that he himself had gone over Prof. Schiff’s laboratory, and had seen dogs, pigeons and other animals in a frightfully mangled and suffering state. A Tuscan officer had seen a cat so tortured that he forced Schiff to kill it. Some 50 or 60 letters had been (or were afterwards) lodged at the Mairie from neighbours complaining of the disturbance caused by the cries and moans of the victims in the Specola. After much conversation I asked, What could be done to check these systematic cruelties, which no Tuscan law could then touch in any way? It was suggested that a Memorial should be addressed to Prof. Schiff himself, urging him to spare his victims as much as possible. This Memorial I drafted at once, and it was translated into Italian and sent round Florence for signatures. Mrs. Somerville placed her name at the head of it; and through her earnest exertions and those of her daughters and of several other friends, the list of supporters soon became very weighty. Among the English signatures was those of Walter Savage Landor (who added some words so violent that I was obliged to suppress them!); and among the Italians almost the whole historic aristocracy of old Florence,—Corsi’s and Corsini’s, and Aldobrandini’s and Strozzi’s, and a hundred more, the reading of whose names recalled Medicean times. In all, there were 783 signatories. Very few of them were of the mezzo-ceto class, and none belonged to the (Red) Republican party. Schiff was himself a “Red,” and, as such, he might, apparently, commit any cruelty he thought fit, inasmuch as he and the other vivisectors (we were told by a lady prominent in that party) were seeking “the religion of the future”—in the brains and entrails of the tortured beasts! The same lady expressed to me her wish that “every animal in creation should be immolated, if only to discover a single fact of science.” Another Englishwoman (also married to a foreigner) wrote to the Daily News to praise Schiff for “actively pursuing Vivisection.”
The Memorial, as often happens, did no direct good; Professor Schiff tossing it aside, and politely qualifying the signatories, (in the Nazione newspaper,) as “un tas de Marquis.” But it certainly caused the subject to be much discussed, and doubtless prepared the way for the complaints and lawsuits concerning the “nuisances” of the moaning dogs, which eventually made Florence an unpleasant abode for Professor Schiff. He retreated thence to Geneva in 1877. The Florentine Società Protettrice degli Animali was founded by Countess Baldelli in 1873, and has led the agitation there against Vivisection ever since.
Meanwhile on the presentation of the Memorial, Professor Schiff wrote a letter in the Nazione (the chief newspaper of Florence) denying the facts mentioned in the letter of the official Correspondent of the Daily News, and challenging the said correspondent to come forward and make good the statement. I instantly wrote a letter saying that I was the Daily News’ Correspondent in Florence; that the letter complained of was mine; and that for verification of my assertions therein I appended a full and signed statement by Dr. Appleton of what he had himself witnessed in the Specola.
It was rather difficult for me then to believe that this letter of mine (in Italian of course) duly signed and authenticated with name, date and place, was refused publication in the paper wherein I had been challenged to come forward! On learning this amazing fact, I requested Dr. Appleton to go down again to Florence and ask the editor of the Nazione to publish my letter if in no other way, at least as a paid advertisement. The answer made by the editor to Dr. Appleton was, that it might be inserted, but only among the advertisements in certain columns of the paper where no decent reader would look for it. N.B.—the Nazione replenished its exchequer by the help of that class of notices which are declined by every reputable English newspaper. After this Dr. Appleton went in despair to Professor Schiff himself, and told him he was bound in honour, (seeing he had made the challenge to us,) to compel the editor to print our answer. The learned and scientific gentleman shrugged his shoulders and laughed in the face of the American who could imagine him to be so simple!
I left Florence soon after this first brush with the demon of Vivisection, but retained (as will easily be understood) very strong feelings on the subject.
At a meeting of the British Association in Liverpool in 1870 a Committee was appointed to consider the subject of “Physiological Experimentation,” and their Report was published in the Medical Times and Gazette, Feb. 25th, 1871; and in British Assoc. Reports, 1871, p. 144. It consists of the following four Rules or Recommendations on the subject of Vivisection:—