(Sir William Fergusson, F.R.S.,
Serjeant-Surgeon to the Queen.)
This Memorial having a certain importance in the history of our movement, I quote the principal paragraphs here:
“The practice of Vivisection has received of recent years enormous extension. Instead of an occasional experiment, made by a man of high scientific attainment, to determine some important problem of physiology, or to test the feasibility of a new surgical operation, it has now become the everyday exercise of hundreds of physiologists and young students of physiology throughout Europe and America. In the latter country, lecturers in most of the schools employ living animals instead of dead for ordinary illustrations, and in Italy one physiologist alone has for some years past experimented on more than 800 dogs annually. A recent correspondence in the Spectator shows that many English physiologists contemplate the indefinite multiplication of such vivisections; some (as Dr. Pye-Smith) defending them as illustrations of lectures, and some (as Mr. Ray-Lankester) frankly avowing that one experiment must lead to another ad infinitum. Every real or supposed discovery of one physiologist immediately causes the repetition of his experiments by scores of students. The most numerous and important of these researches being connected with the nervous system, the use of complete anæsthetics is practically prohibited. Even when employed during an operation, the effect of the anæsthetic of course shortly ceases, and, for the completion of the experiment, the animal is left to suffer the pain of the laceration to which it has been subjected. Another class of experiments consists in superinducing some special disease; such as alcoholism (tried by M. Magnan on dogs at Norwich), and the peculiar malady arising from eating diseased pork (Trichiniasis), superinduced on a number of rabbits in Germany by Dr. Virchow. How far public opinion is becoming deadened to these practices is proved by the frequent recurrence in the newspapers of paragraphs simply alluding to them as matters of scientific interest involving no moral question whatever. One such recently appeared in a highly respectable Review, detailing a French physiologist’s efforts, first to drench the veins of dogs with alcohol, and then to produce spontaneous combustion. Such experiments as these, it is needless to remark, cannot be justified as endeavours to mitigate the sufferings of humanity, and are rather to be characterised as gratifications of the ‘dilettantism of discovery.’
“The recent trial at Norwich has established the fact that, in a public Medical Congress, and sanctioned by a majority of the members, an experiment was tried which has since been formally pronounced by two of the most eminent surgeons in the kingdom to have been ‘cruel and unnecessary.’ We have, therefore, too much reason to fear that in laboratories less exposed to public view, and among inconsiderate young students, very much greater abuses take place which call for repression.
“It is earnestly urged by your Memorialists that the great and influential Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals may see fit to undertake the task (which appears strictly to fall within its province) of placing suitable restrictions on this rapidly increasing evil. The vast benefit to the cause of humanity which the Society has in the past half century effected, would, in our humble estimation, remain altogether one-sided and incomplete; if, while brutal carters and ignorant costermongers are brought to punishment for maltreating the animals under their charge, learned and refined gentlemen should be left unquestioned to inflict far more exquisite pain upon still more sensitive creatures; as if the mere allegation of a scientific purpose removed them above all legal or moral responsibility.
“We therefore beg respectfully to urge on the Committee the immediate adoption of such measures as may approve themselves to their judgment as most suitable to promote the end in view, namely, the Restriction of Vivisection; and we trust that it may not be left to others, who possess neither the wealth or organization of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, to make such efforts in the same direction as might prove to be in their power.”
It was arranged that the Memorial should be presented in Jermyn Street in a formal manner on the 25th January, 1875, by a deputation introduced by my cousin’s husband, Mr. John Locke, M.P., Q.C., and consisting of Sir Frederick Elliot, Lord Jocelyn Percy, General G. Lawrence, Mr. R. H. Hutton, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Dr. Walker, Col. Wood (now Sir Evelyn) and several ladies.
Prince Lucian Bonaparte, who always warmly befriended the cause, took the chair at first, and was succeeded by Lord Harrowby, President of the R.S.P.C.A., supported by Lady Burdett Coutts, Lord Mount-Temple (then Mr. Cowper-Temple) and others.