truths which we cannot predict. Our present electric lights in light-houses and on large ocean steamers, had their origin, not in direct inventions or special researches for the purpose, but in abstract researches on apparently remote subjects.
It is nothing less than a national crime that proper provision has not yet been made for investigating scientifically the causes of famine and pestilence, also physiology and pathology, and the discovery of the laws which regulate diseases and epidemics. What can be more painful to behold than a mother and father deprived of a whole family of five or six children in rapid succession by scarlatina or other contagious disease, and both the parents and medical men utterly unable to save them; and this is a common occurrence. Persons who are ignorant of science look with an abject feeling of helplessness upon great national calamities, and even upon private afflictions, such as a local epidemic, as if there was absolutely no remedy, whilst scientific men believe that by extension of knowledge, such evils might be largely avoided or prevented.
Many persons however, actuated by the very kindest of motives, but insufficiently acquainted with the necessity, conditions, results, and advantages of experiments, unwittingly obstruct the discovery of new knowledge in physiology and pathology, by attempting to prevent experiments being made upon animals.
We should not strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Nearly every step in life involves a choice
between two alternatives, and this is the case with experiments upon living creatures, either such experiments must be made, or the wholesale slaughter of men and other animals, by pestilences, epidemics, small-pox, foot and mouth disease, &c., must continue. Many of the properties of living bodies, like those of dead ones, can only be ascertained by means of experiments, no other course is possible; and the knowledge so obtained enables us not only to prolong the lives but also to alleviate the sufferings of all kinds of living creatures. Nearly all our medical and surgical knowledge has been obtained by observation and study, either of the results of experiments made by ourselves, or by the course of nature for us; and the former is often attended by immeasurably less pain and expence than the latter. No one who has ever made in a proper manner new experiments, would venture to assert that valuable knowledge is not gained by them; and this statement is as correct of experiments in physiology as in all the other sciences.
The total amount of pain inflicted upon animals by vivisection experiments in this country is infinitesimally small—because, firstly, the proportion of experimentalists in so-called "vivisection," does not amount to one person in one million of our inhabitants:—secondly, students cannot be induced to enter upon scientific research in physiology, because such labour is unrewarded, either by enabling them to obtain certificates, degrees, or money. Whatever pain also,
is inflicted in such experiments, is by men of the highest eminence in physiology, and therefore by the most competent persons.
Experimental research is an occupation requiring an exceptional kind of ability and experience; and persons who have never made experiments, nor studied their relation to human welfare, are largely incompetent to determine when and how they should be made, the real effects of them, or the value of the knowledge they afford. To persons inexperienced in scientific research, many experiments appear useless, which have great practical value, either immediately or at a later period. Our greatest curse is ignorance; and knowledge, by enabling us to avoid the fatal effects of pestilences, and epidemics, is as necessary as food to mankind. The "Anti-vivisection" movement however is but one of the phases of the ever-existing conflict between the advancing and retarding sections of mankind.
Greater sympathy with suffering accompanies greater civilization. The increased humanity of the present age over that of previous ones, is largely due to the discovery and extension of new scientific knowledge. Science, by showing more clearly to man his true position in nature and in relation to his fellow-men and other animals, has rendered more evident the concrete fact, that the happiness of each depends upon the happiness of all, and the happiness and welfare of all upon that of each individual. It has also operated in a more apparent, though less
important way, by inculcating better systems of hygiene, improved sanitary arrangements, &c, &c. It is not to the zeal of "anti-vivisectionists," but to the well-directed labours of experimental medical men, that mankind are indebted for the discovery and invention of nearly every known method of preventing and alleviating animal suffering and of prolonging human life. This statement is true of vaccination, the use of chloroform in general surgery, dentistry, and midwifery, of carbolic acid spray in surgical operations; the abolition of the practice of searing amputated limbs with a red-hot iron; and many other improvements. Ferrier's comparatively recent vivisection experiments have already enabled medical men to treat more successfully those formidable diseases, epilepsy and abcess of the brain.