The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents / Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes

by Robert Green Ingersoll

The trouble is that these doctors, these students, these professors, these amateurs, do not give anesthetics. They insist that to render the animal insensible does away with the value of the experiment. They care nothing for the pain they inflict. They are so eager to find some fact that will be of benefit to the human race, that they are utterly careless of the agony endured.

Now, what I say is that no decent man, no gentleman, no civilized person, would vivisect an animal without first having rendered that animal insensible to pain. The doctor, the scientist, who puts his knives, forceps, chisels and saws into the flesh, bones and nerves of an animal without having used an anesthetic, is a savage, a pitiless, heartless monster. When he says he does this for the good of man, because he wishes to do good, he says what is not true. No such man wants to do good; he commits the crime for his own benefit and because he wishes to gratify an insane cruelty or to gain a reputation among like savages.

These scientists now insist that they have done some good. They do not tell exactly what they have done. The claim is general in its character—not specific. If they have done good, could they not have done just as much if they had used anesthetics? Good is not the child of cruelty.

Question. Do you think that the vivisectionists do their work without anesthetics? Do they not, as a rule, give something to deaden pain?

Answer. Here is what the trouble is. Now and then one uses chloroform, but the great majority do not. They claim that it interferes with the value of the experiment, and, as I said before, they object to the expense. Why should they care for what the animals suffer? They inflict the most horrible and useless pain, and they try the silliest experiments—experiments of no possible use or advantage.

For instance: They flay a dog to see how long he can live without his skin. Is this trifling experiment of any importance? Suppose the dog can live a week or a month or a year, what then? What must the real character of the scientific wretch be who would try an experiment like this? Is such a man seeking the good of his fellow- men?

So, these scientists starve animals until they slowly die; watch them from day to day as life recedes from the extremities, and watch them until the final surrender, to see how long the heart will flutter without food; without water. They keep a diary of their sufferings, of their whinings and moanings, of their insanity. And this diary is published and read with joy and eagerness by other scientists in like experiments. Of what possible use is it to know how long a dog or horse can live without food?

So, they take animals, dogs and horses, cut through the flesh with the knife, remove some of the back bone with the chisel, then divide the spinal marrow, then touch it with red hot wires for the purpose of finding, as they say, the connection of nerves; and the animal, thus vivisected, is left to die.

A good man will not voluntarily inflict pain. He will see that his horse has food, if he can procure it, and if he cannot procure the food, he will end the sufferings of the animal in the best and easiest way. So, the good man would rather remain in ignorance as to how pain is transmitted than to cut open the body of a living animal, divide the marrow and torture the nerves with red hot iron. Of what use can it be to take a dog, tie him down and cut out one of his kidneys to see if he can live with the other?

These horrors are perpetrated only by the cruel and the heartless —so cruel and so heartless that they are utterly unfit to be trusted with a human life. They inoculate animals with a virus of disease; they put poison in their eyes until rottenness destroys the sight; until the poor brutes become insane. They given them a disease that resembles hydrophobia, that is accompanied by the most frightful convulsions and spasms. They put them in ovens to see what degree of heat it is that kills. They also try the effect of cold; they slowly drown them; they poison them with the venom of snakes; they force foreign substances into their blood, and, by inoculation, into their eyes; and then watch and record their agonies; their sufferings.