From an Easy Chair

by Sir E. Ray Lankester

There are one or two other features about “cruelty” and the mental conditions leading to and arising from it, which, however uncanny and troubling, should be carefully considered when public opinion is roused in regard to its repression. Among these is the fact that the word is freely applied to the mere infliction of pain without consideration of the question as to whether there is a guilty mind determining it. Storms and frosts are called “cruel” by poetic license; but it is probably quite wrong to call a cat or a tiger cruel. These animals take pleasure in playing with their prey, as they would with an inanimate ball or mechanical toy. There is no reason to suppose that they are conscious of the infliction of pain or take pleasure in pain as pain. And so it must happen sometimes with thoughtless human beings who disregard the pain which they cause, when eagerly engaged in “sport” or in the pursuit of some all-absorbing and consuming purpose. The whole subject of cruelty is a distressing one, but should not on that account be misapprehended or dealt with wildly and blindly.

Twenty-five years ago a Royal Commission sat which was appointed to inquire as to what restrictions, if any, it was desirable to place upon the practice of making experiments on animals for physiological and medical purposes. As a result of its labours an Act of Parliament was passed which made definite regulations for the purpose of preventing unqualified persons from indulging in reckless experiments on animals. There were stories circulated by the agitators then—as there are now—to the effect that medical students perform horrible and painful operations (vivisections, as the agitators term them,) on live animals in secret or with the connivance of their teachers. It was proved twenty-five years ago that these stories were false. At the same time an elaborate law was passed to satisfy the emotional persons misled by the agitators, which made it necessary for an experimenter (1) to have a licence (dependent on a certificate as to his competency); (2) that he should use anæsthetics; and (3) that experiments should only be carried out in licensed laboratories.

The agitators of the present day have by heart-rending stories, similar to those told twenty-five years ago, produced a similar excitement and a similar result, namely, a Royal Commission on Vivisection, which has been occupied for a year and a half in listening to the statements and delusions of those who declare that the law made twenty-five years ago is insufficient, and that all sorts of cruelties are committed by the physiologists and doctors. The Commission has also questioned the leading physiologists and medical men in the country, and listened to their voluntary statements. I have seen the very voluminous report of the evidence thus given on both sides. The various accusations made against the medical men in the conduct of their laboratories have been carefully gone into. It is contended, on their side, that these charges are based on misunderstanding—the misunderstanding which one would expect from an ignorant person with a strong feeling or prejudice in the direction of the misunderstanding. For instance, the fact that chloroform is administered and the animal rendered insensible when operated on, has been overlooked in some of the accounts which excited the so-called “antivivisectors”—notably in the misleading account of “the brown dog.” The whole of the evidence should be read by those who are really in doubt on the matter. Probably it will not be long before the Commission reports, and its conclusions will command the very greatest respect, not only because its members include eminent lawyers, medical men and independent representatives who were ready to give an impartial mind to the inquiry, but also because it is obvious that the very greatest care has been taken to obtain the fullest evidence from both sides.

Sir James Fletcher Moulton, one of the Lords Justices of the Court of Appeal, has made a statement to the Commission in defence of scientific experiment which is a masterpiece of persuasive reasoning and lucid exposition. It is somewhat remarkable that there have been and are persons in high judicial office who have shown active hostility to the cause of science and knowledge in this matter owing to their want of acquaintance with the facts and their readiness to be carried away by blind emotion. Lord Justice Moulton, on the other hand, is a scientific man by education and early training, and has come forward to state in a plain and reasonable way what is the view of the matter which commends itself to him. There is reason to hope that his view will be approved by those who read what he says calmly and without bias. His chief point is that many people are willing to admit that it is right to destroy animals (even by methods which inflict great pain on them) when an immediate result of a good and useful kind is to be obtained—as when we kill animals to serve as food or in order to prevent them from injuring us or destroying our crops and stores. Yet these same persons, he points out, by some defect of imagination are unable to see that the gaining of pain-saving or disease-preventing knowledge as the result of inflicting pain and death on a small number of animals justifies us in permitting that pain and death. They are unable to admit the justification because the knowledge and its practical application does not directly and at once follow upon the first commencement of the search for it, and they have not sufficient acquaintance with the matter to enable them to realise and confidently believe that the beneficent result will ensue. The knowledge has to be built up step by step, and the infliction of pain on the animals is separated by an appreciable lapse of time from the beneficent result—which is none the less the result which was aimed at, and the true consequence of the pain inflicted. Putting aside for the moment the fact that in these inquiries the pain is reduced to a minimum by the use of anæsthetics, it would seem that we ought to be able to recognise that the causing of a certain amount of pain to many hundreds of rabbits, and even dogs, is justified by the consequent removal of a far greater amount of pain from thousands of men and animals who are saved from suffering at a later date by the knowledge so gained.

Lord Justice Moulton suggests two cases of the infliction of pain on animals for comparison. Suppose, he says, a ship to arrive in port which (as might easily happen to-day) is infested by plague-stricken rats; there are, perhaps, ten or twenty thousand rats on board. If the rats escaped and landed they might (not certainly, but probably) infect a whole city, even a much larger area, with plague, and cause death and disaster to thousands of human beings. Everyone will agree that the owner of the ship would be justified in destroying all the rats on the ship by sulphur fumes, or whatever other painful method might be necessary to prevent even one from escaping. A vast amount of suffering would be inflicted on the rats in order to prevent a far greater contingent amount of suffering. Now suppose that a man, by infecting some hundreds of rats and other animals with plague, and by trying various experiments on these animals with curative drugs, and by other operations upon them, can in all probability arrive at such a knowledge of plague and how to check it as to enable us to arrest its propagation, and so to save thousands, or even millions, of human beings from this painful and deadly disease, are we to say that this investigator must not carry on his studies, must not find out how to stop plague in future because to do so he will have to give some amount of pain to a hundred or more animals? Clearly, if we justify the shipowner we must justify the inquiries and experiments of the medical discoverer. In both cases we must hold—every sane man really does hold—that it is right to inflict pain with the expectation (not a certainty in either case, but only a reasonable probability) of preventing a far larger and more serious amount of pain in the future. It is the choice of the lesser of two evils.

And thus we are led to admit that it is right that experiments and studies attended with some pain to animals should be carried on, on condition that competent and serious persons make them, for the purpose of gaining increased knowledge of the processes of life and disease. Such studies have already yielded great results—the pain in the wards of hospitals and in sick rooms is not a tenth of what it was a hundred years ago. The death-rate of great cities is a third less than it was fifty years ago. Modern medicine and modern surgery are really and demonstrably immense agencies for preventing pain and the anguish and misery which is caused by untimely death.

A Society for the Defence of Research has been established this year (1908) with the Earl of Cromer as its president. The Society has issued some valuable pamphlets showing what improvements in medical knowledge have been recently effected by means of inoculations and other experiments in which animals have been used though subjected to as little pain and discomfort as consistent with the enquiries made. Ignorant opponents of medical research assert that the scientific study of the processes of life and disease in laboratories has not helped in the great progress in medical practice which marks the last fifty years. But the medical men who are the leaders of their profession unanimously assert, and prove by detailed accounts of the discoveries made, that such study has been essential to the progress established, and is essential for further progress. Lord Lister, who by his antiseptic method of treating surgical wounds has saved more pain to present and future generations of men than all the torturers of the Inquisition ever inflicted or dreamed of inflicting, has been the leader in declaring the inestimable value to humanity—in fact, the absolute necessity—of physiological experiments on animals. Whose judgment on this question can be considered of greater value than his?

The anti-vivisection agitators, for the purpose of exciting the emotions of those who listen to them, use the word “torture” as describing the action of such men as Pasteur and Lord Lister. To torture is to inflict an ever-increasing amount of pain, with the view of “extorting” a submission, a confession, or treasure from a victim. To suggest that scientific and medical men apply pain in this way, and to spread the word “torture” among the ignorant, emotional public, in connection with their inquiries, is dishonest as well as ungrateful.

One valuable result of the work of the present Royal Commission on what is called “Vivisection,” but should be called “the use of animals in the discovery of means of controlling disease and alleviating pain,” is that it is made quite clear that there is very little pain at all inflicted in this beneficent work, owing to the fact that anæsthetics and narcotics are administered to the animals when anything which might cause pain is done. I do not hesitate to say that there is in this country less pain caused in a whole year in all the laboratories where this great work for the public good is carried on than in a single day’s rabbit-shooting.

It is important to correct, if possible, the misunderstanding which very naturally exists as to what physiologists and doctors mean by “experiment.” In ordinary language an “experiment” suggests a haphazard venture, the doing of something blindly and in ignorance, just “to see what will happen.” It is true that long ago in the eighteenth century there were men callous enough and ignorant enough to make such “fool’s experiments” on living animals. But when scientific men speak of “the experimental method” and the acquisition of knowledge by experiment, they do not allude to haphazard attempts to see what will happen when something extraordinary is done. The experiment of the experimental method is arranged so as to provide a definite answer to a definite question, and the question has been thought out by a man who knows the whole record of previous experiment and knowledge in regard to the subject which is under investigation.