December 1903.—(From "Our Cause in the Press"): "Not only did we see great callousness in the field hospitals in South Africa, but conversation with the class that finds its way into our hospitals in England will reveal that a great deal of refined cruelty is constantly occurring."
Why does the official journal of Mr. Coleridge's society publish these things? For this reason—that it must attack those methods that were discovered by the help of experiments on animals. The medical profession uses these methods. Therefore, that profession must be attacked.
The same reason, of course, helps to explain the National Society's attack on the great Hospitals of London. It would take too long to tell here the whole story of that attack. Three charges were made against the Hospitals: (1) that they maltreat patients; (2) that they promote the torture of animals; (3) that they endow this torture at the cost of the patients. They were accused, to put it plainly, of treachery and fraud; and of course the Council of the King's Hospital Fund got its share of abuse. Mr. Coleridge said on this subject:—
1. (Annual meeting at St. James's Hall, May 1901): "How have Lord Lister, the vivisector, and his Committee distributed the Prince of Wales's Hospital Fund? They have so distributed this fund as to make it clear to hospital managers that the more they connect their hospitals with the torture of animals the larger will be the grant they may expect to get from the Prince of Wales's Fund. That fund, therefore, has been used as an insidious but powerful incentive to vivisection."
2. (Annual meeting at St. James's Hall, 1902): "Sheltering itself now in its most repulsive form behind those ancient and glorious institutions, founded and sustained for their Christ-like work of healing the sick, sapping their foundations and smirching their fair fame, malignant cruelty has taken up its position in its last ditch. There it has summoned to its aid vast interests, ancient prejudices, enormous endowments, and under illustrious patronage it has pilfered the funds subscribed for the poor."
With these statements before us (and it would be easy to add to them) we cannot doubt that the plan of campaign against all experiments on animals is also hostile to the Hospitals, whenever that hostility seems likely to be of the very least use to the cause.
Surely there are charities more worthy of subscriptions, donations, and legacies than these Anti-vivisection Societies. They quarrel among themselves; they spend vast sums of money on offices, salaries, press-cuttings, reprints, lectures and meetings, tons of pamphlets and leaflets. Their members denounce all experiments done now, while they enjoy the profit of all experiments done before now; they say that the object of the physiologist is to torture his victim out of devilish malice prepense; they accuse doctors of fraud, and lying, and refined cruelty, and madness, and winking at sin; they blacklist and boycott the best Hospitals. And the whole costly business, these thirty years, has done nothing to stop these experiments; they have increased rapidly. Surely, if a man wishes to help and comfort animals, he had better give his money to the Home for Lost Dogs, or the Home of Rest for Horses.
II. Literature.
We have now to examine the style of the literature of these societies. But, out of such a vast store of journals, pamphlets, and leaflets, we can only take one here or there.