Feb. 1895.]
HARVEY ON TP1R PASTEUR INSTITUTE AND VIVISECTION.
?rijinal (Eommuniptions. THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE AND VIVISECTION
*
By SuRGEon-Colonel Harvey.
Gentlemen,?The action of the Bengal Branch of the Anti-vivisection Society in opposing the proposed Pasteur Institute for India has made it necessary that a reply should be made to their statements, since they have* disturbed the minds of many sensitive and humane men, and made them hesitate as to whether they should subscribe to the Institute. I would, therefore, as Secretary to the Bengal Branch, crave your indulgence while I sum up, as briefly as the possible, arguments for and against experiments on living animals, in the hope that I may convince doubters that they are not onty justifiable but necessaiy, and that they may give their donations with a clear conscience. I shall do my best to be frank and fair, and may say at starting that I have carefully read and considered all the anti-vivisection literature I could lay my hands on. I would begin by pleading for calm consideration of the matter, instead of the mutual recrimination which has been too common on both sides in this controversy. We want less heat and more charity. I have the highest respect for the feelings and motives of many of the opponents of vivisection, and do not think that science is in any way helped by branding them as faddists and fanatics, and I am equall}' sure that the more enthusiastic among them have done their own cause much harm by the exaggerated language in which they have denounced the eminent physicians and physiologists whose actions they object to. The question may be looked at from two sides, ethical and scientific, and may be divided into two such divisions :? (?) Vivisection proper, which alone involves cutting operations on living animals. (?) Experiments on living animals not involv-
49
4.?That the experiments have a demoralising effect on those who perform them. Some extreme partisans would add with Sir George Duckett (who declined to give evidence before the Royal Commission appointed in 1875 to enquire into the question, on the ground that he had no evidence to offer). 5.?That it is a hellish practice i^tlie italics are the Baronet's) and "goes hand-in-hand with Atheism." The main arguments on the scientific side are :?
1.?That the experiments are necessary for the advancement of knowledge, and that this necessity is recognized almost without exception by the medical profession. 2.?That they have in fact, been of inestimable service to man and to the lower animals, and that the continuation and extension of such investigation are essential to the progress of knowledge, the relief of suffering, and the saving of life."*}" 3.?That they are conducted under Parliamentary restriction, without cruelty, and with the least possible suffering. 4.?That the statements of the anti-vivisection party are inaccurate, exaggerated, and mis"
leading.
5.?That
suffering
and sacrifice
are
facts in
nature which no declamation can eliminate, and that the rights of man are superior to those of
animals. 6.?That the experiments have no demoralising effect on those who perform them.
We have here to do with questions of fact, with matter of opinion, and, above all, with the meaning of words. Vivisection connotes the dissection of life animals without anaesthetics. The term should not be used, at least in my opinion?for experiments performed under chloroform, in which the animal is killed without recovering its senses, and which involve no pain. It does not apply to the killing of animals by ing cutting operations. poison or by snake-bite, and still less to the feeding of them with particular varieties of 1.?Involving their death. 2.?Involving temporary pain or discomfort food, inoculating them with disease germs, and so on, and though the anti-vivisection party objects only. The opponents of experimental research bracket to all these, they have no right to speak of them all these together under the one head of vivisec- as examples of vivisection. Cruelty, too, is another tion, which is, of course, a misnomer; and they word into which the objectors to experiments on base their opposition on the following grounds :? animals have read an entirely new meaning not 1-?That animals have rights, as well as men ; yet accepted by and much of the lexicographers, and that one of these rights is to be saved from bitterness of the been due to has controversy confusion arising from this difference in meaning. cruelty. 2.?That the experiments lead to little or nr What then is cruelty ? useful or practical result. According to Webster, it is an act which 3.?That even if they did, the cruelty which causes extreme suffering without good reason." they involve makes them unjustifiable, since A disposition to give unnecessary pain." And man has no moral right to inflict cruelty for his this, the accepted English meaning of the word, "
"
own
*
advantage.
Read at the Indian Medical
Countess December,
1894.
f Resolution passed unanimously Association at ^ottiuyhara in 1892.
by
the British Medical
50
is that
INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
the profession and by the physiologist. According to the anti-vivisectionist, as represented by Miss Power Cobbe, cruelty is " the voluntary infliction by a moral free agent on a sentient of severe being pain, not beneficent to the sufferer, and not authorised by justice."* It is obvious that, according as we use the word in one sense or the other, both parties are right, for while the experimenters do not experiment without good reason, and have no disposition to give unnecessary pain, the experiments are certainly not beneficent to the sufferers, although they are often of the utmost benefit to men and to animals as a whole. On the strength of this novel definition entirely unknown to the English language?the anti-vivisectors denounce the experiments as atrocious cruelty, diabolical practices, hellish actions, and so on, brand the experimenters as monsters, hold them up by name to the execration of mankind, send anonymous abuse to their wives, in short, forget the courtesies of controversy and the common decencies of life. When the human worm of an experimentalist tortured by their calumnies denounces their proved inaccuracies in plain Saxon, they complain that it is very rude to use such language to ladies and clergymen ! It is greatly to be regretted that there is not better temper on both sides, and the retort courteous" is always better than " the lie with circumstance." In a scientific discussion we want facts and arguments, not personalities. It seems to me that Miss Cobbe's definition begs the whole question, which is: Are the experiments cruel ? The Experimentalist, backed by the dictionaries, says, "No," because they are necessary and productive of great good to men and animals; the Anti-vivisector throwing like Becky Sharp the "dixionary" out of window, and adopting a new meaning of his own, to say of a new ethical standard, says emphatinothing " cally Yes." Miss Cobbe gives a clever classification of subjectively-defined cruelty into wanton,malignant and interestignorant, careless, ed cruelty. In " wanton cruelty the person causing pain for the sake of the emotional excitement which he devises from the spectacle," in "malignant cruelty the cruel person causing pain from hatred of his victim, and taking direct pleasure in his pain, in" interested cruelty, the cruel person causing pain with or without reluctance, for ulterior purposes of his own or the benefit of third parties," and she considers interested cruelty " the most dangerous." It is quite clear, then, that the assertions of atrocious cruelty so often made by the anti-vivisection party require to be received in a special sense, and that they apply the word cruelty to the experiments by a new standard which they do not use for the rest of the world. It is of the greatest importance,
adopted by
"
"
The Modern
Rack,"
p. 62.
[Feb.
1895.
shall see presently, to keep this constantly in mind. Having thus cleared the ground, we may now take in their order the main arguments of the objectors and the replies to them. And first as to the argument from the rights of animals. The physiologist and the physician are quite willing to accept the dictum that animals have rights, and that the right to be saved from cruelty is one of them. They maintain, however, that man has rights as well as animals, and that the rights of man are paramount over those of animals ; that in the words of Scripture he has dominion over them, when good reason can be given for subordinating their rights to his. Next as to the argument from utility. It is a common contention that the experiments lead to little or no useful result, that they are confusing and misleading, hindering and not helping the advance of knowledge, and although her party make less use of this argument than they did formerly, Miss Cobbe's writings are full of it. Now, it is surely for the medical profession to say whether they have been helped in their efforts for the improvement of medical and surgical art by such experiments, and their testimony must outweigh that of women and clergymen not specially trained in physiological or surgical knowledge; and with very few exceptions the medical profession says it has A resolution to this effect, been so helped. which I have already quoted was, passed unanimously at a general meeting of the British Medical Association at Nottingham in 1892. A similar resolution was carried at the International Medical Congress in London in 1881. At the Chnrcli Congress at Folkstone in 1892 telegrams in favour of the experiments were read from several leading London physicians one from that great and good physician Sir Andrew Clark, declaring that he regarded experimental research not as a mere privilege but as a moral duty." A Royal Commission appointed in 1875 at the instance of the objectors, ai;d which included Lord Card well, Mr. W. E. Forster, Sir John Karslake, and Mr. Hutton of the Spectator, persons certainly having no prepossessions in favour of experiments on animals, joined in a unanimous report in which they say totidem verbis : " It would require a voluminous treatise to exhibit in a consecutive statement the benefits that medicine and surgery have derived from these discoveries." Their general conclusions were that it is as we
"
to stop experiments on living animals; prevention even if possible would not be reasonable; that the greatest mitigations of human suffering have been in part derived from these experiments ; that by the use of anaesthetics pain may in the great majority of cases be altogether prevented, and in the remaining cases
impossible that
greatly mitigated.-' They
went
on to
say
"
that
Feb.
1895.]
HARVEY ON THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE AND VIVISECTION.
the abuse of the practice by inhuman or unskilful persons, in short tlie infliction on animals of the any unnecessary pain is justly abhorrent to moral sense of your Majesty's subjects generally ?not least so of the distinguished physiologists and the most eminent surgeons and 'physicians." (The italics are mine.) We have here, then, ample professional evidence, and the opinion of distinguished laymen convinced by that evidence as to the utility of the experiments. Another point which they make is of practical interest to India where the Anti-Vivisectionists wish to put an end to experiments for the It discovery of an antidote to snake-poison. is not possible for us, they say, to recommend that the Indian Government should be prohibited from pursuing its endeavours to discover an antidote for snake bites, or that without such an effort your Majesty's Indian subjects should be left to perish in large numbers annually from the effect of these poisons." * I may mention for the information of the general public that the discoveries of the circulation of the blood, physiology of respiration, the functions of the spinal nerves, of the liver and thyroid gland, the localisation of the motor areas in the bi-ain; the foundations, I may say of modern physiological knowledge, have all been founde I on the Baconian principle, Interrogate nature/' All the experimental sciences without experiment are dependent on this, and As Miss Cobbe no progress can be looked for. truly says,| the experiments constitute "a methodbut it is precisely the same method as is essential to all the experimental sciences, and physiology dealing with life and vital phenomena experiments in that science must necessarily be on living creatures, since death puts an end to living functions. You may object to the method, but in doing so must recognize that you condemn physiology to stagnation, and with it put a stop to all progress in medicine and sui-gery, which are founded on a knowledge of physiology and
51
that some 3| million sheep and 400,000 cattle have been inoculated against the disease in France alone, and that the money value of those saved is some seven millions of francs. This is another example of the utility of experiments, and we may say that their utility is now, however by the Anti-Vivisectionists grudgingly, admitted themselves. " Let us leave utility alone," says Miss Cobbe in a leaflet called " A Charity and a " I do not saj7', and have never Controversy." said, that vivisection is useless," sa}7s Lord * Coleridge Even Mr. Lawson Tait, the Athanasius contra mundum of the anti-vivisection " That there is some good in vivicause, admits section | though he considers it a rank discredit to the profession that we have to plead a necessity for it in any case. We come then to the main position of the AntiVivisectionists which I take to be :?That even if the utility were proved, the cruelty which the experiment^ involve makes them unjustifiable, since man has no moral right to inflict cruelty for his own advantage. If the latter part of this proposition is true it must be accepted as a development of what Miss Cobbe calls the Higher expediency in Ethics, a development in a progressive morality, and it must be true universally and always. You cannot limit a great moral principle, and say: Thus far shalt thou come and no further. If it applies to one set of men and actions, it must apply to all. You cannot divorce it from its logical conclusions. Miss Cobbe defines cruelty as the infliction of severe pain not beneficial to the sufferer, and she absolutely refuses to admit that it can be justified by utility. Let me quote herself. " If vivisectors have already made, or shall hereafter make, discoveries tending directly and importantly to relieve our bodily pains, even then would vivisection, I ask, stand justified ? If it appears Not so, my friends, assuredly." j that the practice be detrimental to the higher interests (she is speaking of moral interests) of pathology. By recent improvements many the community, the question of whether it be operations, formerly attended by a very high useful to the lower (physical) interests scarcely mortality, have been to a great extent freed deserves serious consideration." ? She is clearly from risk, while new ones previously undreamt committed to the statement, then, that the of, have been rendered possible. But for recent inflation of severe pain not beneficent to the experiments on monkeys no surgeon could have sufferer cannot be justified on the plea of utility, accurately diagnosed the site of a tumour in the and we have seen that this rule, if true, at all, brain. The modern surgeon not only does so, must be of universal application. It leads us but successfully removes it. By the sacrifice by strict logical necessity to some strange conexperimentally of a few sheep, pigs, and fowls, clusions. It might be held to forbid the killing anthrax, swine fever, and chicken cholera have of animals for food. It certainly forbids the come under control, to the enormous benefit of killing of them in any but the least painful the animals themselves, and the great profit of way, and would put an end at once to many It is stated \ I cannot of course the farmer. practices now universally followed by man for vouch for the figures, that the mortality from his convenience, or sport, or profit (pecuniary anthrax has been reduced from 18 to 1 per cent., The Lord Chief Justice of England on Vivisection," d F 7 ''
"
"
"
"
"
*
Report p. XIV. + Report p. XIII. " X The Modern Rack," p. 55. Medical Reporter, 1894, p. 370. *
+ Lancet. 1892, Vol. II, p. 1302. " t The Modern Rack," p. 59. ? Ibid, p. 33.
"
INDTAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
52
spiritual), the gratification of his personal vanity, or his bodily appetite. I will give specific instances presently, but the point I wish to insist on is that if for these purposes people other than physiologists inflict severe pain, not beneficial to the sufferers, on sentient beings, they are all, according to Miss Cobbe's showing,
or
in the same boat with the physiologists, and deserve equally with them to be held accountable for the snme crimes and denounced in To use one set of terms the same terms. for the physiologists, who at least profess that the sufferings which they cause, and which they would spare if they could, are for the benefit of both men and animals, and another entirely different set for other people causing sufferings as acute to an infinitely larger number of victims for their own pleasure and convenience, is distinctly unfair and sufficiently accounts for and goes far to justify the hostility of the profession to the anti-vivisection party. Miss Gobbe does not like sport herself, cannot conceive what pleasure her countnnnen take in it," yet talks of the joyous and open-hearted" English gentlemen who ride a fox to death and will not suffer any one in her presence to compare the sportsman of the field with the * Yet surely the sportsman of the laboratory." foxhunter inflicts severe pain not beneficent to the sufferer. She relates how, after her conversion," fhe gave up fishing, but " freely admits that angling scarcely comes under the head of cruelty at all." | Surely the noble salmon fighting for its life suffers severe pain which is not beneficent to it. If, being a cold-blooded creature, it is supposed not to feel pain, why all the virtuous indignation over the "torturing" of frogs, which are probably less sensitive than fish, and which, moreover, are in the majority of instances rendered quite unconscious by pithing before the experiments are begun. For his convenience man constantly inflicts severe pain not beneficial to the sufferer. Take the mutilation of domestic animals. Castration is vivisection of the most painful kind done without anaesthetics, which are required by law to be used in all scientific experiments not exempted by special license. Surely the operators in these cases deserve more opprobrium than the physiologists; and those who employ them or take advantage of their cruel acts, who drive geldings and eat capons, are participators in Yet Lord Coleridge justifies the the crime. " a matter of sheer as necessity," admitpractice ting for mere convenience the plea of necessity which he will not allow the physiologists. They also claim that it is a matter of "sheer necessity" that knowledge should be advanced, and efforts be made to discover the causes of disease and the remedies for it, for the far higher purpose of "
"
"
;
The Modern
Rack,"
p, 23.
+
"
Autobiography,"
p. 245
1895.
[Fkb.
and animals. Wh}' should sheer be allowed to the one and disallowed to the other ? There are in all Europe, according to Miss Cobbe, 250 physiologists engaged ia research work, but many of these seldom or never engage in vivisection experiments. For one animal subjected to the experiments of physiological research, countless thousands are thus vivisected by castration, splaying, and caponising. Why do we hear of no demands for a Bill to compel all these operations to be done under an anaesthetic? We venture to think because the Anti-Vivisectors know that the common sense of mankind is against them, and that they would have no chance of carrying it. For pure sport, man inflicts much severe and unnecessary pain. I have already spoken of hunting and fishing. The woes of the physiologist's rabbit are loudly proclaimed, but of the enormously larger number who are caught in traps and have to endure for hours the tortures of broken limbs, wrenched and mangled in vain efforts to escape, we hear little, and of the wriggling of the tortured worm impaled on the angler's hook nothing at all. The objectors to experimental research have apparently adapted the legal maxim into de minimis carat antiI understand that Miss Cobbe vivisector. allows us for our healths' sake to kill vermin. Utility again ! Has not a mosquito rights ? Is a bug not a sentient being ? Are their sufferings beneficent to them? For the sake of pecuniary proflt?the basest of all motives?many cruelties are committed, but in this direction improved feelings of humanity are gradually interposing barriers and many customs once common have now been suppressed and are punishable by law. Such were the skinning of animals alive to get the fur in better condition, the injection of air under the skin to increase the secretion of milk, and so on. For his spiritual profit man has never hesitated to sacrifice animals, and sometimes his brother man, to his gods; and while these bloody rites have disappeared from many modern religions they are still largely used in others. Thousands of goats Are and many cows are still sacrificed in India their sufferings beneficial to them ? They are purely for the good of man?real or imaginary ?and every pious Hindoo who has ever offered a goat to Kali should come under Miss Cobbe's anathema. The vagaries of fashion, the personal vanities of men and women are the cause of much pain. The wholesale clubbing to death of seals, the destruction of unoffending birds when fashion decrees that feathers are to be worn, the pain caused by gag-bits and bearing reins are all examples. For the gratification of his appetite man does not hesitate to unsex fowls, subject innumerable geese to grave disease, boil lobsters alive, and do other acts quite as cruel" In order that as any done by the physiologist.
benefiting necesssity
men
"
"
"
Feb.
1895.]
53
VIVISECTION. HARVEY ON THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE AND
his veal may be white and more pleasing to his epicurean eye he allows the butcher to vivisect innocent calves by bleeding them to death by convulsions, and hang them up still *living in his I think 1 shop, as Lord Coleridge has seen. have shown then that, according to the antivivisection definition of cruelty, all mankind are guilty as well a3 the vivisectors. There is but one exception that I know of, I mean the Jains. They object altogether to the taking of Jife for any purpose, eat neither fish, flesh nor fowl, offer no sacrifices of blood, and carrying their principles to their logical conclusion like St. Aloys will not take the life of a flea." Of course two wrongs do not make a right, and if the experimenters are really guilty of gross cruelty, the fact that others are also guilty would not excuse them. The point I wish to emphasise is, however, that, according to the anti-vivisection definition, they are on all fours with the rest of mankind. Are we then to brand all men as torturers, careless of the sufferings they inflict? Assuredly not, and in the evolution of morals which is continually going on, the feeling against cruelty and especially cruslty to animals is constantly growing, and as the Royal Commission pointed out is felt not least by the men so ruthlessly denounced by the anti-vivisection party. These gentlemen do what all mankind are constantly doing: subordinate the interests of individual animals to the general welfare of humanity and of animals themselves, and they claim openly and honestly that their actions are altogether justified not only by necessity but by ethics. Justifying themselves they justify also all such actions of other men as do not involve wanton, unnecessary and objectless suffering. This they deprecate as much as the most sensitive of their opponents. They contend that such pain as they inflict is not "unnecessary" pain, not inflicted without good reason," and that they are therefore not guilty of cruelty as defined by the dictionaries, and as understood by the world in general. They contend that putting their actions on a plan by themselves and applying to them a standard quite different to that applied to others is unfair, unjust, and illogical. If the pain they may have to inflict is necessary in the interests of knowledge or for the benefit of man or animals, its infliction ceases to be cruelty by the general consensus of mankind. Miss Cobbe will not admit this, unless the pain is beneficent to the sufferer. She expressly ailows as not constituting cruelly corrective punishments, as when a father flogs his child to cure him of lying, surgical operations as when a dentist tortures his victim to relieve him of a still more torturing tooth, or a surgeon amputates a limb to save a life. By a curious mental "
"
-The Lord Chief Justicg of
England
on
"
Vivisection," p.
13.
process she brings into her exceptions punishments authorized by justice.
to cruelty, Her comYet how does it conform monsense compels this. to her main premises ? It may be argued that most of the punishments awarded by the laws may have a correctional value and so be beneficent to the sufferers, but how about capital punishment? That is not and cannot be beneficent to the sufferer; however much it may benefit mankind by deterring others from like " offences. It is utility pure and simple, and serves to show how unpractical and impracticable her definition of cruelty is, since it lias to contain a clause going directly contrary to its own main principles. The ordinary definition is plain, logical and straightforward, and all men will agree that the infliction of pain without good reason, the disposition to inflict pain constitutes cruelty, and that cruelty should be pnt' down and punished. We acquit of cruelty all; people who from ignorance or carelessness cause > unnecessary pain, though those probably cause more suffering in the world than all the wilful : " do not believe cruelties ever committed. We that the gentle ladies and refined gentlemen?to quote Lord Coleridge?who subject their horses to cruel pain day by day or year by year by means, of gag-bits and bearing reins, have ever seriously thought, "or perhaps really know, what There is no cruelty as cruel) they are doing." as ignorance," says Sir William Gull. The sheer: ignorance of the mothers of India causes in this City of Calcutta the premature death of hundreds of thousands of children eveiy year by most: painful diseases. Yet I know no mothers who; are more tenderly fond of their children. They, are not cruel, they only do not understand. I need " not dwell on the general cruelty of nature red; in tooth and claw with rapine." Nor on the cruelty of war. War is often necessary, butmodern civilization has done much to mitigate its worst horrors. As practical men, we have to. deal with facts as we find them. They are, as chiels that winna ding and canna Burns says, be disputed." I may now go on to the supposed "demoralising" effect of the experiments on those who perform them. It is much insisted on in the writings of the anti-vivisection party, but is based on d 'priori assumption which even Miss Cobbe cannot admit as altogether valid. " Some O of our anti-vivisection friends have a little misused the term demoralising." " They have-, supposed that a man who does things so cruel to animals must necessarily become thoroughly heartless: altogether inhuman " towards men and women ; base and brutal in every sense... But there is some mistake here." Of course there is and the statement of some of our antivivisection friends is as little consonant to a knowledge of human nature as to charity There are no keener fishermen than the "
1
"
m
#
#
m
8
clergy*
INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
54
Yet the contemplative man's recreation involves the grossest treachery, the most deliberate deceit, to say nothing whatever of its cruelty. We do not find, however, the clergy demoralised or converted into monsters " base and brutal in every sense," and I know no more genuinely * pious book than the work of that quaint old cruel coxcomb Isaac Walton. I am proud to number among my friends several of the gentle" men who are labelled " vivisectionists in Miss Cobbe's Index, and know them to be humane and honourable men. The profession recognizes this and honors them, and while many of us, including myself, never have done or witnessed an experiment in vivisection, we recognise the help that these men have given us, and stand shoulder to shoulder and vindicate them and their work. I am not constrained to deny, I will freely admit, that many cruelties have been performed by experimenters. Cruel men may exist in the medical profession as elsewhere, and should be dealt with in the same way. In " ancient days, too, harder the times were," and I have already pointed out that many forms of
cruelty formerly common law and public opinion.
suppressed by Many of the specific instances cited in the book called The Nine are of this nature, and would no Circles longer are now
"
"
be tolerated. At page 95, for instance, is a case dating from 1755. Yet they are constantly attended to as if they were occurrences of to-day. I contend, however, that under present restrictions, the rights of animals are as well safegurded as it is possible to make them. By "The Cruelty to Animals" Act 1876, 39 and 40 Victoria, c. 77, passed with the assent and consent of the medical profession in England, all experiments Its chief provisions are as are regulated. follows :?" Painful experiments on animals are prohibited, under heavy penalties, except subject The to the restrictions imposed by the Act. restrictions are that the experiment must, in every case, be for medical orphysiolgical purposes, that the operator must be licensed under the Act; that the animal must be under an anaesthetic and must be killed before it recovers therefrom if it be seriously injured, or the pain be likely to continue; and that the experiment must not be performed as an illustration of a public lecture, or for the purpose of obtaining manual skill. Most of these restrictions may, however, be relaxed on a certificate being obtained, in manner provided by the Act, setting forth valid reasons for such relaxation. There are also special restrictions as to the performance of
painful experiments
on
horses,
asses,
mules, dogs
No public exhibition of painful experiPersons ments may be given or advertised. such or experiments illegally aiding performing are subject to penalties. Licences are granted and cats.
*
"The Modern
Rack,"
p. 34.
[Feb.
1895.
the Secretary of State who has powers to compel the registry of places in which such experiments are to be performed, to cause such places to be visited by inspectors, and to direct
by
any person making such experiments to report the results to him; Application for licenses must be signed by one or more of the Presidents of certain medical, surgical, and scientific bodies specified in the Act, and countersigned by a university professor of physiology, medicine, anatomy, medical jurisprudence, materia medica, A or surgery, not being the applicant himself. Judge has power to license such experiments when he deems them essential for the purposes of justice in a criminal case. No prosecution under the Act can be instituted against a licensed person without the assent in writing of the Secretary of State, The Act does not apply to invertebrate animals/' It is a mistake to suppose that licenses are easy to obtain and exemptions from restrictions are not given without cause shown. The vast majority of the experiments performed under the Act involve no vivisection, a large number involve little or no pain, less pain, for example, than that to which so many of us have cheerfully submitted to from my This is one proof friend Professor Haffkine. that the statements of the opponents of the Act To judge by are exaggerated and misleading. their writings it might be supposed that the torture of animals was the daily pastime of the
medical
profession.
I have waded through a mass of their literature for the purpose of this paper and the perusal makes me understand as never before how the agitation is manufactured and maintained. It also enables me to sympathize with the movement to some extent. I hate cruelty as much as most people, and I can understand the indignation excited in imaginative and tender minds by reading the bold, blank horrors of the antivivisection books. These say little or nothing of the object of the experiments; the use o! anjesthetics is either not mentioned or brushed aside as not really abolishing pain, the results are sneered at as useless, symptoms occurring in insensible animals are accepted without question as evidence of acute agony and so on. The writer's imagination riots in harrowing descriptions, and ladies ignorant of physiology, ignorant of science, ignorant of all but of goodness and soft blue eyes are tender over kindness," whose " it all, and are horrified flies believe drowning accordingly. Who shall blame them \ The very writers themselves are to some extent self-deceived. They have at least by a long contemplation of one act of facts (or fancies) got to attach an importance to those out of all proportion to their intrinsic weight. They shriek, as we have seeu over the "agonies" of the frog, while justifying the torture of the suffering salmon; eat their veal and foie gras contentedly, and bemoan the
Feb.
1895.]
HARVEY ON THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE AND VIVISECTION.
of the rabbit used for the advancement of learning, while ignoring the thousands of these That same rabbits killed in gins and snares. of their are statements many exaggerated and distorted can be proved up to the hilt. In the first edition of the anti-vivisectionist bible "The Nine Circles," it is stated by Miss Power Cobbe that whenever anaesthetics were used the fact is mentioned in the text. Professor Hossel showed that out of the 26 experiments involving cutting operations recorded in the book, as performed by English scientists, and in all of which antesthetics were used, the fact was not mentioned at all in twenty, and only stated without qualification in two of the remaining six. At page 247 of her " Autobiography" she states that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals laudally exerted itself to stop certain cruelties in France and appealed to the Emperor to interfere not perhaps very hopefully, since, as she had heard, Napoleon III was in the habit of attending these hideous spectacles in his own imperial She had heard." My honourable and person. learned friend who heads the anti-vivisection movement in Bengal will tell you that " I have heard" is not evidence. Surely, gentlemen, recklessness of accusation can go no further. To deliberately assert that a fact has been mentioned in every case when it is omitted in 20 out of 26, to level an accusation of the most monstrous kind against a man on the strength of" I have heard," quite passes, it seems to me, all fair controversial limits, and cannot be excused on the ground that the narrator was misled. Good faith ceases to be such unless reasonable pains are taken to ensure accuracy, As Professor Horsley rightly said at Folkstone: " No man, be he bishop or layman, has the right to publish
woes
"
defamatory
statements
of men without substantiate his
against
a man or a
body
taken the pains amply to position." I have the greatest possible respect for Miss Cobbe much as I dislike her "methods." I have no doubt she believed in all good faith what she was saying. She was grossly misled, as ehe has frankly acknowledged. No great cause was ever gained without enthusiasm, but legitimate enthusiasm must restrain itself to facts. Now it is untrue, and exaggerated statements of this kind form the basis on which most of the Anti-Vivisectionists rest their opposition. The exposure of their inaccuracies, however, though sufficient for thoughtful men has little effect on the idee fixe of the Anti-Vivisectionists. The untrue statements are put aside as regrettable mistakes of no consequence, mere side issues which do not effect the main principle and the flood of garbled exaggerated misapprehended accounts of cruelty goes steadily on, producing its natural effect on ignorant people who know nothing of the real merits of the case. The party has become quite irreconcilable, and not content with opposing vivisection properly
having
55
so-called now appear to "go it blind," as the Americans say, against all experiments for scientific purpose. They are specially severe on those in which disease is imparted to animals for the purpose of studying its pathology and discovering remedies for it. But medicine is a progressive science; we are all striving to improve it, and as we have seen improvement is impossible without interrogation of Nature, i.e., without experiments. If experiments on animals carefully directed to a given point for a special purpose are not allowed, we have to experiment in a clumsy incomplete, and indecisive manner upon We must remember that it was man himself. by experiments mainly of this nature that the discoveries which have been so fruitful to animals themselves were made, and that anthrax, swine fever, chicken cholera, have been robbed of their terrors, and that the chief hope and promise of future advance lies in their continuance. Yet all, painless and painful alike, are objected to by the Anti-Vivisection irreconcilables on the " ground that no line can be drawn between those experiments per se almost harmless and " I which involve if be it that and gross cruelty," found impossible to separate the use of a thing from the abuse and that abuse amount to a great moral offence, then it becomes needful to prohibit the use." * This is a mere petitio principii. It assumes that it has been found impossible to avoid abuse. This the profession denies, and, I trust I have proved to you, rightly denies. I mentioned among the objections the opinion of a gentleman who, knowing nothing on the subject, denounced the experiments as hellish practices going hand-in-hand with Atheism. It would not be worth while noticing this, but that in many other instances the same feeling is expressed in less crude terms. The opponents of the experiments are largely ladies and clergymen of a particular cast of religious mind, and a good deal of the agitation seems to be directed against science as opposed to religion. " Science falsely so-called," they are fond of calling it in the words of St. Paul. But science is knowledge, the pursuit of truth is her end, and truth cannot be hostile to truth. She is in no sense hostile to religion, though she may occasionally come into collision with particular errors commonly held to be part of religion, but not really so, such as the doctrine that the sun went round the world, the world was created in six days and so on. Still there is undoubtedly an opinion in the so-called religious world that scientific men are hostile to religion materialists, agnostic, atheists and what not f and this is constantly cropping up in the anti-vivisection literature. The experimenters are solemnly *
"
The Modern Rack," p. 54. The contemplative atheist is rare, and yet they seem to be more than they are. because all they that condemned received religion or superctition are by the adverse part branded with the name of atheists."?Bacon.
f
"
'
HARVEY ON TP1R PASTEUR INSTITUTE AND VIVISECTION.
?rijinal (Eommuniptions. THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE AND VIVISECTION
*
By SuRGEon-Colonel Harvey.
Gentlemen,?The action of the Bengal Branch of the Anti-vivisection Society in opposing the proposed Pasteur Institute for India has made it necessary that a reply should be made to their statements, since they have* disturbed the minds of many sensitive and humane men, and made them hesitate as to whether they should subscribe to the Institute. I would, therefore, as Secretary to the Bengal Branch, crave your indulgence while I sum up, as briefly as the possible, arguments for and against experiments on living animals, in the hope that I may convince doubters that they are not onty justifiable but necessaiy, and that they may give their donations with a clear conscience. I shall do my best to be frank and fair, and may say at starting that I have carefully read and considered all the anti-vivisection literature I could lay my hands on. I would begin by pleading for calm consideration of the matter, instead of the mutual recrimination which has been too common on both sides in this controversy. We want less heat and more charity. I have the highest respect for the feelings and motives of many of the opponents of vivisection, and do not think that science is in any way helped by branding them as faddists and fanatics, and I am equall}' sure that the more enthusiastic among them have done their own cause much harm by the exaggerated language in which they have denounced the eminent physicians and physiologists whose actions they object to. The question may be looked at from two sides, ethical and scientific, and may be divided into two such divisions :? (?) Vivisection proper, which alone involves cutting operations on living animals. (?) Experiments on living animals not involv-
49
4.?That the experiments have a demoralising effect on those who perform them. Some extreme partisans would add with Sir George Duckett (who declined to give evidence before the Royal Commission appointed in 1875 to enquire into the question, on the ground that he had no evidence to offer). 5.?That it is a hellish practice i^tlie italics are the Baronet's) and "goes hand-in-hand with Atheism." The main arguments on the scientific side are :?
1.?That the experiments are necessary for the advancement of knowledge, and that this necessity is recognized almost without exception by the medical profession. 2.?That they have in fact, been of inestimable service to man and to the lower animals, and that the continuation and extension of such investigation are essential to the progress of knowledge, the relief of suffering, and the saving of life."*}" 3.?That they are conducted under Parliamentary restriction, without cruelty, and with the least possible suffering. 4.?That the statements of the anti-vivisection party are inaccurate, exaggerated, and mis"
leading.
5.?That
suffering
and sacrifice
are
facts in
nature which no declamation can eliminate, and that the rights of man are superior to those of
animals. 6.?That the experiments have no demoralising effect on those who perform them.
We have here to do with questions of fact, with matter of opinion, and, above all, with the meaning of words. Vivisection connotes the dissection of life animals without anaesthetics. The term should not be used, at least in my opinion?for experiments performed under chloroform, in which the animal is killed without recovering its senses, and which involve no pain. It does not apply to the killing of animals by ing cutting operations. poison or by snake-bite, and still less to the feeding of them with particular varieties of 1.?Involving their death. 2.?Involving temporary pain or discomfort food, inoculating them with disease germs, and so on, and though the anti-vivisection party objects only. The opponents of experimental research bracket to all these, they have no right to speak of them all these together under the one head of vivisec- as examples of vivisection. Cruelty, too, is another tion, which is, of course, a misnomer; and they word into which the objectors to experiments on base their opposition on the following grounds :? animals have read an entirely new meaning not 1-?That animals have rights, as well as men ; yet accepted by and much of the lexicographers, and that one of these rights is to be saved from bitterness of the been due to has controversy confusion arising from this difference in meaning. cruelty. 2.?That the experiments lead to little or nr What then is cruelty ? useful or practical result. According to Webster, it is an act which 3.?That even if they did, the cruelty which causes extreme suffering without good reason." they involve makes them unjustifiable, since A disposition to give unnecessary pain." And man has no moral right to inflict cruelty for his this, the accepted English meaning of the word, "
"
own
*
advantage.
Read at the Indian Medical
Countess December,
1894.
f Resolution passed unanimously Association at ^ottiuyhara in 1892.
by
the British Medical
50
is that
INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
the profession and by the physiologist. According to the anti-vivisectionist, as represented by Miss Power Cobbe, cruelty is " the voluntary infliction by a moral free agent on a sentient of severe being pain, not beneficent to the sufferer, and not authorised by justice."* It is obvious that, according as we use the word in one sense or the other, both parties are right, for while the experimenters do not experiment without good reason, and have no disposition to give unnecessary pain, the experiments are certainly not beneficent to the sufferers, although they are often of the utmost benefit to men and to animals as a whole. On the strength of this novel definition entirely unknown to the English language?the anti-vivisectors denounce the experiments as atrocious cruelty, diabolical practices, hellish actions, and so on, brand the experimenters as monsters, hold them up by name to the execration of mankind, send anonymous abuse to their wives, in short, forget the courtesies of controversy and the common decencies of life. When the human worm of an experimentalist tortured by their calumnies denounces their proved inaccuracies in plain Saxon, they complain that it is very rude to use such language to ladies and clergymen ! It is greatly to be regretted that there is not better temper on both sides, and the retort courteous" is always better than " the lie with circumstance." In a scientific discussion we want facts and arguments, not personalities. It seems to me that Miss Cobbe's definition begs the whole question, which is: Are the experiments cruel ? The Experimentalist, backed by the dictionaries, says, "No," because they are necessary and productive of great good to men and animals; the Anti-vivisector throwing like Becky Sharp the "dixionary" out of window, and adopting a new meaning of his own, to say of a new ethical standard, says emphatinothing " cally Yes." Miss Cobbe gives a clever classification of subjectively-defined cruelty into wanton,malignant and interestignorant, careless, ed cruelty. In " wanton cruelty the person causing pain for the sake of the emotional excitement which he devises from the spectacle," in "malignant cruelty the cruel person causing pain from hatred of his victim, and taking direct pleasure in his pain, in" interested cruelty, the cruel person causing pain with or without reluctance, for ulterior purposes of his own or the benefit of third parties," and she considers interested cruelty " the most dangerous." It is quite clear, then, that the assertions of atrocious cruelty so often made by the anti-vivisection party require to be received in a special sense, and that they apply the word cruelty to the experiments by a new standard which they do not use for the rest of the world. It is of the greatest importance,
adopted by
"
"
The Modern
Rack,"
p. 62.
[Feb.
1895.
shall see presently, to keep this constantly in mind. Having thus cleared the ground, we may now take in their order the main arguments of the objectors and the replies to them. And first as to the argument from the rights of animals. The physiologist and the physician are quite willing to accept the dictum that animals have rights, and that the right to be saved from cruelty is one of them. They maintain, however, that man has rights as well as animals, and that the rights of man are paramount over those of animals ; that in the words of Scripture he has dominion over them, when good reason can be given for subordinating their rights to his. Next as to the argument from utility. It is a common contention that the experiments lead to little or no useful result, that they are confusing and misleading, hindering and not helping the advance of knowledge, and although her party make less use of this argument than they did formerly, Miss Cobbe's writings are full of it. Now, it is surely for the medical profession to say whether they have been helped in their efforts for the improvement of medical and surgical art by such experiments, and their testimony must outweigh that of women and clergymen not specially trained in physiological or surgical knowledge; and with very few exceptions the medical profession says it has A resolution to this effect, been so helped. which I have already quoted was, passed unanimously at a general meeting of the British Medical Association at Nottingham in 1892. A similar resolution was carried at the International Medical Congress in London in 1881. At the Chnrcli Congress at Folkstone in 1892 telegrams in favour of the experiments were read from several leading London physicians one from that great and good physician Sir Andrew Clark, declaring that he regarded experimental research not as a mere privilege but as a moral duty." A Royal Commission appointed in 1875 at the instance of the objectors, ai;d which included Lord Card well, Mr. W. E. Forster, Sir John Karslake, and Mr. Hutton of the Spectator, persons certainly having no prepossessions in favour of experiments on animals, joined in a unanimous report in which they say totidem verbis : " It would require a voluminous treatise to exhibit in a consecutive statement the benefits that medicine and surgery have derived from these discoveries." Their general conclusions were that it is as we
"
to stop experiments on living animals; prevention even if possible would not be reasonable; that the greatest mitigations of human suffering have been in part derived from these experiments ; that by the use of anaesthetics pain may in the great majority of cases be altogether prevented, and in the remaining cases
impossible that
greatly mitigated.-' They
went
on to
say
"
that
Feb.
1895.]
HARVEY ON THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE AND VIVISECTION.
the abuse of the practice by inhuman or unskilful persons, in short tlie infliction on animals of the any unnecessary pain is justly abhorrent to moral sense of your Majesty's subjects generally ?not least so of the distinguished physiologists and the most eminent surgeons and 'physicians." (The italics are mine.) We have here, then, ample professional evidence, and the opinion of distinguished laymen convinced by that evidence as to the utility of the experiments. Another point which they make is of practical interest to India where the Anti-Vivisectionists wish to put an end to experiments for the It discovery of an antidote to snake-poison. is not possible for us, they say, to recommend that the Indian Government should be prohibited from pursuing its endeavours to discover an antidote for snake bites, or that without such an effort your Majesty's Indian subjects should be left to perish in large numbers annually from the effect of these poisons." * I may mention for the information of the general public that the discoveries of the circulation of the blood, physiology of respiration, the functions of the spinal nerves, of the liver and thyroid gland, the localisation of the motor areas in the bi-ain; the foundations, I may say of modern physiological knowledge, have all been founde I on the Baconian principle, Interrogate nature/' All the experimental sciences without experiment are dependent on this, and As Miss Cobbe no progress can be looked for. truly says,| the experiments constitute "a methodbut it is precisely the same method as is essential to all the experimental sciences, and physiology dealing with life and vital phenomena experiments in that science must necessarily be on living creatures, since death puts an end to living functions. You may object to the method, but in doing so must recognize that you condemn physiology to stagnation, and with it put a stop to all progress in medicine and sui-gery, which are founded on a knowledge of physiology and
51
that some 3| million sheep and 400,000 cattle have been inoculated against the disease in France alone, and that the money value of those saved is some seven millions of francs. This is another example of the utility of experiments, and we may say that their utility is now, however by the Anti-Vivisectionists grudgingly, admitted themselves. " Let us leave utility alone," says Miss Cobbe in a leaflet called " A Charity and a " I do not saj7', and have never Controversy." said, that vivisection is useless," sa}7s Lord * Coleridge Even Mr. Lawson Tait, the Athanasius contra mundum of the anti-vivisection " That there is some good in vivicause, admits section | though he considers it a rank discredit to the profession that we have to plead a necessity for it in any case. We come then to the main position of the AntiVivisectionists which I take to be :?That even if the utility were proved, the cruelty which the experiment^ involve makes them unjustifiable, since man has no moral right to inflict cruelty for his own advantage. If the latter part of this proposition is true it must be accepted as a development of what Miss Cobbe calls the Higher expediency in Ethics, a development in a progressive morality, and it must be true universally and always. You cannot limit a great moral principle, and say: Thus far shalt thou come and no further. If it applies to one set of men and actions, it must apply to all. You cannot divorce it from its logical conclusions. Miss Cobbe defines cruelty as the infliction of severe pain not beneficial to the sufferer, and she absolutely refuses to admit that it can be justified by utility. Let me quote herself. " If vivisectors have already made, or shall hereafter make, discoveries tending directly and importantly to relieve our bodily pains, even then would vivisection, I ask, stand justified ? If it appears Not so, my friends, assuredly." j that the practice be detrimental to the higher interests (she is speaking of moral interests) of pathology. By recent improvements many the community, the question of whether it be operations, formerly attended by a very high useful to the lower (physical) interests scarcely mortality, have been to a great extent freed deserves serious consideration." ? She is clearly from risk, while new ones previously undreamt committed to the statement, then, that the of, have been rendered possible. But for recent inflation of severe pain not beneficent to the experiments on monkeys no surgeon could have sufferer cannot be justified on the plea of utility, accurately diagnosed the site of a tumour in the and we have seen that this rule, if true, at all, brain. The modern surgeon not only does so, must be of universal application. It leads us but successfully removes it. By the sacrifice by strict logical necessity to some strange conexperimentally of a few sheep, pigs, and fowls, clusions. It might be held to forbid the killing anthrax, swine fever, and chicken cholera have of animals for food. It certainly forbids the come under control, to the enormous benefit of killing of them in any but the least painful the animals themselves, and the great profit of way, and would put an end at once to many It is stated \ I cannot of course the farmer. practices now universally followed by man for vouch for the figures, that the mortality from his convenience, or sport, or profit (pecuniary anthrax has been reduced from 18 to 1 per cent., The Lord Chief Justice of England on Vivisection," d F 7 ''
"
"
"
"
"
*
Report p. XIV. + Report p. XIII. " X The Modern Rack," p. 55. Medical Reporter, 1894, p. 370. *
+ Lancet. 1892, Vol. II, p. 1302. " t The Modern Rack," p. 59. ? Ibid, p. 33.
"
INDTAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
52
spiritual), the gratification of his personal vanity, or his bodily appetite. I will give specific instances presently, but the point I wish to insist on is that if for these purposes people other than physiologists inflict severe pain, not beneficial to the sufferers, on sentient beings, they are all, according to Miss Cobbe's showing,
or
in the same boat with the physiologists, and deserve equally with them to be held accountable for the snme crimes and denounced in To use one set of terms the same terms. for the physiologists, who at least profess that the sufferings which they cause, and which they would spare if they could, are for the benefit of both men and animals, and another entirely different set for other people causing sufferings as acute to an infinitely larger number of victims for their own pleasure and convenience, is distinctly unfair and sufficiently accounts for and goes far to justify the hostility of the profession to the anti-vivisection party. Miss Gobbe does not like sport herself, cannot conceive what pleasure her countnnnen take in it," yet talks of the joyous and open-hearted" English gentlemen who ride a fox to death and will not suffer any one in her presence to compare the sportsman of the field with the * Yet surely the sportsman of the laboratory." foxhunter inflicts severe pain not beneficent to the sufferer. She relates how, after her conversion," fhe gave up fishing, but " freely admits that angling scarcely comes under the head of cruelty at all." | Surely the noble salmon fighting for its life suffers severe pain which is not beneficent to it. If, being a cold-blooded creature, it is supposed not to feel pain, why all the virtuous indignation over the "torturing" of frogs, which are probably less sensitive than fish, and which, moreover, are in the majority of instances rendered quite unconscious by pithing before the experiments are begun. For his convenience man constantly inflicts severe pain not beneficial to the sufferer. Take the mutilation of domestic animals. Castration is vivisection of the most painful kind done without anaesthetics, which are required by law to be used in all scientific experiments not exempted by special license. Surely the operators in these cases deserve more opprobrium than the physiologists; and those who employ them or take advantage of their cruel acts, who drive geldings and eat capons, are participators in Yet Lord Coleridge justifies the the crime. " a matter of sheer as necessity," admitpractice ting for mere convenience the plea of necessity which he will not allow the physiologists. They also claim that it is a matter of "sheer necessity" that knowledge should be advanced, and efforts be made to discover the causes of disease and the remedies for it, for the far higher purpose of "
"
"
;
The Modern
Rack,"
p, 23.
+
"
Autobiography,"
p. 245
1895.
[Fkb.
and animals. Wh}' should sheer be allowed to the one and disallowed to the other ? There are in all Europe, according to Miss Cobbe, 250 physiologists engaged ia research work, but many of these seldom or never engage in vivisection experiments. For one animal subjected to the experiments of physiological research, countless thousands are thus vivisected by castration, splaying, and caponising. Why do we hear of no demands for a Bill to compel all these operations to be done under an anaesthetic? We venture to think because the Anti-Vivisectors know that the common sense of mankind is against them, and that they would have no chance of carrying it. For pure sport, man inflicts much severe and unnecessary pain. I have already spoken of hunting and fishing. The woes of the physiologist's rabbit are loudly proclaimed, but of the enormously larger number who are caught in traps and have to endure for hours the tortures of broken limbs, wrenched and mangled in vain efforts to escape, we hear little, and of the wriggling of the tortured worm impaled on the angler's hook nothing at all. The objectors to experimental research have apparently adapted the legal maxim into de minimis carat antiI understand that Miss Cobbe vivisector. allows us for our healths' sake to kill vermin. Utility again ! Has not a mosquito rights ? Is a bug not a sentient being ? Are their sufferings beneficent to them? For the sake of pecuniary proflt?the basest of all motives?many cruelties are committed, but in this direction improved feelings of humanity are gradually interposing barriers and many customs once common have now been suppressed and are punishable by law. Such were the skinning of animals alive to get the fur in better condition, the injection of air under the skin to increase the secretion of milk, and so on. For his spiritual profit man has never hesitated to sacrifice animals, and sometimes his brother man, to his gods; and while these bloody rites have disappeared from many modern religions they are still largely used in others. Thousands of goats Are and many cows are still sacrificed in India their sufferings beneficial to them ? They are purely for the good of man?real or imaginary ?and every pious Hindoo who has ever offered a goat to Kali should come under Miss Cobbe's anathema. The vagaries of fashion, the personal vanities of men and women are the cause of much pain. The wholesale clubbing to death of seals, the destruction of unoffending birds when fashion decrees that feathers are to be worn, the pain caused by gag-bits and bearing reins are all examples. For the gratification of his appetite man does not hesitate to unsex fowls, subject innumerable geese to grave disease, boil lobsters alive, and do other acts quite as cruel" In order that as any done by the physiologist.
benefiting necesssity
men
"
"
"
Feb.
1895.]
53
VIVISECTION. HARVEY ON THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE AND
his veal may be white and more pleasing to his epicurean eye he allows the butcher to vivisect innocent calves by bleeding them to death by convulsions, and hang them up still *living in his I think 1 shop, as Lord Coleridge has seen. have shown then that, according to the antivivisection definition of cruelty, all mankind are guilty as well a3 the vivisectors. There is but one exception that I know of, I mean the Jains. They object altogether to the taking of Jife for any purpose, eat neither fish, flesh nor fowl, offer no sacrifices of blood, and carrying their principles to their logical conclusion like St. Aloys will not take the life of a flea." Of course two wrongs do not make a right, and if the experimenters are really guilty of gross cruelty, the fact that others are also guilty would not excuse them. The point I wish to emphasise is, however, that, according to the anti-vivisection definition, they are on all fours with the rest of mankind. Are we then to brand all men as torturers, careless of the sufferings they inflict? Assuredly not, and in the evolution of morals which is continually going on, the feeling against cruelty and especially cruslty to animals is constantly growing, and as the Royal Commission pointed out is felt not least by the men so ruthlessly denounced by the anti-vivisection party. These gentlemen do what all mankind are constantly doing: subordinate the interests of individual animals to the general welfare of humanity and of animals themselves, and they claim openly and honestly that their actions are altogether justified not only by necessity but by ethics. Justifying themselves they justify also all such actions of other men as do not involve wanton, unnecessary and objectless suffering. This they deprecate as much as the most sensitive of their opponents. They contend that such pain as they inflict is not "unnecessary" pain, not inflicted without good reason," and that they are therefore not guilty of cruelty as defined by the dictionaries, and as understood by the world in general. They contend that putting their actions on a plan by themselves and applying to them a standard quite different to that applied to others is unfair, unjust, and illogical. If the pain they may have to inflict is necessary in the interests of knowledge or for the benefit of man or animals, its infliction ceases to be cruelty by the general consensus of mankind. Miss Cobbe will not admit this, unless the pain is beneficent to the sufferer. She expressly ailows as not constituting cruelly corrective punishments, as when a father flogs his child to cure him of lying, surgical operations as when a dentist tortures his victim to relieve him of a still more torturing tooth, or a surgeon amputates a limb to save a life. By a curious mental "
"
-The Lord Chief Justicg of
England
on
"
Vivisection," p.
13.
process she brings into her exceptions punishments authorized by justice.
to cruelty, Her comYet how does it conform monsense compels this. to her main premises ? It may be argued that most of the punishments awarded by the laws may have a correctional value and so be beneficent to the sufferers, but how about capital punishment? That is not and cannot be beneficent to the sufferer; however much it may benefit mankind by deterring others from like " offences. It is utility pure and simple, and serves to show how unpractical and impracticable her definition of cruelty is, since it lias to contain a clause going directly contrary to its own main principles. The ordinary definition is plain, logical and straightforward, and all men will agree that the infliction of pain without good reason, the disposition to inflict pain constitutes cruelty, and that cruelty should be pnt' down and punished. We acquit of cruelty all; people who from ignorance or carelessness cause > unnecessary pain, though those probably cause more suffering in the world than all the wilful : " do not believe cruelties ever committed. We that the gentle ladies and refined gentlemen?to quote Lord Coleridge?who subject their horses to cruel pain day by day or year by year by means, of gag-bits and bearing reins, have ever seriously thought, "or perhaps really know, what There is no cruelty as cruel) they are doing." as ignorance," says Sir William Gull. The sheer: ignorance of the mothers of India causes in this City of Calcutta the premature death of hundreds of thousands of children eveiy year by most: painful diseases. Yet I know no mothers who; are more tenderly fond of their children. They, are not cruel, they only do not understand. I need " not dwell on the general cruelty of nature red; in tooth and claw with rapine." Nor on the cruelty of war. War is often necessary, butmodern civilization has done much to mitigate its worst horrors. As practical men, we have to. deal with facts as we find them. They are, as chiels that winna ding and canna Burns says, be disputed." I may now go on to the supposed "demoralising" effect of the experiments on those who perform them. It is much insisted on in the writings of the anti-vivisection party, but is based on d 'priori assumption which even Miss Cobbe cannot admit as altogether valid. " Some O of our anti-vivisection friends have a little misused the term demoralising." " They have-, supposed that a man who does things so cruel to animals must necessarily become thoroughly heartless: altogether inhuman " towards men and women ; base and brutal in every sense... But there is some mistake here." Of course there is and the statement of some of our antivivisection friends is as little consonant to a knowledge of human nature as to charity There are no keener fishermen than the "
1
"
m
#
#
m
8
clergy*
INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
54
Yet the contemplative man's recreation involves the grossest treachery, the most deliberate deceit, to say nothing whatever of its cruelty. We do not find, however, the clergy demoralised or converted into monsters " base and brutal in every sense," and I know no more genuinely * pious book than the work of that quaint old cruel coxcomb Isaac Walton. I am proud to number among my friends several of the gentle" men who are labelled " vivisectionists in Miss Cobbe's Index, and know them to be humane and honourable men. The profession recognizes this and honors them, and while many of us, including myself, never have done or witnessed an experiment in vivisection, we recognise the help that these men have given us, and stand shoulder to shoulder and vindicate them and their work. I am not constrained to deny, I will freely admit, that many cruelties have been performed by experimenters. Cruel men may exist in the medical profession as elsewhere, and should be dealt with in the same way. In " ancient days, too, harder the times were," and I have already pointed out that many forms of
cruelty formerly common law and public opinion.
suppressed by Many of the specific instances cited in the book called The Nine are of this nature, and would no Circles longer are now
"
"
be tolerated. At page 95, for instance, is a case dating from 1755. Yet they are constantly attended to as if they were occurrences of to-day. I contend, however, that under present restrictions, the rights of animals are as well safegurded as it is possible to make them. By "The Cruelty to Animals" Act 1876, 39 and 40 Victoria, c. 77, passed with the assent and consent of the medical profession in England, all experiments Its chief provisions are as are regulated. follows :?" Painful experiments on animals are prohibited, under heavy penalties, except subject The to the restrictions imposed by the Act. restrictions are that the experiment must, in every case, be for medical orphysiolgical purposes, that the operator must be licensed under the Act; that the animal must be under an anaesthetic and must be killed before it recovers therefrom if it be seriously injured, or the pain be likely to continue; and that the experiment must not be performed as an illustration of a public lecture, or for the purpose of obtaining manual skill. Most of these restrictions may, however, be relaxed on a certificate being obtained, in manner provided by the Act, setting forth valid reasons for such relaxation. There are also special restrictions as to the performance of
painful experiments
on
horses,
asses,
mules, dogs
No public exhibition of painful experiPersons ments may be given or advertised. such or experiments illegally aiding performing are subject to penalties. Licences are granted and cats.
*
"The Modern
Rack,"
p. 34.
[Feb.
1895.
the Secretary of State who has powers to compel the registry of places in which such experiments are to be performed, to cause such places to be visited by inspectors, and to direct
by
any person making such experiments to report the results to him; Application for licenses must be signed by one or more of the Presidents of certain medical, surgical, and scientific bodies specified in the Act, and countersigned by a university professor of physiology, medicine, anatomy, medical jurisprudence, materia medica, A or surgery, not being the applicant himself. Judge has power to license such experiments when he deems them essential for the purposes of justice in a criminal case. No prosecution under the Act can be instituted against a licensed person without the assent in writing of the Secretary of State, The Act does not apply to invertebrate animals/' It is a mistake to suppose that licenses are easy to obtain and exemptions from restrictions are not given without cause shown. The vast majority of the experiments performed under the Act involve no vivisection, a large number involve little or no pain, less pain, for example, than that to which so many of us have cheerfully submitted to from my This is one proof friend Professor Haffkine. that the statements of the opponents of the Act To judge by are exaggerated and misleading. their writings it might be supposed that the torture of animals was the daily pastime of the
medical
profession.
I have waded through a mass of their literature for the purpose of this paper and the perusal makes me understand as never before how the agitation is manufactured and maintained. It also enables me to sympathize with the movement to some extent. I hate cruelty as much as most people, and I can understand the indignation excited in imaginative and tender minds by reading the bold, blank horrors of the antivivisection books. These say little or nothing of the object of the experiments; the use o! anjesthetics is either not mentioned or brushed aside as not really abolishing pain, the results are sneered at as useless, symptoms occurring in insensible animals are accepted without question as evidence of acute agony and so on. The writer's imagination riots in harrowing descriptions, and ladies ignorant of physiology, ignorant of science, ignorant of all but of goodness and soft blue eyes are tender over kindness," whose " it all, and are horrified flies believe drowning accordingly. Who shall blame them \ The very writers themselves are to some extent self-deceived. They have at least by a long contemplation of one act of facts (or fancies) got to attach an importance to those out of all proportion to their intrinsic weight. They shriek, as we have seeu over the "agonies" of the frog, while justifying the torture of the suffering salmon; eat their veal and foie gras contentedly, and bemoan the
Feb.
1895.]
HARVEY ON THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE AND VIVISECTION.
of the rabbit used for the advancement of learning, while ignoring the thousands of these That same rabbits killed in gins and snares. of their are statements many exaggerated and distorted can be proved up to the hilt. In the first edition of the anti-vivisectionist bible "The Nine Circles," it is stated by Miss Power Cobbe that whenever anaesthetics were used the fact is mentioned in the text. Professor Hossel showed that out of the 26 experiments involving cutting operations recorded in the book, as performed by English scientists, and in all of which antesthetics were used, the fact was not mentioned at all in twenty, and only stated without qualification in two of the remaining six. At page 247 of her " Autobiography" she states that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals laudally exerted itself to stop certain cruelties in France and appealed to the Emperor to interfere not perhaps very hopefully, since, as she had heard, Napoleon III was in the habit of attending these hideous spectacles in his own imperial She had heard." My honourable and person. learned friend who heads the anti-vivisection movement in Bengal will tell you that " I have heard" is not evidence. Surely, gentlemen, recklessness of accusation can go no further. To deliberately assert that a fact has been mentioned in every case when it is omitted in 20 out of 26, to level an accusation of the most monstrous kind against a man on the strength of" I have heard," quite passes, it seems to me, all fair controversial limits, and cannot be excused on the ground that the narrator was misled. Good faith ceases to be such unless reasonable pains are taken to ensure accuracy, As Professor Horsley rightly said at Folkstone: " No man, be he bishop or layman, has the right to publish
woes
"
defamatory
statements
of men without substantiate his
against
a man or a
body
taken the pains amply to position." I have the greatest possible respect for Miss Cobbe much as I dislike her "methods." I have no doubt she believed in all good faith what she was saying. She was grossly misled, as ehe has frankly acknowledged. No great cause was ever gained without enthusiasm, but legitimate enthusiasm must restrain itself to facts. Now it is untrue, and exaggerated statements of this kind form the basis on which most of the Anti-Vivisectionists rest their opposition. The exposure of their inaccuracies, however, though sufficient for thoughtful men has little effect on the idee fixe of the Anti-Vivisectionists. The untrue statements are put aside as regrettable mistakes of no consequence, mere side issues which do not effect the main principle and the flood of garbled exaggerated misapprehended accounts of cruelty goes steadily on, producing its natural effect on ignorant people who know nothing of the real merits of the case. The party has become quite irreconcilable, and not content with opposing vivisection properly
having
55
so-called now appear to "go it blind," as the Americans say, against all experiments for scientific purpose. They are specially severe on those in which disease is imparted to animals for the purpose of studying its pathology and discovering remedies for it. But medicine is a progressive science; we are all striving to improve it, and as we have seen improvement is impossible without interrogation of Nature, i.e., without experiments. If experiments on animals carefully directed to a given point for a special purpose are not allowed, we have to experiment in a clumsy incomplete, and indecisive manner upon We must remember that it was man himself. by experiments mainly of this nature that the discoveries which have been so fruitful to animals themselves were made, and that anthrax, swine fever, chicken cholera, have been robbed of their terrors, and that the chief hope and promise of future advance lies in their continuance. Yet all, painless and painful alike, are objected to by the Anti-Vivisection irreconcilables on the " ground that no line can be drawn between those experiments per se almost harmless and " I which involve if be it that and gross cruelty," found impossible to separate the use of a thing from the abuse and that abuse amount to a great moral offence, then it becomes needful to prohibit the use." * This is a mere petitio principii. It assumes that it has been found impossible to avoid abuse. This the profession denies, and, I trust I have proved to you, rightly denies. I mentioned among the objections the opinion of a gentleman who, knowing nothing on the subject, denounced the experiments as hellish practices going hand-in-hand with Atheism. It would not be worth while noticing this, but that in many other instances the same feeling is expressed in less crude terms. The opponents of the experiments are largely ladies and clergymen of a particular cast of religious mind, and a good deal of the agitation seems to be directed against science as opposed to religion. " Science falsely so-called," they are fond of calling it in the words of St. Paul. But science is knowledge, the pursuit of truth is her end, and truth cannot be hostile to truth. She is in no sense hostile to religion, though she may occasionally come into collision with particular errors commonly held to be part of religion, but not really so, such as the doctrine that the sun went round the world, the world was created in six days and so on. Still there is undoubtedly an opinion in the so-called religious world that scientific men are hostile to religion materialists, agnostic, atheists and what not f and this is constantly cropping up in the anti-vivisection literature. The experimenters are solemnly *
"
The Modern Rack," p. 54. The contemplative atheist is rare, and yet they seem to be more than they are. because all they that condemned received religion or superctition are by the adverse part branded with the name of atheists."?Bacon.
f
"
'
