The Morality of Vivisection

“A working physiologist or physician is rarely fitted either by education or by opportunity to decide nice questions of morals for himself”
Dr. Wickham Legg, Times, January 16, 1885

THE well-written article on the “Morality of Vivisection,” contributed by Dr. Ruffer to the November number of the Nineteenth Century, is probably as good an exposition of the subject from the physiologist’s point of view as we are likely ever to get, and it demands the serious attention of the anti-vivisectionists. It is an able, and on the whole, a very fair defence of the practice, though in a few passages the author has condescended to arguments of the ad captandum sort, which are unworthy of the subject and himself: as, for instance, when he urges that ‘There is not a mother who would not kill with her own hands a score of animals, rather than that her child should perish.” The question is not of killing, but of torturing, but were it otherwise the behaviour of mothers under trying circumstances could hardly be accepted as a rule of conduct for physiologists.

Again, when Dr. Ruffer speaks of his opponents as “those who object to science,” he is doing them an injustice, and unfairly stealing an argument. In like manner, he is not wholly ingenuous in his final sentence, when, in speaking of medicine, he says: “If it is ever to take its place among the exact sciences it can be advanced only by reasoning based upon observation and experiment, and constantly controlled by both, especially the latter.” This is doubtless true, but it is no proof that experiment on living animals is necessary or desirable. Of all exact sciences, astronomy is probably the most exact, and the reason is not far to seek. The stars are so happily situated that they can be approached only by the mind, and their movements investigated only by minds of ability. Were it possible to apply pulleys, levers, and ladders, there is no doubt they would soon be hauled from their positions, and while little minds, unable to grasp principles, were revelling in minute details, the science and the universe would be reduced to the chaos in which physiology at present is, and seems likely to remain, as long as every youthful investigator is at liberty to start his own theory, based on abnormal and misleading conditions.

Before considering the main argument of Dr. Ruffer’s essay, it will be well first to get rid of the side issues, which, while adding much to the interest of the article and containing fair argument, still confuse the main train of thought. First, with regard to Bishop Moorhouse’s rule of life, namely—“The service of love to God and man and all creatures,” and the physiologist’s rule—namely, “The search for truth for truth’s sake,” I cannot agree with Dr. Ruffer that the latter includes the former. In fact, he inadvertently himself admits that it is not so, when he says that “the searching for truth is likely to enable us to render efficiently those services to men and animals.” The tributaries which enable the river to carry the vessel to the ocean are not greater than the river itself. The search for truth for truth’s sake, as a rule of life, is good or bad, according to the nature of the truth sought. I am told that Zola’s novels present a very truthful picture of one sort of life, but we should not search them for guidance in life with so much chance of an edifying result as the works of Herbert Spencer or John Ruskin, who are equally seekers after truth. he occupation of the physiologists seems, in some cases, to be of the Zola type, and even though it may be well to seek for truth in the entrails of beasts and the functions of animal life, it is not wise to make the pursuit of such truth the law of one’s life, especially if in doing so one loses sight of the higher truths implied in the pursuit of mercy and justice.

The vegetarian question is another side issue of interest. Whether it is inconsistent for a person to object to physiological cruelty and still to eat meat is a matter which I cannot decide; but, granting for argument’s sake, that it is so, the fact does not prove that vivisection is right. A physiologist also is inconsistent when, while complaining that he is called abusive names, he retaliates in similar style. Inconsistency is, indeed, a normal attribute of the human mind, and it has been said that if we were all consistent with our best moments, there would be little ill will or evil conduct left in the world. I think there would be little cruelty, except possibly in the laboratory, where the occasional torture of an innocent animal seems essential to the attainment of the highest morality recognised by the physiologist. At any rate, an argument, to be sound and conclusive, must commend itself to all who are capable of understanding it, and to me, and of course to all other abstainers from meat, the vegetarian argument has no point. Even Dr. Ruffer will admit that the moral right and wrong of vivisection must not be made to depend on the diet of the Bishop of Manchester. The other argument, based on the cruelty of warfare, falls equally flat to a member of the Peace Association. In fact, while we cannot be too grateful to all physiologists who draw attention to other forms of cruelty, which must in the long run tend to bring their own into disrepute, it is obvious that all arguments founded on other cruelties are from their nature a little weak. I am aware that, in this, I have Sir James Paget, Sir Andrew Clark, Dr. Samuel Wilks, and others against me, and I have no doubt that if the proposition were put to a meeting of the British Medical Association, the whole profession would dutifully vote that two blacks do make a white on this particular occasion. But yet, most thinking people will still agree with me that they do not. Three important admissions, bearing directly on the matter, must also be noted, before we consider the main argument.

1. That animals are capable of suffering intense pain, amounting to torture, for Dr. Ruffer tells us of “the horses which remained in a mangled condition on the battle-field, and which suffered torture for weeks.” This is important, not as adding to our knowledge, but because an attempt is often made by physiologists to make us believe that “pain is far less appreciated by animals than by man.”

2. That vivisection is not always done under anæsthetics, and when that is the case, is not, as the Parliamentary Return (1892, p. 3) says, “practically always of the nature of hypodermic injection or simple inoculation.” or if it were so, how could Dr. Ruffer so “much deplore the necessity of inflicting pain” in his experiments, and be at such pains himself, to show that the end justifies the means?

3. That “if experiments were absolutely useless, then they would certainly be immoral.” To this pregnant sentence I hope to return presently. Having now cleared the ground, let us consider the main argument, which seems, when reduced to a syllogism, to be as follows:

(a) “It is not possible to disconnect the morality of this subject from its utility.”
(b) Vivisection is useful, because, as Sir J. Paget says, “the opinion of the members of the medical profession and of other scientific men is, on this question, as nearly unanimous as is any opinion held on any subject by any large number of men.”
(c) Therefore vivisection is right.

The major premise here, unfortunately, is not axiomatic, and many people will dispute it. Why should the morality in cruelty be inseparable from the utility any more than in (say) theft? To feed the hungry is as much a Christian duty as to tend the sick; and to accomplish this feeding efficiently it would be “necessary” to appropriate the possessions of the rich, but we could not as a nation for one moment entertain the idea of setting aside a class of gentlemen specially licensed to appropriate other peoples’ goods for the benefit of widows and orphans.

The failure of the major premise is enough to invalidate the conclusion, but still I should like also to draw attention to the fact that the minor premise also rests only on assertion, and is denied by some persons competent to judge.

The physiologists will never be able to. build up a consistent theory until they have revised their premises, and this leads us to the consideration of the words above quoted, to the effect that experiments would certainly be immoral if they were useless. Perhaps Dr. Ruffer has never paused to consider why that should be the case. The experiments, we may assume, would not be immoral because they were useless, and the only other grounds on which they could be pronounced so are either (a) because they demoralise the practiser, or (b) because they give pain to unoffending animals. Though Dr. Ruffer might admit the former alternative if we were treating of other cruelties, he strenuously denies it with regard to vivisectors; and we are consequently driven to the latter—viz., that they are immoral because they give pain to unoffending animals. This is practically an admission that animals have some sort of rights, for otherwise the view of a well-known German professor is the only logical one—that if you buy an animal it becomes your property, and you are at liberty to do what you please with it. As a nation we have long passed this elementary stage of morality, and by legislation have practically admitted that animals are something more than animated chattels. The exact limit of an animal’s rights may not be easily fixed; but it is certain that they cannot be made to depend on the question whether the animal is on the one side or the other of the wall of a laboratory, or whether or not the man who is accused of infringing those rights is certified as competent to do so by others engaged in the same pursuit. The present law, being founded on no definite moral principle, is unsatisfactory. It makes no attempt to place any limit either to the duration or intensity of the pain which a man may inflict on an animal when once he has a certificate, albeit the Report of the Royal Commission admitted that “it is not to be doubted that inhumanity may be found in persons of very high position as physiologists.”

The anti-vivisectionists are not so unreasonable as their opponents would have people believe. They do not wish to stand in the way of the advance of science by scientific means, or to frustrate legitimate experiment, but they do claim that vivisection as a legalised method shall be totally abolished—first because no means have been or ever can be devised by which the abuse of it can be provided against, and secondly because any arguments which may be urged in defence of it apply equally well to experimentation on the inferior members of the human race, and there is not wanting evidence that hospital patients have been unjustifiably utilised for experiment. Vivisection is the only form of cruelty which is specially protected by law, and we claim that, like theft or any other crime, it shall be made a penal offence. Though as in one case, so in the other, instances may occur of so trivial a nature as to be unworthy of recognition by law, that cannot alter the principle. The law must forbid absolutely, and the interpretation of the law be left to the common sense of the community.

The paper by Professor Horsley is of different calibre. It hardly touches the question under discussion, and is indeed, to use his coadjutor’s words, an essay on the “Immorality of Antivivisectionists.” A reply to it as such could have little interest to readers of the CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, though possibly in a society journal it might be appreciated. There are, however, two points of interest in it, one medical and one otherwise. In speaking of rabies, the writer says, “M. Pasteur . . . discovered the means of saving fourteen out of fifteen persons doomed to die of the disease.” This statement is on a par with that extraordinary one of Sir Joseph Lister, that Pasteur has saved 12,000 lives, or with Professor Horsley’s own statement on a previous occasion before the Lords Committee on Rabies, that the death-rate from hydrophobia in Scandinavia in one year reached one hundred and eighty-one, when, on inquiry being made, it was found that there was no evidence of its having ever reached eighteen even. Professor Horsley, as an advocate for “truth for truth’s sake,” should not have allowed his partisanship to run him into such extravagances. The manner in which both he and Sir Joseph arrive at their figures is apparently by assuming that all the patients who have flocked to Paris, whether bitten, licked, or only frightened, were “doomed to die of the disease.” But I find that Pasteur in his statistics divides his cases into three classes, in which the dogs were—(A) shown to have been mad by experiment, (B) by veterinary examination, and (C) only suspected of having been mad. In making up his results, however, we find that he adds up all, and apparently, like Professor Horsley, assumes that all were “doomed to die” but for him. Such slipshod statistics were probably never presented to the world before by a scientific man. Their value was well shown by the Report of the Local Government Board Committee appointed to inquire into Pasteur’s treatment, of which Professor Horsley cannot be ignorant, as he was himself the secretary. The Committee took for investigation ninety cases, selected as being within reach of Paris. Of these, from one cause or another, they threw out sixty-six, leaving twenty-four, in which they say the dogs were “undoubtedly rabid.”

Of these twenty-four cases the Committee “believed” that not less than eight would have died if they had not been inoculated. The grounds for this belief are not given, and a percentage of thirty-three is a very large one. The Committee, indeed, themselves admit a little higher up that “the percentage of deaths among persons who have been bitten by dogs believed to have been rabid has been in some cases estimated at the rate of only five per cent.” If the lower percentage is the correct one, there is nothing surprising in the fact that no case of hydrophobia should occur among those twenty-four taken at haphazard, even if they were all genuine. Moreover, two deaths did actually occur in Paris during the period covered by the investigation, and it is very remarkable that the Committee passed over them in silence. Had they been included with the twenty-four the argument would have been spoilt.

So that, instead of showing that Pasteur had saved fourteen lives out of fifteen, the Committee left it doubtful whether he had really saved any at all. On the other hand, the Report admitted that “deaths have occurred under conditions which have suggested that they were due to the inoculations rather than to the infection from the rabid animal;” and they also said that, to stamp out hydrophobia, “police regulations would suffice, if they could be rigidly enforced.” Can Mr. Horsley explain his apparent contradictions? The other point of interest is Mr. Horsley’s manner of meeting our not unreasonable demand for some definite instance of the benefit derived by medicine from vivisection. “We are,” he characteristically tells us, “uninstructed, and almost mercenary, questioners.” “The miserable spirit of cuz bono? finds its highest development within our shores.” The application to surgery by Sir J. Lister of Pasteur’s experiments and discoveries with regard to fermentation (made without vivisection) ought to be, we are told, “a perennial example of the fatuity of the eternal demand for so-called practical results.”

Dr. Ruffer says that vivisection would certainly be immoral if it were useless; and, when we ask for evidence of its utility, Professor Horsley replies that we are “an evil and adulterous generation that seeketh after a sign.” Will no sign then ever be given? There has, apparently, been none vouchsafed as yet.

Ernest Bell

The Contemporary Review, December 1892