In the year 1875, in consequence of the cruel experiments which had been published in the works of some English physiologists, a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the practice of subjecting live animals to painful experiments for scientific purposes. In their Report the Commissioners express the opinion that “the practice is, from its very nature, liable to great abuse,” and say that, “looking to the circumstance that a great increase is to be expected in physiological inquiry, it appears to us most important that some legislative control should be established to prevent abuse extending.”
The practical result of this Commission was, that an Act of Parliament was passed in the following year making vivisection illegal, except for specially licensed persons. It was further provided in the Act that additional certificates might be granted to the operators, permitting them to dispense with the necessity of keeping the animals under the influence of chloroform or other anæsthetics during the operations, and that inspectors should be appointed to visit all registered places, With these results the majority of the public were content, and considered that the question had been satisfactorily and finally settled. A few persons, however, who looked below the surface foresaw what has actually proved to be the case, that the Act would be merely a temporary compromise, and, being grounded on no firm moral principle, could not but prove a failure. In fact, it afforded protection, not so much to the animals as to their tormentors, who, provided with licenses and left unvisited by an “inspector” who was one of themselves, were henceforth at liberty to do what they pleased. The number of licenses has been steadily on the increase, and during the last two years it has crept up from thirty-three to fifty-three, and there seems to be no reason why it should not be indefinitely extended, since we have been told that the licenses are granted on the recommendation of an influential scientific society, founded with the express object of protecting the interests of the vivisecting party. Add to this, that some of the experiments during the last ten years have been as cruel as almost any on record, and apparently of no practical use in medicine, and it cannot be said that the endeavour of the Commission to “prevent abuse” has been crowned with success.
On the other hand, their prediction that there would be a great increase in physiological inquiry has been amply fulfilled both here and abroad. Everything now-a-days, be it a fresh drug, a new surgical operation, or merely a fanciful theory, has to he tested on the living animal, and that not by any means to draw conclusions as to the effect on men, but often after it, has been used on patients to try what will happen when it is applied to animals. When, in Paris, a man has demonstrated that he can fast for six weeks, a physiologist thinks it an interesting scientific experiment to starve two dogs to the point of death to try how long they can live—the one with water and the other without it—and the Times devotes a paragraph to reporting this senseless barbarity, adding a flippant and unfeeling comment.
But the surest sign of the increase in public favour of this practice will be found in the manner in which it has lately been endowed. In 1879 was founded the G. H. Lewes scholarship (value £200 a year) for physiological research, by the aid of which Professor Roy was enabled to perform the agonising experiments which were quoted by Mr. Reid in the House of Commons. There years ago the University of Oxford voted £10,000 for the erection of a laboratory for Professor Burdon Sanderson, joint editor of the manual which was one of the immediate causes of the appointment of the Royal Commission. It was on account of this act on the part of his University that Professor Ruskin felt called upon to resign his professorship. A few weeks ago only another sum of £10,000 was left by Mr. J. Lucas Walker for the purposes of scientific and literary research. The Attorney General, into whose bands the bequest was committed, acting on the advice of three friends well known for their advocacy and practice of vivisection, has determined to found with it a studentship for experimental pathology, the holder of which is to be under the immediate control of the above-mentioned Professor Roy.
But the most ominous sign of the times has yet to be told. As is well known, Sir Erasmus Wilson bequeathed upwards of £200,000 to the Royal College of Surgeon’s for the benefit of their College. In the British Medical Journal of January I5th appears a round robin addressed to the President, Vice President, and Council of the College, praying that a portion of the sum may be devoted to the erection of an institution like the “splendid laboratories,” of Berlin, Paris, Leipzig, &c. Of the fifty-two scientific men by whom this memorial has been signed, thirty-one, at least, have either actually practised vivisection or have publicly advocated the practice, and demanded the repeal of the present law; nineteen of them have held licenses, of whom seventeen have had the additional certificate dispensing with the necessity for keeping the animals unconscious of their sufferings.
The natures and opinions of these gentlemen may be seen from the following facts. One of them has recently performed a series of -experiments which consisted in cutting open the abdomens of living animals, laying bare the kidney, dissecting out, cutting, and tying the ends of all the most sensitive nerves, and stimulating them with electricity, to try what effect that would have on the circulation of the kidney. Another has exposed portions of the brains of cats and other animals, and applied electricity to them till the animals uttered “long continued cries as if of rage and pain.” A third has kept the ear of one living animal in the stomach of another for four hours and a half, until the action of the gastric juice had completely eaten away a portion of it. A fourth has killed animals by the application of external heat until their temperature was seventeen degrees above blood heat, which cannot be said to differ much from baking them alive. A fifth has written: “The rocks are broken and put in the crucible, the water is submitted to analysis, the plant is dissected. . . . . In animal life the same method must be adopted to unlock the secrets of nature. The question of the animal being sensitive cannot alter the mode of investigation.” A sixth has openly announced that he has no regard for the sufferings of the animals, and that he does not think there is any difference on this point among the physiologists of England.
From such specimens, which but for want of space might be multiplied, it would be evident what kind of laboratory is likely to be established, had not those of Berlin, Leipzig, and Paris, been specially named, and had not mention been made of the investigations for the prevention of hydrophobia—investigations which for heartless cruelty can hardly be surpassed, since in the words of their author the dreadful disease, “the very thought of which strikes one with fear,” has been communicated to so many animals that “they have passed beyond the possibility of numbering them.”
We fear it is only too probable that the College will be disposed to grant the petition of this influentially signed memorial, but still hope that so strong a public protest may be made that they will pause before they bring the disgrace on themselves and on our country, which has ever been the first to defend the innocent and help the helpless, of introducing into our midst the elaborate applicances and wholesale horrors of the foreign laboratory appliances and wholesale horrors of the foreign laboratory, which even the advocates of vivisection have hitherto agreed in condemning.
Ernest Bell
Church Bells, January 28, 1887, 4 pages