3.

It cannot be expected that any Medical College, of its own accord and
without outside pressure, will restrict or hamper its freedom of
action. As a condition of prosperity and success it cannot show less
than is exhibited by other medical schools; it must keep abreast of
"advanced thought," and do and demonstrate in every way what its
rivals demonstrate and do. There can be no question but that there is
to-day a strong public demand for continental methods of physiological
instruction. Who make this demand? You, gentlemen, students of
medicine, and they who follow in your pathway. This year it is you
who silently request this aid to your memory of the physiological
statements of your text books; another year, another class of young
men and young women, occupying the same benches, or filling the same
laboratory, repeats the demand for the same series of illustrations.
You, perhaps, will have gone forward to take your places in active
life, to assume the real burdens of the medical profession. To those
succeeding years of thought, reflection and usefulness, let me
appeal, respecting the absolute necessity of all class demonstrations
and laboratory work involving pain. Postpone if you please, the ready
decision which, fresh from your class-room, you are perhaps only too
willing to give me to-day; I do not wish it. But some time in the
future, after years have gone by, remembering all you have seen and
aided in the doing, tell us if you can, exactly wherein you received,
in added potency for helping human suffering and for the treatment of
human ills, the equivalent of that awful expenditure of pain which you
are now demanding, and which by unprotesting acquiescence, you are
_to-day_ helping to inflict.

BOSTON, MASS.,
_March, 1889_.

[_From_ SCRIBNER'S MONTHLY, _July, 1880_.]

DOES VIVISECTION PAY?

The question of vivisection is again pushing itself to the front. A
distinguished American physiologist has lately come forward in defense
of the French experimenter, Magendie, and, parenthetically, of his
methods of investigation in the study of vital phenomena. On the other
hand, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals made an
unsuccessful attempt, in the New York Legislature last winter, to
secure the passage of a law which would entirely abolish the practice
as now in vogue in our medical schools, or cause it to be secretly
carried on, in defiance of legal enactments. In support of this