which follow demonstration of
certain physiological facts, the cost is pain--pain sometimes
amounting to prolonged and excruciating torture. Is the gain worth
this?

Let me mention an instance. Not long ago, in a certain medical college
in the State of New York, I saw what Doctor Sharpey, for thirty years
the professor of physiology in the University Medical College, London,
once characterized by antithesis as "Magendie's _infamous_
experiment," it having been first performed by that eminent
physiologist. It was designed to prove that the stomach, although
supplied with muscular coats, is during the act of vomiting for the
most part passive; and that expulsion of its contents is due to the
action of the diaphragm and the larger abdominal muscles. The
professor to whom I refer did not propose to have even Magendie's
word accepted as an authority on the subject: the fact should be
demonstrated again. So an incision in the abdomen of a dog was made;
its stomach was cut out; a pig's bladder containing colored water was
inserted in its place, an emetic was injected into the veins,--and
vomiting ensued. Long before the conclusion of the experiment the
animal became conscious, and its cries of suffering were exceedingly
painful to hear. Now, granting that this experiment impressed an
abstract scientific fact upon the memories of all who saw it,
nevertheless it remains significantly true that the fact thus
demonstrated had no conceivable relation to the treatment of disease.
It is not to-day regarded as conclusive of the theory which, after
nearly two hundred repetitions of his experiment, was doubtless
considered by Magendie as established beyond question. Doctor Sharpey,
a strong advocate of vivisection, by the way, condemned it as a
perfectly unjustifiable experiment, since "besides its atrocity, it
was really purposeless." Was this repetition of the experiment which
I have described worth its cost? Was the gain worth the pain?

Let me instance another and more recent case. Being in Paris a year
ago, I went one morning to the College de France, to hear
Brown-Sequard, the most eminent experimenter in vivisection now
living--one who, Doctor Carpenter tells us, has probably inflicted
more animal suffering than any other man in his time. The lecturer
stated that injury to certain nervous centers near the base of the
brain would produce peculiar and curious phenomena in the animal
operated upon, causing it, for example, to kee