n school-boy knows that the
contrary is true--that the use of ether as an anaesthetic--the grandest
discovery of modern times--had no origin in the torture of animals.

I confess that, until very recently, I shared the common impression
regarding the utility of vivisection in therapeutics. It is a belief
still widely prevalent in the medical profession. Nevertheless, is it
not a mistake? The therapeutical results of nearly half a century of
painful experiments--we seek them in vain. Do we ask surgery? Sir
William Ferguson, surgeon to the Queen, tells us: "In surgery I am not
aware of any of these experiments on the lower animals having led to
the mitigation of pain or to improvement as regards surgical
details." [1049.] Have antidotes to poisons been discovered thereby?
Says Doctor Taylor, lecturer on Toxicology for nearly half a century
in the chief London Medical School (a writer whose work on Poisons is
a recognized authority): "I do not know that we have as yet learned
anything, so far as treatment is concerned, from our experiments with
them (_i.e._ poisons) on animals." [1204.] Doctor Anthony, speaking of
Magendie's experiments, says: "I never gained one single fact by
seeing these cruel experiments in Paris. _I know nothing more from
them than I could have read._" [2450.] Even physiologists admit the
paucity of therapeutic results. Doctor Sharpey says: "I should lay
less stress on the direct application of the results of vivisection to
improvement in the art of healing, than upon the value of these
experiments in the promotion of physiology." [394.] The Oxford
professor of Physiology admitted that Etiology, the science which
treats of the causes of disease, had, by these experiments, been the
gainer, rather than therapeutics. [1302.] "Experiments on animals,"
says Doctor Thorowgood, "already extensive and numerous, cannot be
said to have advanced therapeutics much."[A] Sir William Gull, M. D.,
was questioned before the commission whether he could enumerate any
therapeutic remedies which have been discovered by vivisection, and he
replied with fervor: "The cases bristle around us everywhere!" Yet,
excepting Hall's experiments on the nervous system, he could enumerate
only various forms of disease, our knowledge of which is due to
Harvey's discovery, two hundred and fifty years ago! The question was
pushed closer, and so brought to the necessity of a definite reply, he
answered: "I do not say at present our therape