xperimentation.
Unfortunately, it so happens that the most attractive original
investigations are largely upon the nervous system, involving the
consciousness of pain as a requisite to success. Toward this class of
experiments the State should act with caution and firmness. It seems
to me that the following restrictions are only just.

_III. In view of the great cost in suffering, as compared with the
slight profit gained by the student, the repetition, for purposes of
class instruction of any experiment involving pain to a vertebrate
animal should be forbidden by law._

_IV. In view of the slight gain to practical medicine resulting from
innumerable past experiments of this kind, a painful experiment upon
a living vertebrate animal should be permitted solely for purposes of
original investigation, and then only under the most rigid
surveillance, and preceded by the strictest precautions._ For every
experiment of this kind the physiologist should be required to obtain
special permission from a State board, specifying on application (1)
the object of the proposed investigation, (2) the nature and method of
the operation, (3) the species of animal to be sacrificed, and (4) the
shortest period during which pain will probably be felt. An officer of
the State should be given an opportunity to be present; and a report
made, both of the length of time occupied, and the knowledge, if any,
gained thereby. If these restrictions are made obligatory by statute,
and their violation made punishable by a heavy fine, such experiments
will be generally performed only when absolutely necessary for
purposes of scientific research.

In few matters is there greater necessity for careful discrimination
than in everything pertaining to this subject. The attempt has been
made in this paper to indicate how far the State--leaning to mercy's
side--may sanction a practice often so necessary and useful, always so
dangerous in its tendencies. That is a worthy ideal of conduct which
seeks

"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."

Is not this a sentiment in which even science may fitly share? Are we
justified in neglecting the evidence she offers, purchased in the past
at such immeasurable agonies, and in demanding that year after year
new victims shall be subjected to torture, only to demonstrate what
none of us doubt? That is the chief question. For, if all compromise
be persistently rejecte