pain one would suffer would be in proportion
to its intelligence. Dr. Rutherford, Edinburgh, never performs an
experiment upon a cat or a spaniel if he can help it, because they are
so exceedingly sensitive; and Dr. Horatio Wood, of Philadelphia, tells
us that the nervous system of a cat is far more sensitive than that of
the rabbit. On the other hand, Dr. Lister, of King's College, is not
aware of any such difference in sensibility in animals, and Dr.
Brunton, of St. Bartholomew's, finds cats such very good animals to
operate with that he on one occasion used ninety in making a single
experiment.

Sir William Gull thinks "there are but few experiments performed on
living creatures where sensation is not removed," yet Dr. Rutherford
admits "about half" his experiments to have been made upon animals
sensitive to pain. Professor Rolleston, of Oxford University, tells
us "the whole question of anaesthetizing animals has an element of
uncertainty"; and Professor Rutherford declares it "impossible to say"
whether even artificial respiration is painful or not, "unless the
animal can speak." Dr. Brunton, of St. Bartholomew's, says of that
most painful experiment, poisoning by strychnine, that it cannot be
efficiently shown if the animal be under chloroform. Dr. Davy, of
Guy's, on the contrary, always gives chloroform, and finds it no
impediment to successful demonstration, Is opium an anaesthetic? Claude
Bernard declares that sensibility exists even though the animal be
motionless: "_Il sent la douleur, mais il a, pour ainsi dire, perdu
l'idee de la defense._"[A] But Dr. Brunton, of St. Bartholomew's
hospital, London, has no hesitation whatever in contradicting this
statement "emphatically, however high an authority it may be."

Curare, a poison invented by South American Indians for their arrows,
is much used in physiological laboratories to paralyze the motor
nerves, rendering an animal absolutely incapable of the slightest
disturbing movement. Does it at the same time destroy sensation, or
is the creature conscious of every pang? Claude Bernard, of Paris,
Sharpey, of London, and Flint, of New York[B] all agree that sensation
is _not_ abolished; on the other hand, Rutherford regards curare as a
partial anaesthetic, and Huxley strongly intimates that Bernard in thus
deciding from experiments that it does not affect the cerebral
hemispheres or consciousness, "_jumped at a conclusion_ for which
neither he nor anybody else had