stion. No one is so foolish as
to deny the possibility of future usefulness to any discovery
whatever; but there is a distinction, very easily slurred over in the
eagerness of debate, between present applicability and remotely
potential service. If the pains inflicted on animals are absolutely
necessary to the protection of human life and the advancement of
practical skill in medicine, should sentiment be permitted to check
investigation? An English prelate, the Bishop of Peterborough,
speaking in Parliament on this subject, once told the House of Lords
that "it was very difficult to decide what was unnecessary pain," and
as an example of the perplexities which arose in his own mind he
mentioned "the case of the wretched man who was convicted of skinning
cats alive, because their skins were more valuable when taken from the
living animal than from the dead one. The extra money," added the
Bishop, "got the man a dinner!"[A] Whether in this particular case the
excuse was well received by the judge, the reverend prelate neglected
to inform us; but it is certain that the plea for painful
experimentation rests substantially on the same basis. Out of the
agonies of sentient brutes we are to pluck the secret of longer living
and the art of surer triumph over intractable disease.

[A] See Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, June 20, 1876.

But has this hope been fulfilled? Pasteur, we are told, has claimed
the discovery of a cure for hydrophobia through experiments on
animals. It may be well worth its cost if only true; but we cannot
forget that its practical value is by no means yet demonstrated. Aside
from this, has physiological experimentation during the last quarter
of a century contributed such marked improvements in therapeutic
methods that we find certain and tangible evidence thereof in the
diminishing fatality of any disease? Can one mention a single malady
which thirty years ago resisted every remedial effort, to which the
more enlightened science of to-day can offer hopes of recovery? These
seem to me perfectly legitimate and fair questions, and, fortunately,
in one respect, capable of a scientific reply. I suppose the opinion
of the late Claude Bernard, of Paris, would be generally accepted as
that of the highest scientific authority on the utility of vivisection
in "practical medicine;" but he tells us that it is hardly worth while
to make the inquiry. "Without doubt," he confessed, "_our hands are
empty to-day