to carry his
experiments to the point of running serious risks, and actually making
himself very uncomfortable. But he did not begin with himself. His first
experiment was on two hospital patients. On receiving a message from the
hospital to the effect that these two martyrs to therapeutic science
had all but expired in convulsions, he experimented on a rabbit, which
instantly dropped dead. It was then, and not until then, that he began
to experiment on himself, with the germicide modified in the direction
indicated by the experiments made on the two patients and the rabbit. As
a good many people countenance vivisection because they fear that if the
experiments are not made on rabbits they will be made on themselves,
it is worth noting that in this case, where both rabbits and men
were equally available, the men, being, of course, enormously more
instructive, and costing nothing, were experimented on first. Once
grant the ethics of the vivisectionists and you not only sanction the
experiment on the human subject, but make it the first duty of the
vivisector. If a guinea pig may be sacrificed for the sake of the very
little that can be learnt from it, shall not a man be sacrificed for the
sake of the great deal that can be learnt from him? At all events, he is
sacrificed, as this typical case shows. I may add (not that it touches
the argument) that the doctor, the patients, and the rabbit all suffered
in vain, as far as the hoped-for rescue of the race from pulmonary
consumption is concerned.

"THE LIE IS A EUROPEAN POWER"

Now at the very time when the lectures describing these experiments
were being circulated in print and discussed eagerly by the medical
profession, the customary denials that patients are experimented on
were as loud, as indignant, as high-minded as ever, in spite of the
few intelligent doctors who point out rightly that all treatments are
experiments on the patient. And this brings us to an obvious but
mostly overlooked weakness in the vivisector's position: that is, his
inevitable forfeiture of all claim to have his word believed. It is
hardly to be expected that a man who does not hesitate to vivisect for
the sake of science will hesitate to lie about it afterwards to protect
it from what he deems the ignorant sentimentality of the laity. When
the public conscience stirs uneasily and threatens suppression, there
is never wanting some doctor of eminent position and high character
who will sa