ICAL OR OTHER FACTS
WHICH HAVE BEEN RECEIVED AS SETTLED POINTS AND ARE BEYOND
CONTROVERSY. We consider the question involved as one of extreme
interest to the Profession, and we shall gladly throw open our columns
to any of our brethren who may wish to assist in framing some code by
which we may decide under what circumstances experiments upon living
animals may be made with propriety."

The words italicized in the foregoing quotation are of special
significance to-day. The editor is "very glad" to note the interest
taken in the subject by the general public--a sentiment quite foreign
to that of the present time. One notes, too, the gratifying assurance
that the medical profession of England at that period would "fully
agree in condemning experiments," which nowadays are made not only in
medical schools but to some extent in every college of any standing in
the United States. And this condemnation on the part of the medical
profession was voiced four years before the date assigned by Professor
Bowditch as that of "the first serious attack upon biological research
in England."

A few months later the same medical periodical outlined the principles
which it believed should govern the practice of animal
experimentation. In the issue of this journal for March 2, 1861, the
editor makes the following pronouncement:

"VIVISECTION.--We have been requested to pronounce a condemnation of
vivisection....

"We believe that if anyone competent to the task desires to solve any
question affecting human life or health, or to acquire such a
knowledge of function as shall hereafter be available for the
preservation of human life or health, by the mutilation of a living
animal, he is justified in so doing. But we do not hesitate to
condemn the practice of operating on living animals for the mere
purpose of acquiring coolness and dexterity, and WE THINK THAT THE
REPETITION OF EXPERIMENTS BEFORE STUDENTS, MERELY IN ORDER TO EXHIBIT
THEM AS EXPERIMENTS, SHOWING WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN, IS EQUALLY TO BE
CONDEMNED."

Again, on August 16, 1862, the Medical Times and Gazette gives an
expression of its views on the subject. It condemns the cruelty of
Magendie, concerning which one will seek vainly to-day in medical
periodicals for any similar expression of reprobation. Referring to
the subject, the editor says:

"No person whose moral nature is raised above that of the savage would
defend the practices which lately disgraced the ve