st century, merely because it would
imply a repetition of painful experiments; and they may be done by men
like Magendie, who declared of his mutilated and tormented victims,
that it was "DROLL to see them skip and jump about." It is because of
all these differences that the majority of men have an indefinite
conception of what they approve or condemn. The advocate of
unrestricted vivisection sometimes tells us that experimentation
implies no more pain than the prick of a pin, and that its results are
of great utility to the human race; the antivivisectionist, on the
other hand, may insist that such experimentation means inconceivable
torment without the slightest conceivable benefit to mankind. Both
are right in the occasional significance of the word. Both are wrong
if one meaning is to answer for all varieties of experimentation upon
living things.

Some years ago the attempt was made to obtain the view of animal
experimentation held by certain classes of intelligent men and women.
One view of the practice is that which regards it merely as a method
of scientific research, with which morality has no more to do than it
would have in determining in what direction a telescope should be
pointed by an astronomer, or what rocks a geologist should not venture
to touch. A statement embodying the views of those who favour
unrestricted vivisection included affirmations like these:

"Vivisection, or experimentation upon living creatures, must be looked
at simply as a method of studying the phenomena of life. With it,
morality has nothing to do. It should be subject neither to
criticism, supervision, nor restrictions of any kind. It may be used
to any extent desired by any experimenter--no matter what degree of
extreme or prolonged pain it may involve--for demonstration before
students of the statements contained in their textbooks, as an aid to
memory,....or for any conceivable purpose of investigation into vital
phenomena.... While we claim many discoveries of value,....yet even
these we regard as of secondary importance to the freedom of unlimited
research."

This is the meaning of free and unrestricted vivisection. Its
plainness of speech did not deter very distinguished physiologists and
others from signing it as the expression of their views. One can
hardly doubt that it represents the view of the physiological
laboratory at the present day. Sixty years ago this view of
vivisection would have found but few ad