site in agony, or
literally tears out nerves by their roots, let him cut only one-eight
of an inch farther--and he may have some faint suggestion of the
atrocity he is perpetrating when the guinea-pig shrieks, the poor dog
yells, the noble horse groans and strains--the heartless vivisector
perhaps resenting the struggle which annoys him.

"My heart sickens as I recall the spectacle at Alfort in former times,
of a wretched horse--one of many hundreds, broken with age and disease
resulting from life-long and honest devotion to man's service--bound
upon the floor, his skin scored with a knife like a gridiron, his eyes
and ears cut out, his arteries laid bare, his nerves exposed and
pinched and severed, his hoofs pared to the quick, and every
conceivable and fiendish torture inflicted upon him, while he groaned
and gasped, his life carefully preserved under this continued and
hellish torment from early morning until afternoon, for the purpose,
as was avowed, of familiarizing the pupil with the frenzied motions of
the animal. This was surgical vivisection on a little larger scale,
AND TRANSCENDED BUT LITTLE THE SCENES IN A PHYSIOLOGICAL LABORATORY.
I have heard it said that somebody must do it. I say it is needless.
NOBODY SHOULD DO IT. WATCH THE STUDENTS AT A VIVISECTION; IT IS THE
BLOOD AND SUFFERING, not the science, that rivet their breathless
attention. If hospital service makes young students less tender of
suffering, vivisection deadens their humanity, and begets indifference
to it."

Let us pause for a moment. These are words of great import. They are
as true to-day as when first uttered. Who was the speaker? The most
eminent surgeon in America in his day. He was professor of surgery in
Harvard University, and the leading member of its faculty. He was the
surgeon of the Massachusetts General Hospital. He had seen the first
surgical operation under complete anaesthesia that the world had
known. Learned societies in Paris, in London, in other countries of
Europe, were proud to number him among their members. He had reached
the age of assured eminence, where all fear of opposing influences
that might disastrously affect the medical career of a younger man,
had no weight. Surely, if any living man can speak with authority, he
speaks now.

And before whom does he speak? He is not addressing a general
audience. It is a meeting of the Massachusetts Medical Society, an
association of the physicians and surg