nctions
between what in vivisection is right and wrong! In all the literature
of advocacy for free and unrestricted vivisection can we find anything
resembling it? Certainly, I know no writer favourable to unlimited
experimentation who has been equally fair. One surgical
vivisectionist is fond of dividing the class interested in discussion
of vivisection as "Friends of Research," and "Foes of Research,"
ascribing to the first all the virtues of good sense, and to the
latter all the folly that belongs to ignorance. In which class, we
may well wonder, would he place the first American surgeon of his time
because he objected only to cruelty and abuse?

To Dr. Bigelow the legal supervision of the laboratory seemed the one
practical method by which cruelty might be somewhat restrained,
because in this way he believed the public would obtain some knowledge
of the practice which is now withheld. He says:

"In order that painful vivisection may be as nearly as possible
suppressed, not only by public opinion, but by law, IT IS ESSENTIAL
THAT PUBLIC OPINION SHOULD BE FREQUENTLY INFORMED OF WHAT IT IS AND
MAY BE. Here lies the work of the antivivisectionist. Further, every
laboratory ought to be open to some supervising legal authority
competent to determine that it is conducted from roof to cellar on the
humanest principles, in default of which it should be, as slavery has
been, uncompromisingly prohibited wherever law can accomplish this
result."

Is the cruelty of unrestricted and unregulated vivisection a reality
or a myth? Of his own views on this question we can have no doubt.
He says:

"A TORTURE OF HELPLESS ANIMALS--MORE TERRIBLE BY REASON OF ITS
REFINEMENT AND THE EFFORT TO PROLONG IT THAN BURNING AT THE STAKE,
WHICH IS BRIEF--IS NOW BEING CARRIED ON IN ALL CIVILIZED NATIONS, NOT
IN THE NAME OF RELIGION, BUT OF SCIENCE."

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"The law should interfere. There can be no doubt that in this
relation there exists a case of cruelty to animals far transcending in
its refinement and in its horror anything that has been known in the
history of Nations.

"There will come a time when the world will look back to modern
vivisection in the name of Science, as they do now to burning at the
stake in the name of Religion."

Concerning vivisection, then, the views of one of the most eminent
surgeons that America has produced may be summed up as follows:

FIRST. He is not favourab