propose to bring forward only a few instances typical of their kind.

On June 10, 1896, Dr. Henry P. Bowditch, then professor of physiology
in Harvard Medical School, delivered an address on vivisection before
the Massachusetts Medical Society. The character of his audience, and
the profession of the speaker, might be presumed to give assurance of
absolute accuracy concerning any question of historic fact. A quarter
century before, Dr. Bowditch had studied physiology in German
laboratories Returning to America in 1871, he had been given the
opportunity of reorganizing the teaching of physiology at Harvard
Medical School, so as to bring it into conformity with Continental
methods. It is quite probable that to him, more than to any other
person, is due the introduction of Continental methods of
physiological instruction in the medical colleges of the United
States.

According to Dr. Bowditch, the criticism of vivisection in England
began in 1864. To his audience of physicians he made the following
statement:

"The first serious attack upon biological research in England seems to
have been made in an essay entitled `Vivisection: is it Necessary or
Justifiable?' published in London in 1864, by George Fleming, a
British veterinary surgeon. This essay is an important one, for
although characterized at the time by a reviewer in the London
Athenaeum as `ignorant, fallacious, and altogether unworthy of
acceptance,' its blood-curdling stories, applied to all sorts of
institutions, have formed a large part of the stock-in-trade of
subsequent vivisection writers."

The sneering reference to "blood-curdling stories" is of itself
extremely significant. It indicates unmistakably the utter contempt
which nearly every physiologist feels for the sentiment of humaneness
which underlies protest against experimental cruelty. The speaker
omitted to tell his audience that this essay of Dr. Fleming received
the first prize offered by the "Royal Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals," and that the Committee which decided the merits
of the essay included some of the most eminent scientific men of
England, among them Sir Richard Owen and Professor Carpenter--the
latter one of the most distinguished of English physiologists of his
time. He forgot to add that if the examples of atrocious vivisection
given in this essay were horrible--as they were--yet every instance
was substantiated by reference to the original authorities