time, a century and a half ago.

"Among the inferior professors of medical knowledge is a race of
wretches whose lives are only varied by varieties of cruelty; whose
favourite amusement is to nail dogs to tables and open them alive; to
try how long life may be continued in various degrees of mutilation,
or with the excision or laceration of vital parts; to examine whether
burning irons are felt more acutely by the bone or tendon; and whether
the more lasting agonies are produced by poison forced into the mouth
or injected into the veins. It is not without reluctance that I
offend the sensibility of the tender mind with images like these. If
such cruelties were not practised, it were to be desired that they
should not be conceived; but since they are published every day with
ostentation, let me be allowed once to mention them, since I mention
them with abhorrence.... The anatomical novice tears out the living
bowels of an animal, and styles himself a `physician'; prepares
himself by familiar cruelty for that profession which he is to
exercise upon the tender and helpless, upon feeble bodies and broken
minds, and by which he has opportunities to extend his arts and
tortures, and continue those experiments upon Infancy and Age which he
has hitherto tried upon cats and dogs. What is alleged in defence of
these hateful practices, everyone knows; but the truth is that by
knives and fire knowledge is not always sought, and is very seldom
attained. I know not that by living dissections any discovery has
been made by which a single malady is more easily cured. And if the
knowledge of physiology has been somewhat increased, he surely buys
knowledge dear who learns the use of the lacteals at the expense of
his own humanity. IT IS TIME THAT A UNIVERSAL RESENTMENT AGAINST
THESE HORRID OPERATIONS SHOULD ARISE, which tend to harden the heart,
and make the physician more dreadful than the gout or the stone."

A more vigorous denunciation of the cruelty of vivisection never
appeared than these words of the first scholar of the English-
speaking world. Of course the plea will be put forth that in
Dr. Johnson's time the use of anaesthetics was unknown. Are we, then,
to conclude that the present-day defenders of absolute freedom in
animal research would join him in condemning the perpetrators of ALL
EXPERIMENTS CAUSING DISTRESS IN WHICH ANAESTHETICS CANNOT BE EMPLOYED?
For the merit of Dr. Johnson's plea lies in this, THAT HE MAK