Cruelty and Humour
come within the scope, if not of our sympathy, at least of our understanding. Where there is no introspection there is no incongruity, nothing innately and sickeningly inhuman and ill-bred.
The most unpleasant record which has been preserved for us is the long Latin poem written by Robert Grove, afterwards Bishop of Chichester, and printed in 1685. It is dedicated to the memory of William Harvey, and describes with unshrinking serenity the vivisection of a dog to demonstrate Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood. Such experiments, made before the day of anæsthetics, involved the prolonged agony of the animal used for experimentation. Harvey appears to have been a man as remote from pity as from ferocity. He desired to reach and to prove a supremely valuable scientific truth. He succeeded, and there are few who question his methods. But that a man should write in detail—and in
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