exaggerated or false statements do not come under that category.
Let us now turn our attention to The Abolitionist, which is the journal of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection. At the trial it transpired that Mr. Coleridge had referred to the University College physiological laboratory as "this pit of Tophet;" but the copy of The Abolitionist now before us contains gems equally precious. The President of the American Anti-vivisection Society, a medical man by the way calls vivisection "the abominable sin," "a relentless enemy," and he asks "is not licensing vivisection the same as licensing the social evil?" He thinks that abolition of vivisection would harm only the physiological chemists, "the Shylock dealers in useless serums, who think more of their ducats than their daughters." The idea of filthy lucre being the stimulus to which the vivisector responds is a common one, indeed The Abolitionist puts it very frankly thus:—
"The Daily News might have added that it is in playing on the millionaire's unbelief in any future life, and on his consequent anxiety to retain every hour of this life he possibly can that the vivisector may hope to find his Eldorado.
"It is becoming more and more the habit of millionaires to subsidize vivisection, as Lord Iveagh did to the tune of a quarter of a million, as others are invited to do for the benefit of cancer research, a doubtful benefit to the cancer patients present and to come, but a very certain benefit, we admit, to the pockets of the researchers, among whom even a trifle of £100,000 might divide very pleasantly." Leaving the grammar and composition out of account such insinuations are ridiculous. Physiologists are amongst the last people to be accused of making money their aim and object. Have we not the example of a late Professor of Physiology? Some years ago he was offered a munificent endowment to his chair of physiology conditionally on his stopping all vivisection work in his laboratory; but his reply was such a prompt and uncompromising negative that the would-be donor had to find other use for his money.
These accusations, however, are nothing to the charge of experimenting on helpless hospital patients. Yet such is the indictment of a medical man, a retired officer of the Indian Medical Service, and a Fellow of King's College. The following are extracts from a letter written by Deputy Surgeon-General J. H. Thornton, C.B., M.B., B.A., to the Daily News and printed in The Abolitionist:—
"Vivisection, like all cruel practices, is immoral and dangerous, tending to make its votaries callous, cruel, and unscrupulous. " ♦ ♦ ♦ "Vivisection has so greatly demoralised the medical profession in many foreign countries (especially in Germany) that many medical men have not scrupled to commit the abominable crime of experimenting upon the helpless hospital patients under their charge." He adds that in England it has led to reckless and unnecessary operating, and sometimes (rarely) to experimenting upon hospital patients.
Another retired officer of the Indian Medical Service, was called for the defence in the recent Coleridge trial, and gave evidence along with a Dr. Bowie to the effect that an experiment such as that performed by Dr. Bayliss to illustrate the fundamental law of secretion, and to compare the pressure of saliva with that of the blood, was unnecessary for the practical teaching of physiology to students.
A certain Dr. Hadwen, who writes M.D., L.R.C.P., M.R.C.S., etc., after his name, talks of "the hellish corali," and boldly asserts that "the statistics of the Pasteur Institute are not worth the paper they are printed upon. " ♦ ♦ ♦ "It is the fashion to be inoculated for every innocent dog-bite in these days." Not content with this he condemns diphtheria antitoxin not only as worthless, but as "a very dangerous product," which has proved "a contributing factor to the death-rate." As to vivisection he calls it "an abominable sin," "an inhuman practice," "a relic of the barbaric past, which ought to be prohibited by law."
Mr. Stephens Smith, M.R.C.s., who has written a book on or against vivisection, remarks:— "That the most infamous cruelty occurs, the apologists of vivisection have tacitly admitted." ♦ ♦ ♦ "I have published in detail the merciless experiments which I have seen perpetrated openly and without shame, in France, Belgium and Germany. But are horrors going on in England? They are. Ten per cent, of all cutting experiments in English laboratories are done under the drug curare. This paralyses the muscles while intensifying the sensibility to pain." ♦ ♦ ♦ "From a considerable acquaintance with vivisection, I am convinced that vivisectors do not realise what they are doing, that the cries of the animal are to them only the creaking of a machine."
