Page:Blackwell 1898 Scientific method in biology.pdf/29



T must be carefully noted that the wrong involved in inflicting torture upon a living creature is the violation of a rational principle. The employment of torture or of painful experiment in biological research is not a question of the right to gain knowledge. It is a question of how we seek to gain knowledge. It applies directly to method.

Thus, the fact observed by Paget, that in a patient who vomited all fat, the pancreas alone was found on post-mortem examination to be diseased, is worth more than a series of experiments on lower animals of different constitution from our own.

In the slow approach towards truth—which is the great object of science—no single method is