Page:Blackwell 1898 Scientific method in biology.pdf/41

Rh being of course an unknown quantity, depending on individual conscience.

A point for serious consideration is the effect produced upon the unformed minds of students of medicine, by the introduction of experimentation upon living animals into our medical schools and hospitals.

The employment of destructive experimentation on living creatures is now introduced as a part of the ordinary instruction of medical students in the fundamental study—physiology. This is a novelty of the present generation. During the whole course of my medical studies, forty years ago, I never saw a living creature vivisected for the instruction of students. The same is true of the experience of most of the able physicians of an older generation.

Now, however, every medical school has its store of imprisoned living creatures awaiting their fate—from the large frogs imported from Germany, the mice, rabbits, cats, and dogs of home production, to the cargoes of monkeys brought to our foggy climate from tropical Africa. They