Page:Blackwell 1898 Scientific method in biology.pdf/44

32 the natural shrinking from needless pain can soon be hardened into callousness. Conversing with medical students, in relation to the effect made upon them by witnessing vivisections, even under chloroform, I have found that their experience is always the same, viz.: ﬁrst, the shock of repulsion, then tolerance, and then, if often repeated, indifference.

The moral deterioration necessarily induced in those to whom suffering becomes a frequent spectacle is noted by the 'Englishman in Paris,' from personal experience. After speaking of the inhumanity produced by the daily sight of blood, in the originally honest bourgeois, who became the 'Conventionnels' of the French Revolution in 1793, he writes as follows: 'I have witnessed three executions. After Pommeraye's execution, I was ill for a week; after Troppmann's, the effect soon wore off in three days; after Campa's, I ceased to think about it in twenty-four hours. Then I made a vow that no power on earth should draw me to the Place de la Roquette again. But men generally regard their growing imperviousness as a sign of mental force, and pride themselves upon it.'