Page:Blackwell 1898 Scientific method in biology.pdf/55

Rh medical practice is the motive or source of much of the laboratory experimentation.

The various ethical dangers resulting from conscienceless or irrational experiments on animals demand much more serious consideration by the profession than has hitherto been given to them. In the opinion of an increasing number of intelligent physicians, a vast amount of what is now presumptuously called research—experiments disguised under learned names, but which are really the irrational mutilating and diseasing of sentient living creatures—are no more scientific research than is the gratification of a child's curiosity when it sticks a pin, with a thread, through a cockchafer, to see how long it will ﬂy and how loud it will buzz. The child, when punished for its thoughtless cruelty, might remonstrate in learned terms that it should not be restrained, for it was investigating the vital endurance of the Melolontha vulgaris, and the acoustic properties of its wing-covers, under interesting and abnormal conditions.

A large proportion of what is simply conscienceless curiosity, often starting from more or less frivolous tentative diversions of the laboratory,