Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/59

Rh service for the public good, are not suffered to pursue their beneficent work in peace?

You know that certain persons who profess to be shocked by the methods of physiological research have succeeded in placing this branch of science under as great disabilities as that sense of humor would allow which so often redeems British ignorance from its most mischievous results.

The method that has given rise to so much excitement is the performance of experiments upon living animals. Now, if this were injurious to the greatest good of the greatest number of the community, or if freedom to perform these experiments interfered with the freedom of other persons to abstain from them, or if such experiments were forbidden by any religious or moral authority, by the ten commandments, or by Mr. Matthew Arnold, of course they must be given up; but, equally of course, the science of physiology must also come to a stop, and the farmer, the cattle-breeder, and the physician must be content with such knowledge or such ignorance as he at present possesses. I know it has been asserted that the science of the functions of living organs is quite independent of experiment upon living organs. But this is said by the same persons who have denied that the art of setting right the functions of the body when they go wrong has anything to do with the knowledge of what those functions are.

If you could be persuaded that chemistry can make progress without retorts and balances, that a geologist's hammer is a useless incumbrance, or that engineers can build bridges just as well by the rule of thumb as by the knowledge gained in a workshop, then you might believe that physiology also is independent of experiment.

It is absurd to object to the difficulties of the research or even the contradictory results sometimes obtained. The functions of a muscle or a gland are more complicated than those of water or gas, and their investigation needs greater skill, more caution, and more frequent repetition. Imperfect experiments can lead to nothing but error; criticism from other physiologists, or from scientific men experienced in other branches of research, is not wanting, and is always welcome. But vague assertion that further progress is impossible by the very means which have led to all our present knowledge, coming from those "who are not of our school," or any school, is undeserving of serious notice.

The real contention, of course, is a moral one, that we ought to relinquish the advantage of all experiments which are accompanied with pain to the creature experimented on. The botanist may serve his plants as he pleases, and even the animal physiologist may cut, or starve, or poison all sentient organisms which happen not to possess a backbone, and he may try experiments with all backboned animals, including himself and his friends, so long as they do not hurt; but that must be the limit. On the most extreme humanitarian views no