Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/62

52 men who in this, as in other matters, consistently refuse to give up to argument the notions which were formed by prejudice.

This sentiment is, I admit, the degradation of just feeling. To many unaffectedly compassionate hearts there is a peculiar pang in thinking of suffering which is deliberately inflicted, with only the justification of duty, instead of the excuse of ignorance or passion. They see in the helplessness of the dumb animals an appeal for pity, almost like that of childhood, and are justly indignant with the selfish cruelty so often exercised upon them. All honor to the efforts which have banished so many cruel sports from England; all honor to the society which seeks to prevent cruelty to animals! If it can point to any additional means by which the sufferings of animals in the cause of science can be diminished, we shall be anxious to adopt them. If it can point to any abuse in one of our laboratories, we will hasten to correct it. This society has honorably declared that they know of none. That physiologists have been heedless, or even callous, in their experiments upon animals in past times, when men were strangely insensible even to human suffering, or in countries where a healthy result of Christian civilization has not yet been seen in habitual gentleness to animals, I need not deny. Such cases have been eagerly sought and sometimes most unfairly judged. Only lately a learned body felt itself not strong enough to retain the admittedly invaluable services of an eminent foreigner, who had once admitted that when absorbed in scientific and beneficent researches he lost sight of any pain that might be inflicted. Is not this the very excuse which is held valid in the case of sport? Doubtless we ought to be ever mindful of every branch of duty, but such occasional forgetfulness does not show hardness of heart. It is an excusable weakness for a student of medicine to shudder or to faint at the sight of blood, but he learns that this merely physical sensibility becomes selfish and mischievous if indulged: he is taught to suppress all such exhibition of emotion, and to let it stimulate without paralyzing his efforts to relieve. But no one surely would think the hysterical youth more truly humane than the surgeon whose compassion is shown in the very firmness with which he inflicts a temporary pain for an ultimate good.

I have hitherto rested the whole argument upon the lawfulness of inflicting pain and death upon the lower animals for the sake of science and humanity, but as a matter of fact I may again assure those who, while assenting to the justice of the plea, yet shrink from what it may involve, that the great majority of experiments upon animals are rendered painless, and that the remainder are mostly those experiments which are most immediately and directly subservient to medical art,