Albert Leffingwell

“ There are other reasons why we should not permit the past to be forgotten. We are confronted by the challenge of the laboratory. Behind the locked and barred doors of the vivisection chamber, to which no man can gain admission unless known to be friendly to its practices, the vivisector of to-day challenges society to prove the existence of cruelty or abuse. The vivisector demands absolute freedom of action, he demands the most complete privacy, he demands total independence of all legal supervision—and then challenges the production of proof that any criticism is justified! ”

“ Admitting the benefit of the demonstration of scientific facts, how far may one justifiably subject an animal to pain for the purpose of illustrating a point already known? It is merely a question of cost. For instance, it is an undisputed statement in physical science that the diamond is nothing more than a form of crystallized carbon, and, like other forms of carbon, under certain conditions, may be made to burn. Now most of us are entirely willing to accept this, as we do the majority of truths, upon the testimony of scientific men, without making demonstration a requisite of assent. ”

“ If a skilfully constructed hypothesis could be elaborated up to the point of experimental test by the most accomplished and successful philosopher, and if then a single experiment, though cruel, would forever settle it, we might reluctantly admit that it was justified. But the instincts of our common humanity indignantly remonstrate against the testing of clumsy or unimportant hypotheses by prodigal experimentation, or MAKING THE TORTURE OF ANIMALS AN EXHIBITION TO ENLARGE A MEDICAL SCHOOL, or for the entertainment of students—not one in fifty of whom can turn it to any profitable account. ”

“ It cannot be expected that any Medical College, of its own accord and without outside pressure, will restrict or hamper its freedom of action. As a condition of prosperity and success it cannot show less than is exhibited by other medical schools; it must keep abreast of "advanced thought," and do and demonstrate in every way what its rivals demonstrate and do. There can be no question but that there is to-day a strong public demand for continental methods of physiological instruction. Who make this demand? You, gentlemen, students of medicine, and they who follow in your pathway. ”

“ With germs invisible to the naked eye, grown in a flask, will some future experimenter be able to produce in a human being all the terrible symptoms of this worst scourge of the human race? That the experiment will be tried, there can be no doubt; experiments involving the inoculation of the same horrible disease, have been made both in America and in Europe. But does anyone think that the utility of this suggested experiment of Dr. Noguchi would justify its being made upon an unsuspicious patient in a charity hospital? ”

“ Undoubtedly, friends of the tormented vivisector attempted to comfort him with the assurance—so often repeated in our day—that his experiments on living animals had been carried on "for the benefit of sick and suffering humanity." But Reid was too honest a man to permit himself to be thus deluded while under the very shadow of death. For him the time had come when the specious apologies for the infliction of torture—so current in our day—could be of no avail in lessening the poignant feeling of Remorse. In the dying hour men speak the truth about their actions. ”

“ If vivisection be indeed the true method of studying physiology, if physiology cannot be advanced except by vivisection, if chemical observation and microscopic research be useless for the purpose, and nothing but the torture of animals and the demoralization of men will suffice for its progress—then, in God's name, I say, let physiology stop at the point it has reached, even till the day of doom.—I am, Sir, with apologies for the length of this letter, yours, etc. ”

“ One of the most deadly sins of men has been cruelty, cruelty to animals, to children, to women, to men. The basest of these forms is in some respects cruelty to animals, since animals are so thoroughly committed into our hands. It is not easy to devise a more hardening process than careless vivisection; and the claim that it is done in the name of knowledge is, unless it is profoundly and deeply true, an aggravation of the offence. Inhumanity is the worst possible temper for the medical profession to entertain, and the worst possible suspicion to attach to them. ”

“ If there is cruelty behind those barred doors, how is he to prevent its constant recurrence? What, in short, should be the reasonable attitude of every intelligent man or woman anxious to know the truth and to promote reform of abuse?
For many years I have insisted upon the necessity for a certain degree of scepticism regarding every claim put forth by the laboratory, unsupported by convincing proofs. We may judge the future by the past. Has there not been evinced a disposition to exaggerate achievement, to deny secrecy, to mislead regarding the infliction of pain? ”

“ Can one imagine a medical journal in America or England expressing in our time any sympathy for the suffering of frogs in a physiological laboratory? Can one fancy on the part of its editor a suggestion of "bad moral discipline" which the ruthless vivisection of animals of the highest organization or grade of intelligence might induce? To-day such criticism is unthinkable. Yet the capacity of animal suffering has not diminished. The number of victims is vastly larger. ”

“ Has it accomplished anything for the human race that might not have been accomplished under conditions whereby cruelty should be impossible except as a crime? Has the death-rate been reduced by new discoveries made in American laboratories? Is it possible that utility is persistently exaggerated by those who are not unwilling to use exaggeration as a means of defence? And of the Future, what are the probabilities for which we may hope? What is being done in our century in the way of submitting animals to unlimited torture? ”

“ Will those who champion unrestricted, uninvestigated, unsuperintended vivisection assert that they will guarantee to the people of this city that no act of cruelty or wantonness is or ever shall be committed here by a medical practitioner under the guise of scientific investigation? Will they guarantee that such acts are not, and never shall be, committed in this State? Will they guarantee the humanity and the practice of the thousands of medical students who annually graduate from the colleges? ”

“ When the leading physiologist of his day, addressing an audience of physicians, refers to an early criticism of physiological cruelty as a collection of "blood-curdling stories," there is desire not to investigate, but to ridicule and discredit historic facts. When men of science put forth what they claim to be, "a plain statement of the whole truth," without one word of reference to the abuses of the past, they practically throw dust in the air to hide the truth from the public eye. ”

“ No one questions the importance of the discovery of Koch; it has given Science the knowledge that a definite enemy exists, whose insidious invasion she strives to prevent, and whose ultimate conquest may one day be accomplished—more by prevention than by cure. But when a medical writer ascribes the decrease in mortality of this disease to the discovery of Koch in 1882, and makes no reference to the steady fall in the death-rate which went on for a quarter of a century before that discovery was known, what is to be said of his fidelity to scientific truth? ”

“ It only remains for the future Civilization to recognize it so far as concerns beings inferior to ourselves. The repetition by students in a laboratory of an experiment upon the nervous system of a dog, simply to demonstrate well-known facts, tends, perhaps, to fix them in memory; but that degree of utility does not justify the torture. "The time will come," said Dr. Bigelow of Harvard Medical School, "when the world will look back to modern vivisection in the name of Science as it now does to burning at the stake in the name of Religion." ”

“ Vivisection, we must always remember, is an exceedingly complex practice. It is a means of demonstrating well-known facts; it is also a method of original research. How many animals in any given laboratory are used in each of these phases of experimentation? No one can tell us. If the laboratory keeps no account, it is unlikely that the information could be given by anybody else. A strong impression exists that "original research" for any object of conceivable utility to mankind is vastly more infrequent than vivisection for the repetition—painful or otherwise—of facts perfectly well known. ”

“ Can we criticize the humaneness of one who, at the butcher's bench, mutilates the body from which life has gone? Complete and perfect anaesthesia, maintained till death, is practically only premature death. Deprived of sensibility—a deprivation that is never to cease—a living creature is beyond the infliction of cruelty. But is it certain that all these various experiments, made upon nearly five hundred dogs were without pain? Reasons for doubt concerning some of them have been given. Let us now look into the question so far as concerns vivisection in its relation to the pressure of the blood. ”

“ What are the ideals held up before American students in American colleges? What are the names whose mention is to fire youth with enthusiasm, with longing for like achievement and similar success? Is it Richet, `bending over palpitating entrails, surrounded by groaning creatures,' not, as he tells us, with any thought of benefit to mankind, but simply `to seek out a new fact, to verify a disputed point?' Is it Mantegazza, watching day by day, `con multo amore e patience moltissima,'—with much patience and pleasure— the agonies of his crucified animals? ”

“ An experimenter in a hospital makes dying children his material. Is he willing that the maxim of his act should be universal, and apply to experiments upon his own child, when it lies at the point of death? He plunges needle-electrodes into the brain of a simple-minded and perhaps friendless servant-girl. Can we imagine him willing that the motive of his deed should govern and justify experiments of the same kind made upon his mother or his wife? Following Ringer, he tests the actions of poisons upon patients in some hospital under his control. ”

“ Such explanation implies an inveracity which it is not necessary to impute. Mankind is still liable to error; the false deductions of honest men have more than once led to mistaken affirmations of facts; and the most illustrious scientist that ever lived can hardly claim infallibility in matters of opinion. A distinguished philosopher and vivisector of three hundred years ago, Rene Descartes, put forth the theory that animals, being without souls, cannot suffer pain, and that their cries under vivisection were simply as the whirring of wheels in an intricate piece of machinery. ”

“ The utility of Terror as a deterrent they knew—as France knew it in '93, as the Spanish Inquisition knew it for nearly three centuries, as every nation knew it in times of popular insurrection or foreign wars. What Civilization came at last to recognize was that UTILITY OF TORTURE, NO MATTER HOW GREAT, COULD NOT JUSTIFY ITS USE. This principle in its application to the punishment of human beings has been universally recognized by every civilized nation in the world. ”

“ It has led to innumerable men and women of education and refinement to remit all questions of animal experimentation to the vivisector and his friends, precisely as they would have done had they lived three centuries ago, and had it been theirs to decide on the morality of burning a witch. On the other hand, the alliance between the laboratory and the medical profession, their mutual endeavour to stifle criticism and to induce approval of all vivisection whatever, has given rise to a new spirit of inquiry. A moral question is never absolutely decided until it is decided aright. ”

“ It would seem, therefore, that the first step toward reform must be the creation of a public sentiment, eager, not so much to pass condemnation as to know the facts. That the laboratory, of its own accord and initiative, will ever open its doors and give to the world a complete knowledge of what goes on within its sacred precincts, is more than we can expect. The doors will open only when public opinion so demands. The laboratory is perfectly aware of this. With ever yenergy that such consciousness gives, it will fight to keep everything that it now hides from the light of day. ”

“ Such a man stands, let us say, before some great biological laboratory, richly endowed, slendidly equipped, and in the present enjoyment of freedom that is without bounds, and in a secrecy that to-day is as complete as can be imagined. What can he learn with certainty of what goes on within? If he hears claims of superlative gains by the experiments there carried on, how is he to weigh and decide their value? ”

“ Of the thousands of medical students in the State of New York, are there not hundreds who would have offered with eagerness to submit to a test devoid of peril, in the interests of scientific research? And even if an experiment implied danger, might there not be sufficient compensation for all risks? Every year firemen lose their lives in the flames, and policemen are murdered. The compensation they receive induces them to incur risks that might not otherwise be assumed. ”

“ Is Science ever in such straits of necessity that in a single instance it is obliged to take from any man his supreme right of inviolability, and to make its experiments within the wards of the hospital, upon the eyes of the dying, upon the bodies of the ignorant and the poor?
There is yet another method by which perhaps we may test the morality of the practice. A great philosopher of another century seeking to find some criterion of man's duty toward his fellow-men, based obligation upon a universal law. ”

“ At present the public somewhat ludicrously but sincerely enough grossly exaggerates the amount and the character of this work, and by our foolish secrecy we feed the flame of their passionate error. As organized, systematic, and absolute frankness, besides self-benefit, would at once, as it were, take the wind out of our opponents' saiils. Do not let us have "reform forced upon us from without" in this contention, but by going more than half-way to meet them, by the sincerest publicity, show that as wel as scientists and lovers of men we are also lovers of animals. ”

“ Or, in the interest of Science herself, should not one attempt the exposure of inaccuracy, and the demonstration of the truth?
Approaching the end of a long pilgrimage, it has seemed to me worth while to make a final survey of the great question of our time. How was the cruelty of vivisection once regarded by the leading members of the medical profession? Shall we say to-day that the utility of torment, in the vivisection of animals, constitutes perfect justification and defence? How far did Civilization once go in the approval of torture because of its imagined deterrent effects? ”

“ Against the vast cost in money, cost in depravation of the instinct of compassion, cost in the lessened sensitiveness of young men and young women to the infliction of torment, cost in the seeming necessity of defending and justifying cruelty, cost in the temptation to exaggerate facts, cost in the countless hecatombs of victims, non-existent to-day, yet doomed to perish in pain of which no record and no use can be found,—against all this, what profit will be adduced? ”

“ AGAINST ANY REGULATION WHATEVER I understand the various medical and scientific defenders of vivisection to protest. Their invariable contention, implied or expressed, is that it is no one's business what happens to an animal so long as the individual who is handling it can plead that to increase Science is his aim.
"This contention seems to me to flatly contradict the best conscience of our time. The rights of the helpless—even though they be brutes— must be protected by those who have superior power. The individual vivisector must be held responsible to some authority which he fears. ”

“ The facts are indeed different from the legend which for more than a quarter of a century has been repeated as a convincing argument against reform. Of the malign influence of such a tale upon public opinion in preventing legislation in America, we can form no adequate estimate. For any intentional deception we may, of course, absolve the distinguished professional man who has made himself responsible as transmitter of the myth; no man with any conception of honour would state as facts what he knew to be false. ”