Michael Foster

“ Darwin has shown that the lives of all living beings are shaped by "the struggle for existence." Man's life is a struggle for existence with his fellow-men, with living animals and plants, and with the lifeless forces of the universe. The very conditions of his existence lay upon him the burden, and in so doing give him the right, to use the world around him, the lives of animals included, to aid him in his strife. Imagine the results of forbidding man to take away the lives of animals. ”

“ When the rooms in Bishop's Hostel at Trinity College, which he afterwards occupied for many years, were allotted to him, he set about—I was going to write—'to furnish them,' but that commonplace word is not the right one with which to describe the way in which he transformed the four bare walls left by a Cambridge builder into a chamber full of beautiful things, which, though each in turn drew upon itself the gaze of the visitor, produced, together the dominant effect of luxurious ease and comfort. There was in it no mark of the collector. For Dew-Smith was no mere collector. ”

“ It may be of use to say this to a sportsman; but vivisection is not thereby justified. It is no use saying it at all to those who are now agitating this question. They are equally opposed to cruelty in sport as to cruelty in science; but they are also wise in their generation. They see that there is far more hope of putting down the one than the other. Biologists and physiologists are at the present moment clearly in disrepute. To call them atheists, is to show one's self a man of spirit and intelligence. ”

“ Meanwhile, in 1876, he was appointed lecturer on animal morphology at Cambridge, and he threw himself into the labour of teaching with the same ardour, and showed in it the same power, that were so conspicuous in his original investigations. His class, at first small, soon became large, and before long he had pupils not content with knowing what was known, but anxious like himself to explore the unknown; besides, students in embryology came to him from outside the Cambridge school, it may almost be said from all parts of the world. ”

“ Only he who is making an inquiry knows his own needs. If he experiments recklessly and needlessly, he becomes cruel, and, being cruel, will thereby be the worse. But, if he experiments carefully and needfully, never causing pain where it could be avoided, never sacrificing a life without having in view some object, to attain which there seemed no other way, remembering that whoever "tortures" either dead or living nature carelessly will get no true response, there is no reason why his moral nature should suffer even ever so little tarnish. ”

“ Every problem is grasped with a strong hold, cobwebs are brushed away with a film but courteous sweep; and as the reader passes from page to page, subtle solutions of knotty points and bright suggestions for future inquiry come upon him again and again. Not once or twice only, but many times, the darkness in which previous observers had left a subject is scattered by a few shining lines. It is a work full of new light from beginning to end. ”

“ He took unwearied pains and put forth unusual skill as a hunter to secure something which he sought, a rare first edition, a fine old engraving, an attractive and fantastic jewel, or some old bit of furniture, yet he sought to possess it, not simply that he might have it, but because, having it, to look at it or to handle it gave him pleasure whenever he wished. ”

“ We have now to inquire whether the deaths and pains which the word vivisection implies are, or have been, wrought for the benefit of mankind, inasmuch, as they have led to knowledge and power which could not otherwise have been gained; or whether they had not been wrought for the benefit of mankind, inasmuch as they have not led to knowledge and power, or the power and knowledge might have been gained in some other way, or, being gained by many deaths and much pain, have been so small that mankind could well have done without them. ”

“ On that day the library of Mr Dew-Smith was sold by auction at Messrs. Sotheby's room in the Strand. . ." . The very catalogue is a work of genius. . . . And in the absence of any official handbook it is perhaps the best guide that the critical student of the latest fashions in bibliography can select.'
The owner of 'things' which could be spoken of in such terms, had naturally many friends outside Cambridge and the Scientific Instrument Company. He was in the eighties a member of the select Dilettanti Society and of the then vigorous 'Rabelais' Club. ”

“ The art of medicine is the science of physiology applied to detailed vital phenomena by the help of a wisdom which comes of enlightened experience, and an ingenuity which is born of practice. Were there not a single case on record in which physiology had given special and direct help to the cure of the sick, there would still remain the great truth that the ideas of physiology are the mother-ideas of medicine. ”

“ At Easter 1871 he became natural science scholar of his college, and very shortly afterwards, under the guidance of the Trinity prælector of physiology, Dr. Michael Foster, threw himself with great ardour into the investigation of certain obscure points in the development of the chick. For by this time his earlier love for geology had given way to a desire to attack the difficult problems of animal morphology, and these he, like others, saw could be best approached by the study of embryology, that is the history of the development of individual forms. ”

“ The slaughter of an animal is therefore of necessity painful, except in the special cases where means have been taken to do away with pain. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, when an animal is slaughtered by man, it is the death of the animal which benefits man, the pain itself which accompanies the death does him no good at all. While justified, therefore, in killing the animal, he is not justified in causing it pain. He is bound, in fact, to kill the animal in such a way as to cause as little pain as is consistent with his own interest. ”

“ The struggle for existence is its guiding principle. If we believe that man is to govern the world, and he must either govern or succumb, then we must be prepared to use animals selfishly, if you please to call it so—to use animals for our advantage—to kill them when we have need of their deaths—to kill them with pain when the pain is for our benefit; and, inasmuch as the greater includes the less, to inflict pain without death where their pain does us good. ”

“ The property of the physiologist alone, they might perhaps lie barren; used by the physician or surgeon, they soon bear fruit. The hint given by a physiologist of the past generation becomes a household word with the doctors of the present, and their records in turn offer rich stores of suggestive and corrective facts for the physiologists of the generation to come. Take away from the practical art of medicine the theoretical truths of physiology, and you would have left a crowd of busy idlers in full strife over fantastic ideas. ”

“ You make a great cut through its skin with a sharp knife; it does not wince. You handle, and divide, and pinch nerves which, in ourselves, are full of feeling; it gives no sign of pain. Yet it is full of action. To the physiologist, its body, though poor in what the vulgar call life, is still the stage of manifold events, and each event a problem, with a crowd of still harder problems at its back. He therefore brings to bear on this breathing, pulsating, but otherwise quiescent frame, the instruments which are the tools of his research. ”

“ By vivisection I understand the operating with cutting instruments or by other means on the still living bodies of animals. The word "living" requires, perhaps, some further definition. In the long series of changes through which the body of a living animal passes, from full functional activity to complete decomposition, there are three chief stages, each of which may be arbitrarily taken as the end of life. There is the time at which consciousness is lost, the time at which the breath stops and the heart ceases to beat, and the time at which the muscles become rigid with the death-stiffening. ”

“ Thus, to say that the evil wrought upon animals in the name of science is but a flea-bite compared to that done in the name of sport, is simply to bring forward a tu quoque argument of no real worth, except to stop the mouths of particular opponents. When an ardent sportsman, or when one, no sportsman himself, but having a theoretical admiration of the pleasures of the field, declaims against vivisection, it may be worth while to remind such a one of some of the agonies of sport—of the scenes which accompany a battue or a pigeon-match ”

“ I introduce the word death as well as pain, because, in spite of the etymology of the word, and the fact that vivisection suggests to the public mind pain only, and not death at all, the truth is, that in at least the great majority of cases vivisection does or ought to mean death only, and not pain at all. In the minds of those ignorant of physiology—and they are foremost, if not alone, in blaming vivisection—much confusion has arisen from the different meanings attached to the words "life" and "living." ”

“ So long as men refuse to learn or to listen to physiology in order that they may the better use their bodies, it would be hopeless and useless to talk of the day when they may come to it for instruction how to form their minds and mould their natures. It will be enough for my present purpose to point out briefly the relations of physiology to the practical art of medicine. ”