Charles Robert Richet

“ The wealthiest mandarins, the most intelligent merchants, smoke opium, as do the humblest coolies. The use of opium is like the use of tobacco among ourselves; nor does it produce any greater mischief, at least among the well-to-do classes; but with the common people it is different. There are establishments specially devoted to opium—smoking-places where, for a trifling sum of money, one may gratify this appetite. Rarely does a smoker leave before he is fully under the influence of the drug, just as the drunkard does not quit the gin-shop until he is fuddled. ”

“ Interminable conversations are always going on, recriminations, with indignation drowned in a flood of words. With all this is combined an unceasing movement which has no real object and can not be explained. The woman must put flowers on the bolster of her bed, a ribbon in her hair, she must decorate herself with gewgaws; and the busy carefulness in these little matters contrasts with the negligence and disorder of the general keeping; a patient whose hat is adorned with ribbons will go out barefooted into the court. Odd ideas prevail, and absurd antipathies and sympathies. ”

“ If we think physiology is not a science, or imagine it is useless to man, all right. Let us be contented to observe the stars, and resign ourselves to ignorance of the conditions of our existence. But if we want to sound the mysteries of life, to penetrate to the causes and mechanism of the forces that rule us, then we should continue our efforts without allowing ourselves to be discouraged by unjust attacks. We may be sure of an abundant harvest; and every day, at the price of a few rabbits, frogs, or dogs, will give us some important discovery. ”

“ Her feelings will be likewise of the most fleeting character, and she will not imagine that it is necessary to establish transitions between laughing and tears, anger and satisfaction. Her bad humor will last while you turn an hour-glass, and she will behave like children who burst out in laughing while the tears they have just shed are still rolling down their cheeks.
Notwithstanding this mobility, this irresistible spontaneity, the victims of hysteria are wholly wanting in sincerity. They are all more or less liars ”

“ Memory is the unerring guide of their movements. They can read mentally the book which they open, and perform similar actions to those they would be engaged in if they were awake—as, for example, those of swimming, running, writing, and handling arms. If they are suddenly wakened, they will be stupefied at finding themselves up and dressed when they had supposed that were reposing quietly in their beds. Instead of seeking for something marvelous in these phenomena, would it not be better to satisfy ourselves that they resemble those that we may observe in ordinary sleep? ”

“ The immediate consequence, the practical end, may often escape him, but he is not concerned with them; for he long ago in his own mind identified science with the love of man. He has acquired a conviction that science and the love of his fellows are the same thing, and that every scientific conquest is a step in the way of social progress. I do not believe that any experimenter would say, on giving curare to a rabbit, or in cutting the marrow of a dog, or in poisoning a frog, "This experiment is destined to help cure or relieve some man's disease." ”

“ Let them try to suppress the terrible scourge of war, which has made a hundred thousand times more human victims than all the frogs, rabbits, and dogs that have been sacrificed by all the physiologists in the world. There is a task worthy of their activity.
We are apt, when we speak of pains and martyrdom, to exaggerate the sufferings of animals. There is no pain unless there is consciousness and attention to the pain. The more intelligent a being is, the more it can suffer. Unintelligent animals are incapable of feeling in its fullness the sensation we call pain. ”

“ Has man the right to make living beings suffer for purposes of utility or information?
We remark, first, that if vivisection is to be proscribed, it will be impossible to draw the line at any animal. If morality prohibits us from experimenting on the dog, we must, by the same rule, respect the cat, the rabbit, the fowl, the turtle, and the frog. If we prohibit the use of the frog, how can we permit the use of the snail, the oyster, and the medusa? In a little while we come to those beings the animal nature of which is in dispute. ”

“ Not less surprising than the violence of the attack is the ease with which it can be stopped. All the excess ceases at once on simply compressing the abdomen. The demoniac spell originates apparently in the ovary, for, on pressing the hand on the abdomen precisely at the point that answers to the ovary, the rage immediately ceases. The poor demoniac, restored to herself, casts an astonished look at the persons around her, as if she does not understand why they are there, for she was alone when she was seized, and has been unconscious since. ”

“ Let us now analyze the psychological phenomena of somnambulism. We all know what a dream is: when, tired with the labors of the day, we give up to sleep, our thoughts become confused and floating; the attention can no longer be held fixed upon any definite object; we gradually lose consciousness of the exterior world, and strange forms, the reality of which is in our conception only, impose themselves upon us. ”

“ It is an erroneous view of science to expect that it shall at once give a result useful, palpable, and precise, or an instantaneous practical application. Science has nothing to do with utility; or, rather, the true utilitarians are those whose hopes are in future science. They are forced to respect the science of to-day, even when it appears useless, because it is bringing us nearer to the science of to-morrow, which alone can effect some great alleviation to human suffering. ”

“ We love science for itself, for the grand results it is destined to give, and we surrender ourselves with passion to the disinterested investigation of the truth that is hidden in things, convinced that this truth will in time become the salvation and hope of our brethren.
No parity can be established between the results obtained and the price they cost. A few sufferings of animals while so many other animals are suffering are as nothing in comparison with the results of a scientific discovery. ”

“ The magnetizers make wonderful pretensions. They declare that all these facts are of the earth earthy, and, assuming to rise away above their plane, they have imagined that the intelligence of the somnambulists is capable of pulling aside the curtains from the future, of penetrating the mystery of things that are and will be. They have talked of clairvoyance as a power of seeing without the aid of the eyes, as for example of reading a shut book, of hearing without the aid of the ears, of being present at a conversation which is taking place at the same moment at the other end of the world. ”

“ It may be that the number of those whom modern medicine, relying upon experiment, has cured, is not large; but certainly the number whom it has relieved is immense. If it can not cure disease, it can at least prevent pain. Why, then, should so much account be taken of a few pains of animals in the face of the thousands of men we have saved from suffering? We should not be indignant that a dog may be sacrificed every day in the thirty physiological laboratories that are scattered over the whole world ”

“ Would it not be a really marvelous fact if a deception carried on for a hundred years through all Europe should everywhere and always present the same features, and if all the physicians, all the men of science who had devoted themselves to the study of it, should have become victims to the same unexplainable imposture? ”

“ A young woman, for example, who yesterday had a charming disposition, was docile and amiable, is wholly changed to-day. She will not endure the least observation, is discontented with everything, has a bad look for everybody, breaks all rules, and is quite ungovernable. Her indocility is the more surprising, because it arises suddenly without cause, and disappears in the same manner. Self-love is always extravagantly developed. The most trifling pleasantry often becomes a cruel offense, to be borne with indignation, which tears enough can not be shed to protest against. ”

“ Every step of progress in our knowledge leads in the end to a forward step in our career. Even though we may not immediately comprehend the practical utility of a particular discovery, it will eventually bear a sure fruit. The innumerable and mysterious facts of the medium in which we live are subject to fixed laws that are only imperfectly known. All our efforts should tend to elucidate these laws; and science—that is, the investigation of the grand laws of Nature—seems to be one of the principal functions of human energy. ”

“ When the chloroform absorbed by the mucous membrane of the lungs has passed into the blood, active memory, which presupposes attention and will, has disappeared; still, the intelligence is not yet dead. Ideas are still conceived, old recollections persist, and sometimes even the memory of past events is strangely quickened. The patient will speak in a language he thought he had forgotten, and recall old stories that seemed to have passed into oblivion. ”

“ The physician is, alas! too often powerless to contend against the ills that are raging around us. But, really, we can not expect physiology to cure incurable diseases and make men immortal; its mission is to discover the truth, and it is for the physician to apply the lessons of the new truth to the treatment of diseases. Who can say seriously that modern medicine, enlightened by the great physiological discoveries of this and former centuries, is not superior to the medicine of the middle ages? The circulation of the blood was discovered by vivisection. ”

“ Instead of developing cruelty, the practice of physiology should rather tend to increase in us the feeling of humanity and pity. The physician who has closely observed human suffering, instead of being hardened to it, becomes more compassionate. So the physiologists, who are acquainted with pain, are full of pity for suffering beings, and I do not hesitate to say that not one of them would be guilty of brutality toward an animal. ”

“ One crosses her arms and raises her eyes to heaven in an attitude of religious admiration, as if she saw the clouds opening to show her the saints or God. Another talks in tender words to her little girl, from whom she has been separated for a long time. Another sees monstrous animals, lizards with red snouts and blood-shot eyes, or enormous bats, and her features express unspeakable horror. ”

“ We can not form an idea of what a frog feels when we cut one of its nerves; probably we never shall know what it feels; but it appears to me that the pain it feels then is very vague and very confused. Compared to man, whose intelligence is so clear, the inferior animals are like automatons: most of their acts are half involuntary. They are not deliberate acts, maturely reflected out, but irresistible impulsions of which the actors have imperfect consciousness. ”

“ It is necessary to be fully aware of this fact to understand why they are confined in an asylum for the insane; for when we question them, when we converse with them, we do not discover that total perversion of intelligence which we make out so easily with regard to most insane persons. We should have to see them in their working life, that is, in the midst of the exterior world, subjected to the exciting influences of every kind with which it abounds, to comprehend to what extravagances, not to use a stronger term, they will abandon themselves when no restraint hinders them. ”

“ Notwithstanding a whole class of positive facts exist, proved and easy to verify, there are still some medical men who do not admit the reality of them, and are ready to smile at the mention of somnambulism as if a colossal deception were spoken of. In their view, all the cases of this condition of sleep are nothing but comedies skillfully played before too simple spectators by nervous women who have been made fanatical by delirium. ”

“ Gradually everything becomes more and more indistinct, our thoughts are enveloped in a haze, we feel ourselves detached from matter, detached from our bodies, and transformed into thought, which flits about, so to speak, becoming more and more brilliant, but at the same time more and more confused. ”

“ Over the whole surface of the earth, in Borneo as in France, in the Sahara as in Lapland, men and animals are suffering. In the depths of all the seas, in the currents of all the rivers, on all the shores of all the oceans, in all the forests, and in all the plains, suffering and pain exist. Our object is to bring in some mitigation for all these evils, and it can not be accomplished except by the aid of science, through becoming acquainted with the laws of life. ”

“ Ideas now come crowding on his brain, one following another with bewildering rapidity. Thoughts come and go without any apparent law of succession or concomitance, but in reality they are governed by the immutable laws of the association of ideas and impressions. The patient thinks the persons he sees around him very slow and dull. Language is not swift enough to give expression to his rapid thoughts. There is, as it were, an hypertrophy of ideas. What in the normal state would cause very trifling discomfort, now becomes an unbearable evil, and the patient cries and begs for commiseration. ”

“ Hesitation as between a dog and a man is not permissible. We owe aid and love to the beings who are nearest to us, in the degree that they are nearer, to a Frenchman more than to a Chinese, to a man more than to an animal. We are all of the great human family, to all the individuals of which we owe justice and assistance, while we owe to animals pity and protection only when they involve no harm to our human brethren.
The principal object of science, and particularly of physiological science, is to be useful to men. ”

“ Chance, not physiology, has made us acquainted with the medical properties of cinchona, mercury, opium, and chloroform. The great physiological discoveries, though interesting as curiosities, have not been for our good. What has come from the knowledge of the circulation of the blood? Are we any more able to cure affections of the spinal marrow because we know now, what we did not know a hundred years ago, that there are motor cords and sensitive cords in it? K mortality is less now than formerly, it is not in consequence of the progress of medicine, but of general hygiene. ”

“ They pass and repass with marvelous facility, changing at every instant, and bewildering us with a moving and fantastic train. There are human faces with the forms of beasts, wonderful monsters, gardens, palaces, persons who had disappeared long ago, and who we thought had passed from memory. ”

“ This argument yields the point that we have a right to experiment upon animals which do not feel suffering, or only feel it a little. Let us leave out the question of the inferior animals, and go straight to the strongest argument that can be brought forward, that which turns upon the martyrdom of the dog. Let us take the question, as they say, by the horns, and see if the physiologists have the right to make a dog suffer.
I love dogs for themselves; I have as much compassion as any one can have for them when they are suffering ”