Anti-vivisectionism

“ The advocates of anti-vivisection laws consider themselves more humane and merciful than the opponents of such laws. To my thinking these unthinking advocates are really cruel to their own race. How many cats or guinea pigs would you or I sacrifice to save the life of our child or to win a chance of saving the life of our child? ”

“ So much for why I am an anti-vivisectionist; and I should like to say, in conclusion, that all other anti-vivisectionists of my acquaintance weaken their case infinitely by forming this attack on a scientific speciality in which the human heart is commonly on their side, with attacks upon universal human customs in which the human heart is not at all on their side. I have heard humanitarians, for instance, speak of vivisection and field sports as if they were the same kind of thing. ”

“ I willingly recognise that the absence of this first moral precept is a great gap in most treatises on physiology.
This, however, is about all I can concede to anti-vivisectionists; for truly they indulge in such queer, extraordinary assertions that we are completely disconcerted. Some of these fanatics pretend, for example, that physiologists should practise vivisection upon themselves. To torture a dog is as criminal as to torture a child, according to them; and animal suffering is as much to be respected as human suffering! ”

“ Those most sincere persons who wish to banish experimentation from Science are consequently, I do not fear to say it, standing in the position of direct contradiction to true morality. To refuse man the right to study living nature, is as though we declared that living nature ought not to be known. Alas! [Pg 107] anti-vivisectionists will not listen. In vain do we tell them that we, physiologists, preserve man from disease; that we have alleviated the ills of our human brothers. They stop up their ears; they shut their eyes; they have no pity for the sufferings of human beings. ”

“ There are a number of people who, calling themselves anti-vivisectionists, strongly object to these experiments on the lower animals; and it must be conceded that the humane reasons which they advance against it can only be set aside as “sentimental” if considerations of a wider humanity can show that the arguments of the anti-vivisectionists really run counter to human progress. The supporters of vivisection, properly considered, must not be confused with those who would make a barbarous use of this means of research. ”

“ The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has an equally good record. But an anti-vivisectionist society cannot show results of this kind. Nor can we compare its working expenses to those of a missionary society; for the missionaries give direct personal service to their fellow-men. But we can fairly compare an anti-vivisection society to an anti-vaccination society or a Church of Christian Science. ”

“ Finally, it might be made to appear a culpable act to put an axe into an oak, or to electrify a sensitive-plant, since in either case we disorganize a living being, and possibly produce suffering. Thus easily is the reasoning of the anti-vivisectionists reduced to absurdity. ”

“ This is death in all its savage horror inflicted by man on the animal. There are anti-vivisectionists who accept this. Therefore, they recognise implicitly man's right to kill animals, since they profit by such slaughter for their alimentation; they add, however, that though man has a right to kill, he has no right to cause suffering. Is there no suffering in the slaughter-house? Are anæsthetics ever dreamt of there? ”

“ So it is with the Anti-vivisectionists: they see only the pain inflicted, and do not heed the pain prevented. [Pg xiv] On this score they are in a sense logical when they call Lord Lister a brute, although he of all men living at the present time has been the means of preventing the greatest amount of suffering. They see only the pain which he deliberately inflicted on a few rats and rabbits; they cannot see, or refuse to see the measureless amount of misery he has prevented. ”

“ If anti-vivisectionists were animated by a great desire for morality, they would endeavour to reform our social condition, which is abominable and full of horrors; they would [Pg 80] strive to impart into youth other notions than that of smug satisfaction with the present social conditions. As long as we have not faced the profound evils which gnaw at the root of our social system, as long as we take a delight in the egotistical satisfaction of our capitalist and martial society, it is not permissible, if we would not be accused of scandalous hypocrisy, to affect pretensions to morality. ”

“ The average Anti-vivisectionist disregards them, or at least makes no effort to prevent them. The only kind of pain which stirs his feelings, and meets with his opprobrium, and enables him to indulge in his favourite epithets, is the one justifiable bit of pain in the whole world—a pain inflicted with the noblest of all objects, and by the most humane of all men (for so the medical profession admittedly is) , the object, namely, of preventing future pain, which otherwise would encompass the world of life. ”

“ They seek neither wealth nor honours. It is not in the laboratories of physiology that a man grows rich. It is not in the laboratories of physiology that man wins high social positions. But what matter! He has used his life to alleviate the sufferings of others. He has had ever before him another ideal than that of the anti-vivisectionists, the ideal of human suffering, which is much more to be respected than animal suffering in spite of all empty words and phrases. ”

“ If the anti-vivisectionists were true moralists and not fanatics they would say: "To provoke suffering to produce disease, to inflict tortures, [Pg 77] is an execrable moral lesson. Whilst the first duty of man is to be good, you instruct young men to be wicked. ”

“ If the sick thus relieved could give their testimony and knew how to do it, they would confound the sentimental objections of the anti-vivisectionists, and would declare that their own sufferings deserve a higher consideration than the sufferings of a few animals. ”

“ He is with us when we come into the world and with us when we go out of it, oftentimes lending a helping hand on both occasions. Anyway, our sympathies should especially go out to the medical profession at this particular time when the anti-vivisectionists are railing so loudly against the doctors. The anti-vivisection crusade has enlisted widely different classes in the community, including many lovers of our dumb-animal pets—and aren't some of them the dumbest things you ever saw!—especially chow dogs and love birds. ”

“ But the anti-vivisection movement was quite too formidable to allow of this. That hysterical rampage of British philanthropy was strong enough to coerce the Government against its own protestations, and to extort from it a law that was alike an insult to science and a disgrace to the country. The physiologists were expressly acquitted of all improper practices when left free as they had always been to pursue inquiries in their own way, and they were then handed over to the future control of the police. ”

“ We wish our readers to know that the question was not prompted by any communication from our Society, and we think it unfortunate that members of Parliament should be asked to put questions in the House by persons who do not realise that questions based on inaccurate premises can do nothing but harm to our cause. It is 370 hard that the whole anti-vivisection movement should suffer through the carelessness and indolence of those who will neither be at the pains to avoid inaccuracy by their own study and investigation, nor by consulting the National Society's officers. ”

“ Whatever may be the genius of anti-vivisectionists, they would never have been able to imagine anything similar had they been left to their own intellectual powers. It is not in the study that we are able to discover this long series of unforeseen, extraordinary, almost miraculous facts which laboratory experimentation has been able to find out. ”

“ It was a grand possibility, and, broadly considered, forms the most important step in the progress of medical and surgical science and art.
But, here again, ignorance and prejudice have, even in our day, combined to hinder the use and extension of knowledge vital to human benefit. As the human body was once forbidden to be dissected, so now it is forbidden to vivisect the lower animals. Anti-vivisection societies are formed, and antivivisection legislation is sought and has been obtained to defeat the work of the experimental physiologist. ”

“ As the leading organ of the Anti-vivisection movement, we enter our solemn protest against the publication of this unspeakable article, which must inevitably inflict the gravest injury upon our cause. ”

“ The difference between a dozen anti-vivisectionists and a dozen scientific men can not possibly turn upon a moral question such as dislike of cruelty; and, therefore, if the one can look upon an animal injured and bleeding with serenity and the other not, it would be owing, as the former party assert, to usage or habit. ”

“ This is just what Anti-Slavery Societies are doing; they are taking away the stone from the mouth of the tomb of slavery, where lies the putrid carcass of our brother. They want the pure light of heaven to shine into that dark and gloomy cave; they want all men to see how that dead body has been bound, how that face has been wrapped in the napkin of prejudice; and shall they wait beside that grave in vain? Is not Jesus still the resurrection and the life? Did He come to proclaim liberty to the captive, and the opening of prison doors to them that are bound, in vain? ”

“ But in order to oppose vivisection to best advantage, and especially lest he should place himself in a false position, the anti- vivisectionist should bear clearly in mind that what he opposes is PAINFUL vivisection only. For there have been wholly painless experiments upon living animals which have led to useful results. ”

“ This depends largely on hereditary influences, which are generally bad, but still more on the difficulty of finding a means of subsistence, owing to the state of neglect in which these wretched beings exist, even when herded together in charity schools and orphanages—both of which are even more anti-hygienic morally, than they are physically.
A depraved environment, which counsels or even insists on wrong-doing, and the bad example of parents or relatives, exercise a still more sinister influence on children than desertion. ”

“ If the medical profession were to outdo the Anti-Vivisection Societies in a general professional protest against the practice and principles of the vivisectors, every doctor in the kingdom would gain substantially by the immense relief and reconciliation which would follow such a reassurance of the humanity of the doctor. Not one doctor in a thousand is a vivisector, or has any interest in vivisection, either pecuniary or intellectual, or would treat his dog cruelly or allow anyone else to do it. ”

“ If we would escape torture and death, on visiting any of the slave States, we must stifle our conscientious convictions, bear no testimony against cruelty and tyranny, suppress the struggling emotions of humanity, divest ourselves of all letters and papers of an anti-slavery character, and do homage to the slaveholding power—or run the risk of a cruel martyrdom! These are appalling and undeniable facts. Three millions of the American people are crushed under the American Union! They are held as slaves—trafficked as merchandise—registered as goods and chattels! ”

“ It is not to the zeal of "anti-vivisectionists," but to the well-directed labours of experimental medical men, that mankind are indebted for the discovery and invention of nearly every known method of preventing and alleviating animal suffering and of prolonging human life. ”

“ Slavery does indeed create an aristocracy--an aristocracy of talents, of virtue, of generosity, of courage. In a slave country, every freeman is an aristocrat. Be he rich or poor, if he does not possess a single slave, he has been born to all the natural advantages of the society in which he is placed; and all its honors lie open before him, inviting his genius and industry. ”

“ But to make him a slave, cheapens to nothing universal human nature, and instead of healing a wound, gives a death-stab. What! repair an injury to rational being in the robbery of one of its rights, by robbing it of all, and annihilating their foundation—the everlasting distinction between persons and things? To make a man a chattel, is not the punishment, but the annihilation of a human being, and, so far as it goes, of all human beings. This commutation of the punishment of death, into perpetual slavery, what a fortunate discovery! ”

“ Here the consistent vegetarian and the consistent anti-vivisectionist meet, both resting the ultimate argument upon the broad proposition that man has not the right to nourish himself, clothe himself or save his life at the expense of the life of an animal. ”

“ Let any man of spirit and feeling, for a moment cast his thoughts over this land of slave—think of the nakedness of some, the hungry yearnings of others, the flowing tears and heaving sighs of parting relations, the wailings and wo, the bloody cut of the keen lash, and the frightful scream that rends the very skies—and all this to gratify ambition, lust, pride, avarice, vanity, and other depraved feelings of the human heart.... ”