VIVISECTION: ITS PAINS AND ITS USES.

I.

It seems fair to demand that those who inflict pain or other distress on animals, for the purpose of acquiring knowledge, should be judged by the same rules as those who, for any other purposes, do the same.

The rules by which these are judged may be read in the customs by which a very great majority of sensible and humane persons encourage or permit the infliction of pain and death on large numbers of animals, for purposes far short of great utility, necessity, or selfdefence.

It seems in these customs an admitted rule that, for the sake of certain quantities of utility or pleasure, or both, men may inflict great pain on animals without incurring the blame of cruelty. Can it be shown, for those who make painful scientific experiments, that the pain of their experiments is less and the utility more than in the majority of the practices permitted or encouraged by the great majority of reasonable and humane persons among the educated classes in this country?

In enumerating some of the instances of pain-giving which are generally and, as I think, for the most part rightly allowed, I am aware that some may seem trivial, and some nearly necessary to human welfare; however, they are not cited for the purpose of speaking ill of them, but as examples of practices which, not being deemed blameworthy or restrained by law (unless in respect of the seasons in which they are allowed), may serve as measures with which to compare the pain-giving experiments of scientific inquirers.

Among such practices are the painful restraint and training of our horses and other domestic animals; the caging of birds for the sake of their beauty or their song; the imprisonment of animals of all kinds in zoological gardens and aquaria for study or for amusement. In all these instances animals are compelled or restrained from the happiness of natural life; they have to endure what might be inflicted as severe punishment on criminals-slavery or imprisonment for life. But the inflictions are justified by the utility which men derive from them.

In another large group of painful customs generally encouraged are those inflicting death and often great suffering on birds and beasts for obtaining ornamental fur or feathers; the mutilation of sheep and oxen for the sake of their better or quicker fattening; the multiplication of pains and deaths in the killing of small birds and small. fish, such as larks, quails, whitebait, and the like; although, so far as mere sustenance of life is concerned, any weight of food in one large fish or one large bird would serve as well as an equal weight in a hundred small ones. Still, the pleasure of delicious food, or of beautiful decoration, or, in some instances, the utility of better nutriment, seems sufficient to a vast majority of civilised men and women to justify these customs.

In another group may be named all the pain-giving sports-shooting, hunting, stalking, fishing, and the rest--various in the pleasure that they give, various in utility. And in yet another, the trapping, hunting, and killing of mice, rats, stoats, frogs, and toads invading cultivated land-worms, and slugs, and the whole class of what we call vermin-creatures generally troublesome and sometimes injurious. From a list such as this, which might easily be enlarged, a rough estimate may be formed of the quantity of pain or distress, imprisonment or death, which, in the opinion of great majorities of persons entitled to judge, may be inflicted on animals for purposes of utility or of pleasure, or from other motives far less than those of necessary self-defence or maintenance of human life. The list may thus serve as a standard with which to compare the pains and the utilities of vivisections. Doubtless many persons would find in it some practices which they would forbid; some would hunt or shoot, but would not keep parrots or larks in confinement; some would eat whitebait or small birds, and wear sealskin, and order the destruction (anyhow) of all the rats and mice in their houses, but would put down fox-hunting and salmon-fishing. But there are very few, even among the generally most sensible and humane, who do not allow or encourage, even if they do not practise, many things of which I think it certain that the pain is greater and the utility less than that of many experiments on living animals. They may do it thoughtlessly, but they may find that they do it, if they will make a careful survey of their furniture, clothes, and ornaments, their food, amusements, and habits of life for a year, and then estimate the pains which in providing all these have been inflicted upon animals. Let them estimate them, if they can, with the same measure as that with which they estimate the pain of vivisection.

Such an estimate will probably seem the more easy the less the subject of pain has been studied. If we reflect on the evidence on which we believe that, from any given injury or disease, anyone must suffer less or more pain, we find that we are generally guessing, or saying to ourselves, 'It must be so,' without any clear evidence that

'It is so.' At most, if we have ourselves had any injury or disease, we may believe that another in the same condition would suffer just as we did. But few beliefs would be more fallacious. The sensibility to pain is as various as is the ear for music'; the disease which by one is described, and very truly according to that one's sensations, as a source of agony only to be compared with the rack or some such torture, is by another described as not very distressing; and the accounts given of it by others imply that between these extremes there are all intermediate degrees. To those who study them in surgical practice it is sure that degrees of pain depend on differences of personality much more than on different intensities or quantities of disease or injury. And there are abundant cases to prove that the general sensibility to pain is far greater among the more than among the less cultivated races of mankind; that savages, as they are called, endure with comparative indifference inflictions which to most persons of the higher races would be terrible. Mental cultivation continued through many generations has not only increased the general keenness of our senses, so that we discern far wider and minuter varieties and combinations of form, colour, sound, and flavour, than can be discriminated by lower races; it seems to have increased equally our sensibility to pain and our power of directing our attention to it. This seems to be especially true among persons with poetic and artistic minds: and, as we may be sure of the contrast between the higher and the lower races of men, so we may believe that the contrast must be yet greater between ourselves and any of the animals lower than man. It is as nearly certain as anything of the kind can be that with every degree of diminution of the proportion which the nervous system bears to the rest of the body there is an equal diminution of the sensibility to pain-the lower in the scale of nature the less the sensibility; so the pain inflicted by a deer-stalker, a salmon-fisher, or a vivisector is certainly less than would be inflicted in a similar injury on any man.

But the question is whether vivisections inflict less or more pain than do sports or any other generally encouraged pain-giving practices, on animals of the same kind. I may offer some evidence on this question; for while studying and teaching physiology I saw many experiments on animals, and made some; and although I have not seen much of any pain-giving sport, or other such pursuits, yet I have seen enough to enable me to compare the pains they give with those of vivisections, and I have been able to study the effects of wounds with which hares, birds, and other game or vermin have escaped, and have lived long before they were again shot or died, diseased or starved. And for comparison, so far as may be possible, of the pain of injuries and their consequences in animals with those in men, I can call to mind the impression made by hundreds of surgical operations which I saw before the discovery of anaesthetics, and by the

thousands of patients watched after operations before and since that discovery.

Of course the pains given in experiments on animals, not under an anæsthetic, are as various as were those which before 1846 were given in surgical operations. But, for the worst, I think it probable that the pain inflicted in such experiments as I saw done by Magendie was greater than that caused by any generally permitted sport; it was as bad as that which I saw given to horses in a bull-fight, or which I suppose to have been given in dog-fighting or bear-baiting. I never saw anything in his or any other experiments more horrible than is shown in many of Snyders's boar-hunts, or in Landseer's 'Death of the Otter.' Among the most painful experiments I saw many years ago were some for studying the effects of mineral poisons by giving them to animals, but they only matched the poisoning of rats and other vermin, which is encouraged by all who thus direct their destruction. I have never seen or read of an experiment on a fish so painful as the ligger-fishing I have seen, in which a live fish is impaled as bait on a long double-hook, with which he swims till a pike or other big fish swallows him with the hook, and thus remains in his turn hooked all night, till the fisherman unhooks and kills him. I doubt whether any experiment on fish or reptile can in an equal time give more pain than is given in long playing' a deeply-hooked salmon, or in any length of time give more pain than is endured by a fish which escapes with a hook fixed deeply in his throat. Probably, a thoroughly heartless vivisector, if one could be found, might inflict in a day more pain than a heartless sportsman; but in the ordinary practice of experiments on animals it is not possible that a vivisector should in a day or a month cause nearly so much pain as would, in the same time, be caused by an active sportsman shooting among abundant game, or a fly-fisherman in a well-stocked stream, or as a man successfully hunting seals or ermines, or poisoning rats. All the vivisectors in Paris will hardly be the cause of nearly so much suffering as the promoters of the scheme for preserves of lions and other great carnivora, to be shot at, in Algeria.

I believe, therefore, that, with these few exceptions which I have mentioned, there are no physiological experiments which are not matched or far surpassed in painfulness by common practices permitted or encouraged by the most sensible and humane persons of the time.

In this comparison I have been considering experiments in which anæsthetics are not used. Where these are used, as for many years past they have been in the vast majority of experiments, at least in this country, the case is immensely stronger. For, in respect of all these instances of giving pain, there are two distinct things to be estimatedthe immediate pain of the inflicted injury, and the consequent pain and other misery, if the injury be survived. As to the first,

what has been already said may suffice; it is abolished by anæsthetics; and as to the second, the comparison is more easy, because it may be made between animals injured in vivisection or in any other manner, and men after accidental injuries or surgical operations. When, for this comparison, I call to mind the conditions which I have seen in animals living after vivisection, and those which I have seen in others who have survived the injuries inflicted in sport or in other attempts to kill them, I can only think of them as equal in pain or disability; but with this advantage to the vivisected animal, that it has been an object of care, provided with food and rest, and safe from the attacks of others of its own or other kinds.

I am aware that some say that this keeping alive is itself a shameful cruelty; but probably the animals themselves, if they could think like men, would not so judge; for the vast majority of animals used for experiments are taken from those already marked for death stray dogs who would be carried away by the police, horses assigned to the knacker, rabbits and guinea-pigs whom none would keep, rats and mice whom anyone would kill or direct to be killed. They may be compared with men dying of some mortal disease, whose lives may be prolonged by operations which will leave them in some way mutilated, saved from dying, but remaining invalids. In these cases the great majority of persons endure the mutilation for the sake of the longer life, and they very rarely repent their choice; rather, as time passes, and they become habituated to the consequences of the operation, they regain nearly all the happiness of their former healthy life. No one accustomed to such cases can doubt that, if an animal consigned to death should reason as a man, he would accept his life on condition of submitting to any experiment under an anææsthetic. I have seen many animals after vivisection looking as happy as before them; many of them were happier, being better fed and in every way more cared for than they had ever been before.

If it may thus be justly held that the pain and other miseries inflicted by vivisection are less than those inflicted in many practices encouraged by sensible and humane persons, it may next be considered whether their utility be as great. It might justly be asked whether their utility and pleasure be as great, for it will not be denied that pleasure is a considerable motive in most of the sports, and in the wearing of decorative dresses such as cannot be procured without giving pain. But I would rather not argue that man's pleasure can ever be reason enough for his giving pain. It seems impossible to define even nearly the 'when,' or the how much pain for how much pleasure. But, if any will hold the contrary, and that in the pursuit of pleasure pain may be inflicted, even without considerations of probable utility, then it may certainly be maintained that there are no pleasures more intense than the pursuit of new knowledge, nor any for which, if for any, greater pain might be given.