THE ACT 39 AND 40 VIC. c. 77 HE Royal Commission "On the Practice of subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes," was appointed on 22nd June 1875. Its members were-Lord Cardwell (chairman), Lord Winmarleigh, Mr W. E. Forster, Sir John Karslake, Mr Huxley, Mr (Sir John) Erichsen, and Mr Hutton. Between 5th July and 30th December, 53 witnesses were examined, and 6551 questions were put and answered. The report of the Commission bears date 8th January 1876, and in that year the present Act received the Royal Assent. The evidence before the Commission was all, or nearly all, concerned with physiology, with the work of Magendie, Claude Bernard, and Sir Charles Bell, the action of curare, the Handbook of the Physiological Laboratory, the teaching of physiology, and so forth. Very little was said of pathology; and, of bacteriology, next to nothing. Practically, physiology alone came before the Commissioners; and such experiments in physiology as are now, the youngest of them, more than a quarter of a century old. Bacteriology, at the time of the passing of the Act, had hardly made a beginning. Therefore the Act made no special provision for inoculations, injections, and the whole study of immunisation of animals and men against disease. Experiments of this kind have to be scheduled under one of the existing certificates, to bring them under an Act that was drafted without foreknowledge of them. Certificate A or Certificate B has to be used for this purpose: Certificate A. "We hereby certify that, in our opinion, insensibility in the animal on which any such experiment may be performed cannot be produced by anaesthetics without necessarily frustrating the object of such experiment." Certificate B. 'We hereby certify that, in our opinion, the killing of the animal on which any such experiment is performed before it recovers from the influence of the anesthetic administered to it, would necessarily frustrate the object of such experiment." Under one or other of these certificates must be scheduled all inoculations, injections, feedingexperiments, transplantations of particles of disease, immunisations, and the like. They must be scheduled somehow; and that is the only way of doing it. Where the act of inducing the disease would itself give any pain, if an anesthetic were not administered-as in the subdural inoculation of a rabbit, or the intra-peritoneal inoculation of an animal with a particle of cancerous tissue-there the licensee must hold, together with his license, Certificate B, because the act of inducing the disease is itself an operation, done under an anæsthetic. If the animal be a dog or a cat, he must hold Certificates B and EE; if it be a horse, ass, or mule, Certificates B and F. Where the act of inducing the disease is not itself painful-as in ordinary inoculation, and in feeding experiments the licensee must hold, together with his license, Certificate A, because the animal is not anæsthetised. It is not a painful operation; the experiment consists not in the act of putting the hypodermic needle under the animal's skin, but in the subsequent observation of the course of the disease. Take, for instance, the inoculation of a guinea-pig with tuberclebacilli the experiment is the production of tubercle; the experiment lasts till the animal is killed and found to be infected; it is therefore scheduled under Certificate A. Or take the testing, on an animal, of an antitoxin; the experiment is not the injection, but the observation of the result; the animal may not suffer, but the injection must still be done under Certificate A. And, if the animal be a dog or a cat, the licensee must hold Certificates A and E; or, if it be a horse, ass, or mule, Certificates A and F. This want of a special certificate for inoculations is an important matter, because it has led to the belief that painful operations are performed, |