The modern rack : papers on vivisection / by Frances Power Cobbe.

  • Cobbe, Frances Power, 1822-1904.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The modern rack : papers on vivisection / by Frances Power Cobbe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that it “does not become people who eat animal flesh to demur to the torture of animals,” it would have seemed that no one with common sense could have employed it, had we not found it repeatedly brought forward by the pro-vivisectors as if it pos- sessed withering force. The cattle we use for food exist on the condition that we shall take their lives when we need them ; and ; in doing so in the ordinary, not unmerciful, manner, we save them the far worse miseries of old age and starvation. To end a creature’s existence is one thing. To cause it to suffer torture which shall make that existence a curse is quite another matter. Finally, for the tediously reiterated but more reasonable re- proach that the opponents of Vivisection make no efforts to put down Field Sports, and count among their numbers many fox- hunters, deer - stalkers, fowlers, and anglers: what shall be answered ? My reply is, that the parallel between Vivisection and Field Sports is about as just and accurate as if a tyrant, accused of racking his prisoners in his secret dungeons, were to turn round and open a discussion on the Lawfulness of War. That creatures who chase and are chased all their days in fields and waters should have an arch-enemy and pursuer in man may be differ- ently estimated as ill or well. But it is almost ludicrous to compare a fox-hunt, for example, with its free chances of escape and its almost instantaneous termination in the annihilation of | the poor fox when captured, with the slow, long-drawn agonies of an affectionate, trustful dog, fastened down limb by limb and mangled on its torture-trough. An old-world passion, which had its place and use in another form of society, is running to seed in the modern fashion of field sports, such as battues and pigeon matches. A new passion, which scarcely had existence twenty years ago, is sprouting above ground and showing its bud in Vivisection. I Of course the motive of the sportsman, being usually merely ] sport, contrasts much to his disadvantage with that which the vivisector requires us to believe is his actuating principle. The latter, if an Englishman, tells us that it is for the exalted purpose , of alleviating the sufferings of mankind (which touch his tender • ■