Experimental physiology, its benefits to mankind : with an address on unveiling the statue of William Harvey at Folkestone, 6th August 1881.

  • Owen, Richard, 1804-1892.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Experimental physiology, its benefits to mankind : with an address on unveiling the statue of William Harvey at Folkestone, 6th August 1881. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    human being, of whom the bulk of the medi- cal profession is made up,' ^ in supplicating a * Hom_e Secretary' for official sanction and condonement of an operation on a brute, can- not but feel himself degraded thereby to the status of a social criminal, or of a convict in whose favour intercession has been made for remission of penalty. No matter how plainly, how indisputably, the vivisector has the bene- fit of his fellow-creatures and the public good in view, he is proclaimed by Bestiarians to the world to be meditating ' an act so revolt- ing to the sense of civilised mankind/ or to some, at least, of his countrymen and country^ women, ' as to subject him to their just hatred and scorn '—sentiments which have compelled them to agitate fof, and appeal to the Legis- lature to grant, special protection to their out- raged sensibilities^ a protection which, though not yet stretched to the extent for which the outcry is made, has, nevertheless, done so ^ Chief Justice Colefidge, in tlie Fortnightly ReiJiew for February i, 1882, pp. 231-^33* His Lordship's aspersion of an individual (p. 229) is of small moment compared with this wholesale insult to my profession.