Vivisection, scientifically and ethically considered / in prize essays by James Macaulay, Rev. Brewin Grant, and Abiathar Wall.

  • Macaulay, James, 1817-1902.
Date:
1881
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vivisection, scientifically and ethically considered / in prize essays by James Macaulay, Rev. Brewin Grant, and Abiathar Wall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    sequently, apply only to those schools in France, and else- where, where such demonstrations are delivered. In the few years that have since passed, the practice of vivisection has not only greatly increased in this country, hut seems now to be regarded with altered feelings by a large part of the medical profession. There were always some physiologists and surgeons who thought it right to use this method of investigation; but their researches were quietly conducted, and not with ostentatious publicity, as in Paris and other Continental cities. The whole tone of English professional opinion was against such experiments, English medical students would have revolted against such exhibitions as were customary in foreign schools. But a change has been gradually coming over the spirit of the profession. Courses of demonstrations in animal physiology are given in various medical schools. Hand- books are published for the use of pupils in physiological laboratories. The extent to which this mode of investi- gation, so recently introduced, is carried on will never be fully known; but it is already so far a department of study and education that physiological laboratories, like anatomical class-rooms, are under legal regulation and official inspection. The tone of the medical press, which may be supposed to represent professional opinion, is also very different from what it used to be. To give but one instance—an article in the British and Foreign Medico-Chiruoyical Review, for April, 1875, a journal holding a position analogous to that of the old Medico-Chirurgical, not only advocates the free practice of vivisection, but deals with objections to it as arising only from ignorance or fanaticism. The tone of the press is communicated to the profession. It may be that, at Bath, and at other centres of the Provincial Medical Association, there may be forty men ready to sign a protest as clear and firm as that which we have quoted. But the