The ethics of vivisection.

  • Gull, William Withey, Sir, 1816-1890.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ethics of vivisection. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    1/12 (page 456)
    March THE ETHICS OF VIVISECTION. It is to be regretted that the question of * Vivisection'1 should still call for further discussion. It was reasonably hoped that after the result of the inquiry by a Royal Commission, and the subsequent legislation, physiologists might have been permitted to pursue their investigations, hindered only by the law as it now stands. This expectation was the more reasonable inasmuch as physiologists have loyally accepted the restrictions of the Act in question. But the anti-scientific agitation continues. Some opponents of physiological inquiry maintain that experiments on living creatures are altogether cruel, immoral, and disgraceful, and should therefore be entirely suppressed; others, yielding to the evidence of the importance and usefulness of these inquiries, but misled by a laudable dislike to the infliction of pain, would limit much more the sanctions of the law, and reduce these studies almost to a nullity ; others, uninfluenced by either of these considerations, are opponents of vivisection, as they would be of all other scientific progress. Mr. Hutton, who tells us that a fair number of the articles in favour of a restriction more effective than that of the present law have proceeded from his pen, speaks of practical physiologists as 'a new scientific class'; and of the encouragement of the practical physiological method as ' a new departure,' ' a most significant and important new departure.' Other expressions of a similar kind occur in his article, as of practical physiology being ' a new profession,' * a new movement.' We should hardly have expected from so liberal a writer objections against any course of study because it was new. But happily on this score we can easily satisfy any prejudice against novelty. Practical physiology has the prestige and sanction of ages. Whilst Bacon speaks but lightly of the disputatious wisdom of the Greeks of the time of Plato and Aristotle, he warmly commends the physiological studies of Democritus and his colleagues. Gralen's 1 This term is inaccurate and misleading; but the question to the discussion of ■which I contribute is whether it is justifiable to perform experiments upon the lower animals, with every precaution against preventible pain, in order to increase human knowledge and relieve human suffering.