Evidence of Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton before the Royal Commission on Vivisection, Wednesday, 24th July, 1907.

  • Moulton, John Fletcher Moulton, 1st baron, 1844-1921.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Evidence of Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton before the Royal Commission on Vivisection, Wednesday, 24th July, 1907. 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.

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    because he is willing to inflict pain, without realising that he, who is the most capable, at any rate one of the most capable, of all men to know the ultimate result of his actions, has been doing it for the purposes of reducing suffering, and has succeeded beyond all hope. So that I am not treating those who oppose me un- fairly in pointing out that the37- do not regard the more distant consequences of their action—they only regard the question of the immediately inflicted pain. Now, I want to go on to what the Chairman has put to me, viz., that I must establish that experimental research is the wise mode of action if we wish to diminish pain. I start from the following fundamental facts. I say that if you look round the world, the only way in which we can diminish pain is by human action. Animals go on regardless of the pain they cause to one another. In fact, the universe is built on pain. Whole races of animals live simply by killing other races, and killing them without the slightest regard to suffering. So that we must look to human action alone to diminish pain. Now, what is it that prevents our diminishing pain in the world ? One feels at once that it is not the absence of desire to do it. I believe that desire is very prominently present. It is because we do not know how to do it; it is our ignorance. Take the case of doctors. Doctors are as O desirous as they can possibly be of lessening suffering in the world, and yet how often they stand by the bed- side and the patient goes on suffering and they can do nothing. Now, the absence of our power of diminishing pain is due to ignorance, to our not understanding two things. First, not understanding the causes which ex- cite pain; and, secondly, not understanding the action of those causes on the organism—that is to say, how it is that those morbid causes, if I might use the phrase.