SIR,--In your article on this subject on Saturday last you called upon
the opponents of vivisection to answer certain questions. As I have
been intrusted for many years with the hon. secretaryship of the
leading anti-vivisectionist society, I beg to offer you the following
replies to those questions:--
You ask first, Do we "deny that vivisection is capable of yielding
knowledge of service to man?" We are not so rash as to deny that any
practice, even the most immoral conceivable, might possibly yield
knowledge of service to man; and, in particular, we do not deny that
the vivisection of human beings by the surgeons of classic times, and
again by the great anatomists of Italy in the 15th century, may very
possibly have yielded knowledge to man, and be capable, if revived, of
yielding still more. We have, however, for a long time back called on
the advocates of the vivisection of dogs, monkeys, &c., to furnish
evidence of the beneficial results of their work, not as setting at
rest the question of its morality, but as an indispensable preliminary
to justify them in coming into the court of public opinion as
defendants of a practice obviously (as the Royal Commissioners
reported) "liable from its very nature to great abuse."
We must be excused if we now hold it to be demonstrated that, whether
vivisection be or be not "capable of yielding useful knowledge," it
certainly yields only a scanty crop of it. Were there anything like an
abundant harvest, such a sample as this would not have been produced
with so much pomp for public scrutiny. In short, we think with Dr.
Leffingwell that, "if pain could be measured by money, there is no
mining company in the world which would sanction prospecting in such
barren regions."
You ask us, Sir, secondly, "Do we affirm that the benefit of mankind
is not an adequate or sufficient justification for the infliction of
pain on animals?" We have two answers to this question.
Assuming that by vivisection benefits might be obtained for human
bodies, we hold that the evil results of the practice on human minds
would more than counterbalance any such benefits. The cowardice and
pitilessness involved in tying down a dog on a table and slowly
mangling its brain, its eyes, its entrails; the sin committed against
love and fidelity themselves when a creature capable of dying of grief
on his master's grave is dealt with as a mere parcel of material
tissues, "valuable for purposes of research"--these are basenesses for
which no physical advantages would compensate, and the prevalence of
such a heart-hardening process among our young men would, we are
convinced, detract more from the moral interests of our nation than a
thousand cases of recovery from disease would serve those of a lower
kind. Even life itself ought not to be saved by such methods, any more
than by the cannibalism of the men of the "Mignonette."
Our second answer is yet more brief. We do not "deny that the benefit
of man is a sufficient justification for inflicting pain upon
animals," provided that pain is kept within moderate bounds, nor yet
to taking life from them in a quick and careful manner. But we do deny
the right of man to inflict torture upon brutes, and thus convert
their lives from a blessing into a curse. Such torture has been
inflicted upon tens of thousands of animals by vivisection; and no
legislation that ingenuity can devise will, we believe, suffice to
guard against the repetition of it so long as it is sanctioned in any
way as a method of research. The use of vivisection--if it have any
use--is practically inseparable from abuse. We therefore call upon our
countrymen to forego the poor bribes of possible use which are offered
to them, and of which we have now seen a "unique and impressive"
example, and generously and manfully to say of vivisection as they
once said of slavery "We will have none of it."
I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
FRANCES POWER COBBE.
Hengwrt, Dolgelly, Dec. 28, 1884.