Strangely enough the lower animals have benefited as much as has man
himself through the progress made by animal experimentation. Hog
cholera serum, the tuberculin test for cattle, the control of hoof and
mouth disease, puerperal sepsis in cattle, hydrophobia, fowl plague,
and the many worm diseases that afflict animals depend for their
control on the same type of experimentation that yielded results for
the diseases of man.
There is another side of the question that has its humorous aspects. It
is necessary to kill hundreds of thousands of stray dogs and cats in
our large cities to keep them from overrunning the human inhabitants.
It has been estimated that a single pair of rats, if permitted to
breed unchecked, might produce within three years a number of progeny
running into eighteen or twenty-four figures. Everyone knows about the
prolificity of guinea pigs and rabbits which multiply inordinately.
Who shall say that these uses of science are not as kind a fate, as
satisfactory an existence, as is the hunting down of the surplus by
the hunter, the trapper, the poisoner, or the poundmaster? As we have
shown, the horse used for the production of serum has a far happier
life than the drawer of burdens in the ownership of some unthinking
careless human being.