Day after day went slowly by and Jenkins toiled along the painful road
of life into which he had been so suddenly brought, bearing his burden
of grief and pain and learning, learning all the time. Every hour he
saw further into and through the mist of horror that surrounded him. He
learnt greedily. He felt it was vitally necessary to learn everything
about this terrible wrong that he saw being committed, if he wished in
any way to remedy it. To fight a thing successfully you must know what
it is: you must know what you are fighting.
He saw many volumes on the doctor’s bookshelves and asked permission to
read them which was genially accorded him.
“You’ll find things to stagger you in them,” Sir Charles said
pleasantly, “and lots of hard words. I don’t think you’ll get very
far with them.” But Jenkins did get much farther than the doctor
thought. He found the books were mostly volumes written by scientific
men describing their own work, records of experiments they had made
on living animals set out in full by themselves. And in spite of the
stupid jargon of words surrounding them and the heavy language Jenkins
saw that two things stood out very plainly, one, the hideous suffering
of the animals thus used, the other the absolute uselessness and
senselessness of the experiments as far as regarded Humanity. They were
very enlightening books and so Jenkins found them. Then there was a big
scrap book compiled by the doctor himself, that led Jenkins far along
the road of understanding. This book contained newspaper cuttings of
all descriptions bearing in any way on medical life and work.
Reports of coroners’ inquests especially those where the conduct of
a doctor or nurse had been called in question and where invariably
they had been triumphantly cleared by the coroner (usually himself a
doctor) and votes of sympathy extended to them. These passages had
been underscored with a red pencil and often a note of exclamation
added to them, by the old cynic who had pasted them in. There were
many announcements of wonderful cures and these were starred by a blue
pencil and many pages further on in cuttings of a later date Jenkins
would find these “cures” contradicted and dismissed as worthless hoaxes
and a blue star was put against these also. Then there were long
panegyrics on medical science in general and underneath these were
mostly pencilled notes by the doctor, “Written by Smith,” “Good old
Ted,” “Very good Charlie,” “That’s the stuff to give ’em,” and so on.
Then there were pictures of Royalty opening hospital wards: Royalty
going to balls in aid of hospitals, etc., and side by side with these,
accounts of patients who had jumped from hospital windows: patients who
had died on the operating table, patients who having lost their limbs
or their sight by the mistreatment in hospitals went back to their
garrets to hang themselves or gas themselves to death. Sometimes these
columns were marked by exclamation marks, some times the juxtaposition
was left to speak for itself. Jenkins could just imagine the face of
the doctor with his tongue in his cheek, as he glued the cuttings in.
Jenkins spent many hours hanging fascinated over this volume.
From the vivisectors’ own books he learnt what vivisection really was,
from the reports in the papers he learnt what the public thought it
was and how they were assiduously taught by the press to regard it and
medical science generally.
Then there were other means of self education, one of the best
of which though the most painful was listening to the doctor’s
conversation and that of his friends on those evenings when the great
man had some friends or some young students in to visit him. Jenkins
would be called upon to wait on them at a light supper with heavy
drinks which they took in the doctor’s study.
Jenkins as has been said was not a scientific person, he was simply a
man of common sense and the way those scientific men talked, the utter
brutality and callousness of their jokes, their stories, their whole
view of the sufferings of humanity, the confessions they made or rather
perhaps one should say the boasts, of how they had acted in their
hospital wards, made his blood run cold.
One thing he saw, emerged very clearly and restored somewhat to his
mind the belief in eternal Justice. He saw that this Scientific
Research, so unutterably wicked and cruel to the animals, was at the
same time proving an unspeakable curse to humanity.
As he heard the talk of reckless experiments on patients unnecessary
operations, over-doses of _X_-ray that burnt human insides out, and the
joking and laughter over human agony, he recognized that Humanity
was being justly punished and that the men, degraded by horrible
experiments on animals were totally unfitted to have the care of sick
and helpless men and women.
One night climbing to his room after attendance at one of these suppers
and listening to the revolting talk, he went to bed, white and dizzy
and shaking. In the darkness and stillness a question seemed to form
itself within him and he examined it carefully bringing all the
knowledge he had gained to bear upon it.
Ought he to kill this man?
Murder! That would be murder: a horrible idea, a horrible thought, a
horrible word to the well-balanced, civilized mind; and to Jenkins,
sober and straight-living, the typical good citizen without a trace of
criminality in his disposition it was appalling.
Murder! No! On no account must one murder. It was an essentially
wrong, unpardonable act. But would it be murder? he asked himself
in his clear, hard-thinking though uneducated mind. Would it not be
justifiable homicide? Let him consider. He must consider this question
from all points. Here he was on the verge of a decision to commit an
act forbidden by the law of his country, regarded with detestation by
his fellows and condemned by religion. He would take the point of law
first. The law allowed justifiable homicide. If that were the verdict,
the accused was acquitted with honour.
On what grounds was that verdict given when one man killed another?
First, self-defence. If the doctor attacked him and he feared his own
life was in danger, he might kill the doctor with impunity. _His own
life._ He might kill the doctor to save his own life.
Then why not to save something he valued much more highly? To save
from agonising suffering those thousand of helpless innocent loving
animals that the doctor would torture during his evil life? _Jenkins’
life_, what was that? Like all brave natures he had hardly a
thought for it. A run-away horse, a woman in a canal, a child on a
railway track, any of these might call for and receive its sacrifice
at any time. Certainly to save even that one line of animals in the
laboratory, slowly perishing in their long drawn out anguish he would
have laid down his life, had that been able to help matters.
Therefore, if the law allowed him to murder to save his own life,
why should it not allow him to murder to save something he valued
infinitely more? Jenkins revolved this anxiously and slowly in his
sedate mind till he came to the conclusion that the law should permit
him this choice.
Then he took up another point: the law would certainly call it
justifiable homicide if he saw the doctor murdering a man, woman or
child, any human being, even an imbecile, and killed him in defence of
any of those. Then why should he not kill him to save those thousands
of poor patients that the doctor would certainly murder if allowed
to live out his evil life to its natural close? Only that evening he
had heard him saying to a student that he had performed a certain
operation three thousand times and it had never done any good: only
killed or crippled. Jenkins shuddered as he thought of the mutilated
victims dragging out their ruined lives; women who had come to the
doctor full of hope and faith and had been sent away according to his
own statement, shattered wrecks. _But what could they expect?_
How could they come to a man for sympathy or expect him to be moved or
restrained by any decent feeling when he spent his whole life wallowing
in the most frightful mutilation of animals?
Jenkins marvelled at their folly.
But he must get back to his point as to the law. The law would allow
him to kill the doctor if he were murdering _one_ woman, then why
not when he was murdering thousands? Again, there was that paragraph
in a daily paper stating that a certain serum had been “successfully
tried on 300 children.” What about all the children on whom it had been
unsuccessfully “tried”?
Jenkins seemed for a moment to see round him a plain covered with the
small graves of children, done to death by the modern Moloch--Science.
He would save the lives of many human victims as well as the animal
victims if he extinguished this one evil existence.
Since Jenkins had come to the laboratory he had not seen one single
useful experiment made, one single operation that might be excused by
some people on the ground of its utility. He had seen cats filled with
water till they burst, of what good is that to humanity? He had seen
dogs distorted by rickets, and dogs put into boxes which were gradually
heated while the doctor watched the animals inside through a glass
window panting and writhing without water or air. He had seen the dogs
dragged out in a desperate condition and expire within half an hour.
How was humanity benefited? He had seen monkeys suffering cruelly from
measles, to what end? He had seen animals covered with tar expiring in
lingering agonies. What was the use?
He had seen the doctor take a clear eyed, healthy cat and deliberately
induce an ulcer in one eye and watch it day by day, eating the organ
away and when the work of destruction was complete he would set up an
ulcer in the other eye, encouraged apparently rather than the reverse
by its heartrending screams of pain and finally throw it back into its
cage in total blindness and convulsions of agony. And the results? What
had the Scientists to show?
A few of their vaunted remedies passed in review before him:
Insulin which the Scientists admitted amongst themselves to be more
deadly than the diabetes it was supposed to cure.
Anti-toxin for diphtheria, dangerous and unknown as to its after
effects while the simple Bella Donna was a known specific for the
disease. The inoculation of anti-typhoid serum used in the war. Jenkins
had been to the war and he knew that where the sanitation had been
good, there had been no typhoid. Where the sanitation had been bad
the anti-typhoid serum had not saved the troops. Typhoid had reigned
in spite of it. And so on, and so on. In the whole long list of
“discoveries” and “remedies” emanating from laboratories there was not
one that he could find that had been proved of benefit, not one for
which a simple common-sense substitute could not be found.
Useful, beneficial, good--any of this work? No, it was simply hellish
and having seen it as he had at close quarters and recognising it for
what it was, it was his duty to stop it in the only way he could.
It would not be murder, it would be homicide and justifiable a hundred
times over.
Anger carried him away for a moment but he brought his thoughts back
to calm consideration. What good would it do? The removal of this one
man? Very little, he admitted sorrowfully. But it seemed to him, in the
phrase of the war: “it was his bit.”
How often in the recruiting days the men had been told they were not to
worry over the larger aspects, the greater issues of the war. They were
not to say to themselves that the little which each man could do would
not either win or lose the war. No, each man was to do “his bit.” If he
killed one German it was good. If he killed ten, it was better. And if
he shrank from killing a fellow man he was to remember that by so doing
he was saving the lives of perhaps hundreds of his comrades.
The same reasoning seemed to apply here. He could not do much. He could
not sweep away that cancer of modern civilization--medical scientific
research. He could not influence the ending of it, any more than he
could influence the ending of the war, but he could do his bit. He
could kill this one man and by so doing save thousands of his fellow
human beings and thousands of his no less fellow beings--the animals.
The human beings, really, Jenkins doubted if it were his mission to
save. If they could be so blind, so stupid, so selfish and so cruel as
to allow such work as the doctor’s, because they fancied they might
gain something from it, it was only Divine Justice that they should be
poisoned by the medicines manufactured so hideously. That the Insulin
gained by the torture of dogs; the anti-toxins brought by the agony of
horses; the small-pox vaccine scooped from the aching sores of cows and
all the other vile and filthy products of the laboratory should give
them death and disease instead of the relief they sought.
But for the sake of the animals, entirely innocent, unselfish,
trusting, devoted, that this fiend would torture daily, year by year,
if he lived, for their sake, Jenkins would “do his bit” and save them.
The next morning he rose, his head clear, his heart stout and
determined. He had been sent there for some good reason and he seemed
to see it clearly before him as Joan of Arc saw her mission revealed to
her.
Possessing himself in patience, he would watch and wait till the
opportunity came to take the doctor’s life and then he would take it
as Jael slew Sisera, as Judith slew Holofernes. How many lives had he
taken in the war? He could not remember but it must have been many:
lives of good honest brave men fighting for their country as he was
fighting for his, then should he hesitate now to take a life so mean,
so worthless, so harmful not only to his fellow creatures the animals
but also to his fellow men? Why should he not rid the world of this
monster? A great calmness fell upon Jenkins as he made his resolve and
from that hour, though he lived in pain, he had the courage lent him,
of a man devoted to a cause.