MAGENDIE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
It may be doubted whether any physiologist has ever lived whose
cruelty to animals exceeded that which, for a long period, was
exercised by Franc,ois Magendie. Born at Bordeaux, France, in 1783,
just before the beginning of the French Revolution, he studied
medicine, receiving his medical degree in the year 1808. Entering
with some zest upon the study of physiology, he published several
pamphlets regarding his investigations, and rapidly earned that
notoriety--which for some natures is the equivalent of fame--for the
peculiar and refined torments which, in public demonstrations, he took
frequent occasion to inflict. In 1821 he was elected a member of the
Institute; in 1831 he had become a professor in the College de France,
a position he held for the remainder of his life. He died in 1855.
One of the earliest exposures of Magendie's infamous vivisections was
made in the British Parliament. On February 24, 1825, Mr. Richard
Martin of Galway, an Irish Member of the House of Commons, moved to
bring in a Bill for the repression of bear-baiting and other forms of
cruelty to animals. His name is worth remembering, for to this
Richard Martin belongs the honour of being one of the first men in any
land who attempted to secure some repression of cruelty to animals
through the condemnation of the law. During his speech on this
occasion Mr. Martin said:
"It was not merely bear-baiting and sports of a similar character that
he wished to abolish; there were other practices, equally cruel, with
which he thought the legislature ought to interfere. There was a
Frenchman by the name of Magendie, whom he considered a disgrace to
Society. In the course of the last year this man, at one of his
anatomical theatres, exhibited a series of experiments so atrocious as
almost to shock belief. This M. Magendie got a lady's greyhound.
First of all he nailed its front, and then its hind, paws with the
bluntest spikes that he could find, giving as reason that the poor
beast, in its agony, might tear away from the spikes if they were at
all sharp or cutting. He then doubled up its long ears, and nailed
them down with similar spikes. (Cries of `Shame!') He then made a
gash down the middle of the face, and proceeded to dissect all the
nerves on one side of it.... After he had finished these operations,
this surgical butcher then turned to the spectators, and said: `I
have now finished my operations on one side of this dog's head, and I
shall reserve the other side till to-morrow. If the servant takes
care of him for the night, I am of the opinion that I shall be able to
continue my operations upon him to-morrow with as much satisfaction to
us all as I have done to-day; but if not, ALTHOUGH HE MAY HAVE LOST
THE VIVACITY HE HAS SHOWN TO-DAY, I shall have the opportunity of
cutting him up alive, and showing you the motion of the heart.'
Mr. Martin added that he held in his hands the written declarations of
Mr. Abernethy, of Sir Everard Home (and of other distinguished medical
men), all uniting in condemnation of such excessive and protracted
cruelty as had been practised by this Frenchman."[1]
[1] Hansard's Parliamentary Reports, February 24, 1825.
Within the past forty years has the cruelty of Magendie been condemned
by any English or American physiologist? I have never seen it.
The objection is sometimes raised that evidence like this of
Magendie's cruelty is only "hearsay." Is not this generally the case
where inhumanity is concerned? When Wilberforce described the
atrocities of the African slave trade, or Shaftesbury the conditions
pertaining to children in coal-mines and cotton mills, their
statements were equally questioned; yet, when reform had been
accomplished, nobody doubted that, although they had not personally
witnessed the cruelties, they had reported only the facts. Now, one
peculiarity of Magendie's vivisections WAS THEIR PUBLICITY. There was
no attempt at concealment, such as governs the practice in England and
America to-day. Magendie's experiments were publicly made, seemingly
with a desire to parade his contempt for any sentiment of compassion
towards animals. The evidence of Magendie's cruelty is supported by
an overwhelming amount of evidence, and to Mr. Martin's account of his
vivisections, none of Magendie's English friends or apologists ever
ventured to reply in the public journals of the day.
An English physician, Dr. John Anthony, a pupil of Sir Charles Bell
and a strong advocate of vivisection, has given us a little account of
his personal experience in 1838, while a student of medicine in
Paris. The English members of his class, he says, "were indignant at
the CRUELTIES which we saw manifested IN THE DEMONSTRATION OF
EXPERIMENTS ON LIVING CREATURES.... What I saw in Paris pointed to
this: that very frequently men who are in the habit of making these
experiments are very careless of what becomes of the animal when it
has served its purpose; ... the animal is thrown (aside) to creep into
a corner and die.... I have carefully avoided seeing experiments in
vivisection after the awful dose which I had of it in Paris, in 1838.
THE MEN THERE SEEMED TO CARE NO MORE FOR THE PAIN OF THE CREATURE
BEING OPERATED UPON THAN IF IT WERE SO MUCH INORGANIC MATTER."[1]
[1] Vivisection Report, 1876, Questions 2,347, 2,447, 2,582.
Another witness of Magendie's cruelty was Dr. William Sharpey, LL.D.,
Fellow of the Royal Society, and for more than thirty years the
professor of physiology in University College, London. It is a
curious fact that the "Handbook of the Physiological Laboratory,"
which, when published in 1871, increased the agitation against
vivisection, was dedicated to Professor Sharpey. Before the Royal
Commission on Vivisection, in 1876, he gave the following account of
his personal experience:
"When I was a very young man, studying in Paris, I went to the first
of a series of lectures which Magendie gave upon experimental
physiology; and I was so utterly repelled by what I witnessed that I
never went again. In the first place, they were painful (in those
days there were no anaesthetics), and sometimes they were severe; and
then THEY WERE WITHOUT SUFFICIENT OBJECT. For example, Magendie made
incisions into the skin of rabbits and other creatures TO SHOW THAT
THE SKIN IS SENSITIVE! Surely all the world knows the skin is
sensitive; no experiment is wanted to prove that. Several experiments
he made were of a similar character, AND HE PUT THE ANIMALS TO DEATH,
FINALLY, IN A VERY PAINFUL WAY.... Some of his experiments excited a
strong feeling of abhorrence, not in the public merely, but among
physiologists. There was his--I was going to say `famous' experiment;
it might rather have been called `INFAMOUS' experiment upon vomiting
.... Besides its atrocity, it was really purposeless."[2]
[2] Evidence before Royal Commission, 1875, Questions 444, 474.
Of Magendie's cruelty we have thus the evidence of the best-known
English physiologist of his day. Even by his own countrymen
Magendie's pitilessness was denounced. Dr. Latour, the founder and
editor of the leading medical journal of France--L'Union Me'dicale--
has given us an incident which occurred in his presence, translations
of which appeared in the editorial columns of the London Lancet and
the British Medical Journal, August 22, 1863.
"I recall to mind a poor dog, the roots of whose vertebral nerves
Magendie desired to lay bare to demonstrate Bell's theory, which he
claimed as his own. The dog, already mutilated and bleeding, twice
escaped from under the implacable knife, and threw his forepaws around
Magendie's neck, licking, as if to soften his murderer and ask for
mercy! Vivisectors may laugh, but I confess I was unable to endure
that heartrending spectacle."[1]
[1] The London Lancet, August 22, 1863.
The proof of Magendie's ferocious cruelty to his victims seems
overwhelming. "In France," says Dr. George Wilson, "some of the most
eminent physiologists have gained an unenviable notoriety as PITILESS
TORTURERS, ... experimenters who would not take the trouble to put out
of pain the wretched dogs on which they experimented, even after they
had served their purpose, but left them to perish of lingering torture
.... It is pleasing to contrast the merciless horrors enacted by
Magendie"--with the reluctance manifested by Sir Charles Bell.[2]
Dr. Elliotson, in his work on Human Physiology, states that "Magendie
cut living animals here and there, with no definite object BUT TO SEE
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN."[3] In a sermon on cruelty to animals, preached at
Edinburgh, March 5, 1826, by the Rev. Dr. Chalmers, the speaker
especially alludes to "THE ATROCITIES OF A MAGENDIE," then recently
made known in England. The President of the Royal College of
Surgeons, Sir James Paget, once testified that Magendie "disgusted
people very much BY SHOWING CONTEMPT FOR THE PAIN OF ANIMALS."[1] The
great scientist, Charles Darwin, in a letter to the London Times, made
reference to Magendie as a physiologist "NOTORIOUS, half a century
ago, FOR HIS CRUEL EXPERIMENTS." "It is not to be denied that
inhumanity may be found in persons of very high position as
physiologists. WE HAVE SEEN THAT IT WAS SO IN MAGENDIE." This is the
language of the final report of the Commission, to which was affixed
the name of Professor Thomas Henry Huxley, the most brilliant
scientific writer of the last century.
[2] Wilson's "Life of Reid," p. 165.
[3] "Human Physiology," p. 428.
[1] Evidence before Royal Commission, 1875, Question 371.
Magendie left us a singularly truthful estimate of his own character
and of his scientific accomplishments when he declared himself to be
simply "a street scavenger (un chiffonier) of science. With my hook
in my hand and my basket on my back, I ramble about the streets of
science and gather up whatever I can find." The comparison was
singular, but it was apt; he was, indeed, the ragpicker of
physiology. With a scavenger's sense of honour he endeavored to rob
Sir Charles Bell of the credit for his discovery concerning the
functions of the spinal nerves, by a prodigality of torment, from
which the nobler nature of the English scientist instinctively
recoiled. When there came to him an opportunity of experimenting on
man, he embraced it with avidity, and again and again, while operating
for cataract, plunged his needle to the bottom of the patient's eye,
that he might learn the effect of mechanical irritation of the
delicate organ of sight.[1] Some rags and tatters of physiology he
bought--at the price of immeasurable torment--and held them up for the
admiration of his contemporaries; but in the great conflict with
disease and death it may be questioned whether he added a single fact
that has increased the potency of medical art, the length of human
life, or the sum of human happiness.
[1] Magendie naturally had no hesitancy in telling of these
experiments made upon his patients "at the clinique of my hospital."
See his "Elementary Treatise on Physiology" (translated by Dr. John
Revere). New York, 1844, p. 64.
Such was Franc,ois Magendie, physiologist and torturer, judged by
scientific men and physiologists of a higher race, to whom compassion
was not unknown. For undisguised contempt of pity, for delight in
cruelty, for the infliction of refined and ingenious torment, he may
have been equally by some who followed and imitated him, but certainly
he was never surpassed.
Another distinguished French chiffonier in the slum-districts of
scientific exploration was Dr. L. J. Brachet, a contemporary of
Magendie. In his day he was a man of extended reputation as a
vivisector of animals. His principal work is entitled: "Recherches
Expe'rimentales de Syste`me Nerveux...par J. L. Brachet, Membre de
l'Acade'mie Royale de Me'decine" and member of similar academies at
Berlin, Copenhagen, and elsewhere; member of various medical societies
of Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, and Marseilles--the title-page of his book
records his fame. It will be of interest to study the character of
the experimentation, recorded by himself, upon which rests his
eminence as a scientific man.
His first great "discovery" unfortunately has not yet been accorded
scientific acceptance. "It is little," he says, "to have proven the
existence of sensibility in animals; I have proven that sensation
pertains not merely to animals, but that it also is the property of
vegetables--in a word, OF EVERYTHING THAT LIVES. Everywhere it acts
in the same manner, through the nerves. The entire vegetable kingdom
possesses the sense of feeling" (tous les vegetaux possedent la
faculte de sentier).[1]
[1] "Recherches," etc., p. 13.
Had Brachet confined himself solely to experiments on the sensibility
of plants, we should have little to criticize. Unfortunately,
however, his scientific tastes led him in another direction. He
belonged to a class of men who cannot permit the most apparent fact to
be taken for granted, when, at the cost of torment, it may be
demonstrated--men like Magendie, who insisted on proving to his
students that an animal could really feel pain by stabbing it with his
knife before commencing his experiment. Brachet's problem was a
simple one. We all know, for instance, that an animal--a dog--may
feel an intense dislike to some particular person. Why? Because of
impressions conveyed to the brain of the animal by the senses of sight
and hearing. Outside an asylum for idiots, it is probable that no one
ever questioned the fact. Brachet, however, would not permit his
readers to accept any statement merely upon the general experience of
mankind, when it might be proven scientifically, and he has described
in his book the experiments by which he claims to have demonstrated
his theory.
"EXPERIMENT 162.--I inspired a dog with the strongest possible hatred
for me by teasing it and inflicting upon it some pain every time I saw
it. When this feeling had reached its height, so that the animal
became furious whenever it saw or heard me, I put out its eyes [je
lui fis crever les yeux]. I could then appear before it without its
manifesting any aversion. I spoke, and immediately its barkings and
furious movements permitted no doubt of the rage which animated it.
"I then destroyed the drum of the ears, and disorganized as much as I
could of the inner ear. When the intense inflammation thus excited
had rendered it almost deaf, I filled its ears with wax, and it could
hear me no longer. Then I could stand by its side, speak to it in a
loud voice, and even caress it, without awakening its anger; indeed,
it appeared sensible of my caresses! There is no need to describe
another experiment of the same kind, made upon another dog, since the
results were the same."
By this great experiment, what valuable knowledge was conveyed? Simply
that a dog, deprived of sight and hearing, will not manifest antipathy
to a man it can neither see nor hear!
A true vivisector is never at a loss to invent excuse or occasion for
an experiment. Dr. Brachet had made it clear that a dog will not
manifest antipathy toward an enemy whose presence it cannot perceive;
but suppose such a mutilated creature, in its darkness and silence,
were subjected to some sharp and continuous physical pain, what then
would happen? He proceeded to ascertain:
"EXPERIMENT 163.--I began the experiment on another dog by putting out
its eyes [par crever les yeux], and breaking up the internal ears.
Ten days later, THE SUFFERING OF THE ANIMAL HAVING APPARENTLY CEASED,
after assuring myself that it could no longer see nor hear, I made a
sore in the middle of its back. EVERY MOMENT I IRRITATED THIS WOULD
BY PICKING IT WITH A NEEDLE [a chaque instant j'irritai sa plaie en la
piquant avec un aiguillon]. At first the dog did nothing but yelp and
try to escape, but the impossibility of this FORCED HIM UNCEASINGLY TO
RECEIVE EXCRUCIATING PAIN; and finally the dog passed into a state of
frenzy so violent, that at last it could be induced by touching any
part of its body.... The dog had no reason of hatred against any
individual; ... both sight and hearing had been destroyed; and many
persons the animal had never seen, provoked its rage by irritating the
wound."
Of such an abominable experiment, however scientific it may appear, it
is difficult to speak with restraint. To the average man or woman it
will probably seem that nothing more fiendish or cruel can be found
anywhere in the dark records of animal experimentation. Dr. Brachet
was no obscure or unexperienced vivisector. At one time he was the
professor of physiology in a medical school; he was a member of many
learned societies at home and abroad. But think of an educated man
procuring a little dog and deliberately putting out its eyes; then
breaking up the internal ear, so that for many days the animal must
have endured excruciating anguish from the inflammation thus induced;
next, when the pain had somewhat subsided, creating a sore on the back
by removal of the skin; and then, after comfortably seating himself in
his physiological laboratory by the side of his victim, scientifically
picking, and piercing, and pricking the wound, without respite--
constantly, without ceasing--until the blinded and deafened and
tortured creature is driven into frenzy by torments which it felt
continually, which it could not comprehend, and from which, by no
exertion, it was able to defend itself! Think of the scientist asking
many other learned men to join him from time to time in the
experiment, and to take part in picking at the wound, in tormenting
the mutilated and blinded victim, and in driving it again and again to
the madness of despair! Does anyone say that such an experiment could
not be made to-day? In one of the largest laboratories of America, and
within ten years, an experiment equally cruel, equally useless, has
been performed. The modern defender of unrestricted vivisection
distinctly insists that no legal impediment should hinder the
performance of any investigation desired by any experimenter. It was
the editor of the British Medical Journal who once declared that
"whoever has not seen an animal under experiment CANNOT FORM AN IDEA
OF THE HABITUAL PRACTICES OF THE VIVISECTORS."[1] This accords with
the statement of Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, for forty years connected with
Harvard Medical School, that, aside from motives, painful vivisection
differed mainly from other phases of cruelty "in being practised by an
educated class, who, having once become callous to its objectionable
features, find the pursuit an interesting occupation, under the name
of Science."
[1] British Medical Journal, September 19, 1863 (leading editorial)
And this was the case of Brachet. HE HAD BECOME CALLOUS. He found
torment "an interesting occupation, under the name of Science." May
there not be others in our day to whom the same criticism is only too
applicable?
One of the English critics of the abuses of vivisection a century ago
was Dr. John Abernethy of London, a Lecturer on Physiology at the
Royal College of Surgeons, the founder of the medical school attached
to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and the most distinguished surgeon in
Great Britain during the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
Abernethy was by no means an antivivisectionist; he insisted upon the
utility of certain demonstrations, but he was profoundly opposed to
those cruelties of research which, in our day, by the modern school of
physiologists, are either forgotten or condoned. curiously enough,
one of his strongest utterances against such cruelty was made in one
of his lectures on physiology. Therein he said:
"There is one point I feel it a duty to advert to. Mr. Hunter, whom I
should not have believed to have been very scrupulous about inflicting
suffering upon animals, nevertheless censures Spallanzani for the
unmeaning repetition of similar experiments. Having resolved publicly
to express my own opinions with regard to the subject, I choose the
present opportunity, BECAUSE I BELIEVE SPALLANZANI TO HAVE BEEN ONE OF
THOSE WHO HAVE TORTURED AND DESTROYED ANIMALS IN VAIN. I do not
perceive that in the two principal subjects which he has sought to
elucidate he has added any important fact to our stock of knowledge;
and, besides, some of his experiments are of a nature that a good man
would blush to think of, and a wise man would have been ashamed to
publish."[1]
[1] "Physiological Lectures," London, 1817, p. 164.
This is a unique expression. One may be absolutely certain that no
professor of physiology during the past forty years has thus openly
condemned in a physiology lecture any of his contemporaries for the
cruelty of their experiments.
In his Life of Abernethy, his biographer, Dr. Macilwain, refers to
experiments upon living animals, "WHICH ARE SO REVOLTING FROM THEIR
CRUELTY, that the mind recoils from the contemplation of them." This,
too, is a noteworthy utterance, coming from one who was a
distinguished London surgeon and a Fellow of the Royal Society. In a
subsequent work entitled "Remarks on Vivisection," published some
seventeen years before the date ascribed by Professor Bowditch as that
marking the beginning of criticism, he refers again to the views of
Abernethy:
"As for experiments on living animals involving suffering,
Mr. Abernethy disapproved of them, and seldom alluded to them but in
terms of distrust, derision, or disgust."
That the criticism of experimental cruelty did not begin in 1864, as
imagined by Professor Bowditch, the quotations here given sufficiently
demonstrate.
Beyond this demonstration, does the history of these savage tormentors
have any lesson for us to-day? They belonged to another century.
Should they not be forgiven, and their experiments condoned? Why not
confine attention solely to the laboratory of to-day? Why blame
Brachet and Magendie and Spallanzani, to whom anaesthesia was unknown?
There is a false suggestion in this protest, which, in one form or
another, we hear often to-day. It is the gratuitous assumption put
forth in defence, that if anaesthetics had only been known to
physiologists before 1846, they would invariably have been used. Any
such suggestion is manifestly false. If these experiments of Brachet
and of others to be mentioned were to be made at all, it was necessary
that the animal should be conscious of the agony it experienced. In
the most complete laboratory for vivisection of the present time--in
the Rockefeller Institute, for example--no scientist could drive a dog
INTO A FRENZY while it lies absolutely unconscious under the influence
of chloroform! We may say this of the experiments of Magendie on the
nervous system, for aside from the preliminary cutting operation, such
experiments demanded the consciousness of the victim. That which
humanity has a right to censure in these physiologists is the spirit
of absolute indifference to animal suffering, the willingness to
subject a living creature to agony without adequate reason for the
infliction of pain. The discovery of chloroform or ether made no
change in human nature. Some of the worst of vivisections have been
made, not merely since anaesthetics were discovered, but within the
present century. Over twenty-five years after the properties of ether
had been discovered, the most prominent vivisector in England told the
Royal Commission that, except for teaching purposes, "I never use
anaesthetics where it is not necessary for convenience, " and that an
experimenter "HAD NO TIME, SO TO SPEAK, FOR THINKING WHAT THE ANIMAL
WILL FEEL OR SUFFER."[1]
[1] Evidence before Royal Commission, 1875, Questions 3,538, 3540.
Unrestricted vivisection is the same to-day as a century ago. In many
cases its operations involve little or no pain; in many cases there
seems to be the same absolute indifference to the agony inflicted that
was manifested by the vivisectors of a hundred years since. Where the
law does not interfere, EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE. Whether there is
cruelty or consideration depends on the spirit of the vivisector. It
was no ignorant layman, but the president of the American Academy of
Medicine, who, in his annual address, declared that there were
American vivisectors who "seem, seeking useless knowledge, to be blind
to the writhing agony and deaf to the cry of pain of their victims,
AND WHO HAVE BEEN GUILTY OF THE MOST DAMNABLE CRUELTIES, without the
denunciation of the public and the profession that their wickedness
deserves."[1] And that vivisector of to-day, who suggests that if
anaesthetics had been known to Magendie or Brachet, they would
invariably have been used, is either ignorant or insincere. Surely he
must know that the very nature of their experiments precluded the use
of ether, and that in their time, as to-day, if the experiment were to
be tried at all, it was necessary that the pain be felt.
[1] Address before American Academy of Medicine at Washington, D.C.,
May 4, 1891, by Theophilus Parvin, M.D., LL.D., professor in Jefferson
Medical College of Philadelphia, Pa.
There are other reasons why we should not permit the past to be
forgotten. We are confronted by the challenge of the laboratory.
Behind the locked and barred doors of the vivisection chamber, to
which no man can gain admission unless known to be friendly to its
practices, the vivisector of to-day challenges society to prove the
existence of cruelty or abuse. The vivisector demands absolute
freedom of action, he demands the most complete privacy, he demands
total independence of all legal supervision--and then challenges the
production of proof that any criticism is justified! Within the sacred
precincts of the laboratory a Brachet, a Magendie, a Claude Be'rnard
may be experimenting to-day with a profusion of victims, protected by
their seclusion from every possibility of complaint. For in what
respect does the spirit that animates research to-day differ from that
manifested by experimenters of the past? In all the literature of
advocacy for unrestricted vivisection can one point out a word of
criticism of Magendie or Brachet or Be'rnard, or anything but
expressions of exculpation, of admiration, and of praise? An English
writer on animal experimentation, Mr. Stephen Paget, had occasion, in
a recent work, to refer to the experimentation of both Magendie and
Sir Charles Bell. Does he criticize or condemn Magendie's cruelty?
No. He tells us, incidentally, that Bell always had "a great dislike
to the school of Magendie," adding, with indifference, "LET ALL THAT
PASS." These words aptly express the sentiment and the wish. Gladly,
indeed, would the physiological laboratory hide the past from the
memory of mankind; I do not believe in acceding to that desire. When
the leading physiologist of his day, addressing an audience of
physicians, refers to an early criticism of physiological cruelty as a
collection of "blood-curdling stories," there is desire not to
investigate, but to ridicule and discredit historic facts. When men
of science put forth what they claim to be, "a plain statement of the
whole truth," without one word of reference to the abuses of the past,
they practically throw dust in the air to hide the truth from the
public eye. That it may have been done ignorantly and without any
wish to deceive is not sufficient to earn exculpation, for in either
case the evil is accomplished.
Of one English physiologist of that period, Sir Charles Bell, it is
impossible to speak except in terms of admiration and esteem. Born in
1774, his long and useful life terminated in 1842, four years before
the discovery of anaesthesia. No one can read his correspondence with
his brother, published many years after his death, without recognizing
the innate beauty and nobility of his character. When news of the
Battle of Waterloo reached England, he--the leading surgeon of his
day--started for the battlefield. The story of his experience is one
of the most graphic pictures of the effects of war to be found in
modern literature. It was Sir Charles Bell who made to physiology the
greatest contribution which had come to it since the discovery by
Harvey of the circulation of the blood, and yet this discovery was
made by reasoning upon the facts of anatomy rather than by
experimenting upon animals. An English physiologist, Sir Michael
Foster, admits this:
"To Charles Bell is due the merit of having made the fundamental
discovery of the distinction between motor and sensory fibres. Led to
this view by reflecting on the distribution of the nerves, he
experimentally verified his conclusions...."
In his lectures on the nervous system Bell himself states that his
discoveries, so far from being the result of vivisections, were, "on
the contrary, deductions from anatomy; and I have had recourse to
experiments, not to form my own opinions, but to impress them upon
others."
That which determines the judgment of the world upon human actions is
the spirit that animates them. Sir Charles Bell was not an
antivivisectionist. When experiments on animals seemed to him
absolutely indispensable, he had recourse to them, but always with
repugnance, and with desire to avoid giving of pain. In his lectures
on the nervous system he speaks thus of some of his work:
"After delaying long on account of the unpleasant nature of the
operation, I opened the spinal canal.... I was deterred from repeating
the experiment by the protracted cruelty of the dissection. I
reflected that the experiment would be satisfactory if done on an
animal recently knocked down and insensible."
And on another occasion, writing to his brother, he says:
"I should be writing a third paper on the nerves; but I cannot proceed
without making some experiments, which are so unpleasant to make that
I defer them. You may think me silly, but I cannot perfectly convince
myself that I am authorized in Nature or Religion to do these
cruelties .... And yet what are my experiments in comparison with
those which are daily done, and are done daily for nothing?"
Such extreme sensibility, such sympathetic hesitancy to inflict great
suffering in an attempt to discover some fact, would be ridiculed at
the present day in every laboratory in Europe or America. It is
typical, however, of a sentiment that once prevailed. Are we any
better because it has so largely disappeared?
For great cruelty was there ever great remorse? The cases are not
many; before the self-condemnation of a dying man and the final scene,
friendship may feel it best to draw the veil. Yet one case of this
poignant regret is worthy consideration, and shall have relation.