However ungrateful the discussion of this subject may be, since, in truth
and justice, it must be considered with an unbiassed and unprejudiced
mind, and elicit observations which may prove offensive to many, and
absurd to some, it is one of such moment on the score of humanity, that I
undertake the task without hesitation or reluctance.
In support of the practice it has been urged, that mankind owes the most
valuable discoveries in the science of medicine and its collateral
branches to the vivisection of animals; that since the brute creation was
intended for the use of our species, we could not apply them to a more
important and justifiable purpose, than that of endeavouring to initiate
ourselves in those wonderful functions of nature, a knowledge of which
would give us a clearer insight of the mysterious machinery, and thereby
the better enable us to remedy their derangement when in a morbid state.
It has further been maintained, that when man to indulge his capricious
appetites and his various amusements, tortures every creature that can
minister to his depraved fancies or his unruly pleasures--he would be
more excusable, if not fully justifiable even in the eyes of the most
sentient philanthropist, in submitting these creatures to smaller or
greater sufferings, if mankind could be ultimately benefited by this
sacrifice of feeling. What, indeed, could be our commiseration when
beholding the agonies of a mangled dog or a cat, if the throes of his
sufferings, and the incalculable pangs he endured, could restore a beloved
child to his disconsolate parents, or a sinking father to his helpless
family. Moreover, is not man, from the very nature of his social position,
created to suffer more than animals, not only from the many natural
diseases to which flesh is heir, but to the torturing wounds received on
the field of battle--the burning fevers of distant climes--the chances of
war, pestilence, and famine--all of which are aggravated by that power of
judgment, that reflection and consciousness derivating from the possession
of an immortal soul, which makes the future more horrible than the
present, however great its miseries may be. It has also been urged, that
animals in their savage state, undomesticated by the _humane_ interference
of man, inflict upon each other injuries under which they linger and die
in excruciating pain; and, therefore, when we submit them to similar
agonies, we only fill up the intended measure of their destined
sufferings.
It is painful to assert it, but all these allegations, I consider as not
only unsupported by facts and experience, but grounded on speculative
sophistry; for, in regard to the injuries which animals in their wild
condition may inflict upon each other, they may be the result of the wise
provisions of the CREATOR, with which man, however presumptuous he be, has
nothing to do, and even were it in his power to check their furious and
destructive propensities, it is more than likely, from what we daily
witness, that he would turn them to a profitable or a pleasurable account,
as most probably, the sight of a combat between a wild elephant and a
rhinoceros (provided the spectators were perfectly secure), would attract
a greater multitude, and _draw_ more money, than a dog-fight or a
bull-bait--a tiger-hunt, were it not attended with some personal danger
which requires courage, would prove more delectable than the pursuit of a
timid hare.
But I now come to a much more important consideration--the benefit to
mankind that has occurred or that may be derived from such experiments.
And here I must give as my most decided opinion, that if any such
beneficial results did arise from the inquiries, they were not
commensurate with the barbarity of the experiments; nay, I shall
endeavour to show, that they are frequently more likely to deceive us, by
propping up fallacious and tottering theories, than to shed any valuable
light on the subject of investigation.
I readily admit that there does exist much analogy in the structure of man
and certain animals in the higher grades of the creation; that the
functions of respiration, digestion, absorption, locomotion, are to a
certain extent similar, and that experiments made to ascertain the
mechanism of these functions (if I may so express myself), may tend, in
some measure, to teach us that which the inanimate corpse of man cannot
exhibit; but, admitting to the full extent of argumentation, the analogy
of these functions, I do maintain that the phenomena of life differ widely
between man and animals, and the very nervous influences which we seek to
discover are, in life, of a nature totally different. Were it not so,
would the senses of different animals, rendered more or less acute or
obtuse according to their natural pursuits and protective habits, be so
materially unequal? Indeed, the laws of nature that submit every creature
to the immutable will of Providence are totally unlike; and each apparatus
of life in divers beings seems to be especially calculated for the
identical race: what is poison to the one is an aliment to another; and
the vivid light which the eyes of one creature can bear, would produce
blindness in another; the same effluvia which one animal would not notice,
would guide another over trackless wastes in search of friend or foe. I
therefore maintain, that the mere material examination of the living
organs of animals can no more tend to illustrate their vital principle,
than the keenest anatomical labours can enable us to attain a knowledge of
the nature of our immortal and imperishable parts.
I shall enter still more minutely into this subject. In the barbarous
experiments to which I allude, animals bearing the strongest resemblance
to man (at least in their conformation, for Heaven, in its mercy, did not
gift them with what we call _mind_) are usually selected amongst such as
possess a heart with four cavities, and double lungs. The dog--the natural
companion of man, his most faithful friend in weal and woe, the guardian
of his couch and property, the protector of his infants, the only mourner
o'er the pauper's grave!--dogs, are in general selected for the scientific
shambles; and this for obvious reasons,--they are more easily procured,
and at a _cheaper rate_; moreover, they are more manageable and
unresisting under the mangling scalpel. Well, thousands of these creatures
have been starved to death with butter, sugar, and oil, to prove that they
must die in all the aggravated pangs of hunger,--pangs producing ulcerated
eyes, blindness, staggers, parched up organs, unless their food contains
azote. Will any one maintain, that a similar nourishment would produce
similar effects on man? Certainly not. The one was created by nature to
consume animal substances highly azotized; the other, from the transition
of life to which he is born to be exposed, is essentially polyphagous.
Then, again, millions of animals have had their bones broken, scraped,
bruised in every possible manner, to discover the process of the formation
of bone, called _Osteogeny_: has a single fracture of a human limb been
more rapidly consolidated by these experiments, which fill hundreds of
pages in the works of Duhamel, Haller, Scarpa, and other physiologists?
Animals will digest substances that would kill a human being--have the
experiments in which their palpitating stomach and intestines have been
torn from them, lacerated, pricked, cut, separated from their surrounding
vessels and nerves, increased our means of relieving the dyspepsia of the
sensualist, the surfeit of the glutton, or the nausea of the dissolute? On
the other hand, the gin, the ardent spirits in which the drunkard wallows,
would soon destroy what we think proper to call a _brute_!
In many animals, moreover, there is a tenacity of life--highly convenient
to the physiologist, since it enables him to prolong his experimental
cruelties--which man does not possess; and we find the electric fluid
acting much longer upon their muscles even after death, than on a human
body or its severed limbs.
Another point to be considered is the assertion of the advantages to be
derived from contemplating the living viscera in a healthy state. Good
God! a healthy state!--what a mockery, what a perversion of language!
Behold the dog, stolen from his master--(for theft is encouraged to supply
the man of science--and theft of the worst character, since it is of the
most cruel nature;--our goods, our money, may be restored, replaced by
industry, but what hand can restore the faithful companion of our
solitude, whose looks seem to study our thoughts! left us perhaps by the
lost one of our heart, symbol of that fidelity which death alone
abridged!) the poor animal hungry, chained up for days and nights pining
for his lost master, is led to the butchery. Still he looks up for
compassion to man, his natural protector, licks the very hand that grasps
him until his feeble limbs are lashed to the table! In vain he
struggles--in vain he expresses his sufferings and his fears in piteous
howls: a muzzle is buckled on to stifle his troublesome cries, and his
concentrated groans heave his agonized breast in convulsive throes, until
the scalpel is plunged in his helpless extended body! His blood flows in
torrents, his very heart is exposed to the torturer's searching hand, and
nerves which experience anguish from a mere breath of air, are lacerated
with merciless ingenuity,--and this is a healthy state! The viscera
exposed to atmospheric influence are already parched, and have lost their
natural colour, and not a single function is performed in normal
regularity. One only effort is natural until vital power is exhausted--a
vain instinctive resistance against his butchers!--The heart sickens at
such scenes, when cruelty that would bid defiance to the savage's
vindictive barbarity, sacrifices thousands of harmless beings at the
shrine of vanity. For let the matter not be mistaken--these experiments
are mostly made to give an appearance of verisimilitude to the most absurd
and visionary doctrines; and if a proof were required of this assertion,
it can be easily obtained by reading the works of various physiologists at
different periods, who all draw _different_ deductions from _similar_
facts. For when the mind labours under a certain impression, or a
reputation is founded upon the support of a doctrine, these facts are
distorted with Procrustean skill to suit the views of the experimentalist.
Let us, for instance, consider the subject of digestion, to ascertain the
nature of which, thousands--millions of animals have been ripped up alive.
This practice has been attributed to _coction_, to _elixation_, to
_fermentation_, to _putrefaction_, to _trituration_, to _maceration_, to
_dissolution_, and to many other shades and shadows of similar theories;
and were additional millions of living victims sacrificed in further
scientific hecatombs, posterity may deem our present vain glorious
physiologists as ignorant of the matter as they might consider their
numerous predecessors in the same career of groping curiosity. Has the
cruel extraction of the spleen from a thousand dogs to show that they
could live without that viscous, explained the nature of its functions, or
enabled us more successfully to control its obstinate diseases?
We know nothing of the phenomena of life; all our functions are regulated
by an allwise Power that sets at naught human presumption--and
Hippocrates justly called this harmonic organization a _concensus_, or a
circle, in which we could not discover the commencement or the end.
There does however exist one course of experiments which probably might
prove beneficial to mankind. The search of antidotes to various poisons
that are too frequently administered by criminal hands; but here again
experiments fall short of our expectations, for these substances act
differently upon different animals, and even to some the prussic acid in
large doses may be given with impunity. But I affirm, and can prove it,
that in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, in which such substances are
given to animals, it is not with a view to discover antidotes, but to
ascertain, according to the unfortunate creature's species, size, and
condition, how long he can linger under the pangs of the poison, or what
is the dose sufficient to occasion death. Of what benefit can it be to
humanity to know that thirty drops of hydro-cyanic acid destroys dogs and
cats in the space of six, twelve, or fifteen minutes; that twenty-six
drops kill a rabbit in three minutes; that one drop introduced into the
bill of a sparrow deprives it of life in eleven minutes; that a duck takes
fifteen drops to put an end to its convulsive struggles; and that the
exposing animals to the influence of hydro-cyanic acid gas destroys them
in two, four, six, eight, and ten seconds? What benefit does society reap
from the knowledge that, after the most excruciating suffering, a dog died
in five hours after having taken half an ounce of tobacco, and that
another ill-fated canine victim in whose limbs tobacco had been
introduced, died of paralysis and in horrible convulsions in about an
hour? Were antidotes sought in the thousands of similar cases that I could
adduce? Certainly not--the experiments merely went to ascertain the power
of the drug, and the only possible good that could have resulted from the
barbarous trial, was the appearance of the viscera after death; a fact
that one experiment could demonstrate as well as one thousand--but which
could be more effectually exhibited in human creatures who died from the
effects of deleterious substances. In short, these experiments are nothing
more than cold calculations on the tenacity of life in various
individuals. Every one knows that arsenic and prussic acid destroy life,
and surely such an assertion on the part of a lecturer to his pupils
should satisfy them on this head without having recourse to illustrations
of the fact. In the case of supposed poison introduced into alimentary
substances, and which are given to dogs to prove the criminal act, surely
chemistry is not so little advanced in its boasted progress, not to be
able to afford us a test of the presence of poison, without having
recourse to so savage an expedient.
Another most absurd argument has been upheld in favour of these
experiments in the presence of pupils, that of hardening their feelings in
the contemplation of acute sufferings. This assertion is worse than idle
and absurd; many of our most able surgeons and anatomists have never
practised these cruelties, and yet their nerves have not been unstrung
during the most fearful operations. With hands imbrued in blood I have
performed the arduous duties of my profession in fourteen battles, yet I
never could _witness_ these heartless exhibitions without disgust, and I
am sorry to say contempt. I am aware that these sentiments have been
called _puling_ professions of humanity; nay, that there are men and women
who would weep bitterly over the sufferings of a sick pet, while they
would view accumulated human misery unmoved. These are painful anomalies
arising too frequently in disappointed minds, when the cup of life has
been imbittered by ingratitude, and the "milk of human kindness" curdled
by deceit. These are not reasons to prevent us from censuring acts of
cruelty, when they may be considered _useless_ in a scientific point of
view, and _degrading_ to mankind in regard to private feelings. I can
readily believe that the best and the most humane of men, may be induced
by an ardent desire to elucidate obscure parts of physiologic inquiry, to
try such experiments; but most undoubtedly--unless the object to be so
attained was commensurate with the sacrifice and abnegation of humane
sentiments, I should deeply lament their obduracy, and be inclined to
doubt their benevolence towards their fellow-creatures.
I would not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polish'd manners, and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility), the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that hath humanity forewarned
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
In fine, whenever it is not evident that such practices can benefit
mankind and increase our means of reducing the sum of human misery--it is
a barbarous and criminal abuse of that power which the Creator has given
us over the inferior grades of animated beings; and it is deeply to be
lamented that no legislative measures can be adopted to restrain it, if it
cannot be altogether prohibited. At any rate, professors alone should be
allowed the "_indulgence_," but in no instance should such
pseudo-scientific practices become a public exhibition or a student's
pastime. Brought up in early life, amidst all the complicated horrors of a
revolution, I have been sadly convinced that the contagion of CRUELTY is
much more doubtless and active than that of PESTILENCE!