orderly citizen from a South Sea buccaneer, or a philosopher from
an inquisitor. For here we look in vain for either an economic or
a sentimental motive. In every generation fools and blackguards
have made this claim; and honest and reasonable men, led by the
strongest contemporary minds, have repudiated it and exposed its
crude rascality. From Shakespear and Dr. Johnson to Ruskin and
Mark Twain, the natural abhorrence of sane mankind for the
vivisector's cruelty, and the contempt of able thinkers for his
imbecile casuistry, have been expressed by the most popular
spokesmen of humanity. If the medical profession were to outdo
the Anti-Vivisection Societies in a general professional protest
against the practice and principles of the vivisectors, every
doctor in the kingdom would gain substantially by the immense
relief and reconciliation which would follow such a reassurance
of the humanity of the doctor. Not one doctor in a thousand is a
vivisector, or has any interest in vivisection, either pecuniary
or intellectual, or would treat his dog cruelly or allow anyone
else to do it. It is true that the doctor complies with the
professional fashion of defending vivisection, and assuring you
that people like Shakespear and Dr. Johnson and Ruskin and Mark
Twain are ignorant sentimentalists, just as he complies with any
other silly fashion: the mystery is, how it became the fashion in
spite of its being so injurious to those who follow it. Making
all possible allowance for the effect of the brazen lying of the
few men who bring a rush of despairing patients to their doors by
professing in letters to the newspapers to have learnt from
vivisection how to cure certain diseases, and the assurances of
the sayers of smooth things that the practice is quite painless
under the law, it is still difficult to find any civilized motive
for an attitude by which the medical profession has everything to