by the medical profession, the customary denials that patients
are experimented on were as loud, as indignant, as high-minded as
ever, in spite of the few intelligent doctors who point out
rightly that all treatments are experiments on the patient. And
this brings us to an obvious but mostly overlooked weakness in
the vivisector's position: that is, his inevitable forfeiture of
all claim to have his word believed. It is hardly to be expected
that a man who does not hesitate to vivisect for the sake of
science will hesitate to lie about it afterwards to protect it
from what he deems the ignorant sentimentality of the laity. When
the public conscience stirs uneasily and threatens suppression,
there is never wanting some doctor of eminent position and high
character who will sacrifice himself devotedly to the cause of
science by coming forward to assure the public on his honor that
all experiments on animals are completely painless; although he
must know that the very experiments which first provoked the
antivivisection movement by their atrocity were experiments to
ascertain the physiological effects of the sensation of extreme
pain (the much more interesting physiology of pleasure remains
uninvestigated) and that all experiments in which sensation is a
factor are voided by its suppression. Besides, vivisection may be
painless in cases where the experiments are very cruel. If a
person scratches me with a poisoned dagger so gently that I do
not feel the scratch, he has achieved a painless vivisection; but
if I presently die in torment I am not likely to consider that
his humility is amply vindicated by his gentleness. A cobra's
bite hurts so little that the creature is almost, legally
speaking, a vivisector who inflicts no pain. By giving his
victims chloroform before biting them he could comply with the
law completely.