Vivisection

Abstract

TOWARDS the close of an interesting article on Vivisection in a recent number of NATURE (p. 429), the following remarks from an article in the Fortnightly Review by Lord Coleridge occur: “What would our Lord have said, what looks would He have bent upon a chamber filled with unoffending creatures which He loves, dying under torture deliberately and intentionally inflicted.” Prof. Yeo in answering this, quotes “Ye are of more value than many sparrows,” “How much then is a man better than a sheep.” But there is one passage in Scripture which I think has even a closer connection with vivisection than those mentioned above, namely, the healing of the man possessed with devils (Mark v. verse 13), “and the unclean spirits went out and entered into the swine; and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.” If our Lord therefore considered it expedient to permit the destruction of a whole herd of swine, numbering 2000, in order to alleviate the sufferings of the demoniac, surely the labours of a roan like Hunter must be justified, who by experiments on living animals has been the means of reducing death from aneurism of the principal artery of the lower limb from 95 per cent to 10 per cent., as stated by Sir James Paget.