Human vivisection : A statement and an inquiry.

  • American Humane Association.
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Human vivisection : A statement and an inquiry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    of human life, and inviting the various scientific bodies of the United States to join with it in protest and condemnation. That invitation has not been accepted. Against any restriction or limitation of the right of a vivisector to subject animals to torment without giving a reason why, against any law reg- ulating the practice of vivisection, protests have been made by the Chemical Society of Washi. ton, by the Philosophi- cal Society of Washington, r the Entomological Society of Washington, by the National Academy of Sciences, by the American Medical Association, by the Association of American Physicians, and by various State societies throughout the United States; but so far as known, not a single scientific society in our country has ever made the faintest protest against the atrocious subjection of infants to mutilation, to inoculation with loathsome and sometimes fatal disease, or to any other form of human vivisection. Is there a single one of the above-named societies which by any formal resolu- tion has ever protested against the taking of human life for a purely scientific purpose? The correspondent of a great journal asks, as he reports the experiments of Sanarelli, Is scientific murder a pardonable crime? What is the answer to this ter- ribly significant question? We know the reply of some scien- tific teachers. Writing in the New York Independent, Decem- ber 12, 1895, one of them declares that— A human life is nothing compared with a new fact in science. . . . The aim of science is the advancement of human knowledge at any sacrifice of human life. ... If cats and guinea pigs can be put to any higher use than to advance science we do not know what it is. We do not know of any higher use we can put a man to. We have by no means exhausted the record of human vivi- sections, even in the Western Hemisphere. Sufficient instances have been adduced to show that the practice obtains here in America; and that it is here condoned by significant silence, and by absence of all condemnation on the part of scientific bodies. But underlying the practice of human vivisection there is a danger to human society. Between those who demand that the vivisection of animals shall be without restriction or restraint and those who defend or practice human vivisection there is a common bond of sympathy and belief. Says Judge