• PROFESSOR STANLEY JEVONS ON VIVISECTION.
TO the May number of the Fortnightly Review Professor Stanley Jevons has contributed a paper which we have read with some perplexity and much regret, maintaining—and this in face of the evidence taken before the Royal Commis- sion on Vivisection, in face of Dr. Klein's strangely discredit- able evidence to which Mr. Jevons does not once refer, in face of the evidence of Professor Rutherford and Dr. Sibson, and with the fact before him that in but two or three of the physiological laboratories were animals of no higher rank than frogs regarded as so far capable of suffering as to need any anwsthetic, even in the case of the severest operations—that no restriction is needed, and that only protection for the Vivi- sectionists is required. Professor Jevons is a very original thinker, and his achievements in relation to logic are of a kind which will make his name justly celebrated long after he and his contemporaries have disappeared from the present stage. But the paper to which we now refer is by no means worthy of his logical reputation. Professor Jevons complains, and complains very justly, and with much force, of the tendency to caprice in the expression of English moral sentiments. He points out, what is quite true, and very important, that where- ever the public mind is prepared by habit and custom for moral carelessness, it often happens that no notice is taken of conduct much more intrinsically indefensible than actions of a more novel kind which call forth a violent outcry ; that while lottery-wheels are abolished, lotteries are permitted in connection with the sale of works of art ; and that while public betting is prohibited, no attempt at all is made to interfere with rings of private book-makers among the aristocracy, even though they carry out theirtransactions on a large scale. Mr. Jevons then goes on to remark, very justly, that the same irregularity of moral sentiment exists in a very high degree in relation to the rule of kindness to animals, human and otherwise. He appears to think that while English sentiment is horrified by the kidnapping of South-Sea islanders, it is not much moved by hearing that the Queensland aborigines are shot like kangaroos or poisoned wholesale by strychnine. We would suggest to him that before he rests satisfied with this last assumption,—showing cer- tainly a very hardened moral indifference on the part of the English public, if it is true,—he should first take the trouble to remove the absolute incredulity which was, no doubt, at the bottom of this absence of feeling. We suspect that if he could prove to us that—not in war, but simply in wanton- ness—the Queensland aborigines have been shot down like kangaroos, or that, under any circumstances whatever they have been poisoned by treacherous gifts of flour mixed with strych- nine, without any punishment falling on the author of this atrocious deed, there would be such an outbreak of British feeling as this generation has hardly witnessed. It is not a very improbable, and certainly not a discreditable, explanation of the public indifference which Mr. Jevons supposes, to assume that no one believed the charge made, and that it certainly might fairly have been assumed that if made on even plausible evidence, there would have been a judicial investigation in Queensland. But all these preliminary remarks only lead up to Professor Jevons's main point, that the English people are quite indifferent to the infliction of very large amounts of pain on the lower animals in any way that does not strike their imagination, like that habitual among the sportsmen who purvey for the vendors of skins and plumage, or among those who merely cultivate an exciting and delightful exercise, while the same people resent even hysteri- cally the infliction of even much smaller amounts of pain in new and unaccustomed ways, which strike their imagination,—as, for in.- stance, in the way of vivisection. Now, this is all just and true, and if its drift had been to make the feeling on these subjects more reasonable and uniform, and yet to justify and strengthen the humane vein of sentiment, we should have been thankful to Professor Jevons. Unfortunately, the tendency of the paper, what- ever its purpose, is just the other way,—to apologise for the newer practices which require a similar indifference to the infliction of pain, on the ground that the public do not resent the older ones. Take, for instance, the following sentence. Professor Jevons is referring to something in the evidence taken before the Royal . Commission on Vivisection, and says :—" A great deal of atten- tion was given to the case of certain dogs which had been killed by strychnine in the presence of medical students, for the purpose of demonstrating the action of that fearful poison. As regards the physical pain caused, I see no grounds for complaint, while it is permitted for the squatters of Queensland to kill the native dogs in large numbers by strychnine. If the use of this poison is in itself cruel, then the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should take means to prohibit its general use." If this passage does not mean that until "the Society for the Pre- vention of Cruelty to Animals" gives a signal which is to be heard and obeyed in our most distant colony, the most eminent scientific men need feel no scruple in using a poison which causes brief but most terrible agony, we don't know what it does mean. In point of fact, we do not think that the practice of poisoning dogs by strychnine before classes of medical students was brought before the Royal Commission,—the animals used for that purpose being usually frogs, or at the worst, rabbits and guinea-pigs,—we say 'at the worst,' only on the assumption that creatures of lower organisation suffer less than those of higher organisation, and that frogs, rabbits, and guinea-pigs are, as a rule, less sensitive than dogs. But we would call Mr. Jevons's attention to the fact that Professor Pavy declared it quite possible (question 2146) to ex- hibit the characteristic effect of strychnine-poisoning under chloroform ; and it is a significant fact, that in the ease of all the other lecturers who thought it necessary to exhibit the effects of strychnine before a class, this humane precaution was never taken, on the alleged plea that it would spoil the instructiveness of the experiment, though it seems not improbable that in fact no suffi- cient anxiety had been felt to find out whether it would spoil the experiment or not. Professor Jevons, however, who appears to have studied the evidence, is all for justifying the use of strych- nine before a class, merely on the ground that it is used reck- lessly by ordinary vermin-poisoners, instead of for advising the most careful precautions against the lecturers to medical classes
setting an example of any unscrupulousness, in order that ordi- nary vermin-poisoners might afterwards be required to follow the example thus set them.
We would not misrepresent Professor Jevons. Evidently he would be glad that ladies should cease to use for mere purposes of ornament, feathers which require the destruction of so many birds, and worse still, which involve the serious wounding, with- out the destruction, of so many more. He would also be glad to see certain cruel sports discontinued. But his chief anxiety is certainly not to attack the needless infliction of pain in sport and fashion, so much as to justify its inflic- tion in the interest of science. The interpretation which many will put on the above passage,—we hope and believe a mistaken interpretation,—is that Mr. Jevons would almost be sorry to be deprived of the particular defence for lecturers who exhibit the characteristic effects of strychnine before a class, which is de- rived from the fact that already that poison is freely used where a less painful poison would do equally well, whether in Australia or elsewhere. Certainly he brings his Queensland squatters into the witness-box in order to justify the English professors who inflict the pain of strychnine-poisoning before a class, instead of calling into the witness-box an English professor,—as he might have done,—in order to shame the Queensland squatters and the other persons who use strychnine as an ordinary mode of poisoning vermin. Throughout his paper, Professor Jevons appears so eager to justify everything done by the scientific Vivi- sectionists, that he snatches at the carelessness of the public conscience in other matters in order to excuse or justify them, where we should naturally look for an attempt to guard us at once against public caprice on the one hand, and excess of scientific zeal on the other.
Indeed, if we understand Professor Jevons aright, he even goes so far as to deny that excess of scientific zeal is possible in such a matter. All scientific investigation, he says, is ipso facto compas- sionate. At least, in answer to the suggestion of one of the Com- missioners that compassion and the pursuit of scientific truth might come into collision, Mr. Jevons replies, "The pursuit of scientific truth is the highest, and most civilising, and most compassionate work in which a man can engage ;" a remark which has no mean- ing-in its context, unless it is meant to assert that a man so en- gaged cannot be called upon to stifle compassion. And as far as we can judge, that is really Professor Jevons's very peculiar creed. We suppose he thinks that Dr. Klein, who holds that animal suffering is a matter of no importance at all, as compared with the time of a scientific investigator, is a man brimming over with compassion. But what would he say of Sir Robert Christison, who desisted from an experiment on the effect, we believe, of some irritant poison, because the anguish be in- flicted was too great for him to bear ? Was that a failure of com- passion, inasmuch it was a failure of scientific zeal ? We sup- pose Professor Jevons would think so. And so, too, when Pro- fessor Rutherford kept his thirty-six dogs for an average of eight hours each paralysed under the influence of curare, though pro- bably conscious of every cut of the knife, and of the contact of -every particle of rhubarb or podophilin thrust into these wretched creatures' wounded biliary ducts, he had, in Professor Jevons's -opinion, we suppose, no need to stifle compassion for the dogs, being sustained by the glorious expectation that the effect of rhubarb and podophilin on the secretion of bile in man would be better known for ever after, and by the reflection that if he had been weak enough to use an ad- mitted anaesthetic instead of curare, the interference of the anae.sthetic with the secretion of bile might have partially vitiated his observations. But we would just remind Professor Jevons that however wide a range philosophic compassion may take, natural compassion is awakened by the belief or evidence of individual suffering, and that when we are conscious of any great individual suffering, no hope of possible benefit to creatures not now solicit- ing our compassion can stifle its cry. Indeed, if Professor Jevons's criticism is good for anything, it clearly proves that even the in- fliction of anguish on human beings in the pursuit of scientific truth is a compassionate deed. Nay, it is possible that he really thinks so, for we observe that he apologises for, and seems to justify, the American experiment which we recorded a year ago on the brain of the Irish woman, Mary Rafferty,—though he adds what is exactly contrary to the express evidence, as given in our own journal from which Professor Jevons quotes, that it was painless. The operator frankly enough recorded that she complained of "acute pain" from it, and he evidently thought it probable that it caused a more rapid progress of the disease to which her death was due. However, if the
pursuit of scientific truth cannot possibly be in conflict with compassion, as Professor Jevons seems to hold, then it is quite clear that these incidents were immaterial, and that it may be even a duty to try the most painful of these experiments in our prison-hospitals, and that we ought to regard the men who tried them as the most compassionate of living beings.
We will tell Professor Jevons briefly why, in our opinion, the public conscience is quite right in attaching far more importance to the scientific practice of vivisection than to many cruel prac- tices in which the actuating motive is far lower, and less noble, and the results anticipated far leas beneficial. It is precisely because of the high claims made for it, of the class of men who practise it, and the invincible logic by which its justification would lead to the justification of a large class of practices equally or much more objectionable, that we regard vivisection as most dangerous. The weight of the motive is, indeed, the very source of the danger. Cruelties sanctioned for the sake of pleasure will cease directly men come so far to sympathise with the lower animals as to recoil from pleasures which inflict on them needless pain. Cruelties sanctioned even for the sake of gain will cease, directly men learn what those cruelties are, and are so revolted by the means used, that they refuse to swell the gains of those who commission the perpetrators. But if anguish inflicted in the name and for the purposes of scientific investiga- tion, is to be justified by the conscience of the country, as it is by that of Mr. Jevons, this justification will revolutionise our whole practical ethics. Utilitarians tell you now that the only reason for abolishing torture in our judicial system is that it did not answer its purpose, that instead of elucidating the truth or repressing crime, it had the opposite effect. But that argument could not be pleaded for torture inflicted in the prosecution of scientific investigation, at least, if the physiologists be right. Great scientific results have come of individual applications of that torture. The best authorities tell us (see Royal Commission, question 2754),—and we have no doubt that Professor Jevons would agree with them,—that it is mere weakness to desist from any investigation, however great the requisite torture, if it be necessary for the particular purpose in view, and fairly likely to yield the information required. Here, then, is a principle fruitful in possible anguish for the lower races of animals, and perhaps, too,—for on Professor Jevons's ground we can see no substan- tial distinction,—for the human race. We have the clearest evi- dence that abroad it produces indifference to animal suffering, and Dr. Klein tells us that, in his opinion, the majority of foreign physiologists incline to his view of this matter rather than to the views of the British school. Here, then, is a formidable prospect of a renovated ethics to spring out of the very heart of Science,— that Science which is so much vaunted by Professor Jevons as the spring of all high things in the future, nay, as being "the highest and most civilising and compassionate work in which a man can engage ;"—and yet this renovated ethics be- gins by pleading on behalf of men of science the example of Aus- tralian squatters and British sportsmen. We had hoped better things from Professor cre170318. We had hoped that while trying to render popular humanity leas capricious and more uniform, he would rather have sought to apply, first, the highest standard of humanity to the conduct of science, and then to claim that restric- tions which we impose on the actions of men who acknowledge motives so lofty, should be imposed also on men whose motives are infinitely less worthy. It is not what we should have looked for from him, that in commenting on the great inequalities of British moral sentiment, he should have used its deficiencies to justify the moral deficiencies of science, instead of so elevating the moral discrimination of science as to bring an immense force to bear on the levity of fashionable tastes and the heedlessness of popular amusements.
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