intercepted sooner by the Police. The prisoner was fined 40s. for the offence, and committed in default.

"Harrison attended the Committee of the Society on Monday, April the 10th, when after stating the case as above, the sum of £1 was awarded to him for his humane and praiseworthy exertions. The Serjeant of Police was also rewarded."

NOTE I, page 101.

Dr. Millengen, in his recent work, entitled "The Curiosities of Medical Experience," delivers the following instructive and impressive testimony on the whole subject of vivisection :

"But I am now come to a much more important consideration-the benefit to mankind that has occurred, or that may be derived, from such experiments. And here I must give as my most decided opinion, that if any such beneficial results did arise from the inquiries, they were not commensurate with the barbarity of the experiments; nay, I shall endeavour to show, that they are frequently more likely to deceive us, by propping up fallacious and tottering theories, than to shed any valuable light on the subject of investigation. I readily admit that there does exist much analogy in the structure of man and certain animals in the higher grades of the creation; that the functions of respiration, digestion, absorption, locomotion, are to a certain extent similar, and that experiments made to ascertain the mechanism of these functions (if I may so express myself) may tend in some measure to teach

us that which the inanimate corpse of man cannot exhibit; but, admitting to the full extent of argumentation the analogy of these functions, I do maintain that the phenomena of life differ widely between man and animals, and the very nervous influences which we seek to discover are, in life, of a nature totally different. Were it not so, would the senses of different animals, rendered more or less acute or obtuse according to their natural pursuits and protective habits, be so materially unequal? Indeed, the laws of nature that submit every creature to the immutable will of Providence are totally unlike; and each apparatus of life in divers beings seems to be especially calculated for the identical race: what is poison to the one is an aliment to another; and the vivid light which the eyes of one creature can bear, would produce blindness in another; the same effluvia which one animal would not notice, would guide another over trackless wastes in search of friend or foe. I therefore maintain that the mere material examination of the living organs of animals can no more tend to illustrate their vital principle, than the keenest anatomical labours can enable us to attain a knowledge of the nature of our immortal and imperishable parts. I shall enter still more minutely into this subject. In the barbarous experiments to which I allude, animals bearing the strongest resemblance to man (at least in their conformation, for Heaven, in its mercy, did not gift them with what we call mind) are usually selected amongst such as possess a heart with four cavities and double lungs. The dog, the natural companion of man, his most faithful friend

in weal and wo, the guardian of his couch and property, the protector of his infants, the only mourner over the pauper's grave !-dogs are in general selected for the scientific shambles; and this for obvious reasons, they are more easily procured, and at a cheaper rate; moreover, they are more manageable and unresisting under the mangling scalpel. Well, thousands of these creatures have been starved to death with butter, sugar, and oil, to prove that they must die in all the aggravated pangs of hunger, pangs producing ulcerated eyes, blindness, staggers, parched up organs, unless their food contains azote. Will any one maintain that a similar nourishment would produce similar effects on man? Certainly not. The one was created by nature to consume animal substances highly azotised; the other, from the transition of life to which he is born to be exposed, is essentially polyphagous. Then, again, millions of animals have had their bones broken, scraped, bruised in every possible manner, to discover the process of the formation of bone, called osteogeny ; has a single fracture of a human limb been more rapidly consolidated by these experiments, which fill hundreds

of pages in the works of Duhamel, Haller, Scarpa, and other physiologists? Animals will digest substances that would kill a human being; have the experiments in which their palpitating stomach and intestines have been torn from them, lacerated, pricked, cut, separated from their surrounding vessels and nerves, increased our means of relieving the dyspepsia of the sensualist, the surfeit of the glutton, or the nausea of the dissolute ? On the other hand, the gin, the ardent spirits in which

the drunkard wallows, would soon destroy what we think proper to call a brute! In many animals, moreover, there is a tenacity of life-highly convenient to the physiologist, since it enables him to prolong his experimental cruelties-which man does not possess ; and we find the electric fluid acting much longer upon their muscles, even after death, than on a human body or its severed limbs. Another point to be considered is the assertion of the advantages to be derived from contemplating the living viscera in a healthy state. Good God! a healthy state?—what a mockery, what a perversion of language! Behold the dog, stolen from his master; the poor animal hungry, chained up for days and nights pining for his lost master, is led to the butchery. Still he looks up for compassion to man, his natural protector, licks the very hand that grasps him until his feeble limbs are lashed to the table! vain he struggles; in vain he expresses his sufferings and his fears in piteous howls: a muzzle is buckled on to stifle his troublesome cries, and his concentrated groans heave his agonised breast in convulsive throes, until the scalpel is plunged in his helpless extended body! His blood flows in torrents, his very heart is exposed to the torturer's searching hand; and nerves, which experience anguish from a mere breath of air, are lacerated with merciless ingenuity—and this is a healthy state! The viscera, exposed to atmospheric influence, are already parched, and have lost their natural colour, and not a single function is performed in normal regularity. One only effort is natural until vital power is exhausted —a vain instinctive resistance against his butchers! The

In

heart sickens at such scenes, when cruelty, that would bid defiance to the savage's vindictive barbarity, sacrifices thousands of harmless beings at the shrine of vanity. For let the matter not be mistaken-these experiments are mostly made to give an appearance of verisimilitude to the most absurd and visionary doctrines; and if a proof were required of this assertion, it can be easily obtained by reading the works of various physiologists at different periods, who all draw different deductions from similar facts. For when the mind labours under a certain impression, or a reputation is founded upon the support of a doctrine, these facts are distorted with Procrustean skill to suit the views of the experimentalist. Let us, for instance, consider the subject of digestion, to ascertain the nature of which, thousands -millions of animals have been ripped up alive. This practice has been attributed to coction, to elixation, to fermentation, to putrefaction, to trituration, to maceration, to dissolution, and to many other shades and shadows of similar theories; and were additional millions of living victims sacrificed in further scientific hecatombs, posterity may deem our present vain-glorious physiologists as ignorant of the matter as they might consider their numerous predecessors in the same career of groping curiosity. Has the cruel extraction of the spleen from a thousand dogs, to show that they could live without that viscous, explained the nature of its functions, or enabled us more successfully to control its obstinate diseases? We know nothing of the phenomena of life; all our functions are regulated by an all-wise Power that sets at nought human presumption