OPINIONS OF NOTED PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS.
Dr. Edward Berdoe, M. R. C. S., in the London Globe of Aug. 3, 1892: “I have been trying for many years to find out what the blessings are which vivisection has conferred on the race, but I have not succeeded;” and in a speech at Buda-Pesth, Hungary, July 21, 1896, he said: “It is only necessary to turn over the pages of the different journals of physiology to see that the greater part of the experiments on animals have no, or only the remotest, connection with the arts of medicine or surgery.” Dr. Morgan Davies (Houndsditch), in a letter to Miss Frances Power Cobbe, Oct. 12, 1892: “Not only could we dispense with it (vivisection), but I firmly believe we should get on much more rapidly and securely without it.” Jas. Macauley, A. M., M. D., London, in his Prize Essay: “More useful information can be obtained observing the force of the heart as indicated on the delicate dial of a balance chair, than from all the experiments of vivisectors.” Dr. J. M. Stewart, President of the Peoria County (Ill.) Scientific Association: “Vivisection is horribly cruel and practically useless.” Dr. J. F. Wilkie, of Oshkosh, Wis., graduate of Rush Medical College, writes, to the Illinois Society, January, 1894: “As a physician, I consider vivisection futile and of no consequence to the medical profession.” Prof. Lawson Tait, F. R. C. S. E., foremost abdominal surgeon of England, and once a vivisector, at a meeting in St. James Hall, London, May 26, 1891: “In the art of surgery, the practice of vivisection has done nothing but wrong.” Dr. Tait long ago wrote a pamphlet entitled “The Uselessness of Vivisection,” besides many letters, which have been published, and he has made many speeches reiterating these statements—up to the latter part of 1896. Wm. R. D. Blackwood, M. D., Philadelphia, Pa., in a published letter, March 27, 1894: “It is physically impossible that other than misleading and false doctrines should be the result of the cruel and degrading work of vivisection.” Edward Haughton, M. D., in The Zoophilist (London), Oct. 10, 1893: “I have yet to hear of a single case of discovery made by experiments on helpless animals which might not just as well have been ascertained by clinical investigation.” Dr. F. S. Arnold (Manchester), in a speech at Church Congress, October, 1892: “I believe the whole method (experiments on animals) to be, scientifically speaking, absolutely unsound and untrustworthy. . . . Vivisection is most surely doomed.” John Fletcher, M. D., of Edinburg Medical School, in Introductory Lecture (London), pages 11, 12: “During many years’ experience in lecturing (on physiology) . . . I have never yet found it necessary in a single instance to expose a suffering animal for the purpose of elucidating any point in physiology.” James H. Payne, M. D., of Boston, in a letter to Anti-Vivisection, March 1, 1895: “I am wholly opposed to vivisection. It is useless, wicked, cruel, barbarous, and infamous. It is worse than useless. It fills the mind with false and brutal ideas. No good ever came from it, and never will. It demoralizes the sensibilities and unfits one for the demonstration of real scientific truth. I pray you may prosper in your good endeavors to obliterate the hideous practice from the whole earth.”