How the Fight Against Vivisection Began
Mr. Geo. T. Angell, that veteran worker for not only kindness but justice to animals, has this to say in his valuable little paper, Our Dumb Animals, for February, on the beginning of the strife with the vivisectionists:— As our readers know, we started this paper (first of its kind in the world) June, 1868, with an edition of two hundred thousand copies, and a few months later published in it what perhaps had never been published before in Massachusetts—an attack on vivisection. At the next meeting of directors (none are living now except ourself) we were astonished to find that several of them had decided, on account of that article (and the cost, as they said, of publishing the paper), to discontinue its further publication. This astonished, we listened patiently without a word of objection, and when they were all through, quietly said that we would relieve the society by publishing the paper thereafter as our own, at our own expense. In the over thirty-three years that have passed since that time, there has never been, to our knowledge, another suggestion that Our Dumb Animals should be discontinued. That question was settled once and for all. At that time so little was known on the subject that one of our most intelligent judges stopped us on the street to inquire, “What is vivisection?” We found he had not the slightest knowledge of the meaning of the word. They did not teach it in colleges and universities then, as they are beginning to now. Our Dumb Animals has done and is doing a glorious work. May its light never grow less.