Worthy of Honor by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 26, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 30.

Worthy of Honor

By Editor

Worthy of Honor.—We neglected to chronicle at the time the death of the great English surgeon, Robert Lawson Tait, June 13, at his country residence Llandudno, Wales. He took little stock in much-lauded antiseptics, but insisted on absolute cleanliness. But of his surgical skill we do not need to speak. What we do wish to mention, however, is his opposition to vivisection. He did not believe that vivisection of animals was necessary or useful to medical science. He wished placed over his tomb as an epitaph the following: "He labored to divest his profession of the blundering which resulted from the performance of experiments on the subhuman groups of animal life, in the hope that they would shed light on the aberrant physiology of the human groups." He said further: "Such experiments never have succeeded, and never can; and they have, as in the cases of Koch, Pasteur, and Lister, not only hindered true progress, but they have covered our profession with ridicule." Some of the medical journals sneer at this, but the haters of cruelty will honor his memory.