THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS.
By C. M. S.
THERE recently appeared in the journals of the day a despatch from Vienna under the caption, "Horrors of the Free Hospitals in Vienna; Patients Inoculated in the Interests of Science, Because They Are Cheaper Than Animals." It has been discovered that in the free hospitals of that city patients are systematically experimented upon by the physicians in charge. Children and women are the principal subjects, tho youth and dying patients do not escape inoculation by deadly germs at the hands of those with whom they have intrusted their lives. In one case a doctor injected the bacilli of an infectious disease from a decomposing corpse into three women and three new-born children. In another case a youth who was on the road to recovery was inoculated and died within twenty-four hours. One doctor, who had received an unlimited number of healthy children from a foundling hospital, used them entirely for experimental purposes, inoculating them with deadly virus in order to study the progress of the diseases in the children whom he was thus slowly murdering. The excuse given for such a practise is that the children and patients are cheaper than animals for such "scientific purposes." No words of condemnation could be too strong for this wholesale slaughter of the innocents. Nothing but the complete loss of all fear of God and of all natural love of humanity could permit such diabolical practise, even under the flimsy cloak of "scientific purposes." This may be science, but it is science gone mad. It may be "wisdom," but it is the wisdom of the wicked one—"earthly, sensual, devilish;" not that which is born of God—"peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits." Lovers of money are scheming for the accumulation of millions in a day, and lovers of fame are no less insatiate. A scientist or a physician springs before the world like a jack-in-the-box with some marvelous discovery, and his name is heralded around the globe. His fame sets on fire the ambition of scores of unprincipled men, and such practices as above recorded are the deplorable results. The scientist who considers human life secondary to the exploitation of some discovery, real or imaginary, and proceeds to sacrifice life that he may write a book to chronicle his observations, has forfeited all right to be at large. Such criminals are the more dangerous because of the helplessness of those who are their special prey. Other incidents of this kind have been recorded, which would go to show that the practise is not restricted to Vienna. If evidence had heretofore been lacking to show the moral degeneracy of the times, it is furnished in such occurrences as this. C. M. S.