A NEW FAD by C. M. Stevens

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 24, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 43.

A NEW FAD.

By C. M. Stevens

IN spite of all the agitation by humanitarians against vivisection (the dissection of animals while they are yet alive), the cruel and demoralizing practise still goes on, in some cases "in the interest of science;" in others, because "vivisection parties" are "the fad." These parties are declared to be as popular in Paris as slumming parties were in England and America not long ago.

A recent report from Paris gives the horrifying details of the doings of such a party, where experiments were conducted by a young physician upon living animals, for the amusement of fifteen young women, four of whom were American girls. The experiments began by torturing a frog to death. After partial vivisection, it was tortured with electric shocks, that the party might witness its convulsions. Then came an experiment on a Newfoundland dog, in which partial paralysis was produced by the removal of a portion of the brain. It must be remembered that no such thing as cocain or ether is used in these brutalizing exhibitions. The report states that the result was painful to witness, but that "the young women bore the ordeal with fortitude." Several experiments upon cats followed this, and the entertainment closed with the vivisection of a dog, the details of which are too horrible to relate.

The report adds that during this scene two of the young women fainted, and two were unable to remain in the room.

In the increase of this systematic, cunning cruelty we see the unmistakable evidence of a moral degeneracy, terrible in its consequences. The question is asked, To what will such things lead? The answer is not difficult. Love begets love; hate begets hate; cruelty begets cruelty; and the begotten cruelty begets crime. The tendency of all such things is downward, and the pace is rapid. A college president who is not in favor of the vivisection of animals, has declared that he believed it must be allowed unless the people were willing to face that other horror, human vivisection; for it was sure to come if scientific experimenters were not allowed to vivisect animals.

In the light of all this, where is the prospect of the "glorious future" which the learned agnostic, the evolutionist, and the fashionable churchman are so confidently predicting? The earth is "wearing out;" the tendency of the race to-day is downward; sin and misery are increasing on every hand; and the only hope for a better condition of things is in the fact that the prophecies of God are fulfilling, and that Christ is coming, and coming soon.

C. M. S.