TO THE EDITOR OF THE SIGNS:—It seems incredible that in this enlightened age and in connection with one of our higher educational institutions, there should, from day to day, be committed acts of barbarism which rival in their cruelty the most fiendish plots of the Dark Ages; but such is the case. The daily press reveals the revolting practises perpetrated in the name of science by a certain professor in the University of Chicago.
This man does not scruple to experiment upon live animals, without even the employment of anesthetics, in the following fashion: He severs the spinal cord of a cat, he probes into the brain of a dog and scalds his feet. These inoffensive creatures are thus made to endure indescribable agony to demonstrate the most common experience of every-day life—the reflex action of the nervous system.
Such acts of barbarism in the presence of a class can not but tend to destroy every instinct of humanity in the breasts of those who are compelled to witness such outrages. This is not the kind of education our young people need. It is not the unfortunate animals alone who suffer. Every such cruelty has a “reflex action” upon ourselves.
“I would not enter on my list of friends. . . the man who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.”