periments were nearly all painful, many acutely so, and lingering in their operation if wantonly employed, therefore, for mere curiosity or for amusement, they would have been frightfully cruel. But what has been the result? I refer in answer, to the treatment of persons poisoned, as it existed even at the commencement of the nineteenth century, contrasted with that of the present day. With what happy promptitude in one case is the stomach-pump applied, instead of time being wasted, and the patient at last sacrificed by relying upon supposed antidotes; and how certainly, in another case, does the physician employ the means which chemistry has furnished him to neutralize the deadly drug! To experiments on animals carefully conducted and repeated over and over again, and to nothing else, can we attribute the happy change from the fruitless trifling of the old herbalist to the energetic practice of the modern physician.

6

"In a late number of the Quarterly Review,' the illustrious writer whose experiments I have alluded to is mentioned in a note, as having sacrificed the lives of 10,000 animals in the course of his researches into the actions of poisons,' and he is accordingly classed with what the Reviewer is pleased to call the Frenchified, butcherly school of anatomical experimenters.' I should like to know how many thousand lives have been sacrificed with no other object than mere amusement, by those hard-riding gentlemen whose exploits the Reviewer elsewhere takes such pains to celebrate. The man who devotes years of study to learn how he may best alleviate the pain or save the lives of his fellow-creatures, is called a butcher.' If he had quitted his study for the field, had dressed himself like a mountebank, and had ridden his horse to death, or had killed ten times ten thousand hares and rabbits, the Reviewer would have seen nothing wrong in his conduct, and instead of a 'butcher,' would have styled him a gallant sportsman.'

"The whole question of the lawfulness of the experiments of Orfila and others, is well stated by Sir David Barry, who devoted much time and labour to an inquiry into the actions of poisons on living animals, with a view to improve the treatment of poisoned wounds. Others,' he says, 'talk of needless cruelty. If any useful knowledge is to be obtained by an experiment, none of the means necessary to arrive at that knowledge can be useless, and none else can be adopted without defeating the purpose aimed at; therefore, in useful experiments, there never is needless cruelty, or, in other words, unnecessary pain inflicted.'"

The importance of vivisection in physiology is next insisted on, and to the opinion that the performance of any experiment once is sufficient, and that it will do others to have the results stated to them, he objects:

"Thousands of dead bodies have been dissected, and there are anatomical works without end which contain the results of such dissections, and yet each student has to go through the same processes, to impress things on his memory. So if there be any thing seen on opening a living animal which is important to be seen and to be re

membered, each must use his own eyes, and not content himself, any more than in questions of human anatomy, with the written reports of others."

After considering its importance to the surgeon previous to performing a great operation, he next objects to indiscriminate or careless use, and makes the following powerful remarks:

"In a passage which Dr. Styles quotes from Dr. Millengen's Curiosities of Medical Experience, the author says that vivisection should not be made a public exhibition or a student's pastime.' This remark is most just. Among the precautions to be observed by the vivisector, none is more essential than the avoidance of display. When an important end is to be gained (as was the case in the experiments I have previously noticed, by Orfila, Dupuytren, Sir A. Cooper, Bell, and others), the means indispensable to that end do not constitute cruelty. In employing these means the experimenter is justified by stern necessity, and, if duly impressed with the importance of his researches, can no more feel an inclination towards display than a conscientious surgeon would during a critical operation.

"Those who consider all infliction of pain on the lower animals unjustifiable, may charge me with carrying the principle of expediency too far. To such I would reply, by asking on what ground but the supposed necessity to an end is the punishment of death tolerated in the present day? The feeling of revenge, which originally prompted it, is out of the question in a civilized community. It is inflicted on offenders to deter others: On ne corrige pas,' says Montaigne, 'celuy qu'on pend; on corrige les aultres par luy." Whether the proposed end be really attained is doubted by many enlightened persons: no doubt can exist, however, that the means are shocking, infinitely more so than any vivisection of brutes. In killing the latter mere pain is the result; take the most agonizing process by which a creature's life can possibly be extinguished, still it is so much bodily suffering: we destroy a creature without moral sense, and incapable therefore of doing right or wrong; we prevent no virtue in this life, we hasten no punishment in another.

"How different is the case of a criminal! Who can say if his life were spared that he would not repent? It is not likely, perhaps, but it is possible. He may have been seduced by evil example, the strongest temptation may have assailed him, he may never have had (how often is this the case!) the benefits of education. If that education and moral training were begun even now, his whole nature might be changed, he might yet become a good and happy man: by killing him you prevent all his possible virtues, you make him die wicked. And if we take the more solemn view of the question; if we believe that his future fate through all eternity depends upon his life here, what a responsibility do we take upon ourselves! By making a change of life impossible, we seal his everlasting doom."

The natural repugnance one feels to inflict pain on the lower animals is not a fair argument against these experiments, be

cause we feel an equal repugnance to inflict pain on our fellowmen, and yet we perform the most painful operations, the scooping out of an eye for instance, convinced that by so doing we purchase for the sufferer future benefit, far, far beyond the temporary pain. Mr. Jameson concludes by dilating on this proposition:

"That while necessity alone compels us to take away the lives of animals, our accusers are daily accessory to their wholesale destruction, for the mere gratification of luxury, or as an amusement to while away the passing hour."

This tu quoque sort of argument is not exactly to our taste, and, as we have said before, we would prefer taking the thing on its merits or its necessity, than setting up a sort of oblique defence by accusing the accusers of doing as bad or worse. Mr. Jameson, with great talent, animadverts on the painful killing of animals for food; the mutilation of them to improve their flavour; bulls and rams gelded, sows splayed, cocks converted into capons; geese confined to one spot close to a fire, and stuffed with food, until a disease of the liver takes place, which converts that organ into fat for patés de Strasbourg; turkeys crammed by main force; lobsters boiled alive, &c. He vigorously attacks the inconsistency of the members of the Society boasting of having put down bull-baiting and vulgar pastime, while nothing is attempted against the nearly equally cruel, but royal amusement of stag hunting. "Did the poor bull's suffering arise from the social position of his persecutors? Or do you suppose the stag feels less agony because his tormentors are lords and gentlemen? Prince Albert's hounds bite as sharply as the butcher's bull-dog." We should be happy could we find space to present our readers with Mr. Jameson's illustrations of how badly the patrons of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, exhibit by their conduct the feeling which their position would promise. Beginning with the Queen (the chief patron) who baits hares with beagles, he then brings forward the Duke of Cambridge, "who killed with his own gun about sixty head of game;" the Duke of Devonshire and the Duke of Buccleugh killing grouse, pheasants, and hares in abundance; Lord F. Egerton, another patron, who gave the clerks and agents in his employment a day's coursing, when they killed twenty-two hares. But we have made quotations enough to convey some idea of the talent and interest of this letter, and we shall therefore conclude with Mr. Jameson's final observations:

"Before I bring my letter to a close, allow me once more distinctly to repeat my declaration, that in charging your patrons with

the grossest inconsistency and injustice, I do not mean to accuse them of wilful oppression and tyranny. I have no doubt that the hunters and shooters of Windsor and Chatsworth think they are simply advancing the cause of humanity in punishing the baiters of Westminster and cock-fighters of Hillingdon. The persecutors do not see the wrongfulness of their own pursuits, simply because it has never been fairly pointed out to them. The sportsman shoots and hunts because his father and his friends hunted and shot before him ; the possibility of his amusements being cruel has never once occurred to him. Just so it was in Great Britain a century ago with respect to slavery. Englishmen had been accustomed to buy and sell Negroes just as they did pigs or poultry; and yet those Englishmen were not perhaps worse people than their grandsons. Whitefield (a sincerely pious Christian, if ever there was one) bought Negroes and worked them, and at his death bequeathed them to that elect Lady, that Mother in Israel, that mirror of true and undefiled religion, the Right Honourable Selina, Countess Dowager of Huntingdon. In his will the Negroes stand just midway between his 'lands' and his books and furniture'! But one by one, and little by little, men began to see that the slave-trade was wrong: Sterne said something, and Granville Sharp, and Clarkson, and Wilberforce, said more, and at last most Englishmen were ashamed of what they and their fathers had done as a matter of course; and now every child will tell you that slave-dealing is a sin. When the thing was pointed out to the people they saw it, but not before: having once clearly seen it they can never lose sight of it again.

"If the Society over which your lordship presides be really anxious to act up to its title, let it throw aside all that reverence for rank which at present checks its efforts or renders them ridiculous. If cruelty is to be punished, let it be condemned for its own sake, not because its effects are sometimes painful to the beholder who happens to have weak nerves: and let it be punished alike in all. In the mean time, let the Society make a better use of its funds than to give away a hundred pounds for an Essay on the Animal Creation,' by one who is ignorant of the commonest facts connected with it. Above all, let it beware how it attempts, by well-meant, but ignorant interference, to check the progress of a science, whose noble aim it is, by mitigating disease, to prolong the lives, increase the happiness, and promote the social welfare of mankind."

6

On Dysmenorrhoea, and other uterine Affections, in Connexion with deranged Assimilation. By DR. RIGBY.

In the short work before us Dr. Rigby has taken a good deal of pains to shew an intimate connexion existing between deranged assimilation and dysmenorrhoea, with some of its consequences and complications. Influenced by his admission that

the investigation of the affections, to which his observations refer, is still far from being so perfect as he could wish it to be, we shall rest satisfied with laying before our readers some of the points on which he particularly dwells, and for further information refer them to the work itself. It is divided into two parts, the first being confined to a brief consideration of assimilation with its derangements, and the effect of these, as evidenced by a vitiated condition of the blood, and faulty secretion, with an altered state of the functions of the skin and mucous membranes. Into the details of these consequences of mal-assimilation we shall not follow him further than to state, that having shewn

"That a very intimate connexion exists between the assimilation of the albuminous principle, and the function of the mucous membranes, it will be equally manifest that a healthy or unhealthy condition of the one will determine a corresponding character of function in the other. The secretion from those membranes is of a more or less modified albuminous character, and experience shews, as a general rule, that in mal-assimilation of the albuminous principle, this condition of the mucous secretion usually holds a pretty exact correspondence with the quantum of lithic matters discharged by the kidney."

Dr. Rigby further dwells on the altered state and action of the mucous membrane, as remarked in the rheumatic and gouty diathesis, wherein their circulation, but more especially the venous, becomes much congested, and the membrane assumes a relaxed, swollen, and deeply injected, even purplish appearance; at times coming on suddenly, and manifesting the same erratic character as gout in other parts. As an illustration of this he refers to attacks of gouty asthma. The occurrence of hæmorrhoids he also adduces as a further illustration of the disposition to congestion of the mucous membrane in these habits, with also the increased secretion of an albuminous transparent mucus, "particularly distinct in the rectum, and seemingly closely analogous to the albuminous discharge from the cervix uteri and vagina, in certain uterine affections."

The great tendency in gouty habits of the mucous membrane (but especially of the rectum) to secrete gas, is another point of importance, which will be found to bear out the analogy he wishes to demonstrate as existing between such gouty affections consequent on mal-assimilation and the uterine affections, of which we come now to speak. These he, "in default of any more appropriate term," designates uterine rheumatic gout, meaning thereby to imply

"A certain series of local phenomena or symptoms preceded or attended by a corresponding state of the general system; they are