OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# The Doctor’s Dilemma/The Scientific Investigation of Cruelty

There is in man a specific lust for cruelty which infects even his passion of pity and makes it savage. Simple disgust at cruelty is very rare. The people who turn sick and faint and those who gloat are often alike in the pains they take to witness executions, floggings, operations or any other exhibitions of suffering, especially those involving bloodshed, blows, and laceration. A craze for cruelty can be developed just as a craze for drink can; and nobody who attempts to ignore cruelty as a possible factor in the attraction of vivisection and even of antivivisection, or in the credulity with which we accept its excuses, can be regarded as a scientific investigator of it. Those who accuse vivisectors of indulging the well-known passion of cruelty under the cloak of research are therefore putting forward a strictly scientific psychological hypothesis, which is also simple, human, obvious, and probable. It may be as wounding to the personal vanity of the vivisector as Darwin's Origin of Species was to the people who could not bear to think that they were cousins to the monkeys (remember Goldsmith's anger when he was told that he could not move his upper jaw); but science has to consider only the truth of the hypothesis, and not whether conceited people will like it or not. In vain do the sentimental champions of vivisection declare themselves the most humane of men, inflicting suffering only to relieve it, scrupulous in the use of anesthetics, and void of all passion except the passion of pity for a disease-ridden world. The really scientific investigator answers that the question cannot be settled by hysterical protestations, and that if the vivisectionist rejects deductive reasoning, he had better clear his character by his own favorite method of experiment.
# The Doctor’s Dilemma/The Higher Motive. The Tree of Knowledge

But the greatest force of all on the side of vivisection is the mighty and indeed divine force of curiosity. Here we have no decaying tribal instinct which men strive to root out of themselves as they strive to root out the tiger's lust for blood. On the contrary, the curiosity of the ape, or of the child who pulls out the legs and wings of a fly to see what it will do without them, or who, on being told that a cat dropped out of the window will always fall on its legs, immediately tries the experiment on the nearest cat from the highest window in the house (I protest I did it myself from the first floor only), is as nothing compared to the thirst for knowledge of the philosopher, the poet, the biologist, and the naturalist. I have always despised Adam because he had to be tempted by the woman, as she was by the serpent, before he could he induced to pluck the apple from the tree of knowledge. I should have swallowed every apple on the tree the moment the owner's back was turned. When Gray said "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise," he forgot that it is godlike to be wise; and since nobody wants bliss particularly, or could stand more than a very brief taste of it if it were attainable, and since everybody, by the deepest law of the Life Force, desires to be godlike, it is stupid, and indeed blasphemous and despairing, to hope that the thirst for knowledge will either diminish or consent to be subordinated to any other end whatsoever. We shall see later on that the claim that has arisen in this way for the unconditioned pursuit of knowledge is as idle as all dreams of unconditioned activity; but none the less the right to knowledge must be regarded as a fundamental human right. The fact that men of science have had to fight so hard to secure its recognition, and are still so vigorously persecuted when they discover anything that is not quite palatable to vulgar people, makes them sorely jealous for that right; and when they hear a popular outcry for the suppression of a method of research which has an air of being scientific, their first instinct is to rally to the defence of that method without further consideration, with the result that they sometimes, as in the case of vivisection, presently find themselves fighting on a false issue.
# The Doctor’s Dilemma/The Primitive Savage Motive

I say civilized motive advisedly; for primitive tribal motives are easy enough to find. Every savage chief who is not a Mahomet learns that if he wishes to strike the imagination of his tribe-- and without doing that he can rule them--he must terrify or revolt them from time to time by acts of hideous cruelty or disgusting unnaturalness. We are far from being as superior to such tribes as we imagine. It is very doubtful indeed whether Peter the Great could have effected the changes he made in Russia if he had not fascinated and intimidated his people by his monstrous cruelties and grotesque escapades. Had he been a nineteenth-century king of England, he would have had to wait for some huge accidental calamity: a cholera epidemic, a war, or an insurrection, before waking us up sufficiently to get anything done. Vivisection helps the doctor to rule us as Peter ruled the Russians. The notion that the man who does dreadful things is superhuman, and that therefore he can also do wonderful things either as ruler, avenger, healer, or what not, is by no means confined to barbarians. Just as the manifold wickednesses and stupidities of our criminal code are supported, not by any general comprehension of law or study of jurisprudence, not even by simple vindictiveness, but by the superstition that a calamity of any sort must be expiated by a human sacrifice; so the wickednesses and stupidities of our medicine men are rooted in superstitions that have no more to do with science than the traditional ceremony of christening an ironclad has to do with the effectiveness of its armament. We have only to turn to Macaulay's description of the treatment of Charles II in his last illness to see how strongly his physicians felt that their only chance of cheating death was by outraging nature in tormenting and disgusting their unfortunate patient. True, this was more than two centuries ago; but I have heard my own nineteenth- century grandfather describe the cupping and firing and nauseous medicines of his time with perfect credulity as to their beneficial effects; and some more modern treatments appear to me quite as barbarous. It is in this way that vivisection pays the doctor. It appeals to the fear and credulity of the savage in us; and without fear and credulity half the private doctor's occupation and seven-eighths of his influence would be gone.
# The Doctor’s Dilemma/The Reforms Also Come from the Laity

In the main, then, the doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them. That is why all the changes come from the laity. It was not until an agitation had been conducted for many years by laymen, including quacks and faddists of all kinds, that the public was sufficiently impressed to make it possible for the doctors to open their minds and their mouths on the subject of fresh air, cold water, temperance, and the rest of the new fashions in hygiene. At present the tables have been turned on many old prejudices. Plenty of our most popular elderly doctors believe that cold tubs in the morning are unnatural, exhausting, and rheumatic; that fresh air is a fad and that everybody is the better for a glass or two of port wine every day; but they no longer dare say as much until they know exactly where they are; for many very desirable patients in country houses have lately been persuaded that their first duty is to get up at six in the morning and begin the day by taking a walk barefoot through the dewy grass. He who shows the least scepticism as to this practice is at once suspected of being "an old-fashioned doctor," and dismissed to make room for a younger man.
In short, private medical practice is governed not by science but by supply and demand; and however scientific a treatment may be, it cannot hold its place in the market if there is no demand for it; nor can the grossest quackery be kept off the market if there is a demand for it.
# The Doctor’s Dilemma/The Old Line between Man and Beast

But there is still a distinction to be clung to by those who dare not tell themselves the truth about the medical profession because they are so helplessly dependent on it when death threatens the household. That distinction is the line that separates the brute from the man in the old classification. Granted, they will plead, that we are all cruel; yet the tame- stag-hunter does not hunt men; and the sportsman who lets a leash of greyhounds loose on a hare would be horrified at the thought of letting them loose on a human child. The lady who gets her cloak by flaying a sable does not flay a negro; nor does it ever occur to her that her veal cutlet might be improved on by a slice of tender baby.
Now there was a time when some trust could be placed in this distinction. The Roman Catholic Church still maintains, with what it must permit me to call a stupid obstinacy, and in spite of St. Francis and St. Anthony, that animals have no souls and no rights; so that you cannot sin against an animal, or against God by anything you may choose to do to an animal. Resisting the temptation to enter on an argument as to whether you may not sin against your own soul if you are unjust or cruel to the least of those whom St. Francis called his little brothers, I have only to point out here that nothing could be more despicably superstitious in the opinion of a vivisector than the notion that science recognizes any such step in evolution as the step from a physical organism to an immortal soul. That conceit has been taken out of all our men of science, and out of all our doctors, by the evolutionists; and when it is considered how completely obsessed biological science has become in our days, not by the full scope of evolution, but by that particular method of it which has neither sense nor purpose nor life nor anything human, much less godlike, in it: by the method, that is, of so-called Natural Selection (meaning no selection at all, but mere dead accident and luck), the folly of trusting to vivisectors to hold the human animal any more sacred than the other animals becomes so clear that it would be waste of time to insist further on it. As a matter of fact the man who once concedes to the vivisector the right to put a dog outside the laws of honor and fellowship, concedes to him also the right to put himself outside them; for he is nothing to the vivisector but a more highly developed, and consequently more interesting-to-experiment-on vertebrate than the dog.
# The Doctor’s Dilemma/The Peculiar People

Besides, the calling in of the doctor is now compulsory except in cases where the patient is an adult--and not too ill to decide the steps to be taken. We are subject to prosecution for manslaughter or for criminal neglect if the patient dies without the consolations of the medical profession. This menace is kept before the public by the Peculiar People. The Peculiars, as they are called, have gained their name by believing that the Bible is infallible, and taking their belief quite seriously. The Bible is very clear as to the treatment of illness. The Epistle of James; chapter v., contains the following explicit directions:
14. Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the Church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:
15. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.
The Peculiars obey these instructions and dispense with doctors. They are therefore prosecuted for manslaughter when their children die.
When I was a young man, the Peculiars were usually acquitted. The prosecution broke down when the doctor in the witness box was asked whether, if the child had had medical attendance, it would have lived. It was, of course, impossible for any man of sense and honor to assume divine omniscience by answering this in the affirmative, or indeed pretending to be able to answer it at all. And on this the judge had to instruct the jury that they must acquit the prisoner. Thus a judge with a keen sense of law (a very rare phenomenon on the Bench, by the way) was spared the possibility of leaving to sentence one prisoner (under the Blasphemy laws) for questioning the authority of Scripture, and another for ignorantly and superstitiously accepting it as a guide to conduct. To-day all this is changed. The doctor never hesitates to claim divine omniscience, nor to clamor for laws to punish any scepticism on the part of laymen. A modern doctor thinks nothing of signing the death certificate of one of his own diphtheria patients, and then going into the witness box and swearing a peculiar into prison for six months by assuring the jury, on oath, that if the prisoner's child, dead of diphtheria, had been placed under his treatment instead of that of St. James, it would not have lived. And he does so not only with impunity, but with public applause, though the logical course would be to prosecute him either for the murder of his own patient or for perjury in the case of St. James. Yet no barrister, apparently, dreams of asking for the statistics of the relative case-mortality in diphtheria among the Peculiars and among the believers in doctors, on which alone any valid opinion could be founded. The barrister is as superstitious as the doctor is infatuated; and the Peculiar goes unpitied to his cell, though nothing whatever has been proved except that his child does without the interference of a doctor as effectually as any of the hundreds of children who die every day of the same diseases in the doctor's care.
# The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Docker, Hon. Joseph

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​Docker, Hon. Joseph, M.L.C., second son of Robert Docker, of London, and Eliza (Perry) his wife, was born in 1802, and ​became a surgeon in the East India Company's service. He was married in April 1839 to Matilda, daughter of Major Thomas Brougham, H.E.I.C.S., of Penrith, Cumberland; and emigrating to Australia, was appointed a member of the Upper House in New South Wales, after being defeated as a candidate for the Legislative Assembly. He was Postmaster-General in the first Martin Administration, from Jan. 1866 to Sept. 1868, when he became Colonial Secretary, and retired with his colleagues in the following month. He was again Postmaster-General in Sir James Martin's second Ministry, from Dec. 1870 to May 1872. Whilst holding office on the first occasion he introduced and carried through the Upper House Mr. (now Sir) Henry Parkes' Public School Bill in 1866. He was Minister of Justice and Public Instruction in the Robertson Ministry, from Feb. 1875 to March 1877; and again, under the same Premier, from August to Dec. 1877. He died on Dec. 9th, 1884.
# The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Dodery, Hon. William

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​Dodery, Hon. William, M.L.C., Chairman of Committees, Legislative Council, Tasmania, was returned to the House of Assembly for Norfolk Plains in 1861, and was re-elected in Nov. 1862 and in Oct. 1866. In 1875 he resigned his seat in the Assembly, and in March 1877 was elected to the Council for Longford, now Westmoreland, and was re-elected in April 1883 and in May 1889.
# The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Dobson, Hon. Sir William Lambert

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​Dobson, Hon. Sir William Lambert, F.L.S., Chief Justice, Tasmania, brother of the preceding, eldest son of John Dobson, of Hobart Town, by Mary Anne, daughter of Matthew Atkinson, was born in 1833. He entered at the Middle Temple on Nov. 7th, 1853, received a certificate of honour in May 1856, and was called to the English bar on June 6th, 1856. He was called to the Tasmanian bar on Jan. 22nd, 1857, and married, in 1858, Fanny Louisa, daughter of Ven. William Henry Browne, LL.D., of Ballinvoher, co. Cork, Archdeacon of Launceston. He was appointed Crown Solicitor in 1859, and entered the House of Assembly in 1861, retaining his seat till 1870. He was Attorney-General in the Weston Administration from Feb. 5th to August 2nd, 1861, and in the Chapman Ministry from the latter date till Jan. 20th, 1863. He filled the same post in the Dry Ministry from Nov. 24th, 1866, to August 4th, 1869, and in the Wilson Ministry from that date till Feb. 5th, 1870, when he was appointed Puisne Judge of Tasmania, becoming Chief Justice on the retirement of Sir Francis Smith (q.v.), on Feb. 7th, 1885. Sir Lambert, who is Chancellor of the University of Tasmania, was sworn of the Executive Council on June 6th, 1861, and was created K.B. on August 16th, 1886. He administered the government from Nov. 18th, 1886, till March 11th, 1887.
# The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Dodds, Hon. John Stokell

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​Dodds, Hon. John Stokell, C.M.G., Puisne Judge, Tasmania, was born in Durham, England, in 1848, and having emigrated to Tasmania, was admitted to the bar there in 1872. Having unsuccessfully contested South and North Hobart, Mr. Dodds succeeded Mr. Fysh as the representative of East Hobart in, 1878, and held the seat till 1887, when he assumed his present judicial position. Immediately after his election he accepted the post of Attorney-General in the Crowther Administration, which took office in Dec. 1878. On their defeat in Oct. 1879, Mr. Giblin undertook the formation of a Coalition Government, Mr. Dodds and Mr. O'Reilly being selected as representatives of their party. The office of Treasurer was offered to and declined by Mr. Dodds, who was unwilling to take any portfolio other than that of Attorney-General. Mr. Giblin then waived his own personal wishes, and consented to Mr. Dodds retaining the Attorney-Generalship, he taking the Treasury. Ultimately, however, Mr. Dodds changed places with him, and held the office of Treasurer until the Coalition Government oeased to exist on Mr. Giblin resigning, in August 1884, to become a Judge of the Supreme Court. The Administration was then reconstructed, and Mr. Dodds resigned the Treasurership and became Attorney-General again. In 1886, when Mr. Douglas proceeded to England as Agent-General, it was thought that Mr. Dodds would become Premier; but the Governor, Sir George Strahan, was advised by Mr. Dodds to send for Dr. Agnew^who assumed that position. But the real work of guiding the administration, and of leading the House of Assembly, fell upon Mr. Dodds, who safely steered his party through a general election and a stormy session of Parliament. When still Attorney-General, and whilst en route to England to represent the colony at the Colonial Conference held in London in 1887, he was appointed to the senior puisne judgeship, rendered vacant by the death of his old chief, Mr. Giblin. After attending the Conference, Mr. Dodds returned to Tasmania to assume the seat upon the bench to which he had been appointed in the previous February. In 1890, during the absence of Governor Hamilton, Mr. Dodds exercised for a short time the functions of Deputy Governor.
# The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Dobson, Hon. Henry

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​Dobson, Hon. Henry, M.H.A., Premier of Tasmania, is the fourth son of the late John Dobson and his second wife, Kate, daughter of Richard Willis, of Wanstead, Tasmania. He was born at Hobart on Dec. 24th, 1841, and embracing the legal profession, was admitted to practice in Dec. 1864. He married at Ratho on Feb. 4th, 1868, Emily, daughter of the late Assistant Commissary-General Thomas James Lempriere. In August 1891 Mr. Dobson was returned to the House of Assembly for the Brighton district, and in August 1892 moved an amendment to the financial proposals of the Fysh Government, which was accepted by them as a vote of want of confidence. It was carried by four votes, and Mr. Dobson took office as Premier a few days later.
# The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Domett, Alfred

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​Domett, Alfred, C.M.G., formerly Premier of New Zealand, was the fourth son of Nathaniel Domett, and was born at Camberwell Grove, Surrey, on May 20th, 1811. He was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1829, but left the University without graduating. He then spent a couple of years in America and travelled extensively on the Continent, occupying his time in literary pursuits, and contributing verse to the magazines. He entered at the Middle Temple, Nov. 7th, 1835, and was called to the bar Nov. 19th, 1841. In May of the following year he went out to New Zealand, and settled in the Nelson district, becoming, in 1848, Colonial Secretary for the province of New Munster. In 1851 he was made Civil Secretary for the whole of New Zealand, but resigning the conjoint offices in 1853, he became Commissioner of Crown Lands and ​Resident Magistrate of Hawke's Bay. He was elected to a seat in the House of Representatives for Nelson in 1855, and was re-elected in 1860. On August 6th, 1862, Mr. Domett became Premier in succession to Mr. (afterwards Sir) William Fox. It was then the eve of the Waikato war, and the difficulties encountered in the House led to his resignation on Oct. 29th, 1863, when the Whitaker-Fox Ministry (commonly regarded as the "War Ministry") came into office. Mr. Domett was then appointed Secretary for Crown Lands, and was allotted a seat in the Legislative Council, afterwards becoming Commissioner of Old Land Claims. He was appointed Registrar-General of Land in 1865, and in 1870 Commissioner for Confiscated Lands. In 1871 he retired from his offices, and returned to England, where he lived till his death, which took place in London on Nov. 2nd, 1887. In 1880 he was created C.M.G. Mr. Domett was the author of several volumes of poetry, and enjoyed the friendship of Browning. He it is who was referred to by the latter in his poem beginning, "What's become of Waring, Since he gave us all the slip." Mr. Domett published "Venice: a poem," 1839; "Narrative of the Wairau Massacre," 1843; "Ordinances of New Zealand, Classified," 1850; "Ranolf and Amohia; a South Sea Day Dream," 1872, being an epic poem on a Maori subject; "Flotsam and Jetsam: Rhymes Old and New," 1877. Mr. Domett was for some years a contributor to, and for a portion of the time editor of, the Nelson Examiner, the best of the early New Zealand newspapers.
# The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Don, Charles Jardine

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​Don, Charles Jardine, was born at Cupar, Scotland, in June 1820, and apprenticed to a hand-loom weaver. He took part in the Chartist movement in 1842, and in 1853 emigrated to Victoria, where he worked as a stonemason. He was returned to the Assembly for Collingwood in 1859 and 1861. Mr. Don, who was regarded as a working-class champion, and who was a strenuous advocate of the liberalisation of the land laws, died in 1867.
# The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Donaldson, Hon. John

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​Donaldson, Hon. John, M.L.A., was born at Terang, Victoria, and engaged in squatting pursuits, proceeding to New South Wales in 1876, and to Queensland in 1881. He was returned to the Assembly for Warrego in 1883, but now represents Bulloo. He was appointed Postmaster-General and Secretary for Public Instruction in the McIlwraith Ministry on June 13th, 1888; and when the ministry was reconstructed under Mr. Morehead, on Nov. 30th in that year, continued to hold the same posts until Nov. 19th, 1889, when he succeeded Mr. Pattison as Colonial Treasurer. He resigned with his colleagues in August 1890, owing to the opposition of the Assembly to his financial proposals. He was one of the Queensland delegates to the Federation Convention held at Sydney in March 1891.