The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-02-20 00:00:00

VIVISECTION IN INDIA.

A memorial, signed by a large number of English-
men and Englishwomen, and Hindoos resident in
England, has been forwarded to the Countess of
Dufferin in India conveying congratulations on the
noble work which her Excellency has inaugurated in
providing medical women for India. The plan is one
destined, they are persuaded, to alleviate the suffer-
ings and lengthen the lives of thousands of Hindoo
women, and, through their instruction in the laws of
health, to raise in no unappreciable degree the
physical strength and well-being of the whole popula-
tion of that vast Empire. "There is but one danger
connected with this great scheme," observe the
memorialists, "which causes us some anxiety, and
as it is one against which a single provision in
original grants and deeds will suffice to afford
permanent protection, ,we most respectfully and
hopefully call your Excellency's attention to the
matter. So long as only already qualified medical
women-were to be sent out from England to attend to
the women of India, tie plan offered no point on
which objection could be founded. These ladies, fully
occupied in their arduous and useful work, could
spare no time for study, either of a truly or falsely
scientific character. The case is altered by the addi-
tional project—good and needful in itself—of a
Medical Training College for Indian Women, destined
to prepare a band of native auxiliaries to supplement
the work of the English lady doctors. Here arises the
danger to which we refer. In nearly every medical
school in this country and in America, it has, of late
years, become the practice of Professors of Physiology,
to exhibit to the students in the course of their lec-
tures a certain number of experiments on living
animals, for which, under the present -Vivisection
Act, they obtain special certificates—about fourteen
or sixteen being issued yearly. Some of these experi-
ments in common use are trivial and painless; others
(even some which have been exhibited to the lady-
students of Girton College) involve frightful mang-
ling of the victims; and, though the law requires
that they shall be performed always under
antesthetics, the spectacle is one which, in our
opinion, cannot fail to harden the heart of young
spectators, and to inspire them with that specific and
terrible passion for such operations which the great
foreign vivisector Cyon has described as joyful ex-
citement' and against which Professor Rolleston and
Dr. Haughton (both teachers of physiology) solemnly
warned the Royal Commission as a latent tendency
in many minds, full of danger when fostered by en-
thusiastic professors, and calculated to rear a class
of young devils.' We consider that the introduction
of such vivisections as illustrations of lectures into a
medical school to be founded in India would be of
the most deplorable augury; and the eagerness where-
with the dominant section of the medical profession
are everywhere pressing the practice fills us with well-
founded fears lest the noble and humane designs of
your Excellency be perverted and used as an opening
to a fresh field of scientific cruelty. The native
schools of medicine in the East have never, we
believe, connected the idea of cutting up living animals,
and innoculating them with fearful diseases, with
the preparation of students for the healing art.
It will, indeed, be lamentable if a medical college,
founded by Christians in India with most kindly
intentions, should be the means of accustoming our
fellow-subjects to cruelties which their own religion
now forbids, but which, under inevitable change of
views, they may too readily learn to regard as indiffe-
rent, and even to associate it with European progress
and civilization. For these reasons we most earnestly
beg of your Excellency to provide that in all trust
deeds or grants to the medical colleges to be founded
in connection with your Excellency's plan, there shall
be inserted a clause strictly and for ever prohibit-
ing the practice of vivisection in such:colleges, whether
as illustrations of lectures or for purposes of re-
search." Among the signatures to the memorial are
the names of Prince Lucien Bonaparte, Lord Cole-
ridge, the Bishops of Oxford, Bath and Wells, South-
well, and Derry, Lord Colville of Colross, the Earls
of Darnley,. Haddington, and Leven and Melville,
Lord and Lady Lamington, Lady de Rothschild, Vis-
countess Monk, Countess Miinster, Cardinal Man-
ning, Sir Theodore Martin, Sir A. Malet, and Mr.
Muudella, MT.