Chapter 437

(766/1. A Bill was introduced to the House of Commons by Messrs. Lyon Playfair, Walpole and Ashley, in the spring of 1875, but was withdrawn on the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the whole question. Some account of the Anti-Vivisection agitation, the introduction of bills, and the appointment of a Royal Commission is given in the "Life and Letters," III., page 201, where the more interesting of Darwin's letters on the question are published.)

Down, May 26th, 1875.

I hope that you will excuse my troubling you once again. I received some days ago a letter from Prof. Huxley, in Edinburgh, who says with respect to your Bill: "the professors here are all in arms about it, and as the papers have associated my name with the Bill, I shall have to repudiate it publicly, unless something can be done. But what in the world is to be done?" (766/2. The letter is published in full in Mr. L. Huxley's interesting chapter on the vivisection question in his father's "Life," I., page 438.) Dr. Burdon Sanderson is in nearly the same frame of mind about it. The newspapers take different views of the purport of the Bill, but it seems generally supposed that it would prevent demonstrations on animals rendered insensible, and this seems to me a monstrous provision. It would, moreover, probably defeat the end desired; for Dr. B. Sanderson, who demonstrates to his class on animals rendered insensible, told me that some of his students had declared to him that unless he had shown them what he had, they would have experimented on live animals for themselves. Certainly I do not believe that any one could thoroughly understand the action of the heart without having seen it in action. I do not doubt that you wish to aid the progress of Physiology, and at the same time save animals from all useless suffering; and in this case I believe that you could not do a greater service than to warn the Home Secretary with respect to the appointment of Royal Commissioners, that ordinary doctors know little or nothing about Physiology as a science, and are incompetent to judge of its high importance and of the probability of its hereafter conferring great benefits on mankind.