Part 12

_Id._... “I have urged on woman independence of man, not that I do not think the sexes mutually needed by one another; but because in woman this fact has led to an excessive devotion which has cooled love, degraded marriage, and prevented either sex from being what it should be to itself or the other.... Woman, self-controlled, would never be absorbed by any relations; it would be only an experience to her as to man. It is a vulgar error that love, a love to woman, is her whole existence; she is also born for truth and love in their universal energy.”—Margaret Fuller Ossoli (“The Woman of the Nineteenth Century”).

_Id._... Professor Alfred Russell Wallace has written an article, concerning part of which Mr. W. T. Stead rightly says: “It is a scientific reinforcement of the cause of the emancipation of women, and shows that progress of the cause of female enfranchisement is identified with the progress of humanity.”—(_Review of Reviews_, Vol. V., p. 177.)

Professor Wallace says:—

“When such social changes have been effected that no woman will be compelled, either by hunger, isolation, or social compulsion, to sell herself, whether in or out of wedlock, and when all women alike shall feel the refining influence of a true humanising education, of beautiful and elevating surroundings, and of a public opinion which shall be founded on the highest aspirations of their age and country, the result will be a form of human selection which will bring about a continuous advance in the average status of the race. Under such conditions, all who are deformed either in body or mind, though they may be able to lead happy and contented lives, will, as a rule, leave no children to inherit their deformity. Even now we find many women who never marry because they have never found the man of their ideal. When no woman will be compelled to marry for a bare living or for a comfortable home, those who remain unmarried from their own free choice will certainly increase, while many others, having no inducement to an early marriage, will wait till they meet with a partner who is really congenial to them.

“In such a reformed society the vicious man, the man of degraded taste or feeble intellect, will have little chance of finding a wife, and his bad qualities will die out with himself. The most perfect and beautiful in body and mind will, on the other hand, be most sought, and, therefore, be most likely to marry early, the less highly endowed later, and the least gifted in any way the latest of all, and this will be the case with both sexes.

“From this varying age of marriage, as Mr. Galton has shown, there will result a more rapid increase of the former than of the latter, and this cause continuing at work for successive generations will, at length, bring the average man to be the equal of those who are now among the more advanced of the race.”—“Human Progress, Past and Present” (_Arena_, Jan., 1892).

XLVII.

1.—“_Nor blankly epicene_ ...”

“Bring up a boy and girl side by side, and educate them both for the same profession under the same masters, and a novelist who depicts character could yet weave a story out of the mental and emotional differences between them, which will cause them to look at life from totally opposite points of view.”—Mabel Collins (“On Woman’s Relation to the State”).

2.-“... _sequence of that day_.”

“We have seen that a deep difference in constitution expresses itself in the distinctions between male and female, whether these be physical or mental. The differences may be exaggerated or lessened, but to obliterate them it would be necessary to have all the evolution over again on a new basis. What was decided among the Prehistoric Protozoa cannot be annulled by Act of Parliament.”—Geddes and Thomson (“Evolution of Sex,” p. 267).

3, 4.—“... _not ... by aping falser sex shall truer grow_.”

“While man and woman still are incomplete I prize that soul where man and woman meet, Which types all Nature’s male and female plan, But, friend, man-woman is not woman-man.” —Tennyson (“On One who Affected an Effeminate Manner”).

XLVIII.

8.—“_Happy what each may bring to help the common fate_.”

“I would submit to a severe discipline, and to go without many things cheerfully, for the good and happiness of the human race in the future. Each one of us should do something, however small, towards that great end.... How pleasant it would be each day to think, to-day I have done something that will tend to render future generations more happy. The very thought would make this hour sweeter. It is absolutely necessary that something of this kind should be discovered.... It should be the sacred and sworn duty of everyone, once at least during lifetime, to do something in person towards this end. It would be a delight and a pleasure to me to do some thing every day, were it ever so minute. To reflect that another human being, if at a distance of ten thousand years from the year 1883, would enjoy one hour’s more life, in the sense of fulness of life, in consequence of anything I had done in my little span, would be to me a peace of soul.”—Richard Jefferies (“The Story of My Heart,” pp. 129, 131, 160).

XLIX.

1.—“_By mutual aid perfecting complex man_.”

Kant says: “Man and woman constitute, when united, the whole and entire being, one sex completes the other.”—Bebel (“Woman,” Walther’s Translation, p. 44).

2, 3.—“_Their twofold vision human life may scan From differing standpoints_ ...”

See Note XLVII., 1.

LI.

4.—“_Her brain untutored_ ...”

“The soldier is exercised in the use of his weapons, the artisan in the use of his tools. Every profession demands a special education, even the monk has his novitiate. Women alone are not prepared for their important maternal duties.”—Irma von Troll-Borostyani (“Die Mission unseres Jahrhunderts.” A Study on the Woman Question).

LIII.

2.—“... _the quivering nerve_ ...”

M. Chauveau states that his object was ‘To ascertain the excitability of the spinal marrow, and the convulsions and pain produced by that excitability.’ His studies were made chiefly on horses and asses, who, he says, ‘lend themselves marvellously thereto by the large volume of their spinal marrow.’ M. Chauveau accordingly ‘consecrated eighty subjects to his purpose.’ ‘The animal,’ he says, ‘is fixed upon a table. An incision is made on its back about fourteen inches long; the vertebræ are opened with the help of a chisel, mallet, and pincers, and the spinal marrow is exposed.’ (No mention is made of anæsthetics, which of course would nullify the experimenter’s object of studying “the excitability of the spinal marrow, and the convulsions _and pain_ produced by that excitability.”) “M. Chauveau gives a large number of his cases.... Case 7: ‘A vigorous mule. When one pricks the marrow near the line of emergence of the sensitive nerves, the animal manifests the most violent pain.’ Case 20: ‘An old white horse, lying on the litter, unable to rise, but nevertheless very sensitive. At whatever points I scratch the posterior cord I provoke signs of the most violent suffering.’”—(_Journal de Physiologie_, du Dr. Brown-Séquard. Tome Quatrième. No. XIII.)

4.—“... _living butchery with learned knife_.”

“We are told what Professor Brücke says with reference to section of the trigeminus:—‘The first sign that the trigeminus is divided is a loud piercing cry from the animal. Rabbits we know,’ he adds, ‘are not very sensitive; all sorts of things may be done to them without making them utter a cry; but in this operation, if it succeeds, they invariably send forth a prolonged shriek.’”—“Lectures on Physiology,” Vol. II., p. 76.

5.—“... _cruel anodyne that chained the will_ ...”

It is dubious whether curare be even an anodyne, _i.e._ a deadener of pain. M. Claude Bernard, himself a vivisector, says:—“Curare acting on the nervous system only suppresses the action of the motor nerves, leaving sensation intact. Curare is not an anæsthetic.” (_Revue Scientifique_, 1871–2, p. 892.)

6.—“... _the shuddering victim conscious still_.”

“Everyone has heard of the dog, suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator; this man, unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life.”—Darwin (“The Descent of Man,” Part I., Chap. II.).

8.—“_Nor yields her holiest truths on such a murderer’s rack_.”

“It is fit to say here, once for all, that laws which govern the animal kingdom below the human, can no more be accepted as final and determining to man, in physiological, than in intellectual and moral, action.... For neither the knife of the anatomist, nor the lens of the microscopist, are infallible interpreters of function. We do not possess ourselves of all of Nature’s secrets by cutting up her tissues and fabrics, neither by the keenest inspection of their ultimate atoms, whether fluid or solid. There are some truths withheld from the investigator, however brave, patient, and nice his methods and means, which are given up, in due time, to the truth-seer, without any method or means, save the intuitive faculty and its unambitious, guileless surrender to the service offered it. Such, it is at least possible, we may find has been Nature’s dealing in this occult department.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. I., pp. 47, 50).

LIV.

1.—“_True science finds its own by kindlier quest_.”

“Science is of the utmost importance to mankind, but the last degree of importance cannot be said to attach to all its minute discoveries, and where, as in physiology, the investigation becomes inhuman, there it ought to stop. It ought to stop for our own sakes if from no other motive, for the torturing of animals on the chance that it may suggest the means of alleviating some of our own pains helps to blunt those sensibilities which afford us some of our purest pleasures. Animals are not our equals in all things, but they seem to be at any rate our equals in the sense of pain. The want of imagination may deprive it in their case of some of its poignancy, but on the other hand they have none of the supports which we derive from reason and sympathy, from the tenderness of friendship and the consolations of religion. With them it is pure, unmitigated, unsolaced suffering. Our duties to them form a neglected chapter in the code of ethics, but we ought not to torture them, and there are many who will maintain that the obligation is absolute. Life is no doubt valuable, but it is not everything. It is more than meat, as the body is more than raiment, but it is not more than humanity. There are occasions on which it has to be risked, and there are terms on which men of honour and patriotism would hold it worthless. The doctrine that we may subject the lower animals to incredible suffering on the possibility that it may save ourselves from an additional pang is of a selfish and degrading tendency. It helps to lower the ‘moral ideal’ and to weaken the springs of heroism in human character. We owe it to ourselves to keep clear of this peril. Nature surrounds us with limitations. Here is one which all that is best and noblest in us sets up, and it is more sacred than those over which we have no control. We refuse to torture other sentient creatures in order that we may live.”—Dr. Henry Dunckley (_Manchester Guardian_, August 9th, 1892).

The above noble pronouncement, with its conclusion, is instinct with the spirit of _true_ science (which repudiates with disdain and horror the hypocritical pseudo-science of a ghastly and demoralising study and pursuit of cruelty),—the _true_ science which is one with love, because it refuses the acceptance of life itself on terms of outrage to love.

See Note LXI., 3.

4.—“... _a keener lens of man’s own brain_.”

“Observation is perhaps more powerful an organon than either experiment or empiricism.”—Richard Jefferies (“Story of My Heart,” p. 162).

_Id._... It is well that some English physicists of the fullest scientific impulse and effort are revolted at the inhuman and bootless cruelty of the foreign medical schools which masquerades as scientific research. Is it not possibly something more than a coincidence that vivisectionists in general exhibit an aversion to the equality of woman, and that vivisection flourishes more unrestrainedly where her position and influence are less recognised; _i.e._, in plain words,—in a lower civilisation?

Mr. Lawson Tait says, with the indignation of a truly scientific mind at these methods of “science falsely so called”:—

“For one, as intimately and widely concerned in the application of human knowledge for the saving of human life and the relief of human suffering as anyone can be, or as anyone has ever been, I say I am grateful for the restrictive legislation. Let me give one brief illustration of my most recent experience in this matter as one of hundreds which confirm me in my determination persistently to oppose the introduction into England of what passes for science in Germany. Some few years ago I began to deal with one of the most dreadful calamities to which humanity is subject by means of an operation which had been scientifically proposed nearly two hundred years ago. I mean ectopic gestation. The _rationale_ of the proposed operation was fully explained about fifty years ago, but the whole physiology of the normal process and the pathology of the perverted one were obscured and misrepresented by a French physiologist’s experiments on rabbits and dogs. Nothing was done, and at least ninety-five per cent. of the victims of this catastrophe were allowed to die.

“I went outside the experimentalists’ conclusions, went back to the true science of the old pathologist and of the surgeon of 1701, and performed the operation in scores of cases with almost uniform success. My example was immediately followed throughout the world, and during the last five or six years hundreds if not thousands of women’s lives have been saved, whilst for nearly forty years the simple road to this gigantic success was closed by the folly of a vivisector....

“Views such as mine are those of a minority of my professional brethren, and are generally sneered at as those of a crank. But my reply to this is that they form the new belief, that of the coming generation, and that not one in fifty of the bulk of my present brethren have ever seriously gone into the question, and probably have never seen a single experiment on a living animal.

“My address as the Surgical Orator of 1890, when the British Medical Association met in this town, was mainly directed to the mischievous system of so-called scientific training, of purely German origin and thoroughly repugnant to our English tastes and our English common-sense.

“It is therefore a satisfactory matter to know that the Council of Mason’s College would have none of it, and that the governing body of the new University College of Nottingham has recently decided similarly. The Medical School of Queen’s College is now united entirely with the Science School of Mason’s College; but we, of Mason’s College, have had the direction of the science teaching of the Medical School for several years, we have had no German scientific methods, and our success has not diminished thereby one atom—on the contrary.”—Lawson Tait, F.R.C.S., _President of Mason’s Science College, Birmingham_ (“The Discussion on Vivisection at the Church Congress, October, 1892”).

At the Congress, as above, Professor Horsley made aspersions on Miss Frances Power Cobbe, as to statements concerning Vivisection in her work, “The Nine Circles.” The professor declared some of the reported cruel experiments to have been painless, owing to the victims being under the influence of anæsthetics. In reply to the attack, the following preliminary letter from Miss Cobbe was then published:—

“TO THE EDITOR OF THE ‘TIMES.’

“SIR,—Professor Horsley’s criticism on the above work—planned and compiled by my direction—demands from me a careful reply, which I shall endeavour to give as soon as may be possible at this distance from the books whence the impugned passages are derived. I shall be much surprised if the hocus pocus of the sham anæsthetic _curare_ with ineffective applications of genuine chloroform do not once more illustrate ‘the curse of vivisectible animals,’ and if the results of the experiments in question, whatever were their worth, would not, in most cases, have been vitiated had real and absolute anæsthesia been produced in the victims. Should a small number of the experiments cited in the ‘Nine Circles’ prove, however, to have been performed on animals in an entirely painless state, I shall, while withdrawing them with apologies from a forthcoming new edition of the book, take care at the same time to call attention to the multitude of other experiments, home and foreign, therein recorded—e.g., baking to death, poisoning, starving, creating all manner of diseases, inoculating in the eyes, dissecting out and irritating the exposed nerves, causing the brain of cats ‘to run like cream,’ etc., about which no room for doubt as to the unassuaged agony of the animal can possibly exist.”

Miss Cobbe concludes by a sharp, but just, criticism on her critic, and with an acute diagnosis of the learned vivisectionist’s own condition:—

“The tone of Dr. Horsley’s remarks against me personally will probably inspire those who know me and the history of my connexion with the anti-vivisection cause with an amused sense of the difficulty wherein the Professor must have found himself when, instead of argument in defence of vivisection, he thus turned to ‘abuse the plaintiffs’ attorney.’ For myself I gladly accept such abuse (or mere bluster) as evidence that the consciences even of eminent vivisectors are, like their victims’ nerves, imperfectly under the influence of the scientific anæsthesia, and remain still sensitive to the heart-pricking charge which I bring against them, of cowardly cruelty to defenceless creatures.

“I am, Sir, yours, FRANCES POWER COBBE. Hengwrt, Dolgelly, Oct. 8th, 1892.”

⁂ A further newspaper correspondence concerning “The Nine Circles,” a work from which some of the foregoing notes on vivisection are copied, has gone on while “Woman Free” is passing through the press; the vivisectors saying that certain of the incidents transcribed in “The Nine Circles” are without the announcement that in some cases an anæsthetic had been administered prior to the act of living anatomy, otherwise admittedly true in every detail. The vivisectors lay what stress they can on the omissions; indeed, their principal advocate has made use of a grossness of imputation and a coarseness of invective that augurs ill for any gentleness of treatment or purpose being existent in the organism of such an operator.

Yet, in truth, it is not a matter of surpassing import whether the assertion of the operation (alone) being conducted under an anæsthetic be indubitable, since the after-consequences of pain or incommodity had to be endured by the victim without anæsthetics. What initial chloroforming could ward off the constant after-suffering attendant on the incubation of the disease for the creation of which the “operation” had been performed, a period acknowledgedly often lasting for weeks, and terminated only by death’s mercy? Or what medicament could anæsthetise the impotent yearning—to feed her starving puppy—of a poor mother dog whose mammary glands had been excised, even if the “operation” had been carried out “under chloroform”? Mr. Edward Berdoe, M.R.C.S., reproduces and reprobates the incident with horror in the _Times_ of Oct. 27, 1892:—

“Professor Goltz amputated the breast of the mother of a puppy nursing her young ... who ‘unceasingly licked the living puppy with the same tenderness as an uninjured dog might do.’”

Most gladly may we turn to the words and ways of worthier seekers after truth. Professor Lawson Tait is reported by the _Standard_, 28th Oct., 1892, as saying at a meeting the previous day:—

“Vivisection was a survival from mediæval times. It could not be justified by any results that it had produced. In days when they could tell the composition of the atmosphere of Orion by means of the spectroscope, it was a disgrace that men should resort to vivisection, instead of perfecting other and more humane means of research.”

There speaks true science. And, on a later occasion, Mr. Lawson Tait quotes the celebrated anatomist, Sir Charles Bell (who had been falsely claimed as an advocate of vivisection), as saying, “on page 217 of the second volume of his great work on the Nervous System, published in 1839”:—

“... a survey of what has been attempted of late years in physiology will prove that the opening of living animals has done more to perpetuate error than to confirm the just views taken from the study of anatomy and natural motions.... For my own part I cannot believe that Providence should intend that the secrets of nature are to be discovered by means of cruelty, and I am sure that those who are guilty of protracted cruelties do not possess minds capable of appreciating the laws of nature.”—(The _Times_, Nov. 8th, 1892, p. 3.)

The views of Charles Bell and Lawson Tait are in striking and encouraging coincidence with verses LIII., LIV., and LV.

To women peculiarly it belongs to oppose the doctrines and methods of vivisectionists, for to the practitioners of that school were due the arguments or assumptions which sufficed to introduce for a while into our country the vile system of according a licence to male dissoluteness and female subjection—under a pretext of public morality and “scientific” sanction—known on the continent as the “police des mœurs,” and in sundry Naval and Military stations of England and Ireland as the “Contagious Diseases Acts.”

LV.

8.—“... _from Love’s might alone all thoughts of Wisdom grow_.”

“Hast thou considered how the beginning of all thought worthy the name is love; and the wise head never yet was, without first the generous heart?”—Carlyle (“French Revolution,” Vol. III., p. 375).

LVI.

5.—“_With woman honoured, rises man to height_.”

“If a Hindoo principality is strongly, vigilantly, and economically governed; if order is preserved without oppression, if cultivation is extended, and the people prosperous, in three cases out of four that principality is under a woman’s rule. This fact, to me an entirely unexpected one, I have collected from a long official knowledge of Hindoo Governments.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 100 note).

6.—“_With her degraded, sinks again in night_.”

“And you who have departed from the common tradition, how have you fared in the race of life? Are your men as brave and fearlessly truthful, are your women as courageous and honest as in the old days of ‘the maiden’s choice’? Are the little worn-out child-wives of to-day likely to have descendants like those of the damsels of your ancient epics? Where are the deeds of high emprise, of daring valour, and of patient persistence of the youths who were fired by the pure love of a woman? Ah! gentlemen, with love life departs; there is no vitality in married life without affection, and when love, the great incentive to action, disappears from the family, leaving dry the streams of affection which should flow between the children and parents, what must come of the race?”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (“Address to the Hindoos”).