An Ethical Problem Part 4

"He could not divest his mind of the feeling that there was a special Providence in the way in which he had been afflicted. He had devoted peculiar attention to the functions of certain nerves, and had inflicted suffering on many dumb creatures that he might discover the office of those nerves; and HE COULD NOT BUT REGARD THE CANCER WHICH PREYED UPON THEM--IN HIS OWN BODY--AS A SIGNIFICANT MESSAGE FROM G.o.d."[2]

[2] Ibid., p. 250.

Again and again he repeated the conviction to which his mind continually reverted in the midst of his torment. To him conscience brought no message of Divine approbation, but only a sentence of condemnation upon his past pursuits. Nor was Reid alone in this feeling of apprehension and questioning. We are told by his medical friend and biographer that many of his brother physicians were startled by learning

"that Dr. Reid is doomed to die by a disease WHICH REPEATS UPON HIS OWN BODY NOT IN ONE, BUT IN MANY WAYS, the pains which he had imposed upon the lower animals."[1]

[1] Reid's "Life," p. 252.

Undoubtedly, friends of the tormented vivisector attempted to comfort him with the a.s.surance--so often repeated in our day--that his experiments on living animals had been carried on "for the benefit of sick and suffering humanity." But Reid was too honest a man to permit himself to be thus deluded while under the very shadow of death. For him the time had come when the specious apologies for the infliction of torture--so current in our day--could be of no avail in lessening the poignant feeling of Remorse. In the dying hour men speak the truth about their actions. It was so with Reid.

"He confessed to having thought much of Scientific FAME in his labours, and IT WOULD BE UNTRUE TO SAY THAT THE ALLEVIATION OF HUMAN SUFFERING was the motive always before him when he inflicted pain on the lower animals."[2]

[2] Ibid., p. 65.

An operation seemed to hold out hope of relief from his terrible agony. It was deemed best to perform it--as Reid had experimented-- without anaesthetics, "that the sufferer, with every sensation and faculty alive, might literally become an operator upon himself." In the course of a second operation, Dr. Wilson tells us: "THE SAME NERVES and bloodvessels which had been the subject of Dr. Reid's most important inquiries WERE LAID BARE IN HIMSELF, BY THE SURGEON'S KNIFE." But all remedial measures were in vain. The two years of apprehension, suspense, recognition, despair, of slowly increasing physical torment and the agony of remorse, came at last to an end.

In July, 1849, he found the long-wished-for peace.

Seventy years ago the religious sentiment of Scotland easily favoured that doctrine of Divine displeasure which seemed probable to Reid and his friends. In our day, however, we are less certain of being able to interpret the "judgments of G.o.d"; and if we regard it as a remarkable coincidence, it is as far as we may safely go.

Coincidences of some kind are a universal experience.

That notorious vivisector, Dr. Brown-Se'quard, devoted many years of his life to experiments on the seat of all that is concentrated and exquisite in agony--the spinal cord. It was a curious coincidence certainly, that in his last days the vivisector was affected by a disease of the spinal cord, which at one time compelled him to go on all-fours like a beast. Even the remorse of Reid finds a parallel, for toward the end of his life, Haller, one of the greatest physiologists that ever lived, is said to have expressed in letters deep regret for the suffering he had inflicted upon living animals.

We cannot doubt, however, that the experience of excruciating agony affecting the very nerves upon which he had so often experimented must have brought to the dying man a deeper realization of the pain he had caused than he could otherwise have known. A noted surgeon, whose finger was the seat of a felon, asked his hospital a.s.sistant to lance it, at the same time cautioning him to be particularly careful to cause as little pain as possible. "Why, I've often heard you tell patients coming to the hospital not to mind the lancing--that the pain to be felt was really nothing at all," replied the a.s.sistant.

"Ah, yes," rejoined the surgical sufferer, "but then, remember, I was AT THE OTHER END OF THE KNIFE!" In watching the phenomena elicited by experiments upon animals, there have been vivisectors who forget what was felt "at the other end of the knife," and so became utterly oblivious to the suffering they caused. A leading physiologist of England once declared that he "HAD NO REGARD AT ALL" for the pain of an animal vivisected, and that "he had no time, so to speak, for thinking what the animal would feel or suffer"; that he never used anaesthetics, "except for convenience' sake." Can such a man realize the meaning of the word "PAIN"? Without sharp personal experience, can anyone, adequately comprehend what it signifies?

Remorse may be evidence, not so much of exceptional delinquency as of exceptional sensitiveness to ethical considerations. By the baser and more degraded souls it is rarely experienced. The greatest criminals usually meet their doom, untouched by any feeling of remorse. Perhaps it does not greatly matter how this infinite regret is occasioned.

Sometimes--

"... pain in man Has the high purpose of the flail and fan."

It separates and purifies. To one whose great suffering from disease is long continued, there must come a clearer vision of the infinite littleness of all transitory ambitions. Such supreme regret as that which came to Reid has great value. The poor soul once so longed for "fame"--which means only a little wider recognition to-day, and a little more enduring remembrance by posterity than that which is gained by the generality of mankind. Of that horde of torturers, avid also for "fame," whose causation of unreckonable anguish brings into their ign.o.ble natures no thought of pity, no emotion of regret, everyone comes at last to rest in that deep forgetfulness which he deserves. Here, however, is the story of one whose penitence gives reason for longer remembrance, who greatly erred and greatly suffered, whose contrition atoned, whose example admonishes--JOHN REID, physiologist.

CHAPTER VI

IS TORTURE JUSTIFIED BY UTILITY?

At every point in the discussion of vivisection we are confronted by the plea of utility. If, to some extent, we may admit the reasonableness of the argument, yet such admission must be with certain definite reservations. The infliction of extreme pain either upon human beings or on animals for objects other than their own benefit--how far is it to be justified if some useful end is thereby achieved? The subject is worth of study.

The utility of judicial torture as a method of securing the confession of criminals does not seem to have been questioned for hundreds of years. The Romans often put all their slaves to torture as soon as any crime occurred, of which some of their servants could have been aware. That sometimes the innocent suffered beyond endurance and falsely confessed seemed to our forefathers no reason whatever for changing an ancient custom, so often productive of useful ends.

Mysterious crimes, which under our modern methods of investigation escape detection, were frequently brought to light in earlier times simply by the threat of torment and the sight of the executioner.

There can be no question that in innumerable cases the torture of accused criminals whose guilt was almost certain, yet not absolutely proven, served to further the ends of Justice. If modern civilization condemns the torture of suspected lawbreakers, it is upon other grounds than that Justice finds it useless in every case.

The public punishment of great offences against the state--punishment accompanied with ignominy and extreme torment--seemed to our ancestors equally justified by utility. If an old woman were convicted of witchcraft--and n.o.body questioned the actuality of the offence two hundred and fifty years ago--her punishment by burning at the stake certainly might be expected to deter others from entering into compacts with the Evil One. If heresy and unbelief lead not only the sceptic himself, but all who follow his teaching, into eternal darkness, there seemed to our forefathers no surer method of checking the first tendencies toward intellectual revolt, and saving innumerable souls, than by delivering the heretic to the flames, and accompanying his execution by everything calculated to excite popular derision and execration. The public punishment of treason, and particularly of attempted or achieved a.s.sa.s.sination of the sovereign or head of the State, was made as excruciating and terrible as possible, in order THAT THE EXAMPLE MIGHT DETER.

We speak somewhat vaguely to-day of such tortures and their atrociously horrible accompaniments. It may be worth while to see just what they were. two or three centuries ago civilized nations considered that IF TORMENT WAS USEFUL IT WAS JUSTIFIABLE. There are three cases which stand out in history with especial distinctness, the details of which are little known, and I propose to cite them simply as evidence of the extent to which judicial torment was carried, but a little while ago, among some of the most enlightened and progressive nations of modern times.

If ever the a.s.sa.s.sination of a Prince deserved the severest punishment, it was the murder in July, 1584, of William the Silent, the leader of the Protestants of Holland in their struggle for independence from Spanish dominion. The sentence p.r.o.nounced upon the murderer, Balthazar Gerard, a mere hired a.s.sa.s.sin, was carried out within ten days after commission of the crime. A contemporary writer, apparently an eyewitness of his execution, speaks of Gerard as one "whose death was not of a sufficient sharpness for such a caitiff, and yet too sore for any Christian." His description of the murderer'

execution is as follows:

"The order of the torment was four days. He had the first day the strappado openly, in the market; the second day, whipped and salted, and his right hand cut off; the third day, his b.r.e.a.s.t.s cut out, and salt thrown in, and then his left hand cut off. The last day of his torment, which was the 10th of July, he was bound to two stakes, standing upright, in such order that he could not shrink down nor stir any way. Thus standing, naked, there was a great fire placed some small distance from him wherein heated pincers of iron, with which pincers two men did pinch and pull his flesh in small pieces from his bones throughout most parts of his body. Then was he unbound from the stakes and laid upon the earth, and again fastened to four posts; then they ripped him up, at which time he had life and PERFECT MEMORY."[1]

[1] Harl. Misc., vol. iii., p. 200. "Printed at Middleborough, Anno 1584." The above account is taken from a rare publication, in the British Museum Library. Motley's account of Gerard's torment includes elements of horror not mentioned by this writer.

Thus did Holland, a leading civilized nation, attempt to deter a.s.sa.s.sins from a.s.saulting her rulers.

Three centuries ago in May, 1610, Henry IV., King of France, was struck down by the dagger of Francis Ravilliac; and France, the leading civilized nation of Europe, determined that the punishment of the crime should be so horrible that it might be expected for ever to deter others from imitating his offence. Standing in a tumbril, naked in his shirt, with the knife wherewith he had stabbed the King chained to his right hand, Ravilliac was carried to the doors of the Church of Notre Dame, where he was made to descend, and to do penance for his crime.

"After this was he carried to the Greve, where was builded a very substantial scaffold of strong timber, whereupon he was to be tormented to death. By the executioners, he was bound to an engine of wood and iron, made like to a St. Andrew's Cross; and then the hand, with the knife chained to it, wherewith he slew the king, and half the arm, was put into an artificial furnace, then flaming with fire and brimstone...yet nothing at all would he confess, but yelled out with such horrible cries, even as it had been a Divill or some tormented soul in h.e.l.l...and though he deserved ten times more, yet humane nature might inforce us to pity his distress. After this with tongs and iron pincers made extreme hot in the same furnace, the executioners pinched and seared his b.r.e.a.s.t.s, his arms, and thighs and other fleshy parts of his body, cutting out collops of flesh and burned them before his face; afterward into the same wounds thus made, they poured scalding oil, rosen, pitch and brimstone...yet he would reveal nothing but that he did it of himself...because the King tolerated two religions in his kingdom...but cried out with most horrible roars, even like the dying man tormented in the brazen bull of Philaris."

Finally, his body was torn to pieces by four strong horses, the remains gathered and burnt, and the ashes scattered to the winds.

"G.o.d in His justice," piously observes the narrator, "will, I hope, in like manner reward all such as desperately attempt to lift their hands against the Lord's Anointed."[1]

[1] Harl. Misc., vol. vi., p. 607. "The Terrible and deserved death of Francis Ravilliac, showing the manner of his strange torments at his execution, the 25th of May last past, for the murther of the late French King, Henry IV."

Almost a century and a half pa.s.sed before the Place de Greve, in Paris, again witnessed the torment of a fanatic for an attack upon the sacred person of a King. On January 5, 1757, Louis XV. was slightly wounded by a young Frenchman, Robert Franc,ois Damiens. The injury was not severe, and the King's recovery was soon complete. Such an attack, however, was a capital offence, and it was determined that the criminal should not only lose his life, but that he should be made to undergo every possible addition of torment and agony. On the morning of March 28, 1757, Damiens was subjected to torture, in order to induce him to reveal the names of any accomplices. In the extremity of his agony he appeared at one time to lose consciousness; but the surgeon and the physician--"qui font toujours pre'sent a' la torture"--declared him still conscious, and the torment continued, accompanied by "terrible cries." When he had been for two hours and a quarter in the hands of the tormentors, the physician and surgeon gave it as their opinion that to continue might lead to an "accident," and the doomed wretch was taken to his dungeon, in order to recuperate.

Toward three o'clock of the afternoon the same day, Damiens was notified that everything was in readiness for his execution. Clothed in but a single garment, he was made to mount a tumbril, and was carried to the doors of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Descending from the cart, holding a lighted candle in his hands, he knelt and made "l'amende honorable," after the form prescribed., It is but a short distance from the Church of Notre Dame to the Place de Greve. Here a vast crowd had gathered in order to witness the extremest agony of a dying man. Members of the French aristocracy were present; ladies of quality paid vast sums for the occupancy of windows overlooking the square, and played cards to pa.s.s the time until the spectacle of torment should begin. A scaffold about 9 feet square received the executioners and their victim. The tortures were of the same character as those inflicted in the same place upon the a.s.sa.s.sin of Henry IV. There was the burning of the right hand, the mutilation of the body and limbs, the pouring of melted lead and other substances into bleeding wounds. Terrible cries, "heard at a great distance,"

were induced; there were shrieks for pity; there were prayers to G.o.d for strength to endure: "Mon Dieu, la force! la force! Seigneur mon Dieu, ayez pitie de moi! Seigneur mon Dieu, donnez-moi la patience!"

Prayers for patience, for strength to suffer and endure--these his only pet.i.tions in the supreme agony.

At last came the final act of the tragedy. Four young and vigorous horses were attached, each to a seared and lacerated limb, and the attempt was made to rend asunder the still living body. The horrible spectacle lasted for more than an hour. Finally the surgeon and the physician in attendance gave it as their opinion that complete dismemberment could not be effected except afer a partial severance of the limbs. The operation was performed, the horses were again attached, and the fearful spectacle came to an end. Damiens apparently preserved consciousness even after both legs and an arm had been torn from his body. The remains were gathered and burnt on the place of torment, and the n.o.ble lords and ladies who had gloated over the scene returned to their homes. It is not at all improbable that among those who witnessed the torments of Damiens in 1757 for an a.s.sault upon a King's sacred person there were some who lived to see Louis XVI. mount the scaffold in 1793.[1]

[1] See "Pie'ces Originales des Process fait a Robert Franc,ois Damiens, Paris," 1757, vol. iii., pp. 379-409; and Perkin's "France under Louis XV.," vol. ii., p. 87.

I have quoted at length three cases of judicial torture, occurring among Christian nations, which were then in the front rank of modern civilization. In Turkey and in Egypt, in India and in China, among the savage Sioux and Iroquois of North America, the tragedies of prolonged torment were more frequent, but not more horrible. But in what way do such records of torture concern the abuses of vivisection?

For two reasons they are suggestive. Not infrequently it is intimated that reports of cruelty by physiologists cannot be true: they are merely "blood-curdling stories"; their horror makes the charge beyond the possibility of belief. A physiologist cannot have been so cruel, and yet have seemed so gentle, so benevolent, so mild. Here are presented the records of torment inflicted upon human beings; torments approved by the highest legal authorities; torments to the supervision of which even medical science, in one case at least, lent its representatives to a.s.sist the torturers, and if the facts were not so well attested, they, too, would pa.s.s belief. But we know they are not fictions; they were actualities. To push them out of recollection into forgetfulness is to unlearn one of the chief lessons that History can teach us--the lesson of warning. The atrocities of biological experimentation can no more be dismissed with a shrug of incredulity than one can sneer at the agonies of Gerard or Damiens because they, too, suggest a heartlessness in the men of that time which our finer civilization can hardly conceive.

But the chief lesson of this black chapter of history concerns the great question of utility. That these atrocious torments were inspired simply and solely by an intense pa.s.sion for revenge is an immeasurably dishonouring imputation. For the statesmen not only, but the religious leaders of that period, believed--and justly believed--in the usefulness of public torture; they believed that the fear of an ignominious and horrible death amid the jeering cries of the surrounding populace would tend to hinder others from repeating the offence. The utility of Terror as a deterrent they knew--as France knew it in '93, as the Spanish Inquisition knew it for nearly three centuries, as every nation knew it in times of popular insurrection or foreign wars. What Civilization came at last to recognize was that UTILITY OF TORTURE, NO MATTER HOW GREAT, COULD NOT JUSTIFY ITS USE.

This principle in its application to the punishment of human beings has been universally recognized by every civilized nation in the world. It only remains for the future Civilization to recognize it so far as concerns beings inferior to ourselves. The repet.i.tion by students in a laboratory of an experiment upon the nervous system of a dog, simply to demonstrate well-known facts, tends, perhaps, to fix them in memory; but that degree of utility does not justify the torture. "The time will come," said Dr. Bigelow of Harvard Medical School, "when the world will look back to modern vivisection in the name of Science as it now does to burning at the stake in the name of Religion."

CHAPTER VII

THE COMMENCEMENT OF AGITATION

The student of history, attempting to trace the agitation for reform of vivisection, is early confronted by a curious fact. It is the ignorance which generally prevails concerning the part borne by the medical profession in exciting public attention to the cruelties of experimentation. The present generation of scientific teachers, of medical students and physicians, are as a rule profoundly ignorant of the beginning of the controversy, and would be as surprised as Professor Osler of Oxford University seems to have been surprised, to hear that medical journals first made known to the world the abuses of vivisection. Remembering how vigorously the physiological laboratory of to-day resists and resents either investigation or criticism, one is forced to confess that rarely, if ever, in the history of the world has a transformation of ideals been more completely attained. If the followers of Wilberforce and Clarkson, to whom the world is indebted for the great impulse against negro slavery, were to-day organized for the exploitation of the negroes on the Congo, or the Indians on the Amazon, or for carrying on the slave-trade secretly, without restriction or supervision, the condition of affairs could hardly be more singular than the dominance obtained by the physiological laboratory upon the medical conscience of to-day. The facts const.i.tute a remarkable chapter of human experience; and though once before they have been stated by the present writer, it is evident, by the evidence given before the Royal Commission, that a vast amount of ignorance yet remains to be dispelled.

Up to a period considerably beyond the middle of the last century, the sentiment of the medical profession in England was practically unanimous in condemning the methods of vivisection which prevailed on the Continent of Europe. In 1855 the science of bacteriology was unknown. It is possible that not more than half a dozen English physiologists at that time were making experiments on living animals.

It was not even regarded as an essential in the teaching of medical schools. In 1875 some of the most distinguished surgeons and physicians of Great Britain testified before the Royal Commission that as medical students they had never witnessed an experiment on a living animal.

That the agitation against the cruelties of vivisectors which made itself evident during the last half of the previous century had no origin in ignorance is easily demonstrated. It was the medical journals of England which first made known to the world the atrocities perpetrated in the name of Science in Continental laboratories. In our own day, when some of the leading teachers in medical schools have only scorn for those who denounce cruelty in the laboratory, it is worth while to study the sentiments of an earlier generation, when sympathy for animal suffering was not a subject for mockery.

The Medical Times and Gazette of London was one of the earlier of medical journals to denounce the cruelties perpetrated by vivisection abroad. In its issue of September 4, 1858, the editor says: