assisted by such a procedure?

Το

achieve a similar result it would be necessary to adopt precisely the same precautions in extracting a pigeon from a pie.*

And for the fact itself-if, as I said before, a fact it be-this, on Dr. Owen's own admission, was the discovery not of the vivisector but of the microscopist. Mr. Tait questions the fact. And adduces in justification of his scepticism a steady average of successful operations certainly unsurpassed, even if equalled, by any Listerian of the day. But whether Mr. Lister be right in this matter or Mr. Tait is a matter comparatively without bearing upon the question in hand. The deductions of the microscopist may have been right or may have been wrong. But right

* Even more necessary if we accept the view of germ incubation put forward by Mr. Lawson Tait.

or wrong they were not deduced from Vivisection.

If then Vivisection were uncalled for either to state the conditions of the problem or to meet them with its solution was there no part at all in the business for it to play?

Yes. One.

In surgical, as in other matters, it is possible to purchase even an advantage at too high a price. There is no remedy for headache so unfailingly effective as decapitation. But its adoption—even if desired by the patient—is not sanctioned by the custom of the profession.

The first question then to be answered by the inventor of any new method of operating is the question-Is it safe? And this is probably the question an answer to which was really sought in Mr. Lister's experiments. And with the usual

result. The answer was found-and when found, proved to be fallacious. The effects of carbolic acid upon the flayed entrails. of healthy dogs and cats and rabbits turned out to be not quite the same as that produced upon the diseased organs of the human patient. "My patients," says Mr. Lawson Tait, "recovered as satisfactorily without the carbolic spray as with it. In fact I may say that they recovered better without the carbolic acid; for, while using that substance in a strong spray I had several indications of carbolic poisoning. And I very nearly lost one case."

So in the scientific hands of Mr. Lister, Vivisection has made one addition to our surgical practice after all.

The addition—of carbolic poisoning!

CHAPTER XII.

BELL, BERNARD, AND THE

TOOTHACHE.

WITH the remainder of Dr. Owen's "scientific" arguments we may deal somewhat summarily.

When Dr. Owen claims the discoveries of Sir Charles Bell with regard to the nerves as an outcome of vivisection, one can but shrug one's shoulders and reply -Well of course Dr. Owen knows best. Sir Charles Bell himself did not think so. Sir Charles Bell himself left on record an earnest protest against any delusion of the kind. "Experiments" in Sir Charles Bell's view "have never been the means of discovery," and he emphatically repudiates the notion that his own discoveries

had been due to any charlatanry of the kind.

Why? Because he was an Anti-Vivisectionist? Not at all. For he was not one, nor anything like one.

Charles Bell had indeed some feelings of compassion. He did not inflict torture on the helpless with that joyous eagerness and excitement which as we have seen marks the only true Master of the Coward Science. He was even weak enough to shrink sometimes from a cruelty of more than usual atrocity. But he could control this stomach-squeamishness on occasion with considerable success. Sensitive as he was, his sensitiveness very rarely stood in the way of his desire for fame.

But he was not a mere investigator. He was a man of thought, insight and intellectual grasp. He knew what Vivi