Chapter VII: Dr. Johnson

Of all the Masters of letters that have adorned and elevated the speech of our race Dr. Johnson is in many ways the most lovable. The son of a poor bookseller in Lichfield {40} with an uncouth figure and an undistinguished countenance, he rose by the massive force of his character and the tireless persistence of his industry to an unchallenged supremacy in the literary world of his age, displaying in his whole life the truth of his own dictum that "few things are impossible to diligence and skill." Disdaining the common habit of the times he would owe nothing to the patronage of the great. "Is not a patron," he wrote to Lord Chesterfield, "one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help?"

[Picture: Dr. Johnson. From a contemporary etching published February
10th, 1780]

He was not very patient with the stupid, or merciful to the absurd, and vanity never came into his presence without receiving swift and mortal blows; but the chastisement of his caustic tongue never fell upon modest worth, and there never lived a man who was a more faithful and affectionate friend.

The style of his writing is always balanced and sonorous, and everywhere and always is he "the friend of the wise and teacher of the good."

No man was more ready to give forcible expression to his amusing prejudices, as when he exclaimed that "the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England," but to be able to assert of any act of man that Dr. Johnson in solemn seriousness condemned it, is for ever to arraign that act in the court of human morals; and so the judicious must concede that when his authority can be cited in fierce and glowing denunciation of vivisectors they are left in a demersed condition.

I took occasion when giving evidence before the last Royal Commission on Vivisection to rehearse Dr. Johnson's philippic which I now reproduce below, and the dejected and deflated aspect of the vivisectors on the commission when I had finished it caused that moment to be one of those I shall always recall with exhilaration! Not a word had one of them to say while I waited for any comment they might adventure, and after a diverting and eloquent silence Lord Selby from the chair remarked, "That leaves no doubt about Dr. Johnson's view in his day." It most certainly does not!

The _Idlers_ that sport only with inanimate nature may claim some
indulgence; if they are useless, they are still innocent; but there
are others, whom I know not how to mention without more emotion than
my love of quiet willingly admits. Among the inferior professors of
medical knowledge is a race of wretches whose lives are only varied
by varieties of cruelty; whose favourite amusement is to nail dogs to
tables and open them alive; to try how long life may be continued in
various degrees of mutilation, or with the excision or laceration of
the vital parts; to examine whether burning irons are felt more
acutely by the bone or tendon; and whether the more lasting agonies
are produced by poison forced into the mouth, or injected into the
veins, it is not without reluctance that I offend the sensibility of
the tender mind with images like these. If such cruelties were not
practised it were to be desired that they should not be conceived;
but, since they are published every day with ostentation, let me be
allowed once to mention them, since I mention them with abhorrence.
_Mead_ has invidiously remarked of _Woodward_ that he gathered shells
and stones, and would pass for a philosopher. With pretentions much
less reasonable the anatomical novice tears out the living bowels of
an animal and styles himself physician, prepares himself by familiar
cruelty for that profession which he is to exercise upon the tender
and the helpless, upon feeble bodies and broken minds, and by which
he has opportunities to extend his arts and torture, and continue
those experiments upon infancy and age, which he has hitherto tried
upon cats and dogs. What is alleged in defence of these hateful
practices everyone knows, but the truth is that by knives, fire, and
poisons, knowledge is not always sought, and is very seldom attained.
I know not that by living dissections any discovery has been made by
which a single malady is more easily cured. And if the knowledge of
physiology has been somewhat increased, he surely buys knowledge dear
who learns the use of the lacteals at the expense of his own
humanity. It is time that a universal resentment should arise
against those horrid operations, which tend to harden the heart and
make the physician more dreadful than the gout or the stone.