Chapter I (3)

The practice of some manufacturers using and deriving great profit from new knowledge evolved by research, without recompensing the discoverers, sometimes causes injury to the public welfare by preventing the publication of discoveries which have an immediate practical application. Experience of this kind has constrained me to postpone the publication of a method I have found of readily and quickly converting lumps of white phosphorus into the red variety in a state of powder without protracted heat or grinding.

"What will be the next chapter of British enterprise and invention, and who and where the men to perform the chief part in it? As to the work to be done, there can be no doubt or mystery, for not a day passes {77} without loud complaints, indignant remonstrances, fatal oversights, sad mis-calculations, terrible shortcomings, social or material evils to be remedied if possible, whole masses of people, indeed whole classes to be succoured and lifted out of the slough, and enormous difficulties placed by nature in our way evidently that we may exercise our wit and our virtues in the attempt to overcome them. Here, from all these Isles, there arises a despairing cry from agriculture, as if it had really reached the end of its tether, and had found itself landed in utter helplessness and insolvency--a bad speculation altogether. Here are countless problems, and at the same time countless discoveries, which if they lead to nothing else, prove the inexhaustible nature of our dominion over the elements. Then, for the sea, with its terrible average of wreck and total loss running on without intermission and with but rare abatement, who shall say there is here no work for the discoverer and inventor who will give his heart and soul and mind to it?"

It is indeed high time, that by means of discoveries which will enable us to predict with certainty the nature of coming seasons, we shall be better enabled to cope with adversities in agriculture; also, that the numerous wrecks, and the thousands of lives lost with them every year on our coasts, should be diminished. But these desirable results cannot be effected by invention based upon insufficient knowledge; invention must be preceded by general as well as special research, because the former often discloses important {78} truths which we cannot predict. Our present electric lights in light-houses and on large ocean steamers, had their origin, not in direct inventions or special researches for the purpose, but in abstract researches on apparently remote subjects.

It is nothing less than a national crime that proper provision has not yet been made for investigating scientifically the causes of famine and pestilence, also physiology and pathology, and the discovery of the laws which regulate diseases and epidemics. What can be more painful to behold than a mother and father deprived of a whole family of five or six children in rapid succession by scarlatina or other contagious disease, and both the parents and medical men utterly unable to save them; and this is a common occurrence. Persons who are ignorant of science look with an abject feeling of helplessness upon great national calamities, and even upon private afflictions, such as a local epidemic, as if there was absolutely no remedy, whilst scientific men believe that by extension of knowledge, such evils might be largely avoided or prevented.

Many persons however, actuated by the very kindest of motives, but insufficiently acquainted with the necessity, conditions, results, and advantages of experiments, unwittingly obstruct the discovery of new knowledge in physiology and pathology, by attempting to prevent experiments being made upon animals.

We should not strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Nearly every step in life involves a choice {79} between two alternatives, and this is the case with experiments upon living creatures, either such experiments must be made, or the wholesale slaughter of men and other animals, by pestilences, epidemics, small-pox, foot and mouth disease, &c., must continue. Many of the properties of living bodies, like those of dead ones, can only be ascertained by means of experiments, no other course is possible; and the knowledge so obtained enables us not only to prolong the lives but also to alleviate the sufferings of all kinds of living creatures. Nearly all our medical and surgical knowledge has been obtained by observation and study, either of the results of experiments made by ourselves, or by the course of nature for us; and the former is often attended by immeasurably less pain and expence than the latter. No one who has ever made in a proper manner new experiments, would venture to assert that valuable knowledge is not gained by them; and this statement is as correct of experiments in physiology as in all the other sciences.

The total amount of pain inflicted upon animals by vivisection experiments in this country is infinitesimally small--because, firstly, the proportion of experimentalists in so-called "vivisection," does not amount to one person in one million of our inhabitants:--secondly, students cannot be induced to enter upon scientific research in physiology, because such labour is unrewarded, either by enabling them to obtain certificates, degrees, or money. Whatever pain also, {80} is inflicted in such experiments, is by men of the highest eminence in physiology, and therefore by the most competent persons.

Experimental research is an occupation requiring an exceptional kind of ability and experience; and persons who have never made experiments, nor studied their relation to human welfare, are largely incompetent to determine when and how they should be made, the real effects of them, or the value of the knowledge they afford. To persons inexperienced in scientific research, many experiments appear useless, which have great practical value, either immediately or at a later period. Our greatest curse is ignorance; and knowledge, by enabling us to avoid the fatal effects of pestilences, and epidemics, is as necessary as food to mankind. The "Anti-vivisection" movement however is but one of the phases of the ever-existing conflict between the advancing and retarding sections of mankind.

Greater sympathy with suffering accompanies greater civilization. The increased humanity of the present age over that of previous ones, is largely due to the discovery and extension of new scientific knowledge. Science, by showing more clearly to man his true position in nature and in relation to his fellow-men and other animals, has rendered more evident the concrete fact, that the happiness of each depends upon the happiness of all, and the happiness and welfare of all upon that of each individual. It has also operated in a more apparent, though less {81} important way, by inculcating better systems of hygiene, improved sanitary arrangements, &c, &c. It is not to the zeal of "anti-vivisectionists," but to the well-directed labours of experimental medical men, that mankind are indebted for the discovery and invention of nearly every known method of preventing and alleviating animal suffering and of prolonging human life. This statement is true of vaccination, the use of chloroform in general surgery, dentistry, and midwifery, of carbolic acid spray in surgical operations; the abolition of the practice of searing amputated limbs with a red-hot iron; and many other improvements. Ferrier's comparatively recent vivisection experiments have already enabled medical men to treat more successfully those formidable diseases, epilepsy and abcess of the brain.

What this nation badly requires, is not less experimental research, but more. When famines result from insufficiency of Solar heat, instead of investigating the conditions of the Sun's surface to enable us to predict their occurrence and provide accordingly, we allow them to come upon us in our unprepared state and produce their fearful effects. When contagious disease overtakes us, what do we do? Instead of previously employing and paying scientific investigators to make experiments in physiological and chemical science, to enable us to combat it successfully, we vainly attempt to apply our present stock of chemical and physiological knowledge to ward off the difficulty. When high price of fuel intervenes, instead {82} of previously giving discoverers the means of finding new principles relating to heat, and to chemical, and electrical action, we ineffectually endeavour by means of invention, to economise fuel. These are the pottering, short-sighted, and ignorant ways in which "the great English nation" temporises with great evils, and permits national welfare to be sacrificed to private gain, instead of employing for the discovery of new knowledge some of that superfluous wealth which in many instances is a curse to its possessors.

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