"We could say the animal is respiring air which is charged with anaesthetic in sufficient quantity to keep it anaesthetized before we gave it curare." "That is all you could say?" "That is all we could say."[1] [1] Evidence taken November 21, 1906. And this pious opinion Dr. Thane reiterates to other questioners. It fails to satisfy except where faith is strong. "The curious thing to me," said Dr. George Wilson, "is that you or anyone else can say positively that an animal which cannot, by moving, give any indication that it is not completely anaesthetized during all this time that it is under a terribly severe operation does not suffer.... I cannot understand such a positive statement." And after Dr. Starling had admitted the impossibility of a dog, under curare, making any cry, Dr. Wilson rejoins: "THEN HOW CAN YOU TELL THAT IT SUFFERS NO PAIN? You may hope and believe, but how can you tell that during a prolonged and terrible experiment, the animal suffers no pain?" The only reply that the experimenter could give was a reiteration of faith in the working of the apparatus. And here, for the present, the problem must be left. Its only answer is a guess. Yet it should be capable of a definite solution. Every year, in our great cities, it becomes necessary to put homeless dogs out of existence in some merciful way. It should be possible, by use of chloroform, to determine which theory is true. If, under proper circumstances, a dozen animals were made absolutely unconscious by the use of chloroform, as insensible as human being are made before a capital operation, so that the corneal reflex is abolished, could this degree of unconsciousness be maintained "as long as any experimenter desired"? Would it even be possible as a rule to keep them alive a week, yet completely anaesthetized? Or, on the contrary, would such animals be peculiarly liable to sudden death from the effects of the chloroform? One cannot doubt the possibility of laboratory anaesthesia being maintained indefinitely; but how is it with complex and full surgical anaesthesia? Until such appeal to science shall have been made in the presence of those who doubt, and are able to judge, the question cannot be regarded as settled. There are those who will believe that the older investigators were right; that the perfect insensibility to pain is not invariably attained in these cases; and that both in English and American laboratories the most hideous torments are sometimes inflicted upon man's most faithful servant and friend. Even Dr. Thane, the Government inspector, admitted that in making reports the inspector "never could determine which experiments were painless and which were painful."