human being undergoing the experiences of some of the animals that slowly die in a laboratory." So wrote Dr. Bigelow of Harvard University, the most eminent surgeon that New England has yet produced; and were he living to-day, it is not improbable that he would point to some of the experiments here reviewed as examples of the vivisections he intended to condemn. It may be that although the present generation be indifferent, posterity will not condone, and that one day it will hold up some of the experiments of the twentieth century as involving the most prolonged, the most useless, the most terrible, the most cruel torments, that the annals of animal vivisection have ever supplied. CHAPTER XIII WHAT IS VIVISECTION REFORM? Every reflecting man must recognize that the settlement of the vivisection question is a problem that must find its solution at some period in future rather than to-day. But the duty of the hour remains the same. Admitting the existence of the wrong, what can we do to promote reform? What should we ask with the hope that popular judgment will gradually come to approve? How may we be faithful to that ideal of justice toward our inferior brethren, which underlies all humanitarian effort, and lack nothing in fidelity to Science to whose achievements we reverently look for the amelioration of the human race? There are those who would oppose the slightest use of animals for any scientific purpose whatever. There are others who would grant to the vivisector the secrecy and silence, the complete irresponsibility and unbounded freedom which he demands as his right. There are those to whom a middle course seems the only one leading to ultimate reform. What is the most reasonable attitude toward the laboratory and its claims possible to an honest and clear-minded investigator who is anxious to protect all living creatures from cruel acts, and equally concerned in the conservation of every legitimate privilege which Science can claim? Such a man stands, let us say, before some great biological laboratory, richly endowed, slendidly equipped, and in the present enjoyment of freedom that is without bounds, and in a secrecy that to-day is as complete as can be imagined. What can he learn with certainty of what goes on within? If he hears claims of superlative gains by the experiments there carried on, how is he to weigh and decide their value? If there is cruelty behind those barred doors, how is he to prevent its constant recurrence? What, in short, should be the reasonable attitude of every intelligent man or woman anxious to know the truth and to promote reform of abuse?