For many years I have insisted upon the necessity for a certain degree of scepticism regarding every claim put forth by the laboratory, unsupported by convincing proofs. We may judge the future by the past. Has there not been evinced a disposition to exaggerate achievement, to deny secrecy, to mislead regarding the infliction of pain? No intelligent person, it seems to me, can study the vidence carefully, year after year, without reaching this attitude of distrust and doubt in a great number of instances. This by no means indicates that every claim of utility is false. A great many statements are accurate. Some claims will be partly true, but magnified by the enthusiasm of youth far beyond what devotion to a strict veracity would require. And some claims may be doubted altogether. It may be doubted whether any reliabce whatever can be placed upon the assertions or protesting denials of any profession vivisector now drawing a large income from the vivisection of animals, whose interests would possibly be affeted by failure to produce startling results, or by removal of the secrecy that now enshrouds the laboratory. The defenders of absolute licence have not told us the truth on every occasion it has been sought from them, and it must be gained from other sources and by other means. It would seem, therefore, that the first step toward reform must be the creation of a public sentiment, eager, not so much to pass condemnation as to know the facts. That the laboratory, of its own accord and initiative, will ever open its doors and give to the world a complete knowledge of what goes on within its sacred precincts, is more than we can expect. The doors will open only when public opinion so demands. The laboratory is perfectly aware of this. With ever yenergy that such consciousness gives, it will fight to keep everything that it now hides from the light of day. Take, for example, the question of vivisection in our institutions of learning. To what extent is experimentation carried on therein merely to demonstrate what every student knows in advance? It would appear that certain lines of experiment are now permitted in such institutions which hardly more than a generation ago were condemned as cruel by the medical profession of Great Britain. We ought to inquire why it is that experiments which scarcely thirty years ago were thus condemned, are less abhorrent to-day. The removal of secrecy is the first and most important step toward any true reform. It is the fashion of certain apologists for vivisection without control to represent their opponents as guided by sentiment alone. Perhaps it would be well to quote the opinions of one whose work for science should absolve him from that imputation.