The phase of untruthfulness in the defence of unrestricted experimentation deserves far more attention than can here be accorded. One is loth to regard as possible any intent to deceive; the inaccuracy and exaggeration are undoubtedly due chiefly to ignorance on the part of men who ought to be well-informed, because the world looks to them for statements of fact concerning the benefits claimed to be due to experimentation. Take, for instance, an assertion made in testimony given before the Royal Commission by Sir Victor Horsley, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the representative of the British Medical Association. Referring to pyaemia, or blood- poisoning, he was not content to affirm the disappearance of these formidable maladies from the hospital to which he was attached, but went on to declare their disappearance altogeher. "Anybody," said Sir Vitor Horsley, "who would now be asked to write an article on pyaemia or blood-poisoning in a dictionary of surgery, COULD NOT DO IT; THE DISEASES ARE GONE!"[1] [1] Evidence before Royal Commission, Question 15,669. This statement is a most remarkable one. The witness was once widely known as a ruthless experimenter upon living animals, and he was now defending the practice by an enumeration of its gains. Apparently, no member of the Commission questioned his evidence; the representative of the British Medical Association solemnly affirmed that as a result of vivisection certain diseases had so completely disappeared that present observation or description was impossible, and the Royal Commission accepted his word. The statement that these septic diseases had disappeared crossed the Atlantic, and nearly six years afterward, in the columns of a New York journal, it again appeared.[2] Yet the statement was untrue. It is indeed difficult to believe that any educated medical man in England or America could have read it without recognition of its untruth. Let us glance at the evidence. [2] New York Times, July 28, 1912. If it were true that the septic diseases which relate to blood- poisoning had really been so completely abolished that description of them were now impossible--as Sir Victor Horsley declared--it is evident that as causes of any part of English mortality they would cease to appear. The report of the Registrar-General of England and Wales tells a very different story. Sir Victor Horsley gave this testimony in November, 1907. During the five years preceding, and ending December 31, 1907, NO LESS THAN 2,933 PERSONS DIED FROM BLOOD- POISONING (PYAEMIA AND SEPTICAEMIA) IN ENGLAND AND WALES. During the year 1907, the year that testimony was given, the tribute of 604 lives was exacted by these diseases which had "GONE"! Even during the year following (1908), the recorded deaths due to blood-poisoning in England and Wales were 560; and yet the disease had been solemnly declared to be non-existent by the leading defender of English vivisection!