The sneering reference to "blood-curdling stories" is of itself extremely significant. It indicates unmistakably the utter contempt which nearly every physiologist feels for the sentiment of humaneness which underlies protest against experimental cruelty. The speaker omitted to tell his audience that this essay of Dr. Fleming received the first prize offered by the "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," and that the Committee which decided the merits of the essay included some of the most eminent scientific men of England, among them Sir Richard Owen and Professor Carpenter--the latter one of the most distinguished of English physiologists of his time. He forgot to add that if the examples of atrocious vivisection given in this essay were horrible--as they were--yet every instance was substantiated by reference to the original authorities, and that their accurate quotation could not be impugned. Especially curious is the fact that Professor Bowditch placed the beginning of criticism at 1864. Of the arraignment of cruel vivisections by English physicians and English medical journals before that time, Dr. Bowditch apparently never heard, and all the infamous atrocities which they condemned he dismissed with a sneer as "blood-curdling stories." Yet, in his day, the speaker was one of the leading physiologists of the United States. We cannot believe that the suppression of material facts was intentional; it was due rather to complete ignorance of the history of that protest against physiological cruelty which England witnessed during the first part of the nineteenth century, and of which some account shall follow.