How strange such criticism as this appears to-day! Can one imagine a medical journal in America or England expressing in our time any sympathy for the suffering of frogs in a physiological laboratory? Can one fancy on the part of its editor a suggestion of "bad moral discipline" which the ruthless vivisection of animals of the highest organization or grade of intelligence might induce? To-day such criticism is unthinkable. Yet the capacity of animal suffering has not diminished. The number of victims is vastly larger. What change has occurred which makes it impossible to conceive on the part of a medical journal of the present time the expression of such a sentiment of pity for one of the lower forms of animal life? The Lancet was not alone in such condemnations. No periodical of that day, devoted entirely to the problems of medicine, occupied a position of influence equal to that of the British Medical Journal. One of its earlier editorial utterances concerning vivisection appeared in its issue of May 11, 1861, three years before the date given by Dr. Bowditch as that of "the first serious attack." "The Emperor of the French has received a deputation from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. We sincerely trust that this interview may be the means of putting an end to the unjustifiable brutalities too often inflicted on the lower animals under the guise of scientific experimentation. IT HAS NEVER APPEARED CLEAR TO US THAT WE ARE JUSTIFIED IN DESTROYING ANIMALS FOR MERE EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES; but now that we possess the means of removing sensation during experiments, the man who puts an animal to torture ought, in our opinion, to be prosecuted." Referring to the experiment upon a cow mentioned in Dr. Brown-Se'quard's Journal of Physiology, and already described, the editor adds: "We are not disposed, in a question of this kind, in which some of the highest considerations are concerned, to allow our opinion to be swayed by the opinions or the proceedings of even the greatest surgeons and the greatest physiologists. That such authorities performed vivisection is a fact; but it does not satisfy us that the proceeding is justifiable. Under any circumstances, this much, we think, is evident enough: that IF VIVISECTIONS BE PERMISSIBLE, THEY CAN ONLY BE SO UNDER CERTAIN LIMITED AND DEFINED CONDITIONS. We need hardly add that these conditions have not yet been laid down. Altogether, the subject is one well worthy of serious discussion, and gladly would we see the interests of medical science in the matter properly reconciled with the dictates of the moral sense."