"Were the feelings of experimental physiologists not blunted, they could not long continue the practice of vivisection. They are always ready to repudiate any implied want of tender feeling, but I must say that they seldom show much pity; on the contrary, in practice they frequently show the reverse. Hundreds of times I have seen, when an animal writhed with pain and thereby deranged the tissues during a delicate dissection, instead of being soothed, it would receive a slap and an angry order to be quiet and behave itself. At other times, when an animal had endured great pain for hours without struggling or giving more than an occasional whine, instead of letting the poor mangled wretch loose to crawl about the place in reserve for another day's torture, it would receive pity so far that it would be said to have behaved well enough to merit death, and as a reward would be killed at once by breaking up the medulla with a needle, or `pithing,' as this operation is called. I have often heard the professor say, when one side of an animal had been so mangled and the tissues so obscured by clotted blood that it was difficult to find the part searched for, `Why don't you begin on the other side?' or `WHY DON'T YOU TAKE ANOTHER DOG? WHAT IS THE USE OF BEING SO ECONOMICAL?' One of the most revolting features in the laboratory was the custom of giving an animal, on which the professor had completed his experiment, and which had still some life left, to the assistants to practise the finding of arteries, nerves, etc., in the living animal, or for performing what are called `fundamental experiments' upon it--in other words, repeating those which are recommended in the laboratory handbooks. "I am inclined to look upon anaesthetics as the greatest curse to vivisectible animals. They alter too much the normal conditions of life to give accurate results, and they are therefore little depended upon. THEY, INDEED, PROVE FAR MORE EFFICACIOUS IN LULLING PUBLIC FEELING TOWARDS THE VIVISECTORS THAN PAIN IN THE VIVISECTED. Connected with this there is a horrible proceeding that the public probably knows little about. An animal is sometimes kept quiet by the administration of a poison called `curare,' which paralyzes voluntary motion while it heightens sensation, the animal being kept alive by means of artificial respiration. "I hope that we shall soon have a Government inquiry into the subject, in which experimental physiologists shall be only witnesses, not judges. LET ALL PRIVATE VIVISECTION BE MADE CRIMINAL, AND ALL EXPERIMENTS BE PLACED UNDER GOVERNMENT INSPECTION, and we may have the same clearing away of abuses that the Anatomy Act caused in similar circumstances. "I am, sir, your obedient servant, "George Hoggan, M.B. and C.M. "13, Granville Place, Portman Square, W."