I have presented these opinions at length because they represent exactly the position which I have personally maintained for over thirty years. And if the time shall come, foreseen by him, "when the world will look back to modern vivisection in the name of Science, as we now do to burning at the stake in the name of Religion," then, surely, it will be remembered that the first strong voice in America raised, not in condemnation of all experimentation upon animals, but solely in protest against its cruelty and secrecy, and in appeal for its reform, was that of the leading American surgeon of his time, Professor Henry J. Bigelow of Harvard University. CHAPTER X THE REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON VIVISECTION In the year 1906, a Royal Commission was appointed by King Edward to investigate the practice of animal experimentation. Thirty years had passed since the appearance of the earlier inquiry, upon which was based the English law regulating the practice of such experiments. On the one hand, it had been denounced as affording most inadequate protection to animals liable to such exploitation; on the other hand, in the United States it had been condemned as a hindrance to scientific progress, and a warning against any similar legislation. A new Commission was therefore appointed to inquire into the practice, to take evidence, and to report what changes, if any, in the existing statute might seem advisable. The composition of the new Commission leaned heavily toward the laboratory. It included no opponent to all vivisection. On the other hand, three of the Commissioners at one time or another had held a licence to vivisect, and one of them seems to have held this permission for some fourteen years. The Commission also included among its members the permanent Under-Secretary to the Government--an official whose acts had again and again been arraigned, and were soon to be challenged once more. The unusual spectacle was therefore to be presented of men sitting in judgment upon themselves. One of the Commissioners--Dr. George Wilson, well known for his work regarding the public health--had at various times questioned the conclusions of certain experimenters, but he was not opposed to all research upon animal life. From a Commission so constituted, we might have expected as the final result of their labours a report favourable to the interests of the laboratory, to marked modifications of the existing law by a lessened stringency of inspection, to relaxation of restrictions, and to an endorsement of every claim of utility which the experimenters should put forth.