implied, or at least with the patient actually present to illustrate in his person the professor's descriptions and the success or failure of the treatment employed. The clinic is now firmly established, and has been for years, but it was long before this grand result was attained. Experimental methods of study gradually came into vogue, particularly in the domain of physiology. In this sphere Dr. William Beaumont, of the United States Army, was a pioneer. His historic experiments on Alexis St. Martin, a soldier who had been wounded in the stomach and recovered with a permanent opening into that organ, will ever rank among the most important of the early experimental studies of digestion. It was not long before Claude Bernard extended similar inquiries to the other functions of the body, notably those of the nervous system; and since his time there has been a long array of brilliant investigators of physiology and of other branches of science tributary to medicine. Experiments on living animals were almost the only means of carrying on these researches. In the early days the animals employed were doubtless put to a great deal of pain--perhaps in many instances to unnecessary suffering--and an altogether laudable feeling of humanity has led good people to band themselves together for the purpose of putting a stop to vivisection, or at least of greatly restricting the practice and of freeing it from all avoidable infliction of pain. These praiseworthy efforts have in some instances been carried so far, unfortunately, as to seriously hamper scientific investigation--investigation which has for its object the alleviation of human suffering and the saving of human life. We may earnestly deprecate and strive to prevent wanton reiteration of painful experiments for purposes of demonstrating anew that which is unquestioned, and we may resort to all possible means to render necessary experiments free from actual pain (from the anguish of trepidation we can seldom relieve the poor animals), but let us not block the wheels of scientific progress.