The possible results of slow deterioration in the moral nature when we violate in any degree our religious standard of justice and mercy may be most strongly realized in living examples of diseased inherited tendencies. Such a fearful example is before us in the life history of the criminal, Jesse Pomeroy, now in the State Prison of Charlestown, Mass., who has spent his life in penal servitude, expiating his atrocious mutilations and murders of little children, committed when he was a lad of fifteen. The deteriorating moral influence exercised on offspring by vicious parental tendencies, is directly exhibited in this living object lesson. The father of this lad was a butcher. His mother, during the gestation of this child, took a persistent and morbid delight in watching the death of the animals slaughtered by her husband. We see in the atrocities committed by her young son, a terrible example of the evil effect which the mind can exercise, in deteriorating individual character and in extending its evil influence to others. All experience proves the powerful influence exercised by the parental, and especially the maternal, qualities upon the offspring. Every woman is potentially a mother. The excuse or toleration of cruelty by a woman upon any living creature is a deadly sin against the grandest force in creation--maternal love. I earnestly ask all women physicians to consider the special responsibility which rests upon them, to take that large religious view of life which alone can check any degrading tendencies in intellectual human activity and elevate our noble Profession. Let us not be misled by sophistical arguments, but look steadily at the actual facts of animal torture, and work persistently for the total abolition of vivisection from our medical schools. In this way we shall justify our entrance into medicine, and prove ourselves strong supporters of that noble humanity which is the especial characteristic and solid foundation of the Medical Profession. FOOTNOTES: [1] In 1891. WHY HYGIENIC CONGRESSES FAIL _LESSONS TAUGHT BY THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF 1891_ INTRODUCTION The noblest aim of humanity is the application of Truth to the conduct of life. By doing we develop our faculty of knowing. The difficulty, however, of knowing how to apply Truth in daily life is so great, and yet the need is so urgent, that the most pressing duty of those who have faith in the Divine is to bring forward to the light of sympathetic conference, the facts of life in which one’s most intimate experience lies. Thus the merchant and manufacturer, the business man and the legislator, the farmer, householder, literary man, and those who, living upon interest, should know how that interest is gained, must ever hold it to be true religious duty to seek, in conference with others, the way of elevating every department of life. * * * * *