This great and beneficent reform in the first and world-wide branch of medicine, by means of which the lives of innumerable women in all our large centres of civilization have been saved, is the result of scientific research. It was initiated and successfully carried out by Semmelweis, of Vienna, and is a striking instance of the value of research carried on by the use of the comparative method, with absolutely no resort to experiment. The history of this reform, the methods by which it was accomplished, the opposition it encountered in the profession itself, and its triumphant vindication, are well worth serious study. An account of this valuable investigation and other important discoveries by justifiable methods of inquiry are given to English readers by the admirable translation published by the New Sydenham Society.[13] Medical research, therefore, is not only justifiable, but obligatory in a profession that is specially charged with the care and advancement of individual and national health, and, as will be seen later, observation, induction, and rational experiment form the essential methods of scientific inquiry. These two facts--viz., the necessity of advance in medical knowledge and the methods of investigation necessary for such advance--must be distinctly recognised by sincere reformers, and should shield the profession from that indiscriminate reproach which is often made against it as a whole; for such hostility tends to strengthen that undue _esprit de corps_ which often hinders sound medical progress in the profession. CHAPTER VI _Restriction of Experiment_ When we investigate the popular or ethical aspect of so-called scientific research made upon living animals, we are at once met by facts which imperatively demand both serious thought and determined action if we would not be participators in the degradation of human conscience. We are confronted with the enormous increase in such experiments which has taken place within the last thirty years, as well as in the severity of the sufferings inflicted. This increase is going on in England as well as in foreign countries.[14] It is growing in many cases, not only without any benefit to the human race, but also without reference to any supposed beneficial result as its attempted justification. The volume of facts and evidence collected by Mr. Colam (the able Secretary of the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals), and published by that society in 1876, is a permanent record of great value. It enables us to measure the growth of experimentation in England, not only from 1862 to 1876, when the present Cruelty to Animals Bill was enacted, but it also forms a point of comparison for testing the increase of vivisectional methods since 1876 to the present day, when these easy but often fallacious methods of research have become universal in medical investigation and medical instruction.