They do not hesitate to take advantage of all those improvements of medicine and surgery which have been made by the help of experiments on animals. They denounce the work of the present; but they enjoy all the results of the past, and will enjoy all those of the near future. "If anything of value to medicine has been discovered by vivisection, it would be as absurd to reject it on that account as it would be to abandon Ireland because centuries ago we took it by force." And again: "We are no more morally bound to reject benefits acquired by indefensible means than are the descendants of slaveholders bound to abandon wealth originally acquired by the detestable abomination of slavery." And again, the _Animal's Friend_ (November 1903) takes as further instances the benefits derived from body-snatching, political assassination, and the French Revolution. But, in the matter of experiments on animals, it is the very same men and women who denounce these experiments and who profit by them. What should we say of an anti-slavery reformer who was himself drawing a vast income out of the slave trade? But there is one gentleman, and, so far as I know, only one, who did carry his opinions into practice. He told the story at a debating meeting--how his little girl had a sore throat, and the doctor wanted to give antitoxin, and he forbade it, and the child recovered. "Of course," he says, "it was only an ordinary sore throat." Truly, a great victory, and a brave deed, to make an experiment on your own sick child. II The attitude of these Societies toward sport may seem at first sight purely negative; but it is worth study. I have the honour of knowing a very eminent physiologist who will never shoot, because he thinks it cruel--a man much abused by the National Society. And Lord Llangattock, the President of that Society, is well known as an a "ardent sportsman." This contrast is of some interest. Let us see what the National Society says about sport. Of course, it is not bound to attack sport. But the reasons which it gives for remaining neutral are to be noted. 1. It says, very truly, that it is in great part supported by sportsmen. 2. It says, further, that the cruelties of sport lie outside its own proper work:-- "Our opponents frequently ask us why we do not attack some form of cruelty other than vivisection, which they consider more heinous. Our Honorary Secretary recently summarised this argument in his own amusing manner thus: We must not arrest the man in Tooting for kicking his wife till we have stopped the woman in Balham starving her children, and we must not arrest the woman in Balham for starving her children until we have stopped the man in Tooting kicking his wife." (1901.)