I cannot find, in all the anti-vivisection literature which I have read, any shadow of evidence that any experiment of any sort or kind has been made in this country, on any sort or kind of animal, under curare alone, for the last sixteen or seventeen years. I believe that I might go further back than that. But surely that is far enough. Certainly, so long as any curare is used (not as an anæsthetic, but in conjunction with an anæsthetic) in any experiments on animals in this country, the societies will not trouble to inquire how much of it is used. I wrote, therefore, to the Professors of Physiology at Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Oxford, and asked them to tell me how much curare was used in their laboratories throughout 1903, and what anæsthetics were given with it. Some opponents of experiments on animals seem to think that curare is used very often. One of them says that it is "used daily throughout England." So I wrote to these Professors at our Universities, and they kindly sent the following answers:-- 1. "Your question _re_ curare is easily answered. We did _no_ experiments with it during the past year. Indeed, I have given it up almost entirely for years, chiefly because it is very difficult to get a preparation which--I suppose from impurities--does not seriously affect the heart. There might still be occasions during which it is necessary to use it--if, _e.g._ the _least_ muscular movement would vitiate the results of an experiment. But I find it possible in nearly all cases to get such absolute quiescence with morphia or chloral (besides ether and chloroform) that to all intents and purposes I have long given up the use of curare. Of course, if I had occasion to use it, an anæsthetic would be administered at the same time." 2. "I have asked those who worked in the physiological laboratories in 1903 to give me a return of the number of experiments done and of the number in which curare was used. Including my own experiments, I find that 160 in all were made under the License and Certificates B, EE, C. Curare was given in four cases; in two of these the A.C.E. mixture was the anæsthetic, in the other two ether." 3. At the third laboratory, during 1903, curare was given to seven frogs deprived of their brains before it was given, and to one rabbit under ether. That was the whole use of curare, during a whole year, in three great Universities: at one, seven inanimate frogs, and one rabbit under ether; at another, four animals, under A.C.E. or ether; at another, nothing. INCOMPLETE ANÆSTHESIA