Permit me to quote myself. However little I may be a partisan of painful experimental demonstrations, I make one exception for an experiment which I consider it essential to present, in all its horror, before the young men who attend my lectures. I refer to absinthe. If two or three drops of essence of absinthe are injected into the veins of a dog, he is at once seized by a violent attack of epilepsy with hallucinations, convulsions, and foaming at the mouth. It is truly a terrible sight, one which fills with disgust and horror all who have witnessed this experiment. But it is precisely for the sake of arousing this disgust, this horror, that I perform the experiment. The unfortunate dog will, during ten minutes, have had an attack of intoxication and absinthian epilepsy; but at the end of an hour he will have recovered completely. At the same time, the two hundred students who have witnessed this hideous spectacle will retain, profoundly engraved on their minds, the memory of that epileptic fury, a memory which will remain with them to the end of their days. They will then be able, by their propaganda against absinthe, to exercise around them a salutary influence, to prevent perhaps ten, fifteen, one hundred human personalities from destroying themselves by the use of this abominable poison. After all, it is better to give a dog ten minutes of absinthism than to allow twenty human families to be plunged, by absinthism, into degradation and misery. Finally, as far as surgical exercises are concerned, _they should never be made on a living animal_; as regards demonstrations of experimental physiology intended for instruction, _they should be made only on decapitated or anæsthetised animals_; and as for intoxications,[3] save on very rare and altogether exceptional occasions, _they should not be made the object of experimental demonstrations_. It seems to me that these formal declarations might be accepted by every physiologist as well as by every anti-vivisectionist. FOOTNOTES: [1] The usages in English laboratories in relation to this experiment are in accord with Professor Richet's views.--(W. D. H.) [2] It may not be known to many readers, that it is possible to keep alive for hours and even days the heart entirely removed from the body of a dead mammal. On such a heart the action of drugs can be admirably studied and demonstrated. I once had in my own laboratory a rabbit's heart that continued to beat for nearly five days after the remainder of the rabbit had served for the dinner of my laboratory attendant.--(W. D. H.) [3] The word intoxication here and elsewhere is used in its literal sense, viz., poisoning. It is not limited, as in popular parlance, to the poisonous effects of alcohol.--(W. D. H.) CHAPTER II PAIN AND DEATH