Pawloff has truly said that the ideal experiment is one performed without anæsthesia and without pain. In many cases this ideal can be realised, but in other cases it is unattainable. Physiologists have, therefore, had to select which of the two disturbing factors shall be absent, and they have unhesitatingly chosen the latter. Pain must be absent (1) on grounds of humanity, (2) because it is a far greater disturber of the normal functions than anæsthesia is, and (3) because the struggles of an animal in pain will nullify the accuracy of the experiment, and endanger the safety of the delicate apparatus which it may be necessary to employ. Exactly the same arguments apply to the employment of the antiseptic or aseptic methods of surgery, in experiments in which the animal is kept alive after an operation to study its effects. The healing process is then painless, and there is absence of those febrile and inflammatory conditions which would otherwise complicate the issue. It is therefore for two reasons that an experimenter uses both anæsthetics and antiseptics, (1) to save the animal suffering, and (2) to ensure the success of the experiment. The barbarities which are recorded by Anti-vivisectionist agitators do not exist; the repetition of their stories in spite of repeated contradictions is partly due to wilful misrepresentation and exaggeration, and partly the result of ignorance of the meaning of the technical terms employed by physiological writers. At the Royal Commission which is now considering the question of Vivisection, the cases of alleged cruelty have been one by one sifted to the bottom, and in no single case has a charge of cruelty been sustained. Any one who cares to wade through the four bluebooks of evidence which have been printed will discover for himself that this is so. In fact, one prominent Anti-vivisection journal (the _Verulam Review_, April-June 1907, p. 186), in reference to the evidence given by one of the witnesses before the Commission, had to confess, "Almost every one of Mrs Cook's horrifying cases seems, when examined, to melt away."