An Anti-vivisectionist publication which has obtained some notoriety ("The Shambles of Science") figured in a recent lawsuit. When the particular charge which was the subject of the action was investigated by a prolonged inquiry before the Lord Chief-Justice, a British jury showed their sense of the enormity of the slander by awarding the physiologist impugned the very substantial damages of £2000. An undertaking was subsequently given by the publisher of this "hysterical work" (to quote the words of the Lord Chief-Justice) that it should be withdrawn from publication. Yet the book has been since re-issued by the authors, with the chapter that formed the subject of the trial omitted, but otherwise with very little alteration. The libellous statements scattered through its other chapters can still be read by the lovers of sensation, and the authors doubtless hope that their readers will never take the trouble to read also the evidence before the Royal Commission in which all the allegations of cruelty have been shown to be groundless. The subject of curare, another bugbear of the Anti-vivisection lecturer, is so adequately dealt with by Professor Richet that I will spare the reader any further discussion on that question here. I have taken the liberty of adding, in a footnote on p. 36, a statement in respect to the usages of English physiologists in relation to that drug. The experiments of the pharmacologist in the investigation of the action of drugs can be and are carried out under anæsthesia in the same way as those of the physiologist. But the experiments of the pathologist, which consist in conveying germs and other disease products to animals, come under a different heading. One does not deny that if the animal takes the disease, suffering is produced. This is fully admitted by Professor Richet, and I think that any common-sense reader will be convinced by the arguments put forward that the practice is fully justifiable. It is difficult, as Professor Richet points out, to gauge the amount of pain an animal such as a rat, guinea-pig, or rabbit (the animals usually employed for the purpose) really feels when given a disease experimentally, and whether this is greater or less than the suffering it will endure when another disease or a violent death carries it off in the usual course of nature. It is, however, undeniable that the suffering of these animals is much less than those of human beings. A man, when he is ill, suffers a certain amount of discomfort and physical bodily pain; but this is a drop in the ocean compared to the mental worry and anxiety he endures--all that, at any rate, is absent from the suffering rabbit. The pathologist sees beyond the pain which he inflicts to the pain which he prevents. The death of a few lower animals may be, and has in the past been the means of preventing pain and disease both to the animals themselves and to human beings also, who may be counted by thousands or even millions.