I confess that, until very recently, I shared the common impression regarding the utility of vivisection in therapeutics. It is a belief still widely prevalent in the medical profession. Nevertheless, is it not a mistake? The therapeutical results of nearly half a century of painful experiments--we seek them in vain. Do we ask surgery? Sir William Ferguson, surgeon to the Queen, tells us: "In surgery I am not aware of any of these experiments on the lower animals having led to the mitigation of pain or to improvement as regards surgical details." [1049.] Have antidotes to poisons been discovered thereby? Says Doctor Taylor, lecturer on Toxicology for nearly half a century in the chief London Medical School (a writer whose work on Poisons is a recognized authority): "I do not know that we have as yet learned anything, so far as treatment is concerned, from our experiments with them (_i.e._ poisons) on animals." [1204.] Doctor Anthony, speaking of Magendie's experiments, says: "I never gained one single fact by seeing these cruel experiments in Paris. _I know nothing more from them than I could have read._" [2450.] Even physiologists admit the paucity of therapeutic results. Doctor Sharpey says: "I should lay less stress on the direct application of the results of vivisection to improvement in the art of healing, than upon the value of these experiments in the promotion of physiology." [394.] The Oxford professor of Physiology admitted that Etiology, the science which treats of the causes of disease, had, by these experiments, been the gainer, rather than therapeutics. [1302.] "Experiments on animals," says Doctor Thorowgood, "already extensive and numerous, cannot be said to have advanced therapeutics much."[A] Sir William Gull, M. D., was questioned before the commission whether he could enumerate any therapeutic remedies which have been discovered by vivisection, and he replied with fervor: "The cases bristle around us everywhere!" Yet, excepting Hall's experiments on the nervous system, he could enumerate only various forms of disease, our knowledge of which is due to Harvey's discovery, two hundred and fifty years ago! The question was pushed closer, and so brought to the necessity of a definite reply, he answered: "I do not say at present our therapeutics are much, but there are lines of experiment which _seem to promise_ great help in therapeutics." [5529.] The results of two centuries of experiments, so far as therapeutics are concerned, reduced to a seeming promise! [A] "Medical Times and Gazette," October 5, 1872.