On two points, then, the evidence of the highest scientific authorities in Great Britain seems conclusive--first, that experiments upon living animals conduce chiefly to the benefit of the science of physiology, and little, if at all, at the present day, to the treatment of disease or the amelioration of human suffering; and, secondly, that repetition of painful experiments for class-teaching in medical schools is both unnecessary and unjustifiable. Do these conclusions affect the practice of vivisection in this country? Is it true that experiments are habitually performed in some of our medical schools, often causing extreme pain, to illustrate well-known and accepted facts--experiments which English physiologists pronounce "infamous" and "atrocious," which English physicians and surgeons stigmatize as purposeless cruelty and unjustifiable--which even Huxley regards as unfitting for teaching purposes, and Darwin denounces as worthy of detestation and abhorrence? I confess I see no occasion for any over-delicate reticence in this matter. Science needs no secrecy either for her methods or results; her function is to reveal, not to hide, facts. The reply to these questions must be in the affirmative. In this country our physiologists are rather followers of Magendie and Bernard, after the methods in vogue at Paris and Leipsic, than governed by the cautious and sensitive conservatism in this respect which generally characterizes the physiological teaching of London and Oxford. In making this statement, no criticism is intended on the motives of those responsible for ingrafting continental methods upon our medical schools. If any opprobrium shall be inferred for the past performance of experiments herein condemned, the present writer asks a share in it. It is the future that we hope to change. Now, what are the facts? A recent contributor to the "International Review," referring to Mr. Bergh, says that "he assails physiological experiments with the same blind extravagance of denunciation as if they were still performed without anaesthetics, as in the time of Magendie." In the interests of scientific accuracy one would wish more care had been given to the construction of this sentence, for it implies that experiments are not now performed except with anaesthetics--a meaning its author never could have intended to convey. Every medical student in New York knows that experiments involving pain are repeatedly performed to illustrate teaching. It is no secret; one need not go beyond the frank admissions of our later text-books on physiology for abundant proof, not only of this, but of the extent to which experimentation is now carried in this country. "We have long been in the habit, in class demonstrations, of removing the optic lobe on one side from a pigeon," says Professor Flint, of Bellevue Hospital Medical College, in his excellent work on Physiology.[A] "The experiment of dividing the sympathetic in the neck, especially in