In one of the great cities of China, I was shown, leaning against the high wall of the execution ground, a rude, wooden frame-work or cross, old, hacked, and smeared with recent blood-stains. It was used, I was told, in the punishment of extreme offenses; the criminal being bound thereto, and flayed and cut in every way human ingenuity could devise for inflicting torture before giving an immediately mortal wound. Only the week before, such an execution had taken place; the victim being a woman who had poisoned her husband. A young and enthusiastic physician whom I met, told me he had secured the privilege of being an eye witness to the awful tragedy, that he might verify a theory he had formed on the influence of pain; a theory perhaps like that which led to Mantegazza's crucifixion of pregnant rabbits with _dolori atrocissimi_.[A] Science here caught her profit from the punishment of crime, but the gain would have been the same had her interest alone been the object. There is _always_ gain, always some aid to memory;--_but what of the cost?_ [A] See Appendix, page 83. It cannot be expected that any Medical College, of its own accord and without outside pressure, will restrict or hamper its freedom of action. As a condition of prosperity and success it cannot show less than is exhibited by other medical schools; it must keep abreast of "advanced thought," and do and demonstrate in every way what its rivals demonstrate and do. There can be no question but that there is to-day a strong public demand for continental methods of physiological instruction. Who make this demand? You, gentlemen, students of medicine, and they who follow in your pathway. This year it is you who silently request this aid to your memory of the physiological statements of your text books; another year, another class of young men and young women, occupying the same benches, or filling the same laboratory, repeats the demand for the same series of illustrations. You, perhaps, will have gone forward to take your places in active life, to assume the real burdens of the medical profession. To those succeeding years of thought, reflection and usefulness, let me appeal, respecting the absolute necessity of all class demonstrations and laboratory work involving pain. Postpone if you please, the ready decision which, fresh from your class-room, you are perhaps only too willing to give me to-day; I do not wish it. But some time in the future, after years have gone by, remembering all you have seen and aided in the doing, tell us if you can, exactly wherein you received, in added potency for helping human suffering and for the treatment of human ills, the equivalent of that awful expenditure of pain which you are now demanding, and which by unprotesting acquiescence, you are _to-day_ helping to inflict. BOSTON, MASS., _March, 1889_. [_From_ SCRIBNER'S MONTHLY, _July, 1880_.] DOES VIVISECTION PAY?