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It was reported at the time of the Franco-German war that the Prussian soldiers profited much by their general acquaintance with the geography of France, and by the possession of convenient pocket maps furnished to them of the invaded districts.

To supply the combatants in the Anti-Vivisection Crusade with some such knowledge, and such cartes du pays of the physiologists’ ground, was the original purpose of the Vivisectors’ Directory, as prepared for The Zoophilist. It was recognised by those engaged in the thick of the fight against scientific cruelty that it was impossible to retain in the memory the names of all, even of the most notorious Vivisectors, or to attach to them their particular class of experiments; nor, in the case of English physiologists, was it practicable to recall without continual reference to the whole series of Parliamentary Returns what were the Licenses and Certificates wherewith they have been annually provided. These facts,—so often needed in controversy,—it was proposed to marshal in the compendious form of a Directory, so that each Zoophilist possessed of a copy should be enabled at a moment’s notice to tell in which province of the “doloroso regno” of Research each Vivisector might be found, what were his titles and address, and the books he had published; and (if he were a British subject) how many Licenses and Certificates he had received.

It is hoped that this original purpose of the Directory has been fairly fulfilled, and that Anti-vivisectionists will universally find it to be a very serviceable book of reference. It is not pretended that it is a perfect work, that the names of all the Vivisectors in Europe have been ascertained, or their worst deeds always ferreted out. Great pains have been taken to make the list thus complete, and several able agents have been employed for the purpose abroad as well as at home, under the editor’s supervision. But years would have been needed for the exhaustive completion of the task, and the publication would have been indefinitely delayed. As it now appears, the Directory presents (it is confidently believed) a mass of reliable information in a convenient form, and at a moment when it is urgently needed for use in our sorrowful controversy.

But even while this first purpose of the Directory was being patiently carried out, it became obvious to those concerned that the work would fulfil at the same time another and still more important end. As name after name appeared for registration, and cruel experiment followed cruel experiment in endless variety, the utility of the Directory as affording evidence of the extent to which Vivisection is now carried on in Europe, became revealed. No doubt or dispute, it was obvious, could possibly attach to this testimony. There can be no question here of that “exaggeration” or those “sensational appeals” wherewith our opponents are wont to charge us. There can be no “sensational appeal” in a Dictionary; nay, care has been taken that there should not be one single epithet editorially applied to any experiment recorded from first to last. The Directory is a mere dry Register, like an ordinary Medical or Clerical Directory of names, dates, places, degrees, books, pamphlets, licenses, and certificates. Only some verbatim quotations are added, with exact references to chapter and verse. If these should happen to convey most damning accusations, it is the Vivisectors themselves who have registered their own offences.

But it is a sickening revelation, even to those who have for years back been steeped to the lips in this Dead Sea literature. Few or none will have realized, we believe, till they look into this Directory as a whole, how infinitely varied have been the devices of the tormentors of animals, how relentless the diligence of these explorers of living tissues, these harpists whose instruments are quivering nerves, these diggers into living brains who leave them “like lately-hoed potato fields.” Not the poor humble frogs alone, of which we are wont to hear, but every class of sensitive and intelligent animal seems to be in turn the victim of pitiless experiment,—the commonest of all being the most loving servants of mankind. Not one organ of their beautiful frames but has been chosen for the explorations of a dozen enquirers, and mangled, burned, torn out, or inoculated with some horrible disease. The well-known maladies which result from human drunkenness and vice have been cunningly conveyed to dogs and apes. The breasts of mother brutes nursing their young have been cut off, and the mutilated creatures dropped back to die among their little ones whom they can no longer feed. Pregnant animals have been continually cut open. An Italian physiologist (Mosso) injects putrified human brains into animals. The eyes are chosen as the special seats for inoculation, because, through the transparent body the processes of disease can be most easily watched. Balbiani varnished the skins of dogs, so that after long hours in which all exudation was stopped, the creatures expired—stewed, as it were, in their own blackened blood. Claude Bernard and Alfred Richet baked them alive in stoves constructed for that hideous purpose. Paul Bert and Cyon place them under atmospheric pressures till a dog comes out stiffened all over “like a piece of wood.” Brown-Séquard and Brondgeest cut the spinal cords of guinea-pigs and rabbits, and Chauveau opens the spinal canal of horses and irritates the roots of the nerves. Nasse injects salt into the veins, and Watson Cheyne injects micrococci into the eyes. Blondlot and Heidenhain establish fistulas. Aufrecht endeavours to create kidney disease, and Köbner leprosy. Bacchi and Donders pour acetic acid on the nerves of the eyes. Audigé, Colin, Miss Adams, Gréhaut, and Gscheidlen, experiment on various animals with mineral and vegetable poisons; and Fayrer, Brunton, and Lacerda with that of snakes. The bile ducts of dogs and cats are ligatured by Wickham Legg and Rutherford. Skulls of monkeys and dogs are opened and the brains mutilated and stimulated with electricity by Ferrier, Yeo, Horsley, Schäfer, Goltz, Hitzig, Fritsch, Golgi, Grützner, Günther Leyden, Hermann, Lovèn, Munk, Longet, Luchsinger, Ott, and Vulpian; and the stomach, heart, liver and spleen, are cut into and diversely dissected alive by a whole host of physiologists, Roy, Gaskell, Lépine, Pellacani, Cohnheim, Marey, Martin, Colasanti, Panum, Moleschott, and Flint.

When it is remembered that, according to Claude Bernard in his latest work, we may “take for granted that experiments, when not otherwise described, are performed on curarized dogs”—that is, on highly sensitive creatures, placed in a condition which he himself describes as “accompanied by the most atrocious suffering which the imagination of man can conceive,”—we have before us in this small Directory a record of agonies before which the brain grows dizzy and the heart sick. That any man not utterly science-hardened can contemplate them with indifference, and refuse to lift his voice against them, is difficult to understand. He who will look through this little book and then “pass by on the other side,” might, one would think, have strolled round Nero’s martyr-lighted gardens and turned unmoved away.

F. P. C.