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230 METHUDS OF SOCIAL REFORM.
&rychnine poisoning, which might not only be met with in
practice, but me very instructive in other respects. It was
given in evidence by SOVSMI~ high authorities that no one could
adequately conceive the action of strychnine without witnessing
it. So that the question really i whether medical stndenb
are to be prevented from gaining necessary knowledge in the
moat effective way, becaaso it will harden and sear their moral
natures to soe an animal killed for the purpose.
It seems to me, speaking a5 one having no practical
acquaintance with such matters, that if the exhibition of
poisoned dogs is objoctionablc, then a great part of the
clinicnl instruction of medical students is objectionable. Are
students, for instance, to bo allowed to study patients dying of
hydrophobia or other dreadful diseases ? To allow the general
public hcedlcssly to see suck painful sights would be disgusting,
simply bocause it would be encouraging a morbid pleasure
in the witnessing of piin. But it is a necessary part of the
education of a Lncclical man, not only to learn the nature of the
&owes, but to harden his nerves, and to acquire the power
of encountering the most dreadful cases of human suffering
without losing his prosence of mind. It is iu clinical praotice
he acquiros this power, and it seems to me out of the question,
that after coolly scrutinising human suffering in all its worst
phascls, his moral nature will bo destroyed by seeing the
poisoning of a dog. No doubt it is a question admitting of
discussion how fur the constant witnessing of pain blunts the
moral nature. But so far as I can judge of the medical men
with whom I am acquainted, their moral natures have sustained
no injuries. On the contrary, they are in general among the
most humane of men, and all their cdections and sympathies
have been in no degree weakened by the painful scene9 they
constantly witness. Now, if this be so, I am quite unable to
see how the exhibition, in a reasonable and necessary degree,
of experiments upon the lower snimals, conducted in as
painless a way as the nature of tho experiment allows, can
have the dreadfal mod consequences attributed to it by the
anti-vivisectionists. AB regards the physical element of
cruelty, t'he student may well reflect that infinitely greater