Letter to the Editor, Popular Science Monthly (1879)

AUTHOR: Bergh, Henry

KEYWORDS: animals, animal welfare, anti-vivisection

 

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen)

In this letter to the Editor, Bergh accuses anyone who supports “the extermination” of sparrows by appointing boys “their executioners” of being an “enemy to God.” Bergh's primary target is the ornithologist, Dr. Elliott Coues, whom Bergh calls an “inverted genius” because he “dares to rebuke the Maker of all things,” “betrays his own place in the social and professional world,” and “has not the brains to comprehend the meaning of humanity and good policy, nor yet the fact that God has not created anything needlessly.” Bergh claims that Coues proposes to educate boys “in the practice of murder,” even if “he does not advise these boys to begin by killing their parents, or other human beings.” Clearly, for Bergh, Coues's suggestion goes a long way in this direction, training boys eventually to become “the most distinguished students of crime.” Bergh ends his letter with the following scathing paragraph:

It is said that the inventor of the guillotine was the first person to perish by it. O that this modern Æsculapius would only introduce his beautiful theory among us here in New York – for he is a resident of a much-to-be-envied Eastern State – so that the undersigned might profit by the opportunity of making him acquainted with the legal guillotine which he would certainly be compelled to ascend! (409).