Vivisection (1880)

AUTHOR: Bergh, Henry

KEYWORDS: animals, animal welfare, anti-vivisection

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen)

This anti-vivisection letter, was part of the attempt to instigate “legislation in the interest of mercy.” Bergh turns against them the work of four well-known authorities on vivisection and live animal experimentation (Colin, Carpenter, Longet, Hunter), by emphasizing in their own words the uselessness of the practice of vivisection; thus, he uses these vivisectors as “witnesses against the value of experimentation on animals.” He then gives a vivid description of the process:

Seldom does the result of an experiment satisfy the inquirer. A second must be made, to confirm the first – something has escaped observation. Then the conditions of a second, a third, and so on, were not fulfilled; objections are started [sic]; the animals selected for experiment, after torture and death are suspected to have been erroneously chosen; others must be procured; controversy springs up; ideas are taken by old and young, by practised anatomist as well as by the bungling blockhead whom nature intended for a butcher, and in either case little regard is paid to the sufferings of the poor animals, which are treated as though they were shrubs or trees, to be pruned and cut by the gardener's knife, or as blocks of marble, whereon some new aspirants of fame may cut their worthless names (61).

Bergh ends the letter by expressing his hopes that these perpetrators of cruelty in the name of science will eventually feel “remorse” for “the screams of agony inflicted by [them] on defenceless animals.”