"THE MOTIVES OF VIVISECTORS”

 

by Henry Turtle

 

We are often bidden, when we condemn the cruelty of their actions, to "consider the humane and lofty motives" of Vivisectors. Benevolent motives as regard A and B, do not justify savage maltreatment of C and D; but, so far as they may be supposed to mitigate the guilt of their cruelties, those of Vivisectors challenge examination. The following is a careful estimate of them made by one student of their books and journals, and confirmed emphatically by another from independent impressions. In these books and scientific journals the vivisectors of England, France, Italy, Germany and America have recorded their experiments for the benefit of their colleagues and fellow-workers; and have, at the same time, - incidentally and unintentionally, but all the more certainly - betrayed their genuine aims and feelings; the views they really hold respecting their work and the sentiments, - callous or remorseful, painful or pleasurable, pitiful or contemptuous towards their victims, - wherewith they habitually perform it.

 

Out of 100 Vivisections, there are, -

Performed from genuine anxiety to remedy Human Suffering, 10 per cent,

Performed from Disinterested Pursuit of Science, 30 per cent,

Performed from Personal and Professional Ambition, 30 per cent,

Performed from Sheer Commercialism (especially in Bacteriological Research), 20 per cent,

Performed from pleasure in sight of blood and wounds, 10 per cent. (see Prof. Rolleston's Evidence before the Royal Commission - Minutes .)

 

(From THE ABOLlTIONIST, November 15, 1900, page 234.)

 

Below is a longer article exploring the last-named theme, from the same magazine three months later.

 

"A TERRIBLE REVELATION: VIVISECTION AND SEXUAL PSYCHOPATHY"

 

Dr Klein's well-known evidence before the Royal Commission has been supposed very generally to mark the maximum of the moral degradation wrought in vivisectors by the influence of their occupation. It was, it will be remembered, to the effect that he had "no regard at all" for the sufferings of the animals he vivisected, that he only used anaesthesia for his own convenience; and showed a callousness, a complete absence of sympathy and pity, as the result of his occupation, which was sufficiently appalling.

 

But there was another view put forth before this same Commission as to the influence of vivisection, which indicated, though the meaning was not made sufficiently clear, a more appalling possibility. The absence of pity is terrible enough, but the enjoyment of the infliction and the spectacle of suffering is more terrible by far. At the same Commission before which Dr Klein naively admitted the callousness of the average vivisector in England as well as on the Continent, Professor Rolleston, of Oxford, pointed out the fact that "the sight of a living, bleeding, quivering organism most undoubtedly does act in a particular way on what Dr Carpenter calls the emotiono-motor nature in us." Professor Rolleston was probably very little understood except by vivisectors; but now we have the phenomenon which was merely adumbrated by Professor Rolleston as a "particular effect on the emotiono-motor nature", plainly enough depicted by Dr Leffingwell in his "Reply to Dr Morris", printed in the Appendix to his "Hearing before the Senate Committee on the Bill for the further prevention of cruelty to animals in the District of Columbia." The danger indicated by Professor Rolleston years ago has since become an actual evil, and the horror of it can be clearly seen in the guarded yet sufficiently explicit language of Dr Leffingwell.

 

This is what Dr Leffingwell says: "I but touch the shadow of an awful mystery when I say that one of the most horrible forms of mental and sexual perversion is displayed in the torture of animals and human beings; that a recent writer, Dr Krafft-Ebing, of the University of Vienna, declares that there are 'numerous cases' of beings in human form who 'care only for the sight of suffering,' and who 'make use of the sight of dying animals, or torture animals, to stimulate their lust'; and, regarding the land where vivisection is no more free than it is today in the District of Columbia the charge has publicly been made: 'En France on prolonge les vivisections pour se procurer d'infames plaisirs.' I do not need to hold this abomination into any clearer light; every intelligent physician over 40 years of age is perfectly aware of it."

 

But is such a thing possible? Is there any evidence of the existence of such a hideous actuality in human nature? On the spur of the moment everyone would be inclined to say "No." But on second thoughts this hideous association of cruelty and lust, of cruelty as the pander to lust, is found to be supported as an undoubted fact by any adequate survey of the experience of mankind. In history, to name only a few notable cases, this association has been found in the worst of the Caesars, with fuller evidence in the case of that infamous Marechal de France, Gilles de Retz, whose ferocious lusts, gratified on hundreds of child victims, led to his trial and execution in the fifteenth century; in the latter part of the eighteenth century in the Marquis de Sade, a satyromaniac, whose blood-thirsty tastes as a voluptuary led to his life-long imprisonment. Medical science testifies to the existence of the same horrible form of mania in contemporary civilization, full evidence of which will be found in the works of Dr (Baron) Richard von Krafft-Ebing, particularly in his Psychopathia Sexualis, and in the works of Mantegazza, the notorious vivisector, Lombroso, Blumroder, and Hoffmann.

 

It is by no means improbable that Jack the Ripper, whose skill with the knife and knowledge of anatomy suggested a medical student or a doctor, was the product of the same sexual psychopathy. The experienced police inspector could tell of the same phenomenon, in elderly male debauchees, who pay members of the "unfortunate" class to submit to be flogged, in order that the sight may gratify their perverted sexuality. It was only the year before last that a very able letter in 'Humanity' referred to a yet more horrible case that had shortly before been made public, on which we cannot here be more explicit. It would be easy to multiply instances of this hideous form of cruelty, where cruelty is the servant of lust, but enough has been said on this horrible subject to show that this disease exists; and that already the cruelties of vivisection have been employed in France to minister to its insane cravings.

 

It may be objected that such monsters would not be permitted to hold licences to vivisect in England. Unfortunately criminal monomaniacs of this description, who for the safety of society ought to be in an asylum, move about in ordinary life, and perpetrate from time to time these outrages on human beings, and are by no means rarely detected, as our police court records show. As cunning as they are depraved, these monomaniacs easily wear the mask of sanity in ordinary life. No reflection on the generally excellent medical profession is intended when we say that such persons may occasionally be found in its crowded ranks, for certainly Neil Cream and other monsters have been found there; but it is obvious that to perform vivisections or even to witness demonstrations as students, may, to persons prone to such influences, become an enthralling and at the same time a most demoralising and dangerous appeal. A lesser demoralization would seem to reach a very wide circle of onlookers if we are to believe the late Dr Bigelow, Professor of Surgery at Harvard, who said: "Watch the students at a vivisection. It is the blood and suffering - not the science - that rivets their breathless attention."

 

Be that as it may, the danger of the "joyful excitement" of the ideal vivisector, as described by Cyon, of St. Petersburg, developing with this infamous enjoyment of suffering is a very real one. And just consider the opportunities vivisection presents for such hideous excesses! It is only with difficulty and danger that the Slave of Sadism can gratify his perverted appetite at the expense of human beings; but he has merely to get a licence to vivisect to be empowered (for that is what it comes to as a matter of fact) to torture animals in any way he pleases in his own laboratory for his own enjoyment.

 

Think of the fate of the affectionate dog in the power of such a vivisector, strapped to the trough, and mangled slowly to gratify the morbid cravings of one who finds delight in the prolongation of its agonies. What Sir Michael Foster in his able life of Claude Bernard, calls "the joys of the laboratory", are seen in a new light and a new significance in connection with Dr Leffingwell's terrible revelation. Modern vivisection is comparatively a new vice in England, and the fact that this vice has ministered, and ministers, to such horrible depravity at the other side of the Channel, warns us that, evil as are the generally known fruits of vivisection in hardened hearts and deadened powers of sympathy, there is the possibility of worse things yet in store for those who persist in the practice; terrible potentialities of evil in human nature to which vivisection holds the key, a key which, as the practice spreads, will almost inevitably be found to fit the idiosyncracies of some whose chosen lifework is the torture of helpless fellow-creatures.

 

This sad and terrible warning as to one of the little known results of the practice of vivisection we have felt it our duty to lay before the public, in the best interests of the nation. We do not intend to suggest that such evils already exist in England. There is still time to prevent them, and it will be an ill day for the true, the humane progress of the nation when it can be written in English of English vivisectors as it has been written in French of French vivisectors: "On prolonge les vivisections pour se procurer d'infames plaisirs." There is only one safe way to guard against the moral danger which the practice of vivisection necessarily involves, and that is the total prohibition of the practice, and this we earnestly advocate in the interests of the vivisectors, of their victims, and of the community in general. (From THE ABOLITIONIST, February I5, 1901, p. 271)

 

We wish to make clear that we do not attribute the views expressed in the two articles above to Dr Walter Robert Hadwen (1854-1932), an anti-vaccinationist and anti-vivisectionist medical doctor, celebrated for his uncompromising stance against vivisection. Dr Hadwen, already a seasoned campaigner for the anti-vaccination cause, did not become publicly associated with the anti-vivisection movement of his day until August 1901, when an article written by him appeared in The Abolitionist, the periodical of an anti-vivisection society founded in 1898. He would, however, presumably have read the above articles as background reading, before committing himself to supporting publicly the anti-vivisection cause.

 

There is in our view a striking analogy between the kind of person referred to in the articles reproduced above and some whose activities in more recent times revealed them as predatory and dangerous abusers of children. For example, in an article headed "Police link animal cruelty to violence against children," in the Independent on Sunday, 30 January 2000, page 14, Alan Wolinski of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, is reported speaking of a trip to the United States to collect research on the links between child abuse and animal abuse: "My trip confirmed the feeling that there is definitely a link," he said. "Someone who is cruel to one species is likely to be so to another."  In the same article, the League Against Cruel Sports is reported as believing the link may even extend to paedophiles. "Videos of animal cruelty are like hard core porn videos or child porn," said Steve Rackett, a spokesman. "There appears to be the same motivation between these people and what attracts paedophiles to sexual violence."

 

As the public learns more about vivisection, vivisectors like Cyon increasingly take good care to present themselves as dedicated scientists interested only in the welfare of humanity, although the practice is useless. Some of those in the United Kingdom may even profess to welcome the "controls" they are supposed to work under, but their malign intent can still be seen in the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. The Act makes it is a criminal offence to disclose what may be witnessed in a vivisection laboratory, though the claim to be obliged to observe commercial confidentiality may also be used to mask sadism. It is hard to distinguish those who were already or have become indifferent to the suffering of the animals they experiment on from those who actively seek out situations where they can gratify a desire to inflict suffering on animals. We believe that while some of those who actively defend animal experiments do so out of a natural desire to defend their careers, the zeal with which others involved in vivisection defend the practice suggests in addition an anxiety to protect the opportunities that exist to gratify sadistic impulses while being gainfully employed.

 

If you believe with us that vivisection or animal experimentation, which is cruel, useless and unscientific, should be prohibited by law, deal directly with your Member of Parliament, whose salary you pay and whose name can be found by calling House of Commons Information on 020 7219 4272. Write to your MP to demand total and immediate abolition of vivisection. Always seek to maintain pressure on your MP who has a duty to represent your views.

 

DR. HADWEN ANTI-VIVISECTION MEMORIAL UNIT