THE
Indian Medical Gazette.
JANUARY, 1904.
ANTIVIVESECTION ANTICS.
At the annual meeting of the National Anti-vivisection Society, the Honorary Secretary made a speech which he must have found cause to regret, since it led to his being put in the position of defendant in an action for libel and slander before the Lord Chief Justice, which ended in a verdict against him to the tune of £2,000 for damages and the payment of costs for a special jury. In his summing up the Judge stated that "a person who undertook to advocate a cause was not entitled to do so by charging other people with criminal offences unless he was able to substantiate such charges," and again, that "no man had any right to import into the public discussion of public questions slanderous defamations of any man unless he was prepared to prove those charges in a court of justice."
It is, we fear, a vain hope to expect that even this case will prove an efficient deterrent to the campaign of calumny against honourable men that is incessantly waged by amiable humanitarians with extreme views against vivisection, vaccination, venereal diseases, anti-rabic inoculation, alcohol, opium and even hospitals.
The Hon'ble Stephen Coleridge might have applied to the Home Secretary for the criminal prosecution of Professor Bayliss, who, as the law stands, was liable to. a penalty of £50 for the first offence, and of £100 with the possibility of imprisonment for a repetition of the offence,—in the event of his being proved guilty. But he preferred to harangue a sympathetic audience in an impassioned strain, and to make a great public demonstration against the alleged iniquities of vivisection in general and of the physiologists at University College in particular.
Another obvious course was open to Mr. Coleridge. He might have directed the attention of the authorities at University College to the accusation preferred by the two ladies from Sweden, and he might have called on Dr. Bayliss for a refutation, or for such defence as he had to offer. But such a course does not commend itself to agitators, their metier is to agitate—themselves, or others by choice. But he elected to accept unconditionally the evidence of two foreign ladies of little experience in the subject, with a possible bias, inasmuch as they were Honorary Secretaries of the Swedish Antivivisection Society; ladies apparently impulsive in their actions since they published a book, or pamphlet, entitled The Shambles of Science [1] against legal advice and even against the wish of Mr. Coleridge himself; ladies who insinuated that a vivisection experiment in which a dumb animal suffered torture was treated as a matter for fun and amusement. Even at the trial he produced the impression that he put more faith in them than in the evidence of honourable and distinguished scientific men of his own nationality who practise or advocate vivisection. Mr. Coleridge confessed to sending letters to some of the incumbents of London churches for distribution at the doors before services in order to prevent persons from subscribing to the Hospital Sunday Fund, because he suspected some of the money would be diverted to vivisection purposes. The alleviation of human misery and suffering must not be considered when the sacred cause of the animals is at stake I It is difficult to imagine a more extreme instance of a good man being blinded by partisan bigotry.
We have observed the same tendency amongst certain Calcutta papers that are only too ready to publish any accusation against Calcutta medical institutions and their medical staffs on mere ex parte statements, and even on the strength of anonymous letters, without first making a reference to the hospital authorities or any attempt to ascertain the truth. Give a dog a bad name and hang him, or any stick is good enough to beat him with, seem to be the principles they adopt in girding against a Government medical institution or its officials. These papers appear oblivious to the possibility of being duped by grievance-mongers or those who have axes of their own to grind. Legitimate criticism of a public institution is only right and proper in the interests of the public; but garbled,
- ↑ The Indian Fields notably a lover of animals, thus describes this production:—
The book, "The Shambles of Science," which figured in the trial came to me with a parcel of books for review, a month ago or more. More designedly mischievous drive! I never threw into the waste paper basket, and how any sane man could have supposed he could depend on the unsupported statements of the writers (those two Swedish ladies) is difficult to imagine. At least it was difficult to imagine till one read Mr. Coleridge'e evidence.
