Samuel Johnson
Medical Professors Experiments
Idler, No. 17
Universal Chronicle; or Weekly Gazettee
「1758-Aug-05」Samuel Johnson, “Expedients of Idlers: Medical Professors Experiments No. 17, Saturday, August 5th in The Idler 「Google Books」 (London, 1761) 92-96. 「Idler essays orginally pubished in the Universal Chronicle; or Weekly Gazettee
Among the inferior Professors of medical knowledge, is a race of wretches, whose lives are only varied by varieties of cruelty; whose favourite amusement is to nail dogs to tables and open them alive; and try how long life may be continued in various degrees of mutilation, or with the excision or laceration of the vital parts; to examine whether burning irons are felt more acutely by the bone or tendon; and whether the more lasting agonies are produced by poison forced into the mouth or injected into the veins. (94-5)
It is not without reluctance that I offend the sensibility of the tender mind with images like these. If such cruelties were not practised, it were to be desired that they should not be conceived; but since they are published every day with ostentation, let me be allowed once to mention them, since I mention them with abhorrence. (95)
Mead has invidiously remarked of Woodward that he gathered shells and stones, and would pass for a Philosopher. With pretensions much less reasonable, the anatomical novice tears out the living bowels of an animal, and stiles himself Physician, prepares himself by familiar cruelty for that profession which he is to exercise upon the tender and the helpless, upon feeble bodies and broken minds, and by which he has opportunities to extend his arts o torture, and continue those experiments upon infancy and age, which he has hitherto upon cats and dogs. (95-96)
What is alleged in defence of these hateful practices, every one knows; but the truth is, that by knives, fire, and poison, knowledge is not always sough, and is very seldom attained. The experiments that have been tried, are tried again; he that burned an animal with irons yesterday, will be willing to amuse himself with burning another to-morrow. I know not, that by living dissections any discovery has been made by which a single malady is more easily cured. And if the knowledge of Physiology has been somewhat encreased, he surely buy knowledge dear, who learns the use of the lacteals at the expense of his humanity. It is time that universal resentment should arise against these horrid operation, which tend to harden the heart, extinguish those sensations which give man confidence in man, and make the Physician more dreadful that the gout or stone. (96)
