Baltimore Evening Sun (4 September 1911): 6.

From the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society comes a polite but extremely long letter–so long, indeed, that it would be impossible, without the use of a shoe horn and hydraulic pressure, to get it into this column. Therefore I adopt the device of printing it in sections, on an indefinite series of successive days and interspersed with answers to the questions it asks. Thus it opens:

We have read with interest your recent criticism of some anti-vivisection literature you have at hand. That many men have many minds, that each one has a right to his own opinion, and that we may agree with a person, and even think him very wise on some one subject, while we differ with him on every other–these are indisputable facts and answer your objections to the opinions of the Rev. J. Todd Ferrier, Dr. Anna Kingsford, and some others whose views on vivisection you disregard. By the way, we may here inquire if in your last article on the subject you have not confused Dr. Arabella Kenealy with Dr. Anna Kingsford. We find nothing of theosophy in the former’s statement regarding vivisection.

Score one for the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society. I confess frankly to confusing Dr. Kenealy with Dr. Kingsford. The former is not a theosophist, but a fictioneer, and the author of “Some Men Are Such Gentlemen”—a work, I have no doubt, of the first literary and philosophical importance. It was not this fair scrivener, but Dr. Anna Kingsford who, in the Rev. Mr. Ferrier;s phrases, “visited the physiological laboratories in vision, or, as some would express it, in her astral body,” and then made the discovery that every “horse or dog or rabbit” vivisected inclosed “a human shape, the shape of a man,” and gave voice to her consequent horror by crying out to the vivisectors (astrally, of course) “Wretches, you are torturing an unborn man!”

Let the correction stand. But what difference does it make? Arabella or Anna—it’s all one. The essential thing is that Ferrier attempts to prove, by such absurd theosophical “evidence,” that animals have human souls—and that the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society circulates his balderdash in support of its cause. Are we to accept its plea that it does not thereby indorse Ferrier? Of course not. It argues, and with justice, that it may think a person “very wise on some one subject” and “differ with him on every other.” Admitted. But isn’t vivisection the one subject on which it holds Ferrier to be wise—the one subject, indeed, on which it comes into any contact with him at all? And how can it thus accept his wisdom, and circulate it in Baltimore, without thereby indorsing him?

Another quotation from the Society’s long letter:

For a free lance you show yourself remarkably bound to conventional lines of thought. New Thought seems to be the great foe that you fear will unhorse you, and against That (sic), in whatever form It (sic) takes, you level your lance for a death-dealing blow. Since, however, it is orthodoxy you seek, we call your attention to other opinions you have at hand, but seem to have overlooked. We are sending you now further authoritative statements against vivisection from eminent physicians and surgeons and “other undoubtedly sane men,” with whose system of diet, mode of dress and thoughts concerning the dead you can have no quarrel. Your reference to “snide pseudo-physicians” we cannot at all understand unless you are more specific and name them. We recognize none of the authorities sent you as such.

It is a pleasure to accept this challenge. I make the list of bogus “authorities” short to save space, and take all of the names from literature sent out by the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society, appending to each name a brief account of its bearer:

J. J. Garth Wilkinson, M. D.–Born in 1813 and holder of a mysterious “honorary” medical degree. Author of “Isis and Osiris in the Book of Respiration” and other occult and childish books. An expositor of Swedenborgianism. A poet.

Josiah Oldfield, M. D.–A London lawyer who turned doctor. Senior physician to the Lady Margaret “Fruitarian Hospital.” Author of “Flesh-Eating a Cause of Consumption” and “Butchery and Its Horrors.” Advocates a fruitarian diet “for æsthetic and humane reasons.”

Charles Spooner, R. V. C.–Born in 1806. Dead for many years. A veterinary surgeon.

John Elliotson, M. D., F. R. S.–Born in 1791. Dead half a century. A mesmerist and founder of a mesmerist “hospital.”

Charles Bell-Taylor, M. D., F. R. C. S.–Born in 1829. Died in 1909. Author of the widely-quoted nosnense: “Pasteur does not cure hydrophobia; he gives it”–which I dealt with in this place a few weeks ago [FL 1911-07-29 and FL 1911-08-03].

William Gordon-Stables, M. D., C. M., R. N.–Author of 150 novels, among them, “Every Inch a Sailor,” “A Millionaire’s Grave” and “The Pirate’s Gold.” “Wandering secretary to the Birds’ Protection Society.”

Charles Clay, M. D.–Born in 1801. Dead many years. A collector of fossils.

Stephen Townsend, F. R. C. S.–Novelist and actor. Played prominent parts in “Sowing the Wind” and “Slaves of the Ring.”

Arabella Kenealy, L. R. C. P., L. M.–Author of “Some Men are Such Gentlemen,” “A Semi-Detached Marriage” and “The Marriage Yoke.”

Such are some of the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society’s “eminent physicians and surgeons”–the Bayards and Lion Hearts of its holy war. To resume:

When you call the quotations from Dr. W. S. Halsted and Sir A. E. Wright “misleading” is it not you who are wilfully or carelessly misled in the title of the leaflet: “What Some Eminent Physicians Have Said In 1909 re Vivisection”? Notice it is the Latin preposition re (concerning), not vs. (against) that is used. It is the fact that Dr. Halsted is not an anti-vivisectionist which gives his opinion its great value in the quotation given.

Exactly. But is it fair to select a single sequence from Dr. Halsted’s writings–a sentence enormously qualified by all the rest of his writings–and to use that sentence as evidence? I think not. And yet the anti-vivisectionists do that very thing constantly. Experiments on animals, as every sane man must know, are not invariably productive of new knowledge. Many and many a time, for all the thought and labor put into them, they must needs end in disappointment–and honest experimenters are in the habit of acknowledging such disappointments. But is it fair to twist such honest acknowledgments into confessions that all experiments are futile? I think not. And yet the anti-vivisectionists constantly perform such twistings, as I shall show. But more about that tomorrow.