Wholesale Vivisection

Envy-engendering news reached U. S. surgeons from England last week. The Royal College of Surgeons is developing a large farm for the raising of animals which later will be vivisected as experiments in surgery. The U. S. has no similar project. Best that an inquisitive U. S. surgeon can do when he wants to try out some idea on animals is to get a few small beasts from his hospital or school zoo. Supplies are never large. Even then, the experimenter must be furtive. Anti-vivisectionists may hear of his work and protest.

England also has its vociferous anti-vivisectionists. But the medical profession manages to ignore them.

The Royal College of Surgeons' farm is close to the late great Charles Darwin's home, Downe House, at Downe, Kent. Buckston Browne, 81, a London surgeon who worships Darwin's memory, bought the house, restored it with Darwin's furniture and tools and gave the whole to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. That was two summers ago.

Mr. Browne* is also the donor of the neighboring vivisection farm. It cost him, with endowment, -L-100,000. Last fortnight he attended the cornerstone laying of the farm's first building, a dormitory and study house for the young surgeons whom the Royal College will send there to cut up and reassemble the animals.

The project has the approval of Profession, Nobility and Church. Layer of the cornerstone was Lord Berkeley George Andrew Moynihan, baron and president of the Royal College of Surgeons. Conducting the service of dedication was Very Rev. William Foxley Norris, Dean of Westminster.

*British professional custom reserves the title "Dr." for only graduated Doctors of Medicine. Surgeons and Dentists, unless they are also M.D.'s, are "Mr."

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