Ronald Ross - "The Vivisector Vivisected" (1882)

INTRODUCTION

Ronald Ross (13 May 1857 – 16 September 1932) was a British medical doctor who was the recipient of the 1902 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for his work on malaria, by which he has shown how it enters the organism and thereby has laid the foundation for successful research on this disease and methods of combating it". He wrote a handful of fiction, "The Vivisector Vivisected" was originally written in 1882, but was unpublished until just before his death, first appearing in the 1932 anthology "Strange Assembly".

THE VIVISECTOR VIVISECTED

IN the year 1860, I, having completed my medical studies in London, and being a man of some small independence, determined upon visiting the various universities and scientific societies of the world. I travelled through Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Persia, Turkey, India and China. Having seen much physic poured down many throats, and having listened to the opposing views of five thousand professors, I became in the end assured that for most diseases the best medicine is water, taken internally. I was also convinced of the necessity for a better knowledge of physiology; for unless we know the working of a watch or machine, how can we hope to mend it? Truly hot oil poured in may do good; but it can also possibly clog the wheels. Hygiene is the better part of medicine; physiology, the best part of both: for without it we put on spectacles in the dark. Those great mysteries of Life and Death, birth, maintenance, action and thought were to me Mexicos, their solution El Dorados. Accordingly I set foot in America, the land of experiment, with enthusiasm. I passed eastward, calling on persons long known to me through their works; but I was not satisfied. At the large city of Snogginsville I met the well-known Dr. Silcutt, famous for his excellent work on the encephalon of politicians. He was as ardent a physiologist as myself; and was at the time much excited by his recent excellent discovery that gold produces effects different from those of copper when approached to the different nerves of those engaged in public services. Titillation of the palm with the former metal produces contraction of the flexors, with the latter, contraction of the extensors. He was personally tall, sombre, and not of a humorous disposition. He lived in his private chambers at the Infirmary where I stayed with him so long that we became friends. With him there resided an old gentleman, suffering from dementia, whom at first I took to be his father.

The day before the one on which I intended leaving Snogginsville, Silcutt exhibited to me his private museum of medical curiosities. I remember that when we entered the room, he, being interested in argument, left the door ajar. Passing from specimen to specimen we at last arrived before a most curious contrivance. Roughly described, one would have considered it a double kind of pump with four tubes (two tubes from each pump) leading to a central mechanism. Each pump was a heavy square mass meant to be placed on the ground, with a piston action; the piston being so disposed as to require pushing down and pulling up without a lever. Silcutt seemed inclined to pass it, but I inquired its use; no sooner, however, were the words out of my mouth, than I heard a kind of scream behind me, muffled in laughter. The above-mentioned old gentleman was standing looking at the construction which had interested me. A quick frown passed over Silcutt's face, and he clutched the other by the arm. The old man lifted his right foot and placed it on a low bench close by. His face became tumid with blood until his white hair, eye-brows and scanty whiskers started out, as it were, in contrast. The veins of his neck swelled, and perspiration broke out on his forehead. His teeth were clenched and his eyes bloodshot; and though all this transformation occurred in a few seconds, yet he had every appearance of a man who had undergone severe bodily exercise. He stooped down as if to lift a heavy weight with both hands, and began to pull up and push down with his arms, as if, as I thought, he was working one of the pumps described above. He laughed and screamed alternately; until, after a few seconds more, a foam gathered on his lips, he shrieked, and fell down in an epileptic seizure.

Silcutt said, 'He is not my father. He is accustomed to these fits. He has been located with me for twenty years. Tonight, I will give you a manuscript, fully describing this occurrence and that machine; upon the condition that you do not divulge its contents until the death of both of us.'

Upon retiring to rest, I found on my bedroom table a manuscript signed 'William Silcutt, U.Sc.Phil.' Opening it, I read:-

I attended Snogginsville Infirmary as a medical student from 1838 to 1840. Patrick Maculligan, a man of about forty years of age, was resident medical officer. He was at the time deeply engaged in experimental research on both physiology and therapeutics; and needing an assistant, he fixed on me. I was intensely fond of both these subjects; and we were often engaged together in the laboratory for the whole day. The Infirmary is situated on a hill, and is a long building, turreted at either end. At the time I speak of only one half of the structure was occupied by patients. At the top of the turret belonging to the empty wing, our laboratory was situated. Here we worked, ate, and often slept without seeing anyone but ourselves for twenty-four hours at a stretch. The laboratory consisted of five rooms; an animals' room for keeping live-stock; a chemical room; a microscopical room ; a workshop for making implements; and the operation room. This last chamber was the top central one of the turret and had a window facing westward. It was painted black so as not to show the blood that was often spurted upon its walls. In a corner were a basin and ewer. Tables with various knives, tweezers, forceps, saws, etc., stood round. At a yard from one wall there was the usual stove with a pipe leading through the roof. In the middle stood the operating-table, which we called the altar of science. It was a complicated contrivance, padded and covered with leather, with a waterproof over all. It could be so drawn out, or pushed in, as to afford room for holding either a donkey or a guinea-pig at will. Numbers of fastening straps were attached. The door and window were padded to prevent the egress of any sound which might disturb the patients below.

Maculligan was an Irish immigrant. He was of middle stature, pale of complexion, with light sandy hair. He was very grave and had large white front teeth. His hands were long and hairy; and owing to his studies, he was slightly bowed and weakly. A long scar cut from his left eye to the mouth, and the deformity made him the more shy. He was a Protestant, and when not engaged in vivisection, it was his great delight to read over a book of hymns, which he often hummed to himself. He told me that he was the son of an Irish physician and had left home owing to family quarrels, when a lad of seventeen.

We had often discussed the awful problem of death. Could it be prevented? May not science hope to find its antidote? He said: "Seeing that most tissues are repairable, like bone, re-formable, or like skin to be mended by another structure, I believe that death does not originate in these parts which may be called rather the appurtenances of life than life itself. The older the man, the less able is he to obtain healing of wounds. Why? Because the healing power is older and less vigorous. What is the healing power? Where is it? Either in the nervous system or in the blood, I should say. A man dies, not because his muscles and organs decay; but because either the mechanism of his brain, cord, or ganglia is so attrite, and worn out, or his blood is so changed by continual use, as to be of no further service to the body. We cannot give an animal a new brain; but we can provide him with fresh blood. Let us try then whether the blood be not the seat of life. The plan we will adopt is this: I have constructed an artificial heart which may be filled with the fresh blood of an animal recently killed. Now we must obtain a corpse which has died of loss of blood alone : we must quickly after death cut down to his heart, and apply the apparatus to his blood-vessels, pour in a fresh circulation. By this means," he ended, rubbing his hands, "I hope to bring the dead to life." '

To understand the rest of Dr. Silcutt's narrative, the reader should know the course of the circulation. This is very simple. The heart is divided into two partitions, a right and a left one. The blood enters the right partition, whence it is squirted into the lungs; from the lungs it returns to the left partition, whence it is squirted all over the body; and from the body it finally returns back to the right partition, and so on ad infinitum. The apparatus now shown to Silcutt, described without the use of anatomical words, was an artificial heart, only the two partitions were quite separate, and to be worked by different pressure. The chest was opened and into the large blood-vessels, which convey the blood to and from the heart, long india-rubber tubes were inserted: so that the blood from the body was carried to the right artificial heart or pump, and thence squirted back to the lungs; from the lungs it passed to the left artificial heart or pump, and thence to the body, and so on. These artificial hearts were mere ordinary double-action pumps, with valves, which sucked in the fluid from one direction and expelled it in another; but having to be completely air-tight they were heavily constructed and the pistons were worked only with considerable difficulty. Each pump was placed in a hot-water bath to maintain the blood at the temperature of 100°; and one was to be put on either side of the dead body. To resume the manuscript:-

' It was some time before a fit subject was brought into the hospital. What was required was a person who had simply bled to death without much serious injury except the wound of the blood-vessels. A donkey was kept in readiness to supply the required fluid. We often practised the insertion of the india-rubber tubes into the blood-vessel on dead patients; and had become so skilful as to be able to finish the operation in five minutes.

At last, on the morning of 5th October 1840, a patient was brought into the Infirmary with a cut wound on the head from which he had bled profusely. He had been cut with a knife in a street row. He was a tall, vigorous man, with an immense amount of red hair and beard and with a vicious leering kind of expression. When I saw him he was fast sinking; for the evident drunken habits of the patient did not predispose him to recovery. I only saw him and attended him (except the nurses); and had him removed to a private ward when he died at 2 p.m. Having previously acquainted Maculligan of the case, I waited below while that gentleman was preparing the apparatus. I sent the nurses out of the ward after the patient's death. I wrapt him in a blanket and drawing his hands over my shoulders carried him out. A violent storm, which had just broken, gave me greater security. I locked the door of the private ward and struggled as I best could with my burden up the narrow stairs of the turret. When I arrived in the laboratory, the apparatus was ready, and the pumps were standing in their baths of hot water (which was procured from the stove boiler). The donkey had been killed, and his fresh blood was in the cavities of our machine.

Maculligan was flushed with excitement: "Now," he exclaimed, "we shall get at least some knowledge; either a useful negative result, or a world-reforming fact."

I placed the body on the bed : on his left side was the pump which I was to work and which sent the blood all over his body; on his right side Maculligan supplied his lungs. In a minute I had fastened the limbs, and made bare the chest of the man. Maculligan seized the knife, and at one swoop cut down to the heart. I held apart the several parts. Almost immediately it seemed he had inserted the tubes into the arteries and veins, and a few seconds sufficed to sew up the chest again, joining the cartilages as well as the skin, and covering all the incision with a quickly congealing gum to exclude the air, and permit breathing. The whole was done by ten minutes after death. The corpse was pale, slightly cold, the eyelids half-open, and the eyes turned upwards beneath them. Blankets were thrown upon it to retain the heat. The storm outside had increased in fury; the rain drenched the window-panes, and the violence of the wind was such that the whole tower seemed to rock. Most unearthly noises, too, were caused by it; and the darkness was so great that we could barely see to do our experiment. I could observe Maculligan trembling with excitement. I myself, though generally stolid, was much moved.

"Are you ready," said he, taking hold of his pump and speaking hoarsely. "Then away," and down went the pistons simultaneously.

We told twelve strokes-no blood had oozed from the cut in the chest-all was satisfactory. Another twelve-a slight flushing the cheeks. Maculligan stopped, and we both took off our coats, the wind howling with tenfold fury. We resumed-suddenly the eyes closed. We went on for fully quarter of an hour.

"He is breathing," cried my companion.

Most certainly there was some slight action of the diaphragm. Maculligan suddenly motioned me to stop, and going up to the patient listened to hear the breathing. While he looked into the man's face the eyes suddenly opened, following my friend, who sprang back to his pump, trembling violently. We went on silently; the man, all the while, watching Maculligan whose hair seemed stiff, and whose face was so changed that I should hardly have known him. I myself was so astounded that I could not conceive the occurrence as real. We had never expected that there would be any recovery beyond a comatose condition.

Suddenly the man, who appeared as if recovering from chloroform, said aloud, "Lave it, 'vill you."

"Lave what?" asked Maculligan, hoarsely.

"Lave pulling that out of the ground, for sure it goes bang through the wurrld, and is clamped on the other side. It's o' no use."

"Bedad," he continued, "but ye're the rummiest eggflip iver I came across."

"Egg-flip! Eh, boy?" cried Maculligan, laughing excitedly; "You're another."

"What!" said the man, smiling with one side of his mouth, "you air a wag, you air-a kind o' wag as tells loodicrus tales to tay-totallers at taymatins, you air."

"No, I ain't now," exclaimed my friend, lifting his chin, and winking in an excited, ready-boy kind of manner.

"Wal, friend," continued the patient, "kep your 'air on, an' nobody 'ud tell you warn't a Quaker. But you're too quaky for your occupation-I tak it you're a water-works man, with that 'ere pump, eh, friend?" He then spat into the air.

"What makes you think that, boy," answered my companion, putting his tongue in his cheek, and pumping vigorously.

"Wal," returned the other, laughing roughly, "I guessed you war by your complexion. I say," he continued, winking, "you don't often git your pipes bunged in these parts by vivisections does yer-no vivisected babbies, now-eh?"

"Not I, lad, not I," laughed Maculligan boisterously.

"That's odd now ! och ! man, sure, an wasn't I a vivisector in ould Ireland, an a phesycian."

"I hope you got many of 'em," laughed the other.

"Many o' wot?"

"Fees- you said you were a feesycian."

"Wal," laughed the man, winking, "just you write that 'ere goak in ycr diary and have a dinner on the annivassery  of it, ivery year. Yes, sir, I was a physician, and, sure, an eminent one and got me thousand a year, and lived in Merion Square, bedad. But I went in for physiology-I went in for physiology, and so got ruined. I say! won't the devil give me hot for my vivisecting-for the cutting-eh? For the fastening up-eh? 'You should have taken the trouble to give chloroform,' he'll say. But I don't care a doight for the devil-eh?-till I am dead-eh? sniffiewink?"

"But what if you are," cried Maculligan, loudly. "Eh, boy, what if you are?"

"Hey? Wal, stranger, I guess you air goin' it with that 'ere pump. I say," he called out suddenly, "stop it, will you ! Every push sends a throb in me chist, you skippin' spalpeen."

The patient seemed to become alarmed. He had kept his eyes fixed on my associate; he now turned them upon me, and I saw that he recognized me.

He began to pull at his wrists and ankles, when Maculligan, not knowing what he was saying, kept on repeating, "But, what if you are dead?"

All this while we were both pumping without intermission.

"Aha!" hissed the man, his face wearing a horrible expression, "what is this? What is this? I am dead! Begorra, I died just now-I died of a cut on the head, and drank a bottle o' whiskey upon it to die drunk! Oh, Lord! I see it - ochone ! I am in hell, and I am drunk still!" He wrenched again at his wrists, screaming.

"So you are, Pat," cried my friend. "So you are."

"Ah! Lord! What 'ull they say if I come up to court drunk! Maybe I have been in court already, but was so inebriate I did not know it, and have got damned out o' hand, with never a bit of a voice in the matter."

"So you have, Pat, so you have. You were dead drunk in the dock, you were."

"Ah! krimy," groaned the man, his eye wandering down tu the instrument stuck in his chest, the stitches in his skin and the tubes leading to the pumps. "Och! St. Pathrick, I see it ! And my punishment is, to be done to as I have been done by. And you are a couple of devils, and I a vivisection; and I shall be vivisected for iver and iver, wurrld without end-Oh ! Lord-damn-damn-damn-"

'Here Maculligan inadvertently missed a stroke which caused the patient to gasp violently.

"Now, don't do it again, honey," he continued. " I 'll swear no more, purty deevil that ye are, I did not mane to chaffer ye just now-but ye're the wittiest devil, truly speaking, that I iver saw on earth, or in h or anywhere. You'll not be studyin' much on me now, will yer, dear?"

"We shall not do more than tie up your bile duct and establish a fistula in your side today, friend," said Maculligan, winking at me.

"And will you do that? Oh! crikey?"

"To-morrow we are going to lay out a piece of your mesentery under the microscope to see the blood circulate."

"Oh, sammy ! And what 'ull yer do the day arter ?"

"See how much of your brains we can slice off without stopping your thinking."

"Why, yer don't imagine I think with the pit of my stomich, do yer? One blessing yer'll have to lave it soon, for there 'ull never be a pickin' place left on me carcase."

"Not a bit of it, my dear sir," roared Maculligan, who seemed mad from excitement. "You heal up in one place as soon as we go on to another."

"Well, that knocks all hope out of me. But what are ye <loin' now?"

"Injecting you with donkey's blood to see if you will bray."

"I'll not do that, anyway, but I tell you what, I feel uncommon sharp and witty like. I'ud advise you to try a little of the same mixture. Yer not agoin' to have any alcoholic experiments on me, friend, air ye?"

"No-why?"

"Wal, yer might find out how much whuskey it 'ull take to make me drunk, anyhow, honey. O Lord!" he ejaculated, looking round, "how well I know them scalpels, directors, retractors, bone-forceps, aneurism needles and the like, and I have often done all the experiments you have mentioned."

At times the man dropped the coarser Irish brogue, and at other times used a Californian slang.

"You see," he continued, "I was a man of some eminence in the medical profession."

"And how did you lose that eminence?"

"One day I was up to the ears in thought about me theory of diabetes, when a poodle happening to bark about me heels, instead of kicking it away, sure enough I put it in me pocket, thoughtlessly."

"Well?"

"Well, that poodle belonged to the vice-queen, or the vice-royess, who offered a hundred pound for it. Now a rapscallion saw me pockit the poodle, tould a policeman, who followed me as I went home one day, entered me house, got up to the laboratory and found the identical poodle with a pay in its fourth ventricle, and a pin in its curvickle ganglion. They had me up for dog-stealing, jist as I had complated me work on the subject in hand, and instid of putting me in the Royal Society, put me in a common prison. When I got out I took to drinking and went to America and the dogs; and I've got there now, begorra !- Yer will not give me chloroform, thin, honey; or a gin-cocktail now? Be Jesus, how the devils are howlin' round about!"

During this extraordinary conversation the wind had risen still more, and the turret was plainly felt to rock to and fro. The evening, too, began to hasten in, aided by the black, scurrying rack that obscured the sky. We had been toiling for more than an hour, having to keep time like rowers. My arms were getting tired, and I was profusely perspiring. Maculligan was shouting and laughing like a maniac or drunkard, his face bloated with exertion and his long light hair hanging over his eyes. Suddenly I cast my eyes on the thermometer in the bath which maintained the heat of the blood at the necessary 100°. It stood at 97·4°. The fire in the stove was getting low.

I said: "The fire is getting low; it must be replenished."

 "You pile it up then," said Maculligan; "we must both leave off together."

At a signal from him we both ceased pumping and I, who was nearest, rushed to the stove, knocked the lid off and poured in, in my haste, the whole scuttle full of coals. When I returned the patient had fainted: we immediately resumed.

I said: "He was nearly out then, Maculligan."

"Wot's that?" muttered the patient, coming round. "Tarnation take you deevils, ho\V did you gumption that my name was Maculligan ?"

"Is that so?" inquired Maculligan.

"Is that so! I guess it is-Josephus Maculligan av Maculligan Castle, County Lietrim, son av old Maculligan av the same, and be damned to yer !"

No sooner were these words uttered than my companion uttered the most horrible yell I ever heard.

"You are my brother," he shrieked; "Ha! ha! look at this!" showing the long scar on his face. The patient's jaw dropped, and he struggled violently; but when my friend relaxed the speed of pumping he fell back, and began to groan.

"Oh ! oh ! Is it me brother they have put to plague me, me twin brother, who I knocked about and gashed down the cheek because he was after bein' five munutes older than myself and had got all the proparty? Ye are not dead, Pathrick dear? Ye are no ghost, avic? Ye will not tormint me though your father and me druv you to Ameriky?"

"No, no," shouted Maculligan. "I am alive! You are alive ! We are all alive ! I am surgeon of the Snogginsville Infirmary. I have made an invention for reviving the dead by means of injecting hot, fresh blood into his veins. I required a case for experiment, which had merely bled to death. You were the first that presented. If we leave off pumping for five minutes, or the stove goes out, letting the hot water cool, the blood will clot in the machine and you will die immediately."

I cannot describe the face of Josephus Maculligan during this recital. He burst forth into oaths, upbraiding his brother for attempting such an experiment, and shrieking for help. But the wind out-shrieked him. He prayed and cried alternately. My arms were getting intensely tired, and my back was aching, owing to the necessary stoop of the body. Suddenly the setting sun, which was almost touching the horizon, gleamed out from the clouds, and poured a red glow on Patrick Maculligan's face. I shall never forget its expression: he seemed to have become more like an ape than a man. His face was turbid and red; his mouth drawn back at the corners, showing all his teeth and the very gums. His tongue hung out, the large veins of the throat and forehead stood prominent, the long scar on the cheek glistened white, and seemed to have contracted in length, drawing up the upper lip, and showing the canine tooth of that side. His necktie and collar had burst open, and he panted quickly like a dog; while his eyes, round and lidless, glared on his brother, not with anger or fear, but without any expression at all. The one beam of blood-red light, streaming in from the window seemed to rest upon him on purpose, and, as it were, moved and twined amongst his hair. He alone was visible: all the rest of the room was dark; for the ray, after touching him passed into the workshop beyond. I could see that his hands which were working the pump were swollen and veined.

He said: "You have wronged me. We are twin brothers, and I being the weaker should have been protected by you, rather than bullied. We both loved Lucy Hagan ; but she preferred me. One day I said: 'I have brains; I don't want the property; I will ask Lucy to marry me, and we will go to America!' I went to ask her passing through a wood. You were there felling trees. You threw the hatchet at me, saying: 'I'll knock the Polly Beloy dear out of you!' The steel cut my cheek. A week afterwards I presented myself to Lucy. She said she would think about it, and in the evening sent me a refusal written in French and a hymn-book with her favourite hymns marked. She informed me that she was going to marry you. I called upon her to thank her for the hymn-book, and murdered her on the spot. I then proceeded to America when I heard that my father was found dead in bed. I said: 'My brother Joseph has murdered him.' Both of us being murderers, it was natural enough that we should go a step further and become vivisectors, and this is our punishment."

"Wal," returned the other, spitting into the ray of light, "I guess I'd rayther be you than me in this here investigation of nature. You are payin' interest and principal together of that 'ere loan across the cheek I gave yer. If yer cannot kep up that elber-jiggerin work much longer, I will be much obleeged if you will ax someone to come up and relieve yer, and bring up a drop or two o' somethin' cooling, cas I am feeling tarnation warrum."

"If either of us stop for two minutes you are dead, clear; and there are no more donkeys in the establishment," answered Patrick. "It won't do for only one to pump, because that will burst up your vessels. And it won't do to call, because no one will hear. It would take at least four minutes to get to the occupied wing of the building and back and by that time clots would be sure to form, any one of which getting in your brain would kill you slick."

"Wal," asked Josephus, "and cud not both of you go and divide the distance atween yer? I am getting as hot as a tay-pot."

Looking at the thermometer in the water-bath of my pump, I observed it stood at 102°. The fire in the stove, drawn by the violent wind, was beginning to roar through the heap of coals.

"Turn on the cold water," said Patrick.

It came from the tap with a gush, then stopped-the water-pipe had been broken by the storm. The thermometer was rising-if it passed 120° the blood would be heated to the same temperature, and would certainly become coagulated, or would coagulate the nervous matter of the patient. We left off, and I rushed to the stove- the poker and shovel had both been sent to be mended. The patient was gasping.

"If you stop me circulation again, yer spalpeens, I'll skin yer," he said.

We resumed. The light had left Patrick's face, but the stove glowed out in the darkness, and we heard the roaring of the flames. Patrick was staggering like a drunkard, and breathing stertorously. His tongue was hanging further out; the corners of his mouth were dra¥.'tl more and more backwards; and at every stroke he pulled, his ears twitched. In my hands there was no feeling left, for as said before, the pumps were very stiff. I pushed and pulled mechanically; there was a dead pain at my heart; I could think of nothing, my eyes were glazed; all I saw was the thermometer slowly rising. Josephus was struggling and howling.

"Arrah, now," he cried, "ye're running fire into me. Lave it will yer. I guess I'll get up and pummel yer both."

We stopped for a second, when he yelled out, "Go on yer hell-sparks, or I'll report yer behaviour to the deevil. O Lord," he groaned, "here's faver and no ague."

The thermometer had reached 106°.

"Wal," continued Josephus, "this 'ull put me in the very best trainin' for hell cud be imagined. I shall ask for a place as head stoker after this, for I shan't flinch at no fire agin."

Patrick tried to speak but could not. The flames in the stove shot up through the coaling-hole at top. The thermometer stood at 108°, a temperature seldom reached by the most violent fevers.

"Josephus said, "I poisoned me father with opium and drove me brother to murder his sweetheart, but they ought to let me into heaven arter this, for it's punishment enough sure. It's plaguey hard on a poor boy to make him die twice -to make him pay over agin for his ticket to tarnation. Ah ! lads kep it up, lads. Though ye're a runnin' the red-hot blood o' ten thousand jackasses biled in the boilers av the cintre of the wurrld into me Ah-orta, kep it up! Though ye are a sweatin' away yerselves, till there is nothin' left av yer but yer skilitons, and a little ile in yer boots, yet kep it up, lads, kep it up! Brayvo, brayvo ! oh! but the warrmth-the warrmth ! I'll tak me whusky cold, I thank you. Ice ! Thanks, I wull jist tak a limp o' the same."

He then ceased talking and struggled violently. The last he said was, "Good-bye, Pathrick; I'll vivisect yer, t' other side o' Jourdan!"

The thermometer had reached 116.5°. The howling of the wind was awful. Patrick was rolling from side to side. The perspiration ran down over my eyes. I could not feel my arms below the shoulders. Patrick suddenly drew in his breath sharply, gave a yell, threw up his arms and fell on his face. Josephus by a last effort wrenched his arms loose, sat up, clutched at his throat and fell back. At the same moment the storm blew in the window with a crash. In came the tempest and rain, a spiral of flame shot up from the stove, and I was hurled to the ground.

It was morning when I woke. The stove was out and Patrick sleeping soundly. I could not stand, nor move the arms below the elbows. As best I could I crawled downstairs for assistance.

Josephus Maculligan was stone dead, and was soon buried. Patrick lives, but he is demented and suffers from attacks of epilepsy. I am myself quite well.

(Signed) WILLIAM SILCUTT.

Such was the remarkable manuscript I read, and I may well be believed when I state that so great was the horror of vivisection which I derived from the perusal of this account of the impaling and exhaustion to death of living beings, that I took to collecting butterflies in the summer, and hunting in the winter, neglecting the medical profession altogether. After the death of Silcutt and Maculligan, I related the story to the President of the Club for the Total Abolition of Vivisection. He asked me down to the country branch of that club, where I was to read the manuscript.

After our interesting pigeon battue, where more than two hundred birds were killed, we dined. I then read the work; which filled the members with such horror that they passed forty-five resolutions upon the spot, and finished the day with an oyster and white-bait supper. I am sure that the reader who believes this atrocious and fearful tale cannot become anything but a Total Anti-vivisectionist.