Ɛpsilon

From A. H. Payne   5 December 1879

A. H. Payne Leipzig Leipzig

Dec. 5th. 1879.

Sir,

As you are perhaps aware there is considerable agitation going on in Germany & especially here for the suppression of Vivisection, and as Leipzig has a University of 3,000 students opinions are very divided & violent.1 The Vivisectionists say that no one but a medical man can judge of the question at all, that all medical men of any name are of opinion that Vivisection is desirable & that science has profited greatly by it & that every one who asserts the contrary is a blockhead. Anti Vivisectionists on the contrary assert that medical science has gained next to nothing by it, that opinions among medical men are very divided & that notably you, Sir. W. Fergusson & many other eminent men have declared themselves decidedly against Vivisection.2 Not being a medical man myself I will not give my opinion, but I am very certain that the disgusting cruelties practised by such men as Prof. Goltz & Prof. Schiff who on their own assertions (printed) bore holes in Dogs’ heads, take out their brains & keep them in this state for months, without even attempting to prove that anything has been gained thereby,—that such proceedings are a disgrace to any nation & to man generally & I wish to assist as much as I can in stopping it.3 It would very materially assist the, as I think, good cause, if you would give your opinion on the question which I should have printed here & circulated. I hope you will excuse my troubling you with this matter, but if, as is asserted you have said “die Vivisection ist der Abscheu’s inne Verdammung merkt”4 I venture to hope that you will be glad to assist in stopping the practice.

Your’s obedt. servant, | Albert Payne

my address is

Albert Payne

c/o A. H. Payne, Publisher

Leipzig.

Ch. Darwin, Esque

P.S. To prevent the possibility of my intentions being misunderstood I would mention that I have no interest in the question beyond that of common humanity. I do not publish any books on the question & my motives therefore are quite free from business considerations. I hate cruelty & I think that an educated man who practises it under pretence of assisting science (if this is the case, or, at least, very often) is more to be condemned than a butcher or carter who is very often worked up into a rage by the frequent obstinacy of the animals he has to do with.

1
On the anti-vivisection movement in Germany, see Tröhler and Maehle 1987. Opposition to vivisection in Leipzig centred on the Physiological Institute run by Carl Ludwig, who was himself vice-president of an animal protection society (Tröhler and Maehle 1987, pp. 165–6).
2
CD had been involved in efforts to draft a bill regulating vivisection in 1875 and 1876 (see Correspondence vol. 23, including Appendix VI, and vol. 24). William Fergusson, a surgeon, had signed Frances Power Cobbe’s petition against vivisection; CD considered Cobbe’s petition likely to damage the practice of physiology (Cobbe 1904, pp. 629, 633; Correspondence vol. 23, letter to F. P. Cobbe, [14 January 1875]).
3
Friedrich Ludwig Goltz worked in Strasbourg on the localisation of cerebral function in dogs; he was able to keep dogs whose cerebrums had been removed alive for up to three years (NDB). Moritz Schiff was forced to leave Florence in 1876 after a campaign against his vivisection experiments and became professor of physiology at Geneva (DSB).
4
‘Vivisection is horror’s damnation realised’; however, the transcription of the German is uncertain. There is no record of CD’s saying this.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12344,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12344