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The Petition of [blank] [to Royal Commission on Vivisection]

Humbly Sheweth  

That your petitioners are persons engaged in the study of the Biological Sciences & there application to medicine.

That the art of preventing & curing disease is based upon a knowledge of the nature & causes of disease: and that the increase of such knowledge is the only means by which the art can be brought to perfection.

That the knowledge of the nature & causes of disease is inseparably connected with, and dependent upon just conceptions of the physical & chemical processes which go on in living animals the living body and that such conceptions can be obtained only by the aid of observations and experiments upon living animals.

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That such experiments as involve the cutting of living animals, commonly called vivisection, in the majority of cases may be, and usually are, performed on animals which have been rendered insensible to pain by anaesthetics or otherwise.

That the existence of the present organisation of human society is to a large extent based upon the principle that it is right &  lawful to inflict pain upon animals for the benefit of mankind.

On this principle it is held to be right to kill the killing of animals for food; to employ them and been even employment in the painful labours of beasts of burden & draught are held to be justifiable to expose them to lingering torture in the traps or otherwise for the sake of destroying those which injure men's persons or property; or [illeg] obtaining those, such as fur animals,  which yield mere luxuries, are daily a large numbers of wild animals are

That it may safely be affirmed that all the daily & hourly exposed to lingering tortures in traps or otherwise. With pain which ever has been inflicted upon living  animals, for the sake of obtaining a better knowledge of health & diseased processes, is not to

reference to these practices it may be safely affirmed that all the pain that ever has been inflicted upon living animals for the purposes of investigation is not to

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be compared in amount so that those which result from the operations of the fur traders for a season during a single season

That your petitioners entertain the strongest objections to the wanton or needless infliction of pain upon any sentient creature, & that they would gladly see cruelty under all forms repressed & discouraged, not merely by public opinion, but by legislative enactment; and that they agree with the principles laid down in the Report of a Committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at its meeting in the year 1870, appended hereto. But they venture to express the hope that in any measures which your Honourable House may think fit to take towards this end, nothing may be done to interfere with investigations undertaken by competent & responsible persons, not with the object of increasing wealth or subserving luxury, but in the well-based expectation

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that they may obtain such knowledge as will ten, by elucidating to benefit mankind or by elucidating the nature of disease, to diminish the human & animal suffering to diminish the sufferings of mankind.

And your petitioners will ever pray