To The Editor of the Philadelphia Medical Journal (1899)
AUTHOR: White, Caroline Earle
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$c183351&view=1up&seq=174&size=125&q1=White
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Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Cattle Train”
Lovell, Mary Frances. “Address on Humane Education”
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Twain, Mark. “A Dog’s Tale”
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---. “To the Editor of the Philadelphia Medical Journal ”
White's letter responds to an editorial in the Philadelphia Medical Journal entitled “Kindness to Animals or Hatred of Science – Which?” reprinted in this issue of the The Journal of Zoöphily immediately preceding White's response. This editorial contrasts the cruelty of live animal transport, domestic and transatlantic, with the cruelty involved in vivisection, which is claimed to be much less. The editor argues that anti-vivisectionists should focus on improving the conditions of cattle transportation if they are really interested in the suffering of animals. Anti-vivisectionists are accused of being possessed by a “mediaeval hatred of science” (27).
In her response, White points out that before becoming engaged in the anti-vivisection cause she campaigned “against the cruelties of cattle transportation” (27) and continues to do so. Legislation designed to lessen the suffering of animals in transportation was passed because of these efforts. In addition, “[p]rosecutions of some of the most prominent railroad companies in the United States, for violation of this act, have been undertaken by us, and in some cases, brought to a successful issue” (28). White adds: “I agree with you that the suffering of animals in transportation, and also in slaughtering, is greater than that in a large amount of the vivisectional experiments practised in physiological laboratories, and for that reason I have almost entirely given up the eating of meat.” She concludes, “We hate cruelty, not science” (28).