The Governor Vetoes the Anti-Vivisection Bill

Olympia, Feb. 21.—Special.—A document of great importance to the scientific world was presented to the legislature a few days ago, but owing to the press of other matter was not given out for publication in full. It was the veto message of Gov. McGraw on the Scobey bill to prevent vivisection, and is important from the fact that it is not only the first veto message offered by the governor, but that it is a veto of a non-political subject, and yet one that has attracted a great deal of attention in scientific circles. The message follows:

"Herewith I return without my approval house bill No. 93, entitled 'An act to prevent vivisection and to regulate dissection in the schools of the state of Washington, and to provide a penalty therefor.' I cannot conscientiously approve so broad and sweeping a measure as the one before me for the following reasons:

There can be no subject of more vital importance to mankind than a thorough and accurate knowledge of the human body and the manner in which its various functions are performed. So important is this knowledge that only inaccurate conception, misguided though well-meant impulse, or perverted emotion can desire to prevent its extension to all classes of the community, excluding none, least of all the young, from participating in the beneficial effect to be derived from careful and comprehensive study of such subjects as morphology, physiology and anatomy. It is a false theory of the law, it appears to me, which would declare that only a special class in the community should be permitted to profit by the demonstration of facts which are most forcibly impressed upon the mind by such practice as it is proposed to suppress by this act.

Vivisection, as practiced in the public schools by competent teachers, does not imply debasement of the character of youth nor cruelty to animals. Since the days of Christ's apostle, the physician, who of all men has most intimately studied the body of man and beast, has been taken as a type of goodness and humanity, and it is the young men of the United States, France and Germany, who as youths have had opportunity to study vivisection, who are today, and almost daily, making discoveries which are of untold and incalculable value to the human race. It is the result of the vivisection studies of such young men who began their studies as minors that has so lately led to the discovery, after experiment, that the blood of animals rendered immune to diphtheria germs confers protection on another, and from this has grown the present method of treatment for diphtheria, which makes it possible to save the lives of at least 30,000 children in this country alone.

With the approval of this law a bacteriological laboratory recently established in this state for the study of certain infectious diseases must close. With the approval of this law most valuable researches now in progress for the benefit of the farmer, in the study of insect pests, must stop. The term animal, meaning, as it does, a sentient, living being, as distinguished from a vegetable or a mineral, including as it does so low a class as infusoria, would, by the approval of this law, prevent the exhibition to public students of a dissected sponge.

For these reasons, appreciating fully the important and wide operation of the law, I am constrained to veto the act."