What Levina Buoncuore Urbino wrote in her diary on January 17,1868, stands as a reminder that vivisection, which continues to go on today, is the tragedy of the human race:
We called upon Professor S., so much famed for his knowledge of the nervous system. He has a pleasant, intelligent face, but he tortures animals by his practice of vivisection. There was a poor dog in the study that made my heart bleed. I dared not look in his face, feeling guilty for the cruelty of man towards him. His limbs were distorted and swollen; his body a wreck of skin and bones; and the plaintive noise he made rang through my ears for days after. A large cat was in a cage, probably waiting her turn to be experimented upon. (Quoted from Diary of Levina Buoncuore Urbino, January, 1868, in An American Woman in Europe: The Journal of Two Years and a Half Sojourn in Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy. Boston, MA: Lee & Shepard Publishers, 1869, p. 206-07.)
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