TEE PAINLESS EXTINCTION OF LIFE OF THE LOWER ANIMALS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7270, 7 March 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

TEE PAINLESS EXTINCTION OF LIFE OF THE LOWER ANIMALS.

Br Richardson's (London) lectureon his process of painless killing of the lower animals scores for science a magnificent success. As its author said in the closing passages of his discourse, science has now given to the inferior creation a blessing which she dare not give to man himself—painlese death. At tie Dogs' Home over 6000 dogs have, during the past seven months, slept their final sleep, knowing as little of their deaths as of their births. The principal agent used for the narcotic action is carbonic oxide, passing, at summer heat, over a mixture of chloroform and carbon bisulphide into a lethal chamber, in which chamber as many as 100 dogs can at once receive euthanasia. This is on the large scale ; but Dr. .Richardson described alsD a small apparatus which, after long trials, he has completed, in which from one to six animals can be painlessly killed, and which is so portable that it can be wheeled from a central station to any house or street ready for immediate use. Thus every village and town may be provided at a small cost with a means that will give painless death to any domestic animal without offending the most sensitive individual. By an extension of the same design the author next intends to apply it to animals of the larger kind that are used for human fond, its application to the* slaughtering of sheep being already quite feasible and inexpensive. By such works of beneficence an these, man exerts his wisest and best dominion over natural sufferings and difficulties, and medicine is never more distinctly in her true position than when she is lending to that dominion the willing and practical aid which her representatives are specially fitted to confer. It is no contemptible part of its history in this century for the profession to leave as a bequest to the future the meaus of taking tho sliug of death from all our lower friends whose fate is under our control.