ABSTRACT
The Stephen Paget Lecture has as its particular theme a defence of the use of experimental animals to enlarge medical knowledge. The general public is by no means qualified to judge whether or not our human wardenship of animals is being satisfactorily discharged. It is difficult not to despise the sentimental ignorance about animals that is so widely thought of as a traditional part of the British character – the kind of ignorant sentimentality that finds expression in the fatuous cry that a caged bird should be ‘given its freedom’. The opposite of ignorant sentimentality is humane understanding. Fortunately, some humane and learned organizations do exist to promote the welfare of animals and to educate the public to understand animals as they really are, so that they need no longer rely on some supposedly intuitive understanding of what animals think or feel.
