UTILISING CRIMINALS.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1379, 31 December 1872, Page 4

UTILISING CRIMINALS.

That there is a vast deal of crime in Victoria there can be no doubt whatever, and Mr Rusden,-tho hon. secretary of the Royal Society of Victoria, proposes a singular way of utilising criminals. He is ] reported to have read a paper to that scientific body at its last meeting, in which he stated that " He believed that it was j impossible to reform real criminals. He proposed to utilise them for physiological, medical, and surgical experiment, and the worst should be reserved for experiments in which life might be risked, or taken. Every organ of the human body might thus be brought under direct observation and experiment, and they might at once explode that really stupid saying that ten guilty should escape sooner than one innocent should suffer. The Vfcckly Times makes some strong comments on the hideous barbarity of the proposal, which means torturing men to death in cool blood for the information of hospital or full-blown medical men, and is a disgrace to the colony, and a scandal to humanity. Is Mr Rus'Jen mad? asks the Times. We should think he was very mad indeed ; but when people, especially scientific men and experts, get on a hobby, they ride it to death. The horrors of vivisection as j practised on horses and other living animals, at tho veterinary hospitals in Paris and elsewhere, have been frequently commented on in tho strongest terms of condemnation by tho English Press. How much more do such observations apply to tho inhuman proposition of Mr Rusdcn. To talk in terms of horror of the tortures inflicted by savages on their enemies taken in war, and to tolerate such fiendish ideas as Mr Rusden's, would be grim , satire on our boasted civilisation. There ! is a refinement of cruelty about the proposition of this honorary secretary of the Royal Society of Victoria, which we neVer heard equalled, and certainly which can never be excelled. Dr Barker, another scientific maniac, who supported Mr •Rusden, is reported to -have said, that making medical experiments on criminals would not "be any hardship to them." How he makes this out we don't know, ' but we think he and hia friend, Mr Rusden, should be sent to Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum.