Life, 1893-12-28 · page 5 of 53
Life — December 28, 1893 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 409 This page contains three distinct pieces of satire: 1. **"A Very Fly Scientist"** (top left): A humorous essay mocking the scientific use of flies in laboratory experiments, presented as if flies are complaining about their exploitation by researchers. 2. **"No Mercy Here"** (top right): Commentary criticizing medical students' brutal dissection practices on dead horses, comparing it unfavorably to vivisection experiments on living animals. The piece argues such practices desensitize students to animal suffering. 3. **"Is It Always the Fault of the Cable Car?"** (bottom): A cartoon satirizing cable car accidents in San Francisco. The illustration shows a cable car collision with pedestrians, suggesting ironic blame-shifting—implying the cable car system receives unfair criticism for accidents that may not be entirely its fault.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A VERY FLY SCIENTIST. SS NTIFIC FLY (concluding a lec- ture): So you see, fly ladies and fly gentiemen, how all the rich resources of Nature have from the first been in- tended solely for the comfort and conven- ience of the fly race. As wild animals perfected means of defence against us, and as plants were beginning to develop traps for our destruction, kindly Nature brought forth a ponderous creature called man, whose mission was to catch and tame the animals to our purpose, destroy the dangerous plants, and in their place raise an abundance of food suited to our A TRIFLE UNDER THE WEATHER, 409 NO MERCY HERE. I OVERS of the horse should know —~ that after this useful servant has outlived his financial value the medical students can yet get lots of fun out of him, A dead horse, of course, is not interesting, but by careful management he can be kept alive through quite a series of amusing experiments. You can dissect his feet, for instance, without immediately endangering his life. The indescribable agony caused by these operations seems to act as a pleasant stimulant upon the amiable experimenter. The cye is also an interesting organ to dissect while the needs. In addition, as history progressed they erected warm and sunny abodes in which we could turn Winter into Summer when so disposed. For a time the advocates of the revolting theory that all things come by chance were able to point, with galling triumph, to the painful fact that hor: though tamed, were still danger- ous to feast upon. But how low have our opponents fallen ? Almost before we could frame an answer our silent slave, man, guided only by original design, has moved up to those murderous horses and cut off their tail A Vacant Lot.—The Fifth Avenue stage horses. —= nerves are yet alive. A very little knowledge of the vivisector’s deeds makes it easy to understand why students of medicine should be so much “ tougher” as a class than the students of anything else. It is difficult to conceive a course of training more brutalizing than the systematic and needless torturing of one’s helpless friends, It is but a short step from the quivering nerves of a four-footed servitor to experiments upon a human being. RAGG: I know a thing or two. SCAPELY: You sly dog! 1S IT ALWAYS THE FAULT OF THE CABLE CAR? comicbooks.com