Men were once virtuosi in that respect, but are so no longer; the art has become so simplified that it will soon disappear altogether.

In cutting the limbs of living men, in opening their bellies and in dragging out their entrails, phenomena were grasped on the moment and discoveries made.

We are obliged to renounce these experiments now, and are thus deprived of the progress which surgery made by aid of the executioner.
The vivisection of former days was not limited to the manufacture of phenomena for the market-place, of buffoons for the palace (a species of augmentative of the courtier), and eunuchs for sultans and popes.

It abounded in varieties.

One of its triumphs was the manufacture of cocks for the king of England.
It was the custom, in the palace of the kings of England, to have a sort of watchman, who crowed like a cock.