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Drawing the life-blood of physiology: Vivisection and the Physiologists' dilemma, 1870–1900

Pages 27-56 | Received 02 Jan 1985, Published online: 22 Aug 2006

References

  • Holton , G. 1984 . Do scientists need a philosophy? . Times Literary Supplement , November : 1231 – 1234 . 2 (p. 1234)
  • For the most comprehensive account, and penetrating analysis, of the British anti-vivisection movement, see French R.D. Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society Princeton 1975 Further comment on its retarding influence on physiology may be found in G. L. Geison, Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology (Princeton, 1978), especially chapter 2; and James Turner, Reckoning with the Beast. Animals, Pain and Humanity in the Victorian Mind (Baltimore and London, 1980), especially chapter 6. See also L. G. Stevenson, ‘Science down the drain: on the hostility of certain sanitarians to animal experimentation, bacteriology and immunology’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 29 (1955), 1–26, and idem, ‘Religious elements in the background to the British antivivisection movement’, Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 29 (1956), 125–7. A comparative account of related movements in Europe and America has been given by H. Bretschneider, Der Streit un die Vivisektion im 19 Jahrhundert, Medizin in Geschichte und Kultur, No. 2 (Stuttgart, 1962). S. V. F. Butler, ‘Science and the education of doctors in the nineteenth century: a study of British Medical Schools with particular reference to the development and uses of physiology’ (PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 1981), discusses the growth of physiology in its institutional context, as well as the attitudes of medical teachers and practitioners to science and the question of academic status.
  • See in particular Sharpey-Schäfer E.A. History of the Physiological Society during its First Fifty Years London 1927
  • In addition to references at footnote 2, see French R.D. Some problems and sources in the foundation of modern physiology in Great Britain History of Science 1971 10 28 55
  • Finnochiaro , M.A. 1973 . History of Science as Explanation 204 – 204 . Detroit Finnochiaro is here following the concept of history advanced by B. Croce in History as the Story of Liberty (London, 1941).
  • Collingwood , R.G. 1946 . The Idea of History 302 – 302 . London 1961
  • Figlio , K. 1977 . The historiography of scientific medicine: an invitation to the human sciences . Comparative Studies of Society and History , 19 : 262 – 286 . (pp. 265–6)
  • The reader will be aware that I feel obliged in this section—although with considerable reluctance—to defend the claim to some kind of ‘privileged insight’ into the nature of physiological endeavour. Fifteen years of laboratory experimentation were, I believe, a sufficient basis from which to make Collingwood's distinction between ‘experience’ and ‘the mere object of experience’. The experience itself was, on occasions, one of notable exhilaration and committed abandonment; subsequent analysis of the experience—recollected in tranquillity—has aroused growing discomfiture and regret; regret that many acute experiments were ugly and unnecessarily destructive of life, and most chronic experiments unjustifiably cruel. Attendance at the centennial meeting of the Physiological Society in Cambridge in 1976—which was devoted largely to a celebration of classic experiments—did nothing to convince me that the atmosphere generated in the ‘great days’ was other than a supercharged version of that which still obtains today. The essential experience has not changed, and the ‘preparation’ as a whole continues to receive a great deal less consideration than the particular part being studied. It is in connection with this aspect of the psychology of physiology that I must insist that mere empathy—indispensable as it is—must always fall critically short of committed experience. Most authors, however, make little attempt even at empathetic understanding. I do not oppose all experiments on animals, although I am against unnecessary and unjustifiable exploitation. See my Forethoughts for Carnivores Philosophy 1981 56 73 87
  • Turner . 1980 . Reckoning with the Beast. Animals, Pain and Humanity in the Victorian Mind xi – xi . Baltimore and London and 79. Turner discusses many aspects of the rapidly changing attitudes to animals and animal suffering during the nineteenth century. Of particular relevance are chapters 5 and 6. See also footnote 92.
  • Bentham , J. 1780 . An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation London edited by J. H. Burnsand H. L. A. Hart (Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, London, 1970), p. 283.
  • Turner . 1980 . Reckoning with the Beast. Animals, Pain and Humanity in the Victorian Mind 100 – 100 . Baltimore and London
  • Turner . 1980 . Reckoning with the Beast. Animals, Pain and Humanity in the Victorian Mind 111 – 111 . Baltimore and London
  • Before Foster's Michael Textbook of Physiology London 1877 the most influential English language books were probably W. B. Carpenter, Principles of Human Physiology (London 1842; 6th edition, 1864) and R. D. Todd and W. Bowman, The Physiological Anatomy and Physiology of Man, 2 vols (London 1845–56; new edition by L. S. Beale, 1866). Sanderson's Edinburgh teacher J. H. Bennett published his Textbook of Physiology: General, Special and Practical (Edinburgh, 1872) just before the Handbook, but I have found no evidence that it was well received or widely used. It could with justification, however, be argued that it was Bennett who initiated ‘practical’ and perhaps ‘experimental’ physiology in Britain, in the 1860s. See the Edinburgh University Calendars for the period; e.g. the first details of a course in ‘practical experimental physiology’ are in the Calendar for 1866–67, p. 74; also see The Lancet, 1 (1873), 95, and British Medical Journal, 1 (1873), 464, 672. More generally, of course, it must not be forgotten that most of the leading English physiologists (though not Foster) had themselves been educated in Scotland.
  • The universal originality of the book was stressed by The Medical Times and Gazette 1873 1 433 433 and by E. A. Schäfer in Sir John Burdon Sanderson. A Memoir, by Lady G. Burdon Sanderson (Oxford, 1911), where he describes it as the first sign of the revival of British physiology (p. 97).
  • That it appeared at an opportune moment is clear from the notable events of 1870 which made it so significant a year for British physiology. These included the appointments of Sanderson and Foster to full-time posts in London and Cambridge, and a change in the statutes of the Royal College of Surgeons which now required experience of practical physiology for all would-be licentiates. See, for example Cope Z. The Royal College of Surgeons of England London 1959 143 143 The Lancet, 2 (1870), 578 and 1 (1871), 67; and G. L. Geison, ‘Social and institutional factors in the stagnancy of English physiology, 1840–70’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 46 (1972), 30–58. Of particular importance, for its comprehensive treatment of this and related matters, is the recent work of Butler (footnote 2).
  • 1873 . Medical Times and Gazette Vol. 1 , 433 – 433 . and The Lancet, 1 (1873), 631.
  • 1872 . Report of the British Association for Advancement of Science 144 – 144 .
  • Klein , E. , Sanderson , J. Burdon , Foster , M. and Brunton , T. Lauder . 1873 . Handbook for the Physiological Laboratory Edited by: Sanderson , J. Burdon . Vol. 2 , London
  • 1873 . Nature , 7 : 438 – 441 . (p. 439); British Medical Journal, 1 (1873), 490.
  • See Franklin K.J. Physiology and histology A Century of Science Dingle H. London 1951 222 238 in and L. G. Stevenson, ‘Anatomical reasoning in physiological thought’, in The Historical Development of Physiological Thought, edited by C. McC. Brooks and P.F. Cranefield (New York, 1959), pp. 27–38.
  • For biographical information on Sanderson see the extended obituary notices in British Medical Journal 1905 2 1481 1492 A.S. MacNulty, ‘Sir John Burdon Sanderson’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 47 (1954), 28–32 (p. 29); and footnote 16.
  • 1873 . British Medical Journal , 1 : 490 – 491 .
  • 1873 . British Medical Journal , 1 : 537 – 538 .
  • Burdon Sanderson Papers , London : University College Library . MS Add. 179/29
  • See Brazier M.A.B. The historical development of neurophysiology Handbook of Physiology, Section 1, Neurophysiology American Physiological Society Washington, D.C. 1 58 in I (pp. 22–3). An examination question on this topic appeared in the BSc physiology paper at Edinburgh in 1873; see University Calendar, 1873–74, p. 243. Foster described and illustrated the necessary procedure and apparatus in all but the first edition (1877) of his Textbook of Physiology.
  • Sanderson , J. Burdon , ed. 1873 . Handbook for the Physiological Laboratory Vol. 2 , viii – viii . London
  • Sanderson , J. Burdon , ed. 1873 . Handbook for the Physiological Laboratory Vol. 2 , viii – viii . London
  • 1873 . The Lancet , 1 : 632 – 632 .
  • 1873 . Nature , 7 : 438 – 438 . (italics mine).
  • Haight , G.S. 1956 . The George Eliot Letters Vol. vi , 221 – 221 . London
  • French . 1975 . Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society Princeton chapters 9–11.
  • 1876 . The Cruelty to Animals Bill . Saturday Review , 41 : 773 – 773 .
  • Even as recently as the 1860s, the medical press has been much less certain, usually condemning vivisection for demonstrative purposes and always for achieving manual dexterity. Its role in genuine research was clearly recognized as problematic. See, for example British Medical Journal 1861 1 502 503 and 1 (1864), 71: The Lancet, 2 (1860), 395–6 and 2 (1863), 224–5; Medical Times and Gazette, 2 (1860), 383 and 1 (1861), 227. With the introduction of practical physiology in the medical schools and the impossibility, after about 1870, of maintaining the traditional distinction with respect to Continental practice, the medical press rapidly accepted vivisection as essential.
  • 1873 . Nature , 7 : 441 – 441 .
  • Bryant , I. 1977 . Vivisection: a chapter in the sociology of Victorian science . Ethics in Science and Medicine , 4 : 75 – 86 . (p. 78).
  • There is no doubt that the Handbook painted a singificantly more clumsy and sinister picture of physiology than did the Journal of Physiology itself (which could absorb the major lessons as to the anaesthesia question in the five-year interval before it commenced publication). A perusal of the articles by British authors working in British laboratories during the 1870s and '80s, shows that anaesthetics were specified fairly consistently, although there were exceptions. (See, for example, work by Gamgee at Owens College, in which the dogs were said to have been anaesthetized, but not the rabbits, 1 (1878–79), 57.) The problem of curare persisted. If chloroform was administered throughout, why was curare necessary? (See work by Barrett at King's College London 1885 6 145 145 where the use of curare is implied, and that by Phillips at University College, 8 (1887), 118, where it is stated.) Long-term experiments, of course, could not employ anaesthetics, even where they induced ‘excessive constitutional disturbances’. (See work by Dowdeswell at Oxford, 1 (1878–79), 260.).
  • Sanderson , J. Burdon , ed. 1873 . Handbook for the Physiological Laboratory Vol. 2 , 403 – 403 . London (italics mine).
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Parliamentary Papers [hereafter P.P.] (C. 1397), Q. 2419.
  • Some aspects of this evidence have been discussed by French Activivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society Princeton 1975 91 108 Many more details of experimental procedures in use at the time (including those of the Handbook's authors), and presented in an essentially unemotive manner, may be found in B. Bryan, The British Vivisectors's Directory (London, 1890).
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Q. 538.
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Qs 999 and 975.
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Qs 1344, 1347, 1349–51.
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Q. 2239. The sincerity of this claim is supported by a letter from Sanderson to Darwin, dated 14 April 1875, in which he wrote: ‘There is no comparison between experimentation and dissection. Every [medical] student must dissect, but not one in a hundred need take part in any vivisection’. Sinclair Collection II.xii, Woodward Biomedical Library, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Q. 2302
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Qs 2243, 2242 and 2265.
  • See French Activivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society Princeton 1975 93 93
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Qs 2781-4 (italics mine).
  • Klein's remarkable testimony has been noted elsewhere, for example by French Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society Princeton 1975 103 105 and L. G. Stevenson, ‘Physiology, general education and the antivivisection movement,’ Clio Medica, 12 (1977), 17–31 (pp. 29–30). However, its importance demands a brief summary in the present context.
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Qs 2781–84.
  • French . 1975 . Activivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society 104 – 104 . Princeton
  • Huxley to Sanderson Burdon Sanderson Papers University College Library London 1875 October 3 MS Add. 179/2/f.32 and Huxley to Foster, 25 May 1876, Huxley Papers IV, 120–2, Imperial College, London.
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Appendix II; and W. Bulloch, ‘Emanuel Klein (1844–1925)’, Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology, 27 (1925), 684–97 (pp. 688 and 697).
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Q. 2333.
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Qs 2211, 538 and 2410–4.
  • Sanderson , J. Burdon , ed. 1873 . Handbook for the Physiological Laboratory Vol. 2 , 409 – 409 . London
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Qs 2421–4 and 2159–61. In a particularly confused defence, Pavy argued that the frog's sensibility would somehow be destroyed before it could experience any suffering.
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Q. 5789.
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Qs 3790, 3799, 3801 and 3859.
  • For the anti-vivisectionists' arguments, see in particular French Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society Princeton 1975 chapters 8 and 9.
  • French . 1975 . Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society Princeton chapter 7. The Association for the Advancement of Medicine by Research (1882), though highly successful in promoting the physiologists' cause, did so mainly by undertaking a ‘program[me] of public invisibility’, p. 209. The current position is represented by D. H. Smyth, Alternatives to Animal Experiments (London, 1978). Moral issues are omitted, it is said, not because they are unimportant, but because experimentalists generally have no special qualifications to instruct others on such matters (p. 15).
  • Cross to Sanderson, 10 July 1875 Burdon Sanderson Papers University College Library London MS Add. 179/2 f.23 The Times (28 June 1875, p. 11) regretted that there was no practising physiologist on the Commission.
  • See, for example, the remarks of Seaton, Thomson, Allbutt, McHendrick, Horsley and Halliburton in British Medical Journal 1905 2 1486 1489
  • See, for example, the remarks of Seaton, Thomson, Allbutt, McHendrick, Horsley and Halliburton in British Medical Journal 1905 2 1491 1491
  • Wells , H.G. 1896 . The Island of Dr Moreau 34 – 34 . London 1946 According to Moreau's reluctant assistant, the island was ‘as bad as Gower Street [University College London]—with its cats’, p. 52.
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Qs 2217 and 2222.
  • In Cushing H.W. The Life of Sir William Osler Oxford 1940 92 92
  • Gotch , F. 1905 . Proceedings of the Royal Society , 2 : 3 – 3 .
  • Bernard , C. 1927 . An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine 103 – 103 . New York translated by H. C. Greene Again, Dr Moreau's position bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Bernard: ‘To this day I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter…I have gone on, not heeding anything but the question I was pursuing…’. See Wells (footnote 69), p. 82.
  • An example (from 1849) of Bernard's insensitivity on the issue of vivisection is given in Olmstead J.M.D. Claude Bernard. Physiologist London 1939 121 122 His wife (and daughters) eventually opened an asylum for stray dogs and cats, and the couple were divorced in 1870.
  • No student [could] be expected to come forward when he knows that he would be hooted, mobbed, and explled from among his fellows for doing so, and any rising medical man would only achieve professional ruin by following a similar course… Were the feelings of experimental physiologists not blunted, they could not long continue the practice of vivisection’. Spectator 1875 48 177 178
  • Burdon Sanderson . 1911 . Oxford 103 – 103 .
  • 1876 . Home Office Return Vol. LXVIII , 423 – 423 . for P.P. 1877
  • Sanderson's notebooks , Edinburgh : National Library of Scotland . MS. 20505/4/13/18
  • 1876 . Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes Vol. XLI , Q. 5194 et seq. Essentially the same motivation for vivisection was claimed for Bernard's laboratory by Hoggan, ‘the great aim being to keep up with, or get ahead of, one's contemporaries in science’ (footnote 75), 177. The professor was presumably W R. Sanders (1869–81); see J. D. Comrie, History of Scottish Medicine, 2 vols (London, 1932), II, 697. Sanders' views did not inhibit his suggesting to Sanderson that he apply for the Professorship of the Institutes of Medicine (physiology) vacated by Bennett. Sanders to Sanderson, 9 July 1873, MS. 20501/47, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.
  • Carroll , L. 1875 . Some popular fallacies about vivisection . Fortnightly Review , 17 : 847 – 854 . (p. 854).
  • Wilenski , R.H. 1967 . John Ruskin. An introduction to further study of his life and work 155 – 155 . New York
  • 1908 . Royal Commission on Vivisection Vol. LVII , 599 – 599 . 4th Report: Evidence, P.P. (Cd 3955) Qs 19208 and 19259–61.
  • 1881 . British Medical Journal , 2 : 333 – 333 . See also numerous references in Geison (footnote 2).
  • Geison . 1978 . Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology 358 – 358 . Princeton
  • Foster , M. 1874 . Vivisection . MacMillan's Magazine , 29 : 367 – 376 . (p. 372) (Foster's italics).
  • Haight . 1956 . The George Eliot Letters Vol. VI , 221 – 221 . London The letter in question was written in 1875, by which time ‘Eliot’ had been living with G. H. Lewes (see below and footnote 100) for some 20 years.
  • Sharpey to Edward A. Schäfer, Sharpey-Schäfer Papers Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine London 1875 July 29 B3
  • Darwin to Mrs Litchfield (his daughter), Life and Letters of Charles Darwin , second edition Darwin F. London 1875 January III 203 203 4 in 3 vols 1887
  • French . 1975 . Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society 187 – 187 . Princeton and 191.
  • 1980 . Royal Commission of Vivisection Vol. LVII , 283 – 283 . 3rd Report: Evidence, P.P. (Cd 3757) Qs 6803, 7106 and 6918.
  • 1876 . The Lancet , 2 : 873 – 873 . and Home Office Return for 1885, P.P. 1886, LII, 699.
  • Turner . 1980 . Reckoning with the Beast. Animals, Pain and Humanity in the Victorian Mind Baltimore and London chapter 2, makes the point that there were clear links between the growing concern for the sufferings of animals and other humanitarian reforms of the period, for example the education of the deaf and blind, treatment of the mentally ill, efforts to improve public health, and of course the abolition of the slave trade: ‘a deepened human sensibility…was a necessary ingredient in many, perhaps most, of them’ (p. 35). William ‘Wilberforce helped to lead the fight to eradicate bull baiting and later to found the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a venture in which his antislavery successor Thomas Fowell Buxton joined him’ (pp. 35–6).
  • Huxley , T.H. 1877 . “ On elementary instruction in physiology ” . In Collected Essays, III, Science and Education 294 – 302 . London in 1893 (pp. 300–302).
  • Huxley , L. 1903 . Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley , second edition Vol. II , 164 – 164 . London 3 vols
  • Huxley , L. 1903 . Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley , second edition Vol. 3 , 159 – 159 . London
  • See Harrison B. Animals and the State in nineteenth century England English Historical Review 1973 88 786 820 (p. 799).
  • In The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll , second edition Collingwood S.D. London 1899 167 168
  • Thistelton-Dyer , W.T. 1907 . Michael Foster: a recollection . Cambridge Review , 28 : 439 – 440 . (p. 439). Huxley did obtain a Home Office licence however, in 1882, and was listed as having performed experiments without anaesthesia (probably to demonstrate the circulation in the frog's foot, a procedure requiring no dissection). Home Office Return for 1882, P.P. 1883, liv, 563.
  • 1878 . British Medical Journal , 2 : 67 – 67 . Nature 8 (1873), 457.
  • Lewes , G.H. 1873 . Nature , 9 : 144 – 145 . See also R. E. Smith, ‘George Henry Lewes and his “Physiology of Common Life”, 1859’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 53 (1960), 569–74 (p. 572).
  • 1873 . Nature , 9 : 145 – 145 .
  • Bulloch . 1925 . Emanuel Klein (1844–1925) . Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology , 27 : 687 – 687 .
  • Darwin . 1887 . Life and Letters of Charles Darwin , second edition Edited by: Darwin , F. Vol. III , 205 – 206 . London 3 vols 200, 210 and 200. That Darwin felt ‘very anxious on the subject, for the sake of the grand science of Physiology’, is clear from a letter he wrote to Sanderson, dated 10 February 1875. The public attitude adopted by leading physiologists would, he felt, ‘have much influence on students and others’. Sinclair Collection, I, xxi, Woodward Biomedical Library, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
  • 1874 . Spectator , 47 : 46 – 46 . Lankester's impulsive nature is also exemplified in a letter marked ‘private’ from Sanderson to Schäfer, in which he mentions having received ‘an extraordinary letter’ from Lankester, which showed him to be ‘a greater fool than we took him for…’. Sharpey-Schäfer Papers, B. 7., (12 July 1877), Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London. The ‘extraordinary letter’ itself is at MS 20030/29, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Others of a similar nature are nearby.
  • French and French , R.D. 1975 . Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society Princeton chapter 12. The Home Office figures upon which quantitative analyses have been based combine the details for England and Scotland.
  • 1911 . Home Office Return Vol. LXIII , 227 – 227 . for P.P.
  • 1897 . Home Office Return Vol. LXXII , 729 – 729 . for P.P.

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