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"Vivisection, Virtue, and the Law in the Nineteenth Century" by Bates
Vivisection is a practice of experimentalist doctors, but clinicians
wanted to distance themselves from it because inflicting pain is at odds
with caring for patients.
Anti-vivisectors viewed by some as regressive luddites.
Always a minority in support of vivisection
Desire to protect anmials was "a form of social self-defense."
Middle class activists?
Cock-fights and bull-baitings alarmed the urban bourgeoisie
Casual cruelty => Violence
Radicals who wanted to empower disenfranchised humans
Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle Act
Required offender to act 'wantonly and cruelly'
Moved focus from moral to legal concerns
Originally a French ("Continental") Procedure
Magendie is a famous Parisian vivisector
Utilitarian arguments, "betterment of mankind," used by vivisectors
Voluntary doctors' boards and organizations founded.
Fear of vivisectors' character, human vivisections of charity patients
Ethics wasn't an established practice in the nineteenth century
Not even legislation until Medical Act of 1858
Virtue ethics: doctors expected to act gentlemanly
Doctors can't enjoy vivisection; motives > actions
Ideal motive is actually a balance: scientific inquiry tempered
with a degree of care for the animal (but not too much, that's
effeminate)
Empathy seen to be lacking by vivisectors
- Cadaver dissection had interchangeable arguments
"Cold-heartedness and self-indulgence"
1876 Cruelty to Animals Act requires licensing (passed due to a shocking
experiment conducted by a Frenchman)
Dubious value on several bases: while quantitative value was obtained,
objectors worried it had little scientific relevance to human.
Countered with specific examples of benefits from vivisection like John
Hunter's work with aneurysms.
Nationalist criticism (Brits -> French, in particular)
Objective criteria: "the information sought must not be obtainable by
observation alone, the experiment must have a distinct and definite
object, it must not be a repeat, it must cause the least possible
suffering to the least sentient animal, and must be properly witnessed
and recorded." (influence in Antivivisection Act)
Wantonly: without rational regard
Cruelty (Sir John Day): "Something which cannot be justified."
There were no successful prosecutions of vivisectionists in Britain.
676 people licensed, many not required to use anaesthesia.
Encouraged nepotism by requiring signatures of other physicians
National Anti-Vivisection Society founded to end animal experiments.
Also known as Victoria Street Society
Claimed that Act made vivisection rates worse
Teaching colleges avoided vivisections because teachers believed that
"anyone who would look calmly on a vivisection would not make a good
physician." Rare in the field too
Support of laboratory medicine correlates strongly with feelings about
vivisection.
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