Vivisection in Historical Perspective

Nicolaas A. Rupke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040751565
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Social History

The debate about vivisection is over 150 years old yet until this book was published in 1987 there had been few studies of the historical context of the vivisection controversy. This book provides that context. It places the often vehement arguments of pro- and anti-vivisectionists in the wider conflicts over the value of modern science in general. Pro-vivisection has been linked to a scientocratic view of society and at different times also to positivist philosophy, materialism, political radicalism and socialism. Anti-vivisection societies originated at a time when scientists first began to usurp a major share of the 'estates' of cultural authority. Idealist philosophy, the suffragette movement and antisemitism have all been linked to the anti-vivisection movement. Such connections show that the controversy's roots reach deep into broad, cultural divisions, often functioning as a catalyst of wider conflicts in society as a whole.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Plates, Figures and Tables
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Animal Experimentation from Antiquity to the End of the Eighteenth Century: Attitudes and Arguments
• 3 Vivisection and the Emergence of Experimental Physiology in Nineteenth-century France
• 4 Marshall Hall (1790–1857): Vivisection and the Development of Experimental Physiology
• 5 Moritz Schiff (1823–96): Experimental Physiology and Noble Sentiment in Florence
• 6 Vicarious Suffering, Necessary Pain: Physiological Method in Late Nineteenth-century Britain
• 7 Anti-vivisection ίn Nineteenth-century Germany and Switzerland: Motives and Methods
• 8 Pro-vivisection in England in the Early 1880s: Arguments and Motives
• 9 The Vivisection Debate in Sweden in the 1880s
• 10 The Controversy over Animal Experimentation in America, 1880–1914
• 11 Women and Anti-vivisection in Victorian England, 1870–1900
• 12 Cinema Vérité?: The Image of William Harvey’s Experiments in 1928
• 13 Legislation: A Practical Solution to the Vivisection Dilemma?
• 14 A Select Iconography of Animal Experiment
• 15 Epilogue
• Index