The Victorian Vivisection Debate

The Victorian Vivisection Debate PDF Author: Theodore G. Obenchain
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786471195
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Is it justifiable for scientists to subject live animals to open operations--forcing them to suffer for the benefit of humans? This book expounds upon a debate among such experimental scientists as Joseph Lister, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch in Victorian England--at a time in which animal cruelty (bear-baiting, e.g.) was ubiquitous. Journalist and reformer Frances Power Cobbe became so incensed that she devoted her political and legislative talents over a thirty year period to prohibiting vivisection. Struggling within severe medical limitations was London surgeon Lister, hardly able to operate for fear his patients would succumb to sepsis. After reading of Pasteur's new theory about germs, Lister helped revolutionize hospital care. These two scientists and Koch then expanded the scientific base by animal experiments. As their methods improved, they transformed medicine into a beneficent institution within British culture. No single adversarial movement could have held back the tide of modernism. The author brings the debate up to the 21st century by analyzing modern-day animal rights theories, and offers a credo for readers who remain undecided.

The Victorian Vivisection Debate

The Victorian Vivisection Debate PDF Author: Theodore G. Obenchain
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786471195
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Is it justifiable for scientists to subject live animals to open operations--forcing them to suffer for the benefit of humans? This book expounds upon a debate among such experimental scientists as Joseph Lister, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch in Victorian England--at a time in which animal cruelty (bear-baiting, e.g.) was ubiquitous. Journalist and reformer Frances Power Cobbe became so incensed that she devoted her political and legislative talents over a thirty year period to prohibiting vivisection. Struggling within severe medical limitations was London surgeon Lister, hardly able to operate for fear his patients would succumb to sepsis. After reading of Pasteur's new theory about germs, Lister helped revolutionize hospital care. These two scientists and Koch then expanded the scientific base by animal experiments. As their methods improved, they transformed medicine into a beneficent institution within British culture. No single adversarial movement could have held back the tide of modernism. The author brings the debate up to the 21st century by analyzing modern-day animal rights theories, and offers a credo for readers who remain undecided.

Moral Authority, Men of Science, and the Victorian Novel

Moral Authority, Men of Science, and the Victorian Novel PDF Author: Anne DeWitt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107036178
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Anne DeWitt examines how Victorian novelists challenged the claims of men of science to align scientific practice with moral excellence.

Anti-Vivisection and the Profession of Medicine in Britain

Anti-Vivisection and the Profession of Medicine in Britain PDF Author: A.W.H. Bates
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137556978
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book explores the social history of the anti-vivisection movement in Britain from its nineteenth-century beginnings until the 1960s. It discusses the ethical principles that inspired the movement and the socio-political background that explains its rise and fall. Opposition to vivisection began when medical practitioners complained it was contrary to the compassionate ethos of their profession. Christian anti-cruelty organizations took up the cause out of concern that callousness among the professional classes would have a demoralizing effect on the rest of society. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the influence of transcendentalism, Eastern religions and the spiritual revival led new age social reformers to champion a more holistic approach to science, and dismiss reliance on vivisection as a materialistic oversimplification. In response, scientists claimed it was necessary to remain objective and unemotional in order to perform the experiments necessary for medical progress.

The Animal Estate

The Animal Estate PDF Author: Harriet Ritvo
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674266730
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
When we think about the Victorian age, we usually envision people together with animals: the Queen and her pugs, the sportsman with horses and hounds, the big game hunter with his wild kill, the gentleman farmer with a prize bull. Harriet Ritvo here gives us a vivid picture of how animals figured in English thinking during the nineteenth century and, by extension, how they served as metaphors for human psychological needs and sociopolitical aspirations. Victorian England was a period of burgeoning scientific cattle breeding and newly fashionable dog shows; an age of Empire and big game hunting; an era of reform and reformers that saw the birth of the Royal SPCA. Ritvo examines Victorian thinking about animals in the context of other lines of thought: evolution, class structure, popular science and natural history, imperial domination. The papers and publications of people and organizations concerned with agricultural breeding, veterinary medicine, the world of pets, vivisection and other humane causes, zoos, hunting at home and abroad, all reveal underlying assumptions and deeply held convictions—for example, about Britain’s imperial enterprise, social discipline, and the hierarchy of orders, in nature and in human society. Thus this book contributes a new new topic of inquiry to Victorian studies; its combination of rhetorical analysis with more conventional methods of historical research offers a novel perspective on Victorian culture. And because nineteenth-century attitudes and practices were often the ancestors of contemporary ones, this perspective can also inform modern debates about human–animal interactions.

Vivisection in Historical Perspective

Vivisection in Historical Perspective PDF Author: Nicolaas A. Rupke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
"This is the first book to examine the debate over vivisection over the past century in detail, placing it in the context of the wider conflict over the value of modern scientific research."--book depository.

Experimenting with Humans and Animals

Experimenting with Humans and Animals PDF Author: Anita Guerrini
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801871979
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Ethical questions about the use of animals and humans in research remain among the most vexing within both the scientific community and society at large. These often rancorous arguments have gone on, however, with little awareness of their historical antecedents. Experimentation on animals and particularly humans is often assumed to be a uniquely modern phenomenon, but the ideas and attitudes that encourage the biological and medical sciences to experiment on living creatures date from the earliest expression of Western thought. Here, Anita Guerrini looks at the history of these practices from vivisection in ancient Alexandria to present-day battles over animal rights and medical research employing human subjects. Guerrini discusses key historical episodes, including the discovery of blood circulation, the development of smallpox and polio vaccines, and recent AIDS research. She also explores the rise of the antivivisection movement in Victorian England, the modern animal rights movement, and current debates over gene therapy.--From publisher description.

A Debate on Should Vivisection be Abolished?

A Debate on Should Vivisection be Abolished? PDF Author: Walter Robert Hadwen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 27

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Book Description


Victorian Medicine and Popular Culture

Victorian Medicine and Popular Culture PDF Author: Louise Penner
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822981890
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This collection of essays explores the rise of scientific medicine and its impact on Victorian popular culture. Chapters include an examination of Charles Dickens’s involvement with hospital funding, concerns about milk purity, and the theatrical portrayal of drug addiction, plus a whole section devoted to the representation of medicine in crime fiction. This is an interdisciplinary study involving public health, cultural studies, the history of medicine, literature and theatre, providing new insights into Victorian culture and society.

Victorian Animal Dreams

Victorian Animal Dreams PDF Author: Deborah Denenholz Morse
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351875957
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
The Victorian period witnessed the beginning of a debate on the status of animals that continues today. This volume explicitly acknowledges the way twenty-first-century deliberations about animal rights and the fact of past and prospective animal extinction haunt the discussion of the Victorians' obsession with animals. Combining close attention to historical detail with a sophisticated analytical framework, the contributors examine the various forms of human dominion over animals, including imaginative possession of animals in the realms of fiction, performance, and the visual arts, as well as physical control as manifest in hunting, killing, vivisection and zookeeping. The diverse range of topics, analyzed from a contemporary perspective, makes the volume a significant contribution to Victorian studies. The conclusion by Harriet Ritvo, the pre-eminent authority in the field of Victorian/animal studies, provides valuable insight into the burgeoning field of animal studies and points toward future studies of animals in the Victorian period.

A Debate on Should Vivisection Be Abolished?

A Debate on Should Vivisection Be Abolished? PDF Author: Walter Robert Hadwen
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9780366561780
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
Excerpt from A Debate on Should Vivisection Be Abolished?: Between Walter R. Hadwn, Esq., J. P., M.D., L. R. C. P., M. R. C. S., Etc., And Thomas Eastham, Esq., M. B., Ch. B., Held in the Victoria Hall, Glossop, on July 18th, 1907 The debate, the report of which follows, was the result of circumstances which I will briefly detail. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.