For Science and Humanity: Vivisection and the Rise of Experimental Physiology (2024)

https://doi.org/10.1097/ALN.0000000000004475

Vivisection, or animal dissection for scientific research, was instrumental to the rise of experimental physiology in the 19th century. Practiced by some physiologists in Continental Europe even before the advent of surgical anesthesia, vivisection provoked resistance in Victorian England. Vivisectors were depicted as cruel scientists who butchered vulnerable animals in a cold pursuit of knowledge. By the late 19th century, what began as a specialized issue had become highly publicized, and antivivisectionism quickly spread beyond England. The German cartoon above (right), entitled “The Vivisection of Man” (1899), satirized the issue at large. It presented a role reversal from the scene in Robert Hinckley’s painting, The First Operation with Ether (1893, left), which portrayed William T. G. Morton’s groundbreaking display of surgical anesthesia in Boston. The cartoon (right) showed laboratory animals cutting into a bespectacled physiologist in a surgical amphitheater akin to the Ether Dome. A caption read, “The principle of freedom of research demands that I vivisect this human for the health of the animal kingdom!” The reverse premise—that animal experimentation was necessary for medical progress and the welfare of humanity—would ultimately prevail. Anesthesia facilitated scientific research and made it more acceptable; research helped elucidate the pharmacologic properties and physiological effects of many anesthetics. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology. www.woodlibrarymuseum.org)

Vivisection, or animal dissection for scientific research, was instrumental to the rise of experimental physiology in the 19th century. Practiced by some physiologists in Continental Europe even before the advent of surgical anesthesia, vivisection provoked resistance in Victorian England. Vivisectors were depicted as cruel scientists who butchered vulnerable animals in a cold pursuit of knowledge. By the late 19th century, what began as a specialized issue had become highly publicized, and antivivisectionism quickly spread beyond England. The German cartoon above (right), entitled “The Vivisection of Man” (1899), satirized the issue at large. It presented a role reversal from the scene in Robert Hinckley’s painting, The First Operation with Ether (1893, left), which portrayed William T. G. Morton’s groundbreaking display of surgical anesthesia in Boston. The cartoon (right) showed laboratory animals cutting into a bespectacled physiologist in a surgical amphitheater akin to the Ether Dome. A caption read, “The principle of freedom of research demands that I vivisect this human for the health of the animal kingdom!” The reverse premise—that animal experimentation was necessary for medical progress and the welfare of humanity—would ultimately prevail. Anesthesia facilitated scientific research and made it more acceptable; research helped elucidate the pharmacologic properties and physiological effects of many anesthetics. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology. www.woodlibrarymuseum.org)

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