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Contact: [email protected] Historical, Fictional and Illustrative Readings of the Vivisected Body 1873-1913 By Ann Loveridge Canterbury Christ Church University Thesis submitted For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Contents Abstract .......................................................................................... 1 Acknowledgements......................................................................... 2 Introduction..................................................................................... 3 Chapter 1. More Sinned Against than Sinning: The Case for the Late-Victorian Physiologist........................................... 36 Chapter 2. Writing Pain from the Vivisection Laboratory.............. 79 Chapter 3. Reading the relationship between ‘Heart’ and ‘Science’ in Vivisection Literature................................................ 118 Chapter 4. Vivisection, Hydrophobia and Maternal Nurturing....... 153 Chapter 5. The Vivisected Body as Literary Object........................ 192 Conclusion....................................................................................... 212 Works Cited .................................................................................... 217 Loveridge 1 Abstract This thesis analyses why the practice of vivisection captured the imagination of a small section of late-Victorian society, and how these individuals articulated their concerns. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this study brings together the texts of both anti and pro-vivisectionists to place literary texts alongside medical textbooks and illustrations, essays and campaigning leaflets to suggest a representation of the vivisector throughout the different texts assembled. The first chapter explores the interaction, in print, between activist Frances Power Cobbe and physiologist, Elie de Cyon alongside the ways in which the anti- vivisectionists used images of vivisected animals, sourced from scientific manuals, to assist in constructing the movement’s identity. The second chapter analyses the lecture notes of two young medical students published as The Shambles of Science (1903) and how the authors strived to secure a literary representation for pain. These findings will then pave the way for an examination of how anti-vivisection rhetoric influenced fiction. The next chapter is concerned with the relationship between the ‘heart’ and ‘science’ and considers the more positive outcomes for those existing on the periphery of scientific experimentation. The fourth chapter examines the relationship between vivisection and hydrophobia, while simultaneously considering the implications of nurturing the young vivisector. The final chapter examines how the signature of the vivisectionist can be read through the incisions made on the surface of the opened body. By delving into these interactive, textual and imaginative bodies, this chapter explores the ways in which the vivisected body, traced by the scalpel and relayed by the instrumentation of the laboratory became a literary object. Loveridge 2 Acknowledgements The completion of this study would not have been possible without a Staff Funding Fee Waiver Award from Canterbury Christ Church University. I would like to thank Professor Carolyn Oulton and Dr Susan Civale for supervising this study and providing endless encouragement. I am also very grateful to the support and patience I have received from the Graduate School on numerous occasions. A debt of gratitude is owed to Diana Beaupré and Adrian Watkinson for their endless support and guidance throughout the entirety of the study. I would also like to thank Amanda Browne for supporting my funding application and Rachel Bowen for providing unwavering patience to what appeared at the time as endless concerns. Olive, Rosa and Michael have lived with this study for some considerable years and their patience has been exemplary: I thank you many times from the page. The numerous lifts supplied by Gerry to the library at unsocial hours have been appreciated and so has Julie Verhoeven’s unwavering confidence in my abilities. Lastly, I would like to thank Pearl who has been a constant companion throughout a study that during the past seven years has changed my life immeasurably. Published parts of this thesis are as follows: “More Sinned Against than Sinning: The Case for the Victorian Physiologist. Dovetail Journal. (2014): 23-49. (Chapter 1) “Women and Scientific Ambition in Late-Victorian Antivivisection Fiction. Viewpoint. British Society for History of Science. 111 (2016): 6-7. (Chapter 3) Loveridge 3 Introduction: Historical, Fictional and Illustrative Readings of the Vivisected Body 1873 – 1913 This thesis explores the late-Victorian context in which the anti-vivisection movement developed its critique of the practice of vivisection. There is a wealth of literature produced across the late-nineteenth century all of which demonstrate that the medical profession was challenged by the anti-vivisection debate. Based on articles from the Zoophilist, the official periodical of the Victoria Street Society; pamphlets, essays, fiction, poetry, and images of vivisected animals, this study focuses on the methods used by activists to articulate their concern that vivisection transgressed boundaries and instigated “a moral lobotomy on its practitioners” (Straley 355). By embracing a new historicism approach, this thesis adopts a parallel reading of literary and non-literary texts of the same historical period. Through analysing the movement’s periodicals, which have received little interest from scholarly research, alongside the fiction of the debate, this study considers why one strand of scientific investigation captured the imagination of a small section of society. This thesis does not place “literature on the one side and history on the other” (Bennett and Royal 118) or treat the categories of ‘literature’ and ‘history’ as intrinsically separate. Although acknowledging that literary texts transcend history, the writings of the vivisection debate determine an understanding of the time in which they are set. It was common for activist writers to use the courtship plot to drive the vivisection topic forward and for this reason, this study has selected fictional texts that incorporate such secondary issues as hydrophobia1 and the role of maternal nurturing. In doing so, this it will expand on earlier discussion that has focused upon women’s identification with the wounded animal to suggest positive interpretations within experimental science. The “scribbling women” (Smith 37) who wrote for the periodicals were 1 Rabies was the disease of the dog. In humans, the virus was recognised as hydrophobia. See Pemberton, Introduction. Loveridge 4 also those that successfully campaigned to change legislative rights for animals. By exploring the topics covered in specialist periodicals, this thesis interrogates why the anti-vivisection movement was considered, often in a disparaging context, a ‘women’s cause.’ As Mary Ann Elston has surmised, late-Victorian women were not only “wives and mothers, they were [also] the guardians of family health” (277). These women were fortuitously placed to recognise the moral cost of vivisection to domesticity. Anti-vivisectionists held the opinion that vivisectors lacked sympathy and needed to be ‘hardened’ to the pain of others to carry out their profession. In turn, pro-vivisectors diagnosed women anti-vivisectionists as suffering from ‘zoophile-psychosis’ (Buettinger 857) and were thereby able to categorise the activists with a mental illness and, in turn, attack the credibility of their judgement. At times, each side of the debate appeared more concerned with the character of their opponent, rather than the controversy per se. This study adopts the original stance in acknowledging the contributions made by both the pro and anti-vivisectionists, and to determine how the vivisected body came to be read as a literary object. HISTORICAL SETTING OF THE DEBATE The start date of this thesis is the publication date of John Burdon Sanderson’s Handbook for the Physiological Laboratory (1873). Sanderson was Professor of Physiology at University College London and co-edited the Handbook with Emanuel Klein, Professor of Comparative Pathology at Brown Animal Institution, T. Lauder Brunton, Professor at University College London, and Michael Foster, who held a Praelectorship in Physiology, Trinity College, Cambridge2. As Christopher Pittard suggests, the late-Victorians considered “[v]ivisection [as] suspiciously continental” (161) and Sanderson’s Handbook was the first British publication of physiology