FROM MORALITY TO Abstract MEDICAL DANGER: ANTI- VIVISECTIONISM IN THE The trajectory of the ideological-literary NOVELS OF THREE LATE- anti-vivisection movement is traced across TH three successive English novels (by Wilkie VICTORIAN/EARLY 20 - Collins, Gertrude Colmore, and Walter CENTURY WRITERS1 Hadwen) and shown first to be morality- centred and character-focussed in its 2 directionality, but increasingly moving Tony Page towards scientific exposure of the practice as methodologically flawed and dangerously misleading for the human patient. This movement of narrowing focus upon the medical perils of vivisection is shown to reach its culmination in the ก ( Wilkie Collins, medical historiography of novelist Hans Gertrude Colmore Walter Hadwen) ก Ruesch, who abjures formal novel-writing but retains rhetorical and literary styles ก ก and devices in his presentation of the ก ก ก ก vivisection issue. ก ก Introduction ก ก ก ก In the past two decades, much revealing research has been carried out on the theme of vivisection in Victorian and early 20th- ก ก century English literature. Studies have ก ก tackled such topics as the symbolic parallelism between the vivisected animal ก Hans Ruesch and the vilified female form3; the unease ก ก felt by Victorians towards their changing world and the symbolic expression of that ก ก unease through the pains engendered in ก ก ก 3 Susan Hamilton perceptively writes: ‘… in the process of the sexualizing of vivisection, a conflation appears to take place between the act of vivisection itself and the object of vivisection: the vivisected animal body. As the result of this conflation, the vivisected body is simultaneously 1 ก ก :ก ก constructed as ‘sexual’ and ‘obscene’ ‘ Susan ก / Hamilton, ‘ “Still Lives”: Gender and the Literature of the Victorian Vivisection 20 Controversy’ in Victorian Studies Association 2 ( ) Lecturer, School of Humanities, of Western Canada, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Winter Bangkok University, Bangkok, Thailand 1991), p.33.
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the vivisection laboratory, and vivisection Heart and Science: The ‘as a metaphor for the human condition’ Predominantly Moral Focus (in the excellent Otis 2007: 47); the subtle re-enactment of a harmless form of The plot of Collins’s novel may very vivisection in the ‘tickling’ of the reader’s briefly be outlined as follows: a young, nerves in anti-vivisectionist ‘sensation’ overworked medical doctor named Ovid literature (Straley 2010); the familiarizing Vere—soon to leave England for a of the non-scientific general public with recuperative stay in Canada—meets and the reading of scientific journals in the falls in love with a distant relative of his, quest to expose the horrors of vivisection Carmina Graywell, who comes to stay at (Hamilton 2010); and how literature the London house of Ovid’s scheming and became used as a vehicle for the avaricious mother, Mrs. Gallilee. While mobilisation of an animal-defence agenda Ovid is away in Canada, Carmina is (Li 2006). treated badly by Mrs. Gallilee, falls ill and is deliberately rendered no genuine What has largely gone unexplored, medical assistance by a family however, is the changing focus of the acquaintance, Dr. Nathan Benjulia—a ideological literary struggle against keen vivisectionist who has been laboring vivisection as that struggle moved from for many years to understand brain disease almost total concern with moral issues and who now wishes to observe the towards a major critical questioning of the progress of Carmina’s illness in order to medico-scientific value and justification of write up in medical journals what he has the vivisection enterprise as a putative gleaned from such observation. Finally, means of understanding the aetiology and getting word from little Zo (Ovid’s treatment of human disease. charming young half-sister), Ovid returns to England with a cure for Carmina’s The present study seeks to trace the illness which he has discovered in Canada trajectory of literary engagement with without resorting to vivisectionist means. vivisection as perceived as first moral and Dr. Benjulia, disenchanted, releases his then increasingly medico-scientific laboratory animals and commits suicide. aberration, and exemplified in three major Ovid and Carmina marry. anti-vivisection novels by Victorian writers (although two of those authors th Collins’s subtitle for his anti-vivisection were writing into the early 20 century), novel runs: ‘A Story of the Present Time’. culminating in the renunciation of novel- th His work implicitly seeks to take a writing by the late-20 -century novelist, snapshot of what was occurring and being Hans Ruesch, in favour of a wholly discussed in relation to vivisection at the medical / scientific, yet rhetorically time of his novel’s composition framed, focus on the vivisection issue. (1882/1883). It is indeed symptomatic of that time that very little, if anything, was Our exploration begins with Wilkie said of the dangers for human physical Collins, one of the first celebrated health consequent upon the vivisection Victorian authors to tackle the vivisection methodology as a tool in medical research. question in novel form—in his ‘character Strictures against vivisection as a novel’, Heart and Science. collection of scientifically aberrant and potentially misleading medical
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investigative processes were to come later total abolition of the practice. She did not –and in incremental increase—in anti- base her opposition to vivisection on any vivisection literature, as shall be shown. claims of its unscientific nature, but on its cruelty, and the immorality and injustice it Collins’s bi-partite ‘Preface’ divides itself represented in man’s striving for improved neatly first into moral and then scientific health at the expense of suffering animals. concerns (the ‘Heart’ and ‘Science’ of the In 1891 she deploringly wrote: title). ‘Readers in general’ are told that the pre-eminent characteristics of novels The most portentous fact which find favour with the readership are concerning Vivisection is not that those centring upon character and humour, it is a cruel practice; but that it is a and which ‘enlarge the circle of [the justified cruelty … To contend reader’s] friends’ (Collins 1996: 37). This against Vivisection is, then, to is significant, as it indicates that within contend … against those besetting Collins’s moral purview, even so dark a sins of the age of which it is the character as his creation, the vivisector, outcome—selfishness, and Dr. Nathan Benjulia, should not be cowardice …’ (Cobbe 2004: 369 excluded from the circle of the reader’s and 371). ‘friends’: even such an animal experimenter is (or should be) within the It is in keeping with this prevailing tenor pale of the reader’s compassion, and of moral opposition to vivisection that should not be placed in a realm beyond Collins’s novel has little to say on the moral redemption. medical inutility of the practice. When he does address the scientific aspect in his The Preface then quotes Walter Scott Preface (directed now at ‘readers in (echoing Shakespeare’s Cymbeline) on the particular’), it is only to reassure his more ‘hardening of the heart’ that can ensue sceptical readership that his information from extreme scientific practice, and derives from scientific sources and is not further quotes Faraday on the need for the wilful product of his own imagination. man to display humility in the exercising He also mentions the ambiguity that can of his judgement. Both commentaries accompany certain vivisectional findings focus on the moral dimension of man’s in regard to the causes and results of brain engagement with the world, rather than on lesions, for instance—but this is little more the scientific efficacy of any techniques than a passing remark by Collins and is man might employ. This moral focus sets not expanded upon either in the Preface or the predominant tone for the whole of substantially in the novel itself. Collins’s Heart and Science in relation to the chief novelistic concern remains the subject of vivisection. delineation of character in relation to natural morality. It might be germane to advert briefly to the ideological context in which Collins The novel itself is launched with the was writing: for some years, the feminist, recurrent motifs of malady, malaise Frances Power Cobbe (with whom Collins (physical, mental and moral) and abuse of communicated on the vivisection nature: not only is the protagonist, Ovid question), had been Britain’s leading anti- Vere, one who has ‘cruelly wearied’ his vivisection campaigner, calling for the brain (Collins 1996: 45), one who has
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‘overwrought Nature’ (ibid) and now How sweet his music! on my life, stands in need of inner restoration; not There’s more of wisdom in it. only is his restive mother, Mrs. Gallilee, (Wordsworth 2014: 107) ‘in a state of indescribable agitation’ (Collins 1996: 47), but the very century Animals can further teach the avoidance of itself is described as ‘weary’ and ‘old’ excessive, debilitating labour, and the (Collins 1996: 45). The impression is resultant happiness. As Ovid’s friend and generated of a people and time enfeebled colleague, Sir Richard, comments, echoing and in a state of enervated disharmony Wordsworth’s dictum of ‘Let nature be with nature. your teacher’ (Wordsworth 2014: 107): ‘Look at my wise dog here, on the front A subtle imagistic link is also established seat, and learn from him to be idle and between Ovid Vere, the seemingly moral happy.’ (Collins 1996: 47). Man has to and blameless hero of the novel, and the learn to open his heart to the lessons and later ‘villain’, Dr. Nathan Benjulia: both liberty of nature, just as Benjulia, in a abuse brains—the one his own ‘cruelly break-through moment of moral lucidity, wearied’ brain, the other those of animals. will finally open up the cages of his Both are in revolt against nature, and both laboratory animals and let them regain transgress against a code of natural their natural freedom and therewith secure morality, wisdom and health which owes his own moral release and redemption. an unstated spiritual debt to Wordsworthian conceptions of the natural Unlike Dr. Benjulia, who is possessed of a world and harmonious human interactions tragic grandeur, Mrs. Gallilee, the true with it: nature, manifesting through plants, villainess of the story, undergoes no animals and young children (cats, dogs, epiphany in her life, and ends the entire tale birds, the gentle fluttering of leaves on as morally petty and purblind as she began trees—and young Zo, Ovid’s spontaneous it. For her, a signal token of intellectual and unaffected little sister), can be a progress through life is the dissection of the source of wisdom, tranquility, and nervous system of the bee (Collins 1996: healthful tutelage. Wordsworth in his ‘The 71). She regards such activities as proof of Tables Turned’ of 1798 speaks of her and science’s advance; but the ‘Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, narratorial tenor of the novel suggests Truth breathed by cheerfulness’ instead sympathy with Wordsworth’s (Wordsworth 2014: 107)—a cheerfulness, disapprobation of ‘Our meddling intellect’ natural good health and innate wisdom and with his trenchant apercu that ‘We markedly displayed in this novel by little murder to dissect’ (Wordsworth 2014: Zo. Speaking of children, Teresa, 107). It might perhaps be argued that Carmina’s travelling companion, linking Collins’s novel to Wordsworth’s rhetorically asks: ‘But what is a child— conception of nature and natural morality especially when that beastly governess has is to simplify the former’s work: this need muddled her unfortunate little head with not be the case, however, since it provides learning?’ (Collins 1996: 106). We almost a framework for understanding which, hear Wordsworth fulminating: while not all-encompassing and could be viewed as somewhat sentimentalized, Books! ‘tis a dull and endless strife: certainly is in harmony with central Come, hear the woodland linnet, aspects of Collins’s vision.
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I have said that Collins’s chief concern in Although on the occasion cited Ovid this novel is character allied to natural displays himself as not exempt from morality. That morality extends into the insensitivity towards animals (and thus the sphere of etiquette—even towards reader is enabled to see that ‘cruelty’ to animals. Since animals are depicted in this animals is a matter of degree, rather than story as very much sentient beings, of kind—Ovid and Dr. Benjulia stand on a capable of thought, sensitivity, pleasure moral continuum, rather than in wholly and pain, it follows that one should different worlds), his solecism vis-à-vis observe basic courtesy and consideration the terrier dog is overwhelmingly offset by towards them, and that failure to do so his general kindliness and compassion entails a moral lapse. When Mrs. towards animals more generally. His Gallilee’s little terrier dog is ignored by rescue of a neglected female black cat, for Ovid on one occasion, the narrator makes instance, wins him the eternal gratitude of it clear that the dog feels slighted and hurt: that animal (Collins 1996: 82-83) and ‘The dog’s eyes and ears expressed early singles Ovid out as a man of general reproachful surprise. His friend Ovid had moral rectitude. treated him rudely for the first time in his life.’ (Collins 1996: 78). Here again there What of Benjulia? Far from being the two- is a subtle link between Ovid and Dr. dimensional villain of some 19th-century Benjulia: whereas Benjulia hurts animals’ melodrama, he is a multi-faceted and bodies, Ovid is, on this occasion at least, ‘round’ character (in Forsterian terms)—a not above hurting their feelings. In the ‘remarkable man’, as the narrator calls him universe of discourse of this novel, even (Collins 1996: 94). Certainly from the the sensitivities of a dog count and are not moral perspective of the novel, he is a to be brushed aside as of no consequence. tragically flawed individual, prepared to inflict pain and torment upon animals in The implicit moral prohibition on rending order to wrest neurological and the bodies and feelings of representatives encephalogical secrets from their prostrate of nature goes even further. In an bodies. This is done less to advance insightful article, Jessica Straley human knowledge (knowledge is for him perceptively comments on how Collins merely a means to an ambitious end), but uses the image of ‘mutilation’ and far more to bring him fame and lasting ‘cutting’ in his Preface in reference to the glory in the annals of medical history. In vivisectionist writings he has consulted his quest for medical celebrity, he is even (Straley 2010: 371). Once again we see the prepared to let Carmina’s neurological activated sensitivity of the novelist, who illness go unchecked, so that he can study has become sensitized (even in humorous its progress and potentially publish the mode) to the vocabulary of pain and results of what he has discovered. Thus the suffering in spheres seemingly removed animal vivisector ends up being a kind of from those of the vivisection laboratory: human vivisector or abuser. This and yet the subterranean, verbal links corruption of basic human decency in the remain. For Collins, hurting animals and physiological experimenter is the moral even cutting into the pages derived from message of the novel, and is typical of nature (paper that issues from trees) gives concerns of those late Victorian years. pause for moral thought. Lewis Carroll, for example, sees vivisection’s most salient harm as lying in
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the vitiation of moral character which it bastard) takes its origin from himself: he is effects within the perpetrator, declaring in to blame. As he tells the good and kindly his anti-vivisection article, ‘Some Popular Mr. Gallilee (an exemplar of gentle, caring Fallacies about Vivisection’: ‘…[t]hat the humanity in the novel): ‘ “Can you take chief evil of the practice of vivisection these papers to your wife? … I called here consists in its effect on the moral character this evening – being the person to blame— of the operator; and that this effect is to set the matter right” ’ (Collins, 1996: distinctly demoralising and brutalising’ 254). He is thus a man who can (Carroll 1875: 853). acknowledge his own errors and attempt to make good the harm he has caused others Yet despite his more than dubious (this arguably prefigures his renunciation morality and distinct sadism (additionally of vivisection at the end of the novel). illustrated by his cruel treatment of his Furthermore, he has quite literally a ‘soft cook, highlighted in one semi-comical spot’ for little Zo – a child of nature and a episode of the novel), Benjulia is link to the realm of pure, unadulterated invariably ‘scrupulously polite’ (Collins, love. He takes pleasure in tickling her 1996: 99), indeed has the ‘manners of a spine. While the child herself displays an prince’ (Collins 1996: 97), and is unwilling submission to this (and this possessed of a tender physical touch which could be viewed as an unsettling sign of belies the savage use to which he daily power-abuse on the part of the vivisector), puts his hands. The narrator comments on the little girl yet does not actively dislike his soft fingertips: ‘Those tips felt like Dr. Benjulia, indeed she is not quite sure satin when they touched you. When he what she feels about him. He is for her, as wished to be careful, he could handle the for others, a mystery (Collins 1996: 97). frailest objects with the most exquisite delicacy’ (Collins 1996: 95). The reader at Coral Lansbury sees a hidden and this stage of the narrative is unaware of the disturbing significance in Benjulia’s nature of Benjulia’s work, so that the tickling of Zo: he is sexually molesting the subsequent revelation that he is a little girl and is in truth a paedophile! vivisector comes with an amplified shock- Lansbury further views the stick which effect. Benjulia habitually carries, and with which little Zo likes to play, as a phallic symbol Adding to this picture of a complex, (Lansbury 1985: 140). Both of these seemingly self-contradictory character is claims are arguable (utilizing a depth- the fact that Benjulia is to some degree a psychological, Freudian approach), and man of honour: once he realizes that he yet they strike me as perhaps somewhat has wronged the good name of Carmina by extreme and ultimately without powerful implying that she was born as an evidentiary or ancillary substantiation ‘illegitimate’ child (an erroneous view from the novel itself. I agree with Jessica deriving from misinformation supplied Straley, when she writes: ‘… the tickling him), he seeks to make good his error by shared by Benjulia and Zo should not be passing on to Mrs. Gallilee (the novel’s so quickly characterized as the antithesis true villain) some legal documents which of proper feeling’ (Straley 2010: 368). rectify his mistake. He admits quite Rather than piling on the horrors relating candidly that the slander spoken by Mrs. to Benjulia’s character, Collins is Gallilee (namely, that Carmina is a attempting here to be balanced and just -
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to show that even such a seemingly callous them all to die a gruesome and fiery death individual as the animal experimenter can – but he does not do so. Even the large, be ‘touched’ by natural innocence and limping dog which tries to fawn on made to open up his heart, to whatever Benjulia as it emerges from the lab is sent small degree, to the ingress of human away after its fellows (Collins 1996: 323): affection, even love. He might be an ‘ugly if it had remained in the proximity of the beast’ (Collins 1996: 95), but as a ‘beast’ experimenter, it would run the risk of he is still linked in to the sphere of nature being burnt in the inferno which Benjulia – he is not utterly divorced from it. He is about to ignite. Benjulia’s suicide is a feels a subliminal connectedness to the self-sacrifice by one who has for too long very human in this novel who most been prepared to sacrifice the lives of embodies uncorrupted naturalness. It is for others but who now wishes to save them this reason that Benjulia leaves all of his from protracted pain and immolation. It is earthly possessions indeed to little Zo in this desperate, despairing and yet morally his final will and testament: she alone has redeeming final act by Benjulia that allows been able to reach into a heart that has his creator, Wilkie Collins, to bestow on been hardened by the practice of him (an implied Jew), as he does in the vivisection and kindle there a small flame final pages of the novel, a ‘Christian of human sympathy and relatedness. burial’ (Collins 1996: 324). While there is a definite deployment of irony here, this The most marked advance in the moral authorial decision nevertheless represents progress of Benjulia’s character comes the writer’s magnanimous gesture of indeed at the very close of his life—when respect towards a man who has finally he realises that another researcher has pre- abjured vivisection and its malefic works. empted him in the understanding of brain disease (and has done so without resorting One might query whether Benjulia truly to vivisection) and consequently decides has taken a step forward into greater that his own life needs to be terminated in humanity at the end of the novel; yet it a holocaust of the very laboratory where remains difficult to account for his he has laboured for so many years without liberative act towards the lab animals success. Significantly, Benjulia swiftly except in terms of a nascent stirring within puts to death those animals too grievously him of a sense of compassion and caring— maimed by his experiments to survive (in no matter how late and how minimal that a sense, he bestows upon them a merciful stirring might be. In fact, Benjulia would ‘coup de grâce’), and he releases all the appear to be the first animal experimenter other animals strong enough for such in the work of a major Victorian novelist freedom before poisoning himself and to pace from the role of daily animal setting fire to the lab. This act of animal torturer to active animal liberator, and thus liberation (the adjective, ‘liberated’, is anticipate the ‘animal liberation’ pointedly used by the narrator) is not the movement that was to burst upon the action of a monster; rather, it is the last world with powerful effect in the second gesture this side of death of a man who has half of the 20th century (one thinks of seen the error of his ways and wishes to Professor Pietro Croce’s turning away free his laboratory creatures from the from decades of vivisectional experiments incarceration and torment he has so long to a subsequent commitment to scientific inflicted upon them. He could have left anti-vivisectionism and animal liberation –
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see Croce 1991). There is no functional or represent a thematic advance on Wilkie practical reason (from a self-orientated Collins’s almost exclusively moral and viewpoint) for Benjulia to free his animals. ‘characterological’ engagement with the Yet he performs this act—and this saving vivisection question. While Colmore is deed of pity and compassion would seem still wedded to an overwhelmingly ethical to hint at a degree of moral regeneration. objection to experimentation on living For Collins, the vivisector might be an animals, she propels the debate forward by ‘ugly beast’ or animal—but precisely for giving greater prominence to two aspects this reason is not to be viewed as that Collins had scarcely touched upon: 1) irredeemably and immutably excluded the risk of active, non-consensual human from the circle of nature. ‘Beasts’ are very experimentation in hospital settings, much a part of nature. Thus, Benjulia is stemming from the callousness that the potentially connected in to nature and can vivisection process brings about in the even become empowered to function as its medical researcher and clinician; and 2) liberator. There is, of course, more than a the scientific dubiousness of the degree of irony in this unexpected turn of vivisectional methodology, on account of events which all but brings the novel to its cross-species variations, which also close. problematises any attempts at reliably extrapolating (physiologically and Priests of Progress: Scientific therapeutically) from animal to man. Anti-Vivisectionism Puts in a Tentative Appearance Whereas Collins had at most allowed his vivisector, Benjulia, to practise a form of
‘passive’ human vivisection on the ailing As we move forward to the next major Carmina (by wilfully conniving at the anti-vivisection novel of our study— physician Mr. Null’s ineffective treatment Gertrude Colmore’s Priests of Progress— regimen), Colmore goes a step further and we enter an expanded world of anti- has her characters speak of surgical vivisection debate. Her novel is not a interventions upon patients carried out ‘sensation novel’ – a category to which solely for the purpose of gaining or Collins’s work indubitably belongs – but demonstrating knowledge, rather than for operates from a more spiritually-centred the therapeutic benefit of the patient focus upon the lives of several medical involved. The anti-vivisectionist and non- students and the varying paths they tread conformist, John Cameron, comments: ‘… in the course of their careers. The novel in Vienna … women in the hospitals, portrays practising vivisectors and equally pregnant women, and babies, new-born convinced anti-vivisectionists (both lay and unborn, form subjects for experiment and medical), with the latter group … [and] in America … experiments are highlighting the moral and spiritual performed on the inmates of the hospitals, reasons for a rejection of vivisection the asylums and the prisons …’ (Colmore chiefly (but not exclusively) on moral 1908: 46). Colmore details and grounds, and with scientific objections personalises one such example of human now beginning to break the surface of experimentation carried out in a British ideological discussion. hospital: the wholly unnecessary excision
of the ‘superior maxilla’ from the Gertrude Colmore’s 1908 anti-vivisection impoverished Sarah Jennings’ jaw and the novel, Priests of Progress, does indeed
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resultant needless disfiguring of that animal cruelty inflicted in the course of human victim’s face (Colmore 2008: 40- vivisectional experimentation. He writes: 44, and 331). ‘Seen as a whole, a remarkable shift had taken place. Ridicule against any and all The fear that animal vivisectors would so scientific undertakings, which naturally morally degenerate as to become human included animal experimentation, had been vivisectors is one that had already been replaced by the moral argument precisely expressed by a number of writers of this against this practice’ (Maehle 1990: 51). period, including Lewis Carroll, who in his 1875 essay, ‘Some Popular Fallacies Another ‘remarkable shift’ was now About Vivisection’, foresees underway in the literary treatment of vivisection—from an almost total focus … a day when anatomy shall upon the moral dimension of vivisection’s claim as legitimate subjects for evils to a burgeoning awareness of experiment, first, our condemned vivisection as a dubious scientific criminals – next, perhaps, the methodology. This theme is first sounded inmates of our refuges for by the novel’s long-standing female anti- incurables – then the hopeless vivisectionist, Judith Home, who discusses lunatic, the pauper hospital- the difficulties inherent in trying to apply patient, and generally “him that animal data to the human patient. In quest hath no helper” ’ (quoted in the of a cure for a given malady, a vivisector fine article by Mayer 2009: 440). might perhaps have performed hundreds of experiments upon various animals. The As regards specifically animal problem, however, remains the following: experimentation, Colmore (like Collins before her) regards vivisection as a The experiments yielded varying manifestation of the most immoral cruelty. results. That the effect of certain Her AV (anti-vivisectionist) heroine, processes, certain drugs, should David Lowther, puts it succinctly: ‘ “It is be different in a guinea-pig from simply that I am persuaded that vivisection what it is in a dog, may not is cruel, and persuaded also that of all appear surprising; that it might be immorality cruelty is the most immoral” ’ different, again, in a human being (Colmore 1908: 306). It is such moral would seem presumable… objection to vivisection’s cruelty which Having vivisected some hundreds predominantly shapes and directs of animals in vain, he did not Colmore’s attack upon the practice. This reason that no certain result was sense of moral horror at wanton cruelty in that way to be attained … towards animals had become (Colmore 1908: 177-178) commonplace amongst numerous British writers ever since the 17th century. Writing This slightly tentative statement of the most informatively on literary responses to problem receives more forcible vivisection in 17th and 18th-century Britain, enunciation from the lips of human- Andreas-Holger Maehle traces the experimentation advocate, Dr. Giraud, movement from its initial satirical when he declares: mocking of science and scientists to a growing sense of moral outrage over
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It is a fact that there is an no utility was not as secure and unbridgeable gulf between the unshakeable as her moral objection to the animal and human kingdoms, and practice on grounds of its cruelty. One results ascertained in the one registers the sense that the author resorts to remain problematical in the other. certain key elements of ‘scientific anti- The inadequacy of experiments vivisectionism’ largely as a propaganda upon animals only is indisputable expedient to turn the reader against animal when you consider that there are experimentation, rather than such a view certain maladies peculiar to man stemming from deep-seated and alone, and that some of them exhaustively considered conviction—as will cannot be reproduced in animals be seen to be the case with Dr. Hadwen, and (Colmore 1908: 238). especially Hans Ruesch much later on.
A specific example of such a malady to Illustrative of this ambivalence towards, or which the novel indirectly refers is vacillation of attitude regarding, syphilis—a human ailment that initially vivisection’s potential for human utility was not able to be modelled in animals. and benefit, the following statements from different characters, significantly placed in A further element of complication in the the run-up towards the novel’s conclusion, vivisection methodology is raised by jump out of the page and almost Judith in her address to an audience of unconsciously prompt a grudging medical students when she points out that acceptance in the reader that animal physiological investigations upon animals experimentation can be of value in the are always carried out ‘under abnormal quest for knowledge and the banishing of conditions’ (Colmore 1908: 313), which disease: do not mimic everyday life-conditions in man. The artificially diseased and There is something more precious artificially caged laboratory animal is not … than knowledge, even accurate comparable to a spontaneously and knowledge; more precious than differently ‘environmented’ human physical gain, even assured gain; patient. the spiritual progress of man. Any method of acquiring anything, These critiques of vivisection, not as a whether it be knowledge or ease, morally reprehensible practice alone, but material advantage or mental also as a scientifically questionable one, power, any method which inflicts constitute a major strategic step forward in pain upon any sentient creature, the literary assault upon the citadel of save for the creature’s benefit, is animal experimentation in the early years against that progress. Vivisection of the 20th century. Yet Colmore’s central appeals to the two basest instincts focus remains fixed upon the moral of humanity – selfishness and unacceptability of hurting animals in the cowardice; instincts which delay name of human advantage. On a number man’s march, and degrade his of occasions, she slips words onto the lips nobility. Shall man take of her characters and even into the motto knowledge of his body, comfort of of her novel which indicate that her his body, in exchange for his personal belief that vivisection possessed soul? (Colmore 1908: 262)
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These words, spoken by John Cameron, trying to escape from suffering is articulate a clear distinction between the one of them (Colmore 1908: 269; spheres of physical gain (which here emphases added). means knowledge of human health and sickness, and deliverance from the pains of There is no condemnation of vivisection as physical malady) and spiritual progress. an un-scientific methodology here; rather, The implicit assumption is that vivisection there is acceptance of it as a valid pathway can deliver knowledge (‘even accurate to valuable, therapeutic knowledge. There knowledge’) and can bring relief for man is only rejection of it on purely moral from human physical ailments—but that grounds. we should reject such gains. The final words are, of course, a re-casting of the A little later, David, after reading a famous aperçu by Christ (to which we particularly unpleasant vivisectionist tract shall return) and place the moral focus and with the evident approval of the squarely upon the realm of vivisectionally narrator, reflects that not all vivisectors are derived knowledge and ease relating to cruel or engaged upon trivial research. man’s physical being. Some do actually secure worthwhile attainments which are not vitiated by After having secretly witnessed her excessive amounts of animal suffering: husband perform a vivisection experiment, the heroine of the novel, David Cranley- That all vivisectors were not like Chance (née Lowther), rejects animal the author of the book, she was experimentation, even though she well aware; even in the reaction of implicitly concedes that it could bring her present attitude she preserved benefit to humanity: ‘… there is a sufficient impartiality of something in me which would rather judgment to remember that there suffer pain than benefit by doing to an were men marching under the animal what you—what was done same flag as that author, whose yesterday’ (Colmore 1908: 268), she tells motives seemed to themselves her husband. She becomes even more humane, whose methods were not explicit in her view that, yes, vivisection wilfully barbarous, whose can deliver human beings from the pains scientific achievements were not of sickness, but that such a price is too grotesquely out of proportion to high to pay. Speaking of her little, afflicted the [animal] suffering they daughter (significantly named ‘Vi’— entailed (Colmore 1908: 273- reminiscent of the term ‘vivisection’ and 274). the suffering with which it is linked), she passionately asserts: David then muses that the type of human progress which truly matters does not You know what it means to me to pertain to the physical body, but solely to see Vi suffer; or it hurts, perhaps, the moral or spiritual sphere: more than you know. But there are prices that one can’t pay, And she realized, reading and however much one may want thinking during those strange what they would buy; things one days, that there is in man can’t do. This scientific way of something more important than
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the desire for material … Gale, questioning, formulated his knowledge; that there is for man a answer in yet another question: higher destiny than the conquest ‘What shall it profit a man if he of pain, or even the conquest of gain the whole world and lose his Nature. Vaguely, to be sure, and own soul?’(Colmore 1908: 351; slowly, the realisation dawned in emphases added). her consciousness that the spirit of man is a reality and not a The spiritual, moral and transcendental theological conception, and that aspects of man’s being are here accorded the development of that spirit far higher value than any upgrading, as it means the only real advance of were, of his corporeal condition. Yet that humanity (Colmore 1908: 274). the physical side of man can be enhanced and its longevity extended through animal It is difficult to escape from the impression research is clearly suggested here. that vivisection is here viewed as an efficacious tool in the fight against human The final Christ-quote—which had earlier physical suffering, but that man should in the novel been encountered in nevertheless set such gain aside and leap paraphrased form upon the lips of John up to a more exalted spiritual vantage- Cameron—powerfully implies in its point and forego the benefits that context that vivisection can indeed bestow vivisection can bring. upon humanity ‘the whole world’, but that it would be wrong to take possession of Deeper into the novel, David’s much- such a global benefit when it has been admired anti-vivisection friend, Judy, gained via unethical channels. That this claims—astonishingly in view of the doubly-presented dictum of vivisection’s earlier scientific doubts regarding potential benefits for mankind in the war vivisection which had been mooted – that: against disease, despite its moral ‘There is primarily no medical or scientific repugnance and unacceptability, represents aspect of this question … The question is the final and considered view of Gertrude fundamentally a moral one’ (Colmore Colmore is rendered incontestable by the 1908: 314). Less than thirty pages before author’s selection of precisely this quote the novel’s close, one of its leading anti- as the motto of her entire novel. For vivisection ‘heroes’, Dr. Sidney Gale, is Colmore, there are incipient, but not yet able to ponder in the following manner on deeply imbedded, doubts about the the potential human health benefits scientific utility of vivisection, but these acquired through vivisection and yet to are overshadowed and overpowered by the abjure those benefits due to the immorality much greater inner certitude that of the practice: vivisection is a moral and spiritual evil.
Was the gain worth the price? Did When we come to Dr. Walter Hadwen’s the end commend the means? anti-vivisection novel, The Difficulties of Would man, trampling on those Dr. Deguerre, no such medical / scientific weaker than himself, denying his doubts or ambivalences remain: there is higher intuitions, abjuring the solid certainty that vivisection is from its immortal to put on an added very inception and in its potential mortality; would man gain much?
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therapeutic products ill-conceived, around a number of debates on vivisection unscientific and possibly dangerous. held by members of a certain ‘Argumentative Club’. The Difficulties of Dr. Deguerre: Scientific Anti- As indicated above, The Difficulties of Dr. Vivisectionism Takes a Deguerre diverges markedly in tone, emphasis and subject-matter from the anti- Firm Stand vivisection novels which preceded it. Whereas Collin’s Heart and Science Hadwen’s story can only loosely and focusses primarily upon character and generously be termed a novel, as it is far plot, and Colmore’s Priests of Progress more of a compendium of discussions held powerfully engages the moral and spiritual by the main characters of his story on the dimensions of live-animal theme of vivisection. The eponymous hero experimentation, and a novel such as The of the tale, Dr. Deguerre, sets out as a Healers (Maartens, 1906) sees the believer in the efficacy of vivisection, but vivisection issue as an opportunity for by the close of the novel has become humour, satire and persiflage (and in this convinced by the informed scientific regard revives a tradition of vivisctional arguments of his friend, Mr. Vigor, that mocking prevalent in the 17th and 18th vivisection is a medically useless and centuries4), Hadwen’s novel (according to potentially dangerous practice for the its own lights) attempts to overturn the human patient. medico-scientific arguments that underpin vivisection as an allegedly valid With this incursion of the medical doctor, methodology in scientific and therapeutic Walter R. Hadwen, into the territory of research. literary anti-vivisectionism, a sharp turn is taken away from chiefly moral arguments Hadwen launches a putatively scientific against the practice of live animal assault not only upon such practices as experimentation towards a full-frontal vivisection, but also upon vaccination and attack from a mainly medical and the very germ theory of disease which scientific quarter. often underlies them. Hadwen stands firmly in the ‘miasma camp’ as to the Hadwen wrote his ‘story’ (as he correctly aetiology of disease, refusing to endorse terms it) in 1913, and it was published in the relatively recent opinion (from instalments between the years 1913 and Hadwen’s standpoint) that germs are 1918 in the British anti-vivisection bearers of disease. The fact that his journal, The Abolitionist (Hadwen 1926: scientific views are now seen by most 7). It was then published in full as a bound medical researchers today as outmoded is volume in 1926, effectively as a putative novel. As indicated, in outer form it is 4 construable as a novel; yet it does not For the predominantly satirical and mocking tone of 17th-and 18th-century British literary display the primary interests of the expressions of anti-vivisectionism, see the traditional novel, namely character and excellent article by Andreas-Holger Maehle, incident. It might more appropriately (and ‘Literary Responses to Animal still generously) be described as a Experimentation in Seventeenth- and serialised dialogue novel structured Eighteenth-Century Britain’ in Medical History, 1990, 34: 27-51.
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not relevant to the present article, since it 1983: 269). Such a stance betrays a is Hadwen’s marshalling of (what he perverse form of anthropomorphism—a deemed) scientific and medical evidence casting of the animal body and physiology to oppose vivisection which is of central into the likeness of man. Ironically, the concern to this study. charge of anthropomorphism was, and frequently still is, leveled against anti- Statistics are called upon, statements from vivisectionists; it is regarded as the vivisectors and anti-vivisectors before the actuating force behind their opposition to Victorian Royal Commission on the practice. Maehle all but concludes his vivisection are cited, and logic is adduced otherwise excellent article with the to show that attempting to extrapolate following claim: ‘True anti-vivisectionism physiological information from animals to emerged only with the anthropomorphism man constitutes an essentially unscientific of the Victorian age’ (Maehle 1990: 51). modus operandi, since the physiology and Dr. Hadwen was a Victorian, by birth and anatomy of animals and humans vary to culture. Yet his approach to anti- such a marked and unpredictable degree vivisection was to highlight the differences that no dependable correlation between the between animals and humans, rather than two categories of living beings can be dwell on their likeness. Indeed, it can drawn. Numerous examples of ‘species justly be claimed that Hadwen’s AV differences’ as between man and the stance was overwhelmingly anti- ‘lower animals’ are invoked (as, for anthropomorphic, as the following example, the fact that lemon juice, a health anatomical and physiological reflections drink for humans, proves to be a fatal by the young naval surgeon in his novel, poison to cats and rabbits), and the novel’s Dr. Drew, indicate: initially pro-vivisectionist medical doctor, Deguerre, finally comes to the following ‘We all have four limbs – just the realisation of vivisection’s inherent same ground plan in man, in dog, uncertainty as regards the results it in bird, or in the denizen of the delivers, particularly in the field of water, but the developments are so pharmacological testing: different and the functions of each so distinct, that whilst all need The point is, that experiment with organs to breathe with, mouths to drugs on animals is not scientific receive food, stomachs and investigation; you cannot be sure intestines to digest it, and kidneys when you have obtained a certain and livers and other organs for result in an animal, that you will secretion and excretion, yet each get a corresponding effect in a of these organs has been modified man (Hadwen 1926: 557-558). to the condition of life belonging to each particular creature and its This is the diametrical opposite of the habits, until its physical and dictum of vivisection’s most celebrated physiological economy have (and, in other quarters, most execrated) become part and parcel of its own founding father, Claude Bernard, who order or genus or species, and can apodeictically declared that ‘… results constitute no guide whatever to obtained on animals are perfectly the economy of the order or genus conclusive for man’ (quoted in Ruesch
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or species of another kind’ physiological, split between man and the (Hadwen 1926: 375). ‘lower’ animals.
Hence, as Dr. Drew also remarks, ‘… the Yet it would be inaccurate to claim that processes of physiology in an animal body Hadwen totally rejects all moral are apt to be misleading [vis-à-vis man] opposition to vivisection. He does not. He and are never conclusive’ (Hadwen, 1926: simply believes that as a campaigning 374). Drew further rejects any form of strategy the moral aspects should be reactive parallelism not only between relegated to a subservient position in the laboratory animals and man, but also struggle for vivisection’s abolition. When between the varying animal species his novel’s kindly bishop urges that AV themselves in their response to treatment, activists should appeal to the moral observing: conscience of the public in their agitation against animal experimentation, the ‘When you come to treat any of novel’s chief AV proponent, Mr. Vigor, these animals for the disease you counter-balances this with the need to are supposed to have induced, you point out the scientific failings of the will probably find that a dog will vivisection practice, saying: react quite differently from a cat, and a guinea-pig will react in an ‘… you are never going to win altogether contrary way from a your battle solely on those [moral] rabbit, and the whole of them lines, if you fight till the crack of differently from a human being. doom … You will have to fight At least, that is the conclusion I the question on the scientific side, have come to ...’ (Hadwen 1926: if you are going to win. You will 374). have to prove to the public that vivisection is an unscientific This is a stance that is radically different practice, that it is misleading in its from that embodied in some of the anti- results, that it is useless, that the vivisection comments provided by the erroneous conclusions deduced Victorian writer, Robert Lewis Stevenson, from experiments on animals whose vivisectionally hued 1885 novella, have, again and again, led to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. seriously prejudicial Hyde, and even more so his short story, consequences. You must show The Scientific Ape, not only closely link that it has never assisted in the the animal to man, but man to the animal. slightest degree in the As Chris Danta rightly points out: amelioration or cure of any human ‘Stevenson likens humans and animal not disease …’ (Hadwen 1926: 586). just physically but metaphysically. In so doing, he raises the question of the The eponymous hero of the novel, Dr. animality of human beings’ (Danta 2010: Deguerre, concurs and concludes the 58). Hadwen, by contrast, does the precise entire debate with a statement that sees the opposite and emphasises the differences moral question embraced into the between animals and humans in an effort equation, but with greater emphasis to highlight the physical, indeed accorded to the scientific side:
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‘From my experience among paving the way for literary vivisection to medical men, I am fully move entirely away from the expressive convinced that, if ever the anti- but fictional format of the novel and into vivisection cause is to succeed, that of a discursive, yet eloquently anti-vivisectionists must be articulated, indictment of vivisection, prepared to answer the stock based upon an array of factual, medical medical arguments advanced on and scientific documentation. This reaches behalf of experiments on animals, its culmination in the figure of Hans and they must be prepared to Ruesch, celebrated Swiss novelist who weigh the subject historically and turned his back on fiction entirely to scientifically in all its bearings, expose in largely scientific, historical and and the man or woman who fails psychological terms the very real dangers to do that must expect defeat … he saw in the vivisection methodology for anti-vivisectionists, to be the human patient. successful, will have to wield the double-edged sword that not only Slaughter of the Innocent: presents the immorality of the The Seminal High-Point practice, but also its stupidity and of Scientific Anti- danger. The moral conscience is reached sooner by fear and Vivisectionism ridicule than by high ideals unsupported by scientific facts’ Walter Hadwen and Hans Ruesch can (Hadwen 1926: 591). justly be viewed as the two progenitors of the modern ‘scientific anti-vivisection’ Vigor had pointed to the ‘seriously movement. Additionally, they were prejudicial consequences’ of the responsible for shifting anti-vivisection vivisection methodology, and Deguerre literature away from the traditionally now explicitly speaks of the medical constituted novel as a suitable literary danger of vivisection for the human vehicle for anti-vivisection argument patient. In entering this conceptual towards a more discursive non-literary territory of what might be termed medico- form. Hadwen’s Difficulties of Dr. critical alarmism (basing itself on Deguerre is a novel in outer form only and vivisection’s dangerously misleading teeters on the brink of being undiluted results when transferred to the human polemical discourse, not centrally clinical sphere)—territory barely trodden concerned with the delineation of human by Collins, Colmore and their character at all (although, of course, a contemporaries5 - , and through the chiefly variety of characters and character traits scientific thrust of his story, Hadwen is are presented to the reader).
5 Hadwen had long been dead when Ruesch In this regard, contrast with Hadwen’s entered the anti-vivisection arena, and the scientific approach the almost exclusively moral, anti-torture stance regarding vivisection English doctor’s name had all but been evinced by AV novelists such as Berdoe, forgotten (although was not entirely Cassidy, Corelli, Daal, Graham, Huntly, unknown to Ruesch). Yet Ruesch, through Macdonald, Marston, Maxwell, Melena (in his own multi-lingual researches into whose novella vivisectionists are also medical and scientific journals, arrived Satanists), as well as H.G. Wells.
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independently at the Hadwenite view that who have been harmed and killed by a vivisection was a medical aberration and dangerously misleading medical should be attacked chiefly along scientific investigative methodology. In this, he goes lines. beyond Dr. Hadwen, although in principle following the cue Hadwen had supplied. Paradoxically, whereas Hadwen—a physician and not a professional writer— Towards the end of his seminal work,6 turned, at least superficially, to the novel Ruesch states: format to give expression to his anti- vivisection views, Hans Ruesch, a Vivisection has proved far worse professional novelist of considerable than merely futile; it has proved standing and popular acclaim, did the directly responsible for damages precise reverse, renouncing fiction-writing to public health that are increasing for good, in order to devote himself to a and proliferating in geometrical medical and scientific exposé of progression … (Ruesch 1983: vivisection’s fraudulent, pseudo-scientific 346). underpinnings (as he declared them to be). He did this, however, with the skilful and A brief example of such damage to human impassioned eloquence of an health might be apposite at this juncture. accomplished novelist. The most notorious case cited by Ruesch is the morning-sickness drug, Slaughter of the Innocent (first published Thalidomide. This was extensively tested in 1978) is a history of the advent and on a variety of animal species and found to growth of vivisection in anatomical and be damaging to ‘neither mother nor child’ medical research, and a refutation of its (Ruesch 1983: 360). Yet in humans it alleged scientific and medical benefits. wrought major malformations in the The book is, in fact, a species of medical developing foetus (the ‘teratogenic’ effect historiography and further seeks to achieve –literally, ‘monster-making’ effect): some its goal of disproving vivisection’s 10,000 humans were born with what is viability by marshalling a wide range of medically termed phocomelic limbs statements from doctors and scientists on (foreshortened, malformed arms and legs). vivisection’s unreliability as a scientific A public outcry erupted and the methodology. The books was later manufacturer of the drug, the German followed by the similarly-themed Naked pharmaceutical company Chemie Empress (1986) and 1,000 Doctors against Grünenthal, was arraigned. Hans Ruesch Vivisection (1989). comments:
For the first time in a factual work on animal research, Ruesch not only 6 Slaughter of the Innocent directly inspired rehearses the familiar moral arguments scientifically orientated manifestations of anti- against vivisection, but reveals the great vivisectionism such as Pietro Croce’s harm to human health for which he indicts Vivisection or Science: A Choice to Make; R. the practice. The title, ‘Slaughter of the and J. Greek’s Sacred Cows and Golden Innocent’, thus refers not only to the Geese: The Human Cost of Experiments on slaughtered animals of the vivisection Animals, and the present author’s Vivisection laboratories, but equally to human patients Unveiled: An Exposé of the Medical Futility of Animal Experimentation.
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The discovery of the drug’s that ‘there is no animal test capable of effects on man had required years. indicating beforehand that human beings, While the first birth defects in subjected to similar experimental human beings were becoming conditions, will react in similar or identical increasingly evident, the fashion’ (Ruesch 1983: 362). resumption of animal tests just didn’t confirm the suspicions, no With Ruesch, anti-vivisection literature matter how high the concentration moves away from the formal structures of given—thus confirming for the novel, but retains the eloquence and another long, fatal period the passion often associated with that literary assumption of the drug’s form. A typical example of Rueschian harmlessness, and so the prose might be the following, taken from manufacturers saw no reason to the first pages of his work: withdraw it. Until the evidence became overwhelming: Although Every day of the year, at the hands harmless to animals, Thalidomide of white-robed individuals caused malformations in man, and recognized as medical authorities, Chemie Grünenthal was or bent on getting such recognition, incriminated for having marketed or a degree, or at least a lucrative a harmful drug (Ruesch 1983: job, millions of animals—mainly 361). mice, rats, guinea-pigs, hamsters, dogs, cats, rabbits, monkeys, pigs, It was eventually found that with turtles; but also horses, donkeys, experiments on the white New Zealand goats, birds and fishes – are rabbit, teratogenic effects were indeed slowly blinded by acids, obtainable, as also from a few monkeys. submitted to repeated shocks or Ruesch remarks, however, that this was: intermittent submersion, poisoned, inoculated with deadly diseases, … after years of tests, hundreds of disemboweled, frozen to be different strains and millions of revived and refrozen, starved or animals used. But researchers left to die of thirst, in many cases immediately pointed out that after various glands have been malformations, like cancer, could entirely or partially extirpated or be obtained by administration of the spinal cord has been cut. practically any substance in high concentration, including sugar and The victims’ reactions are then salt … (Ruesch 1983: 361). meticulously recorded, except during the long weekends, when Chemie Grünenthal was finally acquitted the animals are left unattended to of malpractice after expert upon expert meditate about their sufferings; declared that a pharmaceutical company which may last weeks, months, could not be blamed for the large-scale years, before death puts an end to non-transferability of animal test data to their ordeal – death being the only man. Even Professor Widukind Lenz, who effective anesthesia most of the had managed to obtain some teratogenicity victims get to know … (Ruesch in monkey offspring, testified at the trial 1983: 1-2).
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This has all the evocative power of a am still fighting with what little strength popular ‘sensationalist’ novel and employs remains …’7 the literary devices of alliteration, consonance, anthropomorphism, Although his expressive writings failed to repetition, verbal agglomeration and bring about the abolition of vivisection for climactic intensification for the purposes which he was calling, Ruesch’s bold views of bringing home to the reader the horror on the wrong turning which he deemed of the practices performed in the medical science to have taken by entering experimental laboratories. Thus while vivisectional territory influenced Ruesch has abandoned the novel as a subsequent writing and campaigning structural form, he has retained literary against animal experiments. In a 2010 and rhetorical techniques that can be found scholarly volume on Arguments about embedded within it. In a sense, one could Animal Ethics, for instance, the authors do argue that the medical facts and histories not frame the vivisection debate in favoured by Ruesch are embedded in a reference to its moral or ethical parameters literary style that brings him close to the (as one might expect), but focus on its ‘sensation literature’ of Wilkie Collins. scientific/ medical unreliability and This does not diminish Ruesch, but merely dangers, writing: indicates his awareness of the value of literary techniques and devices in the … modern vivisection does not spearheading of an ideological campaign. accurately predict human outcomes because of the To the very end of his life, Hans Ruesch complexities of genetics and refused to revert to novel-writing while molecular biology, a problem that vivisection continued unabated; yet in his sometimes produces fatal results discursive writings he made use of in human consumers … animal rhetorical strategies and his considerable experiments fail to predict human literary skill in the dissemination of what outcomes more than 95 percent of he saw as the scientific truths regarding the time (Goodale and Black the medical fraudulence of the vivisection 2010: 129 and 145). enterprise. This medico-scientific stance towards In his final two years of life, Ruesch vivisection traces its ideological lineage planned to republish a compact booklet, back to Hans Ruesch’s Slaughter of the CIVIS Answers Questions on Vivisection Innocent. Ruesch’s focus on the inutility (the distilled essence of Slaughter of the and positive dangers of the vivisectionist Innocent), which he had written some methodology for human pharmaceutical years earlier for his anti-vivisection consumers additionally gained him entry organisation, CIVIS, on the medical into a university textbook on literary, dangers of vivisection. This booklet artistic and scientific ideas which have eschewed moral arguments against animal markedly impacted upon the contemporary experimentation altogether. In one of his world. In a section entitled, ‘The Natural final letters, Ruesch wrote: ‘I am almost World’, the authors of Past to Present: blind, close to 93 and ready to go. But I
7 Personal communication to the author, 12 March 2006.
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Ideas that Changed Our World historiography. It remains to be seen into (Hirschberg 2002) include Hans Ruesch as what expressive forms the advancing a significant figure. Fourteen pages of decades of the 21st century will take excerpts from Slaughter of the Innocent discussion of the vivisection issue in its are provided. Ruesch here finds himself in struggle for a final resolution. illustrious company, since amongst the other luminaries cited and lauded in ‘The References Natural World’ are naturalist Charles Darwin, novelist and essayist Mark Twain, Berdoe, Edward. 1887. St. and ethologist Konrad Lorenz. Bernard’s: The Romance of a Medical Student. London: Swan Sonnenschein. Conclusion Carroll, Lewis. 1875. Some Popular It has been shown that it is possible to Fallacies about Vivisection. Fortnightly trace within the trajectory of anti- Review, XXIII, June 1875: 847-854. vivisection literature a movement extending from the sphere of the Cassidy, James. 1897. The Gift of Life. traditional novel (with its chief focus on London: Chapman and Hall. character and morality), into that of a retention of the outer novel form (while Cobbe, Frances Power. 2004 abandoning most of the inner content and (1891). The Significance of character concerns of the novel), to a Vivisection. In Animal historico-scientific popular presentation of Welfare and Antivivisection anti-vivisectionism written with a 1870-1910, Vol. 1, edited by novelist’s literary skill, keen eye and Susan Hamilton, pp. 369-372. verbal facility—culminating in a scholarly London: Routledge. work celebrating seminal ideas (including those of anti-vivisection) emerging from Collins, Wilkie. 1996. (1883). the artistic, literary and rhetorical arenas. Heart and Science, edited by Steve Farmer. Peterborough, In literary discourse on the vivisection Ontario: Broadview Press. debate, fiction in the guise of the novel moved increasingly towards fact and Colmore, Gertrude. 1908. eventually relinquished the overt and Priests of Progress. New formal novel structure altogether. One York: B. W. Dodge and might say that the trajectory of the animal- Company. experimentation debate followed a movement in fictional format from Corelli, Marie 1900. The Master predominant engagement with the medical Christian. London: Methuen. immorality of the practice to a marked reduction in moral polemic and a Croce, Pietro. 1991. Vivisection or heightened focus upon the therapeutic Science: A Choice to Make. Lugano: inutility and dangers of biomedical animal CIVIS. research—this in the form of factual but eloquently articulated medical
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Daal, Marie. 1885. Anna, the Professor’s Lansbury, Coral. 1985. The Old Brown Daughter. London: Swan Dog: Women, Workers, and Vivisection Sonnenschein. in Edwardian England. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Danta, Chris. 2010. The Metaphysical Cut: Darwin and Stevenson on Li, Chien-hui. 2006. Mobilizing Vivisection. Victorian Review Literature in the Animal Defense 36.2: 51-65 Movement in Britain, 1870-1918. Concentric: Literary and Cultural Goodale, Greg and J. E. Black. 2010. Studies, January 2006: 27-55. Arguments about Animal Ethics. Plymouth: Lexington Books. Maartens, Maarten. 1906. The Healers. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz. Graham, Leonard. 1881. The Professor’s Wife. London: Chatto and Windus. MacDonald, George. 1878. Paul Faber, Surgeon. London: Strahan. Greek, C. Ray and J. S. Greek. 2000. Sacred Cows and Golden Geese: The Maehle, Andreas-Holger. 1990. Literary Human Cost of Experiments on Responses to Animal Experimentation Animals. London: Bloomsbury 3PL. in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth Century Britain. Medical History Hadwen, Walter R. 1926. The Difficulties 34: 27-51 of Dr. Deguerre. London: C. W. Daniel Company. Marston, Ellis. 1900. Of the House of Chloe. London: Simpkin and Marshall. Hamilton, Susan. 1991. ‘Still Lives’: Gender and the Literature of the Maxwell, W. B. 1906. The Guarded Victorian Vivisection Controversy. Flame. London: Methuen. Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada 17.2: 21-34. Mayer, Jed. 2009. The Vivisection of the Snark. Victorian Poetry 47.2: 429-448 ---. 2010. Reading the Popular Critique of Science in the Victorian Anti Melena, Elpis. 1897. Gemma, or Virtue Vivisection Press: Frances Power and Vice. Bavaria: Monaco. Cobbe’s Writing for the Victoria Street Society. Victorian Review 36.2: 66-79. Otis, Laura. 2007. Howled out of the Country: Wilkie Collins and H.G. Hirschberg, Stuart and Terry Hirschberg. Wells Retry David Ferrier. In 2002. Past to Present: Ideas that Neurology and Literature, 1860-1920, Changed our World. Harlow: edited by Anne Stiles, pp. 27-51. Longman. Palgrave: Macmillan.
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