Humane Professions: The Defence of Experimental Medicine, 1876–1914 by Rob Boddice

Abstract

In this book, Boddice explores how medical scientists developed their defense of scientific experimentation on animals in late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Britain and United States, thereby causing drastic changes to the idea of medical humanity. In addition, the book analyzes the difficulties that both countries confronted and the strategies that they deployed against the anti-vivisection movement. The book argues that when scientific communities faced accusations of immorality from anti-vivisectionists, they not only acquired support from domestic and overseas scientific allies but also merged the scientific spirit with discourses of culture, rhetoric, politics, and gender to develop their own version of medical humanity.Boddice constructs his argument in five chronological chapters in the context of a longue durée (8). Building on his previous work, which focused on medical science as a sympathetic practice in nineteenth-century Britain (3), he analyzes old British and American official archives, medical records, and personal letters from the perspective of cultural, intellectual, medical, public, and gender history. He applies the tools of cultural anthropology to argue that scientific communities took moral economy into consideration when they planned their strategies to justify vivisection for medical research (7). In addition, the book uses the sociology of emotions and actor-network theory to explain how British and American medical authorities manipulated public opinion and sought transnational cooperation and interaction to counteract the protests of anti-vivisectionists (144–148, 151).The controversy surrounding animal vivisection dates back at least to the Enlightenment, extending into the nineteenth century in Western scientific medicine (55–56). The moral condemnation from anti-vivisectionists negatively impacted the governmental and public funding and support of British and U.S. medical scientists—all of whom accepted both Charles Darwin’s concept of evolution and the experimental medicine that had emerged in Germany (69–70, 78). To counter this growing opposition, Stephen Paget, leader of the British Research Defence Society, worked to translate professional medical knowledge and practice into an accessible language and to spread popularized scientific information to all classes of British society through publications, speeches, and media (114). Likewise, Walter Cannon, the leading figure of the American Defense of Medical Research, exploited publications and the media to portray medical practitioners as scientific pioneers and vivisection as a powerful tool for medical advancement (163).Both organizations used emotional messaging to win broad support. By 1914, they had transformed the image of experimental medicine, a male-dominated realm, from cold-blooded and inhumane to salutary, rational, civilized, humanitarian, and self-sacrificing. At the same time, they labeled the anti-vivisectionists as irrational, uncivilized, unpatriotic, ignorant, and emotional women (135–136, 171).Boddice closely and systematically reconstructs how the information network of British and American scientists was ultimately able to shift public opinion, not through dry academic research and statistics but through “emotional labor”—the use of personal stories and sentimental experiences (150). Although most previous studies of the history of animal experimentation have focused on the voices of anti-vivisectionists, this book also presents the conflict from medical scientists’ point of view, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of how the controversies originated.