In the sciences during the Romantic period, especially physiology, could have distinct connotations of both vulgarity and butchery. For example, Victor Frankenstein refers to natural philosophy as filthy process (37); and his mentor Waldman, modeled on Humphry Davy, warns him not to be petty experimentalist (31). The modifier here is somewhat surprising, given the verificationalist function within science, and also given the importance Davy placed on experiment. However, experiment could be either form of rote trial and error without knowledge or something to be done mindlessly and mechanically. Its associations with cruelty to animals did not help its prestige. Victor Frankenstein admits to such cruelty when he confesses that he has tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay (36). Shelley may have been alluding to the physiologist Albrecht Von Haller, who discovered the physiology of sensibility on the backs of the nearly two-hundred dogs, which died in the name of natural philosophy. Even Haller admitted a species of cruelty for which [he] felt such reluctance, as could only be overcome by the desire of contributing to the benefit of mankind (cited in Guerrini, 65). By the end of the Romantic period, the vulgarity of experiment seemed less of problem, and within science, instead re-acquired judgment, perhaps because the rise of objectivity had allowed experiments to become self-vindicating, term that philosopher of science, Ian Hacking, argues speaks to conjunction between the test of theory and both the apparatus that has co-evolved with it, along with modes of confirming data collection (30-1). (1) Even within physiology, experiment took on the need to deal with function. Historian of science, Andrew Cunningham has shown how, after 1800, physiological experiment on live animals became de rigeur. How did something relegated to the hand and to animal butchery cast off its vulgarity and become intellectual again? When Coleridge helped prompt William Whewell to coin the term, scientist, by insisting we must stop calling these men natural philosophers, he was not necessarily paying them compliment. For Coleridge, because they preferred mere empirical knowledge over and above metaphysical ideas, they no longer deserved the name of natural philosopher. (2) In this view, scientist was demotion. Why the opprobrium against petty experimentalists? When experiment is associated with rote trial and error, it requires no knowledge. The empirick was thus quack who knows nothing but skullduggery. In the conventional history of the Royal Society, experiment was often forsaken in favor of such forms of gentility as antiquarianism and virtuosity. Robert Mitchell suggests how the gentility of 17th century science was encouraged by the gift economy under which scientific experiment operated. But Boyle had little to do with actual manipulation of equipment--he respected the line between making machines work and making knowledge (Shapin 1988, 395). In other words, he kept his hands clean. One thus should consider both the gap between praise of experiment and the actual doing of it, and the ability of experiment to include thought experiments so as to avoid the dirty hand. In 2010, Shapin argued that experimental trials were more open ended, and therefore carried with them the sense of indiscipline (85), which did not reinforce the intellectual lustre of experiment. In the Romantic period, John Hunter ran semen through all the senses: looking at it, smelling it, and yes, tasting it. Or think of Galvani rotely testing one form of electricity over another to see what was generalizable. The fantasy that experimental practice is necessarily regimented and logically ordered allows scientific labor to look mechanical and machine-like, even as in the Romantic period, the machine, because of steam power, was becoming more human (Tresch). How then did experiment shed its vulgarity? …