Making the anaesthetised animal into a boundary object: an analysis of the 1875 Royal Commission on Vivisection

Author:

Holmes Tarquin,Friese CarrieORCID

Abstract

AbstractThis paper explores how, at the 1875 Royal Commission on Vivisection, the anaesthetised animal was construed as a boundary object around which “cooperation without consensus” (Star, in: Esterbrook (ed) Computer supported cooperative work: cooperation or conflict? Springer, London, 1993) could form, serving the interests of both scientists and animals. Advocates of anaesthesia presented it as benevolently intervening between the scientific agent and animal patient. Such articulations of ‘ethical’ vivisection through anaesthesia were then mandated in the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act, and thus have had significant downstream effects on the regulation of laboratory animals in Britain and beyond. Constructing this ‘consensus’ around the anaesthetised animal, however, required first excluding abolitionists and inhumane scientists, and secondly limiting the interests of experimental animals to the avoidance of pain through anaesthesia and euthanasia, thereby circumventing the issue of their possible interest in future life. This consensus also served to secure the interests of vivisecting scientists and to limit the influence of public opinion in the laboratory to administrative procedure and scheduled inspection. The focus on anaesthesia was connected with discussions of what supporting infrastructures were required to ensure proper ethical procedure was carried out by scientists. In contrast to the much studied polarisation in British society between pro- and antivivisectionists after 1876, we understand the 1875 Commission as a conflict amongst scientists themselves, while also being an intra-class conflict amongst the ruling class (French in Antivivisection and medical science in Victorian society, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1975).

Funder

Wellcome Trust

London School of Economics and Political Science

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Subject

History and Philosophy of Science,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous),History

Reference73 articles.

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3. An Act to Consolidate and Amend the Several Laws Relating to the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Animals, and the Mischiefs Arising from the Driving of Cattle, and to Make Other Provisions in Regard Thereto, 9th September 1835 (1835). In A collection of the public general statutes passed in the fifth and sixth year of the reign of his majesty king William the fourth, London (pp. 344–351).

4. An Act to Prevent the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle 22nd July 1822. (1822). In Statutes of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 3 George IV, London (pp. 403–405).

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