Article ID: CBB174441189

Making the Anaesthetised Animal into a Boundary Object: An Analysis of the 1875 Royal Commission on Vivisection (2020)

unapi

This 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).

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Authors & Contributors
Boddice, Rob
Druglitrø, Tone
Shmuely, Shira Dina
Bittel, Carla Jean
Brinbacher, Dieter
Burkhardt, Frederick
Journals
Science, Technology, and Human Values
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Journal of the History of Ideas
Lychnos
Publishers
Cambridge University Press
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT
Lunds Universitet
Brock University (Canada)
Concepts
Vivisection
Animal experimentation
Controversies and disputes
Ethics
Animal rights
Science and ethics
People
Darwin, Charles Robert
Grysanowski, Ernst George Friedrich
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Schopenhauer, Arthur
Schweitzer, Albert
Ferrier, David
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
21st century
Places
Great Britain
Germany
Denmark
European Union
Norway
South Africa
Institutions
Royal Commission on Vivisection (1875)
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