Book contents
- Vivisection and Late-Victorian Literary Culture
- Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century Literature and culture
- Vivisection and Late-Victorian Literary Culture
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Protest
- Part II Reading Vivisectors
- Part III Representing Pain
- Part IV Writing as Vivisection
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2025
- Vivisection and Late-Victorian Literary Culture
- Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century Literature and culture
- Vivisection and Late-Victorian Literary Culture
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Protest
- Part II Reading Vivisectors
- Part III Representing Pain
- Part IV Writing as Vivisection
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Summary
In February 1903, Professors William Bayliss and Ernest Starling vivisected a terrier at UCL’s Institute of Physiology. Unbeknownst to them, two of the attendees were joint secretaries of the Anti-Vivisection Society of Sweden (see Fig. C.1). Lizzy Lind-af-Hageby and Leisa Katherina Schartau claimed that the dog was not anaesthetised, and hence the experiment breached the 1876 Act. The pair reported their findings to the Hon Stephen Coleridge, Secretary of the NAVS who publicised their eye-witness statements in an inflammatory speech at a public antivivisection meeting on 1 May 1903. First, however, he vividly set the scene of the crime: Gower Street was transformed into the Via Dolorosa and UCL’s physiological laboratory became ‘a pit of Tophet’ into which ‘passes a never-ending procession of helpless dumb creatures’.
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- Vivisection and Late-Victorian Literary Culture , pp. 222 - 230Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025