Vivisection debate in nineteenth century Great Britain: a muted echo in colonial and early post‐colonial Australia

Absinthism: a fictitious 19th century syndrome with present impact

“…In Great Britain, the hostility against Magnans experiments led so far that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals prosecuted three English doctors for assisting Magnan in 1874 in demonstrating that intravenous injection of wormwood extracts into a dog induced epilepsy. The prosecution failed as Magnan had discreetly returned to France [ 48 ].…”

The biliary cycle of Moritz Schiff

“…39,40 The animal experiments that brought Moritz Schiff international recognition and acclaim as a physiologisthis published works, collected after his death by two former students, numbered more than 200 and filled 4 volumes 41 -led to his harassment and trial by the loosely organized anti-vivisectionist movement in Florence of well-to-do and intellectual locals and foreigners, as well as to his ill-advised late countersuit against his accusers and detractors and to his eventual escape to Switzerland. 28,[42][43][44] Whereas opposition to vivisection had its roots in the 18th Century, supported and publicized by philosophers, literary figures, and artists, 45 it made little headway then against the tide of scientific endeavor and especially not against the swell of physiological discovery by animal experimentation. Nowhere in Europe was concern over cruelty to animals more vocal and successful than in Great Britain, where its prevention became a watchword of 19th Century Victorian morality that promoted and was in turn spurred on by the passage of Richard Martin's Act in 1822 concerning the humane treatment of domestic farm animals.…”