The Old Grey Mare:

Caroline Earle White

The Founding American
Woman in Animal
Welfare and
Anti-Vivisection
Arahshiel Rose Silver

NOTE: This is a first draft of a book I had been looking to put together dedicated
to the work of Caroline Earle White. It has not been proofread or reviewed for
readability, so I apologize if readers find it dry or clunky. There are also areas in
which text has not been completed.

©Arahshiel Rose Silver 2019

1
 DEDICATION:
It goes without saying that this book is dedicated to the memory of Caroline Earle
White – an incredibly compassionate woman whose tireless adherence to her
principles no doubt touched the lives of thousands of animals and human beings.

Finally, this book is dedicated to the faculty and staff of the University of Illinois at
Springfield; without their support, this project would probably have never
happened. Thanks to them, this Old Grey Mare has had the opportunity to talk
about America’s version of the Old Brown Dog

2
3
 Introduction

"Mrs. Caroline Earle White, one of the many bright women whom Philadelphia is proud to
claim, is famous both as philanthropist and literatour. She was literally the founder of humane
education in her native city, which owes many of its substantial charities to her early energy and
interest, while her first effort in fiction was judged by so able a critic as the editor of Harper's
Monthly to be the equal of "Paul and Virginia" in simplicity and beauty. In person Mrs. White is
tall and dark her handsome face showing the marked strength and determination of her
character. Her Summer home is upon that sandy arm of Nantucket Island known as Brondt's
Point, where here "white squadron," a trim little yacht, oarboat, and rowboat, all of dazzling
white, ride in anchored readiness before the pretty verandaed cottage. 1

On September 28, 1833, a daughter was born to Thomas Earle and Mary Hussey. Thomas
was a Philadelphia lawyer and an ardent abolitionist who would run as a vice-presidential
candidate on the anti-slavery ticket in 1840. Hussey was the cousin of Lucretia Mott, famous
anti-slavery speaker. 2 White was born one year after the Anatomy Act of 1832 and three years
before one of the first U.S. anti-cruelty laws was passed in Massachusetts. In 1854 she would
marry Richard P. White who was her long-time husband and supporter. After she converted to
Catholicism, two years later, she would serve as President of the St. Vincent’s Aid Sociey and
Chairman of the “Ladies Auxiliary of the American Catholic Historical Society.” Although her
husband was the first to make her away of organizations to help end cruelty to animals, she
would not be able to pursue these interests until after the Civil War. 3 She was also a woman of
education, with Miss Elizabeth Somers saying of her: “She… had a profound reverence for the
truth and would not willingly deviate a hair’s breath from it… She was a linguist and was wont
to say it gave her more pleasure to study a language that to read the most interesting novel every
written…Astronomy was a science in which her interest never seemed to flag.” 4

Little Caroline would grow up in a Philadelphia that would become famously satirized in
George Lippard’s serial novel The Quaker City: Or the Monks of Monk Hall. Lippard’s story
about ‘The City of Brotherly Love’ would be the most widely read serial work before Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The work was disparaged by some as a work of
sensationalist fiction which tarnished the image of Philadelphia, or at least some of its most
wealthy inhabitants. However, the reality was that the city was not free of scandal, controversy
and cruelty. While we cannot know White’s opinion of Lippard’s work, she would have quite
likely agreed with some of Lippard’s portrayals of leading figures, especially the corrupt and
sadistic Dr. McTourniquet.

1
(New York Times)
2
(Researchers) 30.
3
(Researchers) 36-37
4
(Researchers) 53.

4
 What we do know is that Caroline Earle White was attuned to the suffering of animals at
an early age. “[A]s a little girl of seven or eight years of age,” she would later recount, “she
would go some distance out of her way, when sent upon an errand, to avoid seeing the mules
around Penn Square, in Philadelphia, severely beaten with blacksnake whips.” 5 White’s
compassion animals would eventually inspire her to found two humane societies, the
Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Women’s Branch of the
Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She would also found the
American Anti-Vivisection Society, the first of its kind in the United States. She became
internationally known for her humanitarian work and did not shy away from meeting critics
head-on. A tireless advocate for the voiceless, she also warned of the dangers that humanity
would face should the consideration of kindness and compassion toward all beings be ignored.
With many of her concerns still with us today, in the 21st century, White was both a trailblazer
and a prophet.

5
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)6

5
 Pre - 1867

While the history of animal and human experimentation goes back even into the ancient
world, the particular style of animal experimentation that would become the focus of Caroline
Earle White’s ire had its roots the seventeenth century. According to Anita Guerrini, experiments
on animals became more widespread in the seventeenth-century, a time in which “most...
scientists did not believe that the "beast-machine" notion of Descartes implied that animals felt
no pain.” 6 Almost as soon as this was accepted as fact, great numbers of experiments began to be
conducted in almost any way imaginable; all for the sake of what Samuel Pepys would describe
as a “pretty experiment.” 7
By the eighteenth century, more prominent notice began to be given to the issues of
animal welfare. William Hogarth’s “Four Stages of Cruelty” portrayed the fictional life of Tom
Nero. The series of engravings seek to warn of the outcomes of animal cruelty. Nero has abused
animals in childhood, beats his horses, and, eventually, murders a woman. 8 Nero’s reward for his
abuses, according to Hogarth’s work, is his posthumous dissection as part of an anatomy lecture.
In 1758, Samuel Johnson would describe physicians as “wretches, whose lives are only varied by
varieties of cruelty; whose favorite amusement is to nail dogs to tables and open them alive.” 9
The early nineteenth-century saw its first real victory in the fight to prevent cruelty to
animals. In England in 1822, Richard Martin and William Wilberforce successfully worked
together to get the first piece of anti-cruelty legislation passed. The bill forbade cruelty to farm
animals and would later be expanded to include protections for cats and dogs. 10 William
Wilberforce, most famous for his anti-slavery work, would prove to be a consistent ally in the
fight to prevent the abuse of animals.

Grave-Robbing and Medical Murder

"Bye the bye, Byrnewood did ye ever read those accounts of 'burking' folks in London? Five men
hung at once for murdering live people, on order to sell their bodies to the Doctors! It’s my
opinion that the same thing is done in this good Quaker City.
~Dr. McTourniquet~ 11

In 1829, the city of Edinburgh witnessed what was arguably the most disturbing grave-
robbing trial in history: it involved not only grave-robbing but also murder. William Burke and

6
(Guerrini) 45
7
(Carson) 38.
8
(Shevelow) 129
9
(Guerrini) 60
10
(Guerrini)79
11
(Lippard)535

6
William Hare were put on trial for the crime of murdering individuals in order to turn the bodies
over for dissection. While Burke was eventually hanged, Hare escaped the penalty, along with
Doctor Robert Knox, who was the requisitioner of the bodies. However, the court’s decision to
show leniency toward Hare and Knox was not approved of in popular opinion. According to Tim
Marshall’s Murdering to Dissect: Grave-robbing, Frankenstein and the Anatomy Literature,
Edinburgh residents protested and sang the following in the streets: "Burke's the butcher, Hare's
the thief, Knox the boy who buys the beef.” 12
Another historian, David Sappol, in his work, A Traffic of Dead Bodies, also addressed
the public’s distrust of the medical profession. In Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft’s’ 1818 work
Frankenstein, Dr. Viktor Frankenstein’s creation, was “a constitution as a mass of plebeian
bodies,” Sappol states that the socioeconomically disadvantaged empathized with the victims of
grave robbing. He states that they felt sympathy “with the dissected … that they could almost
“feel” the dissector’s scalpel carve into their flesh, which in turn triggered a ‘visceral’ response:
rioting, fearful tremors, overwhelming grief and anger.” 13 In truth, Shelley’s work is still
relevant to us today and is invoked in ethical controversies ranging from genetically modified
food animals and the creation of chimeric creatures in medical labs.
Although more humanitarian-minded individuals such as the aforementioned Jeremy
Bentham donated his body to science in 1832, there was a shortage of bodies available for
medical dissection. This shortage would result in the medical professions’ push for legislation
such as the Anatomy Act of 1832 which allowed doctors to take the unclaimed bodies of the
poor for dissection. At the Philadelphia Almshouse, says Michael Sappol, inmates accused the
physicians and employees of “buzzardism,” and described them as “inhumane” and
“predatory.” 14 In the 1850s, a physician and group of students were almost tarred and feathered
in western Pennsylvania for stealing cadavers. In 1854, a group in Ohio pronounced the
following resolution: "That we most solemnly believe that those who have no regard for the
dead, can have but little respect for the living, and those who respect neither the dead nor the
living should never receive the confidence of the public." 15 Despite such opposition, the same
year saw the passage of the “Bone Bill.” The Bone Bill would legitimize the turning over of
corpses of prisons and poorhouses for dissection. Reacting to the state of such practices, Joseph
Cook would denounce the medical profession as "a class of men who...have neither hope of
heaven nor the fear of hell before their eyes - who laugh at the jest and top off the bowl, while
before them quivers the flesh of inanimate humanity." 16

12
(Marshall) 1-2
13
(Sappol)169
14
(Sappol)18
15
(De Ville) 70
16
(Sappol) 247

7
 Early to Mid-Nineteenth Century Medical Chaos and Sexism

All honor to the "Herald," that, unbiased by commercial considerations, holds its even way on
the path of investigation and exposure of evil. It is true that the headlines of its initial page on
April 18th startled our conservative citizens - "160 ORPHANS (so it read)", "MANY OF THEM
BABYES, USED IN TESTS MADE BY PHYSICIANS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF
PENNYLVANIA, TO WHOM THE LITTLE ONES ARE KNOWN AS 'HUMAN MATERIAL'" 17

Even as cruelty to (some) animals began to become subject to legal penalties, and while
laws were being created to reduce grave-robbing, a new challenge would be appearing on the
horizon: widespread animal experimentation and even live experimentation on the
socioeconomically impoverished. The early to mid-nineteenth century was also rife with the
release of hundreds of untrained medical professionals upon the general public. For example,
early M.D. candidates needed only to take two winters of schooling and attend a few lectures in
order to earn their ‘degrees.’ According to historian Harold J. Abrams, “by 1820 [this was]
universal practice in American medical schools because it was the custom in Philadelphia." By
the 1840s, evidence of the inadequacies of such hastily produced physicians began to appear in
the form of malpractice suits, and the number of cases would only increase. By 1853, the
Western Journal of Medical and Physical Sciences stated that suits occurred almost every month
in the year.
Other disturbing instances involving members of the medical profession would also
appear. In 1850, in an event which White opponent Dr. W.W. Keen would remember (fondly?)
as his first experience reading about medical professionals, the public would learn of a case of
doctor murdering doctor, an act performed in a most gruesome way. The infamous case of the
murder Dr. Parkman shocked the public as the victim was found meticulously dissected. 18 One
year later “the first use of vivisectional demonstration in the teaching of physiology was
performed by John Call Dalton, an American physician who had studied experimental
physiology with the infamous Claude Bernard. 19
Sexism in the medical profession was also present in the 1850s. The year 1850 saw the
opening of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, however, these women’s schools would
come to be regarded as little better than boarding schools and their graduates regarded not so
highly as hoped for.” 20 Anti-vivisection ally, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, who would become the

17
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)____
18
(James) 110
19
(Lederer)
20
(Abrahams) 176

8
first woman in the world to receive a medical degree, earned her degree in Geneva and only later
moved to the United States in 1851.
As for the other Philadelphia medical schools, their reputations left much to be desired.
Some of the diploma-selling schools of Philadelphia got their start around this time. One of the
most notorious, one Dr. Buchanan, jumped in employment from porter to professor at the
Eclectic Medical College of Philadelphia. By 1867, he held the charter for the American
University of Philadelphia; a school he used in order to make money via the sales of diplomas to
those with little to no qualifications. Later, when running for office in 1869, he issued free
diplomas among African American communities as an incentive for their votes. 21

21
(Abrahams)436

9
 1867-1870

"I am much obliged for the enclosed sketch which pleasured and amused me very much. I am
glad you go about in "high top boots" ferreting out abuses and attending to the wants of the often
persecuted "brute creation." I should like to see you at your work. If I were a man, I am quite
sure I would follow your example, but as it has pleased the Almighty God to create me a woman,
I must be satisfied with a more limited sphere of labor and do the little good that I can with my
tongue.

'For years I have never been able to cross Broad St without an inward shudder, and I have many
times gone several squares out of my way to avoid crossing where a train of coal cars was about
being started. Some of my friends have told me I was morbid upon the subject, but yet I know
there are men in the city who feel as I do about it (202)" 22

Eleven years after her marriage to Thomas Earle and her subsequent conversion to
Catholicism, Caroline Earle White would found the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals. The year was 1867. It was just one year after Henry Bergh founded the first
organization of its kind in the United States, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals, and one year before George Thorndike Angell founded the Massachusetts Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The PSPCA would get off the ground with the help of
generous donors such as Mr. Richards Muckle of the Public Ledger and S. Morris Waln. It’s
President would be Mr. Wilson Swain. 23

White would also found the first animal shelter in the United States, that organization
born in 1869. 24 The next year, Philadelphia contributed $2,500 toward her humane work. This
shelter was the first of its kind in its efforts to care for the stray and unwanted animals of a city.
In 1870 the city allowed the society $2,500 to meet the expense of the work.

She would always emphasize the importance of humane education and she worked
tirelessly to get it introduced into the schools. Said white of the work:

“The idea of humane education is to teach children in the first place that animals have
certain rights, and that in view of all of the services they render to us, and the vast amount of
comfort and happiness that they add to our lives, they are entitled to good treatment and to

22
(White et al.) 202
23
(Researchers) 38.
24
(W. H. Society)

10
protection at our hands…Children are taught also that everything which ecists, even the smallest
insect, as long as it is not needed for the necessities of man and does not interfere with his safety
or comfort or convenience, has a right to live and that it is wrong to kill it; that they must step
aside to avoid crushing even the harmless bettle in the roads. This creates in their minds a respect
and regard for life per se and there is little danger that a child brought up in this manner will ever
become a murderer.” 25

“Bands of Mercy” were formed in some Philadelphia schools.______________________

White never forgot her work for the children, and she was a part of the founding of the
Philadelphia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and would become part of the
Executive Board..

Animal Welfare and WSPCA

It is interesting to consider the tone of White’s note to Bergh, especially since she would
found the Women’s Branch of the PSPCA only a year later in 1868, a move which,
unsurprisingly, evoke criticisms toward White on the account of her sex. After all, it was
uncommon to find women in leadership positions or so publicly taking part in politics and
discourses, and for a woman to found an independent organization was especially courageous.
On the other hand, due to its Quaker foundations, Philadelphia was probably one of the most
likely places for such an action.

The WSPCA (now known as the Women’s Humane Society), according to its First
Annual Report stated that its “inception included “[a]bout thirty ladies, with Mrs. Richard P.
White President, signed as first work to employ an agent to inspect horses for abuse
(overloading, sores, beating).” 26 Some of the first of the organization's goals was to call for the
reduction of passenger loads for horses and to ask for an end to the exceptionally cruel way in
which stray dogs were rounded up and killed. To give the reader an idea as to the view of the
abuses of the horse, Edward Mayhew of England, in the same year, 1868, declared that "[n]o
living creature could be more exposed to the willfulness of perversity than the horse has hitherto
been." 27 Mayhew would also comment on the state of medical education:

"Another individual shall earn disgrace at college. Yet this many shall start business
to knock about the drugs and hack at living flesh, without comprehending the parts
he is interfering with or having any knowledge of the medicines he ventures to
administer. This last person, though he neither adorns nor enlarges the sphere in
which he acts, invariably attains the lucrative repute of being "a purely practical
man." The notoriety brings profit to the object that merits no reward, while the

25
(Researchers) 41-42.
26
(Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, First Annual Report of the
Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals)3-4
27
(Mayhew) V

11
 absence of such fame acutely increases the sufferings of a deserving gentleman who
dared to brave the thorns which proverbially beset the pathway of desert to the
recognition of society.” 28

The period between 1867 and 1870 also showed that trouble was brewing in the
hatcheries of the medical community. In 1870, it has been suggested that perhaps half of Harvard
students could not write. Major suspicions regarding the operation of the some Philadelphia
medical schools were also being voiced in the Philadelphia Journal of Medicine and Surgery, “A
libel published in the Medical and Surgical Reporter, on the Philadelphia University of Medicine
and Surgery, and which the editors retracted, when the strong arm of the law was placed before
their obtuse intellects, has developed a fact to which we called the attention of a profession a
long time ago; that is, one more of the medical schools is selling diplomas...." 29 Signs that there
was still a perceived shortage of bodies 30 for medical students included the passage of the
Pennsylvania Anatomy Act of 1868, which stated that mortuaries and prisons had to turn over
unclaimed bodies to the medical schools. It wouldn’t be enough.

28
(Mayhew)xi-xii
29
(Abrahams) 342
30
And that there was perhaps an awareness that illicit body-snatching activities continued.

12
 Ag-Gag Laws

“If you would understand the dual nature of man at his present stage, look first
at his churches, his cathedrals, his school houses, his asylums, his hospitals,
his laboratories of science, his observations of the heavens, and then pay a
visit to the Chicago stockyards!” 31
~F.H.R. Garrett P. Serviss~
From the Journal of Zoophily, Volume XXII, Issue 5, 1913.

Of the many issues which Caroline Earle White pursued with great fervor, and an issue
which remains at the forefront of many animal rights organizations today, was the humane
treatment of animals destined for human consumption. Railway transportation would become a
focus of attention, with the United States experiencing a surge in the number and length of
railways across the nation. In the age in which ‘robber baron’ became a commonplace term, it
wasn’t just investors or workers feeling the painful pinch. Abuse of animals on the railways was
an urgent enough issue to cause White to personally travel to Washington in defense of a bill
defending livestock, stating that “[f]earing that a fate similar to that of the preceding year might
befall it in the Senate, unless some attempt was made to influence that body, I went on to
Washington last May, accompanied by one of the ladies of our Society.” 32 White reported that
she was received courteously and, in this case, the legislature was amenable to her cause, and the
law was passed on March 3, 1873.

The 28-Hour Law, as it was known, was the first federal protection law for animals, and
was the result of the efforts of those who witnessed the horrific suffering of the cattle and other
animals that were being raised largely in the western and southern United States. It stipulated
that animals being transported could not be kept without food, water or exercise for periods of
time that exceeded 28 hours. However, despite the optimism of White and other allies at the time
of the law’s passing, as is so often the case with legislation that threatens to cut the profits of
moneyed interests, constant challenges to the law and lack of enforcement would haunt
advocates for decades to come. As a matter of fact, White would return to Washington in 1900,
with a Mrs. Totten of the Washington Humane Society, to again personally advocate for the
cattle, successfully preventing legislation initiated by western railroad companies that intended to
increase the minimum time from 28 hours to 40. Certainly not alone in questioning the
motivation for this increase in time, a later request for the same adjustment caught the attention
of the New York Evening Post. In a 1903 article, the paper said of the Live-stock Association’s

31
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)70
32
(Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Fourth Annual Report of
the Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Crulety to Animals) 6-7

13
request: "And all this to increase the profits of an organization which boasts that it represents a
capital of $600,000,000!" 33

The WPSCA claimed some notable victories in respect to the law in at this time, such as
1897’s case: Woman's Branch of the S.P.C.A vs. the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad.
Leading agent, Thomas S. Carlisle, responded to a report that a car-load of horses had arrived in
perilously bad condition. Evidence collected from others, including some of the employees of the
railroad (testimony which White attributed to Carlisle’s “skill and tact,”) showed that the horses
had endured at least fifty-two hours without water and rest, with only a modicum of hay which
had been provided at the inception of the journey. 34 The complaint, which was received on
November 27, 1895, which would take over two years to resolve in court, ultimately resulted in a
guilty verdict in December 1897 and a fine of $200. 35 In 1902, the WSPCA prided itself in its
Thirty-Third Annual Report that “the year is memorable on account of our having instituted five
prosecutions of the Reading Railroad Company for violation of the act of Congress preventing
cruelty to animals in transit, and having obtained a conviction in all these prosecutions.” 36

One of the ways in which White attempted to work with the railway companies after the
passage of the law was to negotiate with transporters for better railway cars. In the WSPCA’s
seventh-annual report, White spoke optimistically of the invention of cars that would provide at
least the food and water demanded by the 28-Hour Law, if not the exercise or rest. Along with
attempting to achieve her ends by wisely appealing to the ‘bottom-line’ interests of industry.
Pitting the cattle ranchers against robber barons, White encouraged the ranchers to challenge the
railway owner’s practices of delaying cattle trains in favor of higher-paying freight trains.
Ultimately, according to White’s account in 1908, two of the cattle rancher associations wrote
“to Dr. Stillman on the subject, and as this is precisely what we want, the two so long conflicting
factions are now in harmony." 37

The issue of cattle transportation, although not usually immediately associated with the
popular perception of ‘humane societies,’ was always high on White’s list of concerns. In 1876,
seven years before the founding of the AAVS, she spoke of its priority in the following way:
"[n]ext to cattle transportation, the evil which we have felt has most demanded our attention is
Vivisection.” 38 Her watering fountains, distributed throughout Philadelphia, supported not only
horses and dogs, but also served to quench the thirst of cattle, with the WSPCA citing at least
once incident of a near-stampede of cattle to one of the fountains in 1890.

33
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)____
34
(Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Twenty Eighth Annual
Report of the Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) 3.
35
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 26-27
36
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 27-28
37
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 30
38
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)6

14
 Poultry, too, received consideration from White’s quarter. In 1901, then Superintendent
Thomas S. Carlisle responded to frequent reports of cruelty in the transportation of fowls;
complaints that appeared to come in the greatest numbers during the Thanksgiving and
Christmas seasons. Not only did that year see the crowding of transported fowls addressed, but
the Philadelphia legislature was persuaded to pass a law which was described as “giving many
details as to the size and appointments of a building which should be used for the killing of
poultry." 39 Such successes were also cited internationally. In a 1902 White received a copy of an
Indian publication entitled “Railway Horrors” which addressed the need to reduce suffering in
the transportation of cattle in India, but also included a section entitled "American Women's
Noble Work." The segment, which detailed the WSPCA’s recent Reading Railway prosecutions,
directly discussed the “efforts of our Superintendent, and the diminution in the number of fowls
picked while alive." 40

------------
White’s concern for the treatment of cattle did not end at the end of the railway line,
however. In 1890, some thirteen years before Upton Sinclair’s iconic work, The Jungle, was
published, WSPCA agents Currier and Royal were involved in the prosecution and trial of a
West Philadelphia abattoir. White, harboring hopes that the abattoir would be improved was
disappointed to find that even prosecution did not persuade the owners to rebuild the
slaughterhouse in a manner that “would allow a humane and merciful way of slaughtering the
cattle” but, rather seemed to exacerbate the suffering. 41

Concern regarding the sheer amount of cruelty involved in mass slaughter, and the
psychological effects that slaughterhouse work had on workers, was not limited to Chicago and
Philadelphia. In 1901, The Journal of Zoophily, under the heading “Is This Civilization?”
discussed the publication of an article, “A Glimpse of Hell,” an article which described the
conditions of slaughterhouses in Kansas City. The piece described the vast number of killings
(“The killing bed for hogs contains about one hundred at a time”) as well as sharing with the
reader that the animals “more often than not arrives live and kicking…” 42
Although White was an advocate of transparency in matters involving animal welfare, the
Journal of Zoophily article also indicates the disturbing fascination that the spectacle held for
some people, "The creatures who flock to the scene of carnage become so fascinated that they
are with difficulty driven from the spot…One well-dressed woman was noticed with a twelve-

39
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 50
40
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 122
41
(Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Twenty First Annual
Report of the Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevetion of Cruelty to Animals)11
42
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)4

15
months old babe in her arms, taking in the picture. 43 The Zoophily treatise draws particular
attention to the effects which such work could have on women and children. 44

"What do you think of little boys, twelve to fourteen or fifteen years old, with rubber boots on
reaching their thighs, wading in and scooping blood all day long, and girls of the same tender
age cutting and slashing in all this bloody meat from morning until night? What kind of men and
women do you think they will be when matured? What kind of progeny will they produce?" 45

The detrimental effects on the workers were also discussed in the annals of Zoophily,
with various issues, such as the possibility that such work resulted in ostracization and
demoralization of workers. Leading member of the WSPCA and the AAVS, Mary F. Lovell
poignantly asked in 1907: “And what about our brother man? What humanness is there in
providing a brutalizing, degrading, disgusting, occupation which, because the pressure of
necessity, some of our brother men must undertake.” 46 Annie Besant’s trip to the Chicago
slaughterhouses in 1903 caused her to state in an article that “these men are made a class
practically apart from their fellows,” while Rev. Wilbur T. Atchison was to have reported that a
Whitechapel 47 butcher, when asked how he could handle the horrors of the slaughterhouse,
replied “I'm only doing your dirty work, sir. It's such as you makes such as us." 48 Such words
mirrored those of Upton Sinclair who stated that “it can be hard to get a man to understand
something when his salary depends on him not understanding it." 49

Religious traditions were also challenged, with efforts to make the Jewish methods of
slaughter less painful. In 1886 the WSPCA managed to enact changes which included the usage
of rope rather than chains in the suspension of cattle for kosher slaughter. I also required that the
rope would be placed around both of the hind legs rather than only one. Outside of the United
States, laws that outright banned such methods were enacted, including one in Switzerland
passed in 1894, a move which the WSPCA called “a great step for the Societies for the
Protection of Animals to have gained." 50 As other issues debated during White’s time, such laws
are being made and debated even today.

43
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
44
Proving clearly that even White ‘allies’ did not take the time to read her work. Only one year later, in 1902, at
the meeting of the American Humane Association, she was forced to defend herself against charges that she cared
only about cattle transportation and not people. “She denied that she had in any way dropped her interest in the
management or care of matters pertaining to cruelty to children.”
45
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 4.
46
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)8
47
The most famous site of the Jack the Ripper murders
48
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) Journal of Zoophily 1 (1907). 32
49
(Garrett) 133-4
50
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)115

16
 While it may be tempting to believe that many of the cruel practices White addressed one
hundred years ago have faded from memory, this would be a mistake. While the WSPCA cited
evidence of the pain suffered by dehorned cattle in 1894, the debate raged on in 2015, with
organizations like Animals Australia (http://www.animalsaustralia.org/) using their website to
raise awareness of the various complications and dangers that result from the practice. The
WPSCA news item related an incident in which a dehorned cow, unable to defend itself, was
attacked by six dogs; the Chester County farmer only able to stave off the attack with a shot-gun.
In the 21st-century, the practice continues mostly unabated, with the procedure, almost
exclusively done without anesthetics, intended to reduce injury among cattle which are tightly
packed together during transport. In White’s words, the farmers of her time pled superior
knowledge ,“feeling that in the nineteenth century these things are better understood, cut them
off,” but such excuse, if excuse it is, is certainly not presented in modern times, with the reasons
for painful dehorning clearly delineated as a ‘cost-saving’ measure. 51

Along with the abuses that occurred during transportation, Dr. Stillman and Caroline
Earle White also sought to eliminate the practice of turning out of cattle to starve or freeze
during difficult winters. In 1904, Congress considered a bill which would establish a national
Board of Child and Animal Protection. Like other humane societies, this organization would
seek to protect children and animals, but would do so in the less-populated portions of the
western United States where such societies had not yet been formed. Clarence M. Abbott’s 1907
report, “Neglect of Range Stock in the Northwest,” included photographs and first-hand accounts
of those cattle which had been turned out during a particularly rough winter, and, in the
following year, a formal protest was submitted by the American Humane Association. As
reported in a 1908 issue of Zoophily, the committee discovered that the death-toll for the year
ending March 31, 1905 included “1,345,000 cattle and 1,250,000 sheep” had died from
exposure. 52

51
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
52
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)58

17
 1871

""All honor, I say to that woman! and to all who overcoming their natural repugnance and
dislike to interfering" 53
Caroline Earle White

53
(Animals) 10

18
 1871 was a year of triumph and of fiery dialogue for White, the former in her humane
society work and the latter in her anti-vivisection endeavours. In March, the 28-Hour Law was
passed, meant to protect cattle and other animals from crowding and cruelty while in
transportation to eastern cities. However, it was also the year that S. Weir Mitchell, of Charlotte
Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper fame, famously requested dogs from the WSPCA’s
shelter for experimentation. Next to her interactions with Dr. W.W. Keen, the series of
interactions between Weir and White are amongst her well-known. The debate ensuing from
their public interactions was believed to be the catalyst for the creation of White’s American
Anti-Vivisection Society. Even publications went to war at one another, with the Medical Times
criticizing the creation of the WSPCA as a need for “a little more sentimentality” while another
paper defended the group, stating:

NEW PUBLICATIONS ARTICLE: Even here we think enough shown to the observant reader to
defend the ladies from the sneer leveled at them. They did not, as it seems, seek a "chance for
sentimentality," but promptly effected a very desirable reform, recognized as such by the whole
community, and even by their present critic. But there “comes some difficulty." This we do not
learn wholly from this editorial, for we have had for some time on our table the Second Annual
Report of the Women's Branch..... We shall now, without cruelty to animals, kill two birds with
one stone. The editorial in the magazine takes its title, "Sentiment versus Science." It were apter
to style it, Professional versus general Sentiment. There is such an antagonism, or rather
diversity, as every physical knows. It is only a very young or indiscreet one who will obtrude the
arcana of the professional upon the public eye. We do not lay down any rule for the professional
conscience, nor do we down that the ends it keeps in view will often justify means that seem
cruel. But we object to the contemptuous treatment of the general feelings of mankind, as if they
were a feminine or effeminate sentimentalism. The feelings of professional men are happily
steeled by habit to a degree that is not necessary or desirable in the general public. 54

The “Tired Old Argument”

"There is on the part of some philanthropists a disposition to undervalue the labors and
the sentiments of those who work for the welfare of animals. They money and the time might,
they think, be better applied to improving the condition of man, and they instance the undeniable
fact that the state of a large proportion of our human fellow-creatures is one of desperate need. It
is true that if all who devote some time to work for animals were to give it up and substitute
work for humanity, there would be even then be less than enough done, but is that a good reason
why the claims of our dumb brethren should be ignored? In the first place, the Maker of them

54
(“Philadelphia”)

19
and us has never ignored them. The Biblical record tells us that they were created before man,
and that after their creation "God saw that it was good."

The philanthropists who grudge the work done by others for dumb creatures, who say that "men
are worth more than animals," think that they are using an unanswerable argument.
...Philanthropy, so far as it has been reduced to a system, should be a branch of teaching in all
schools; and no education should be considered complete which does not include training in
knowledge of the right relation of humanity to its wards, the dumb creation. MFL 55

PHOTO OF MFL

“I had not intended to make any reply to the remarks of those who are constantly attacking our
Society, and asking why we work for animals when there are so many human beings needing
assistance, but since these remonstrances at our efforts have attained to the dignity of a
Magazine article which lately met my eye, I would say that this is what all may expect who are
engaged in any good work whatever. These cavillers are dissatisfied with everybody and every
thing, and the same persons who find fault with us for working for animals, will demand of
societies laboring on behalf of human beings why they don't help some other human beings. Thus
the Anti-Slavery agitators were constantly asked why they did not give their attention to the
miseries of their white brethren at the North; and those who are spending their lives in efforts for
the heathen abroad, are asked why they do not look at home; and those who do look at home are
questioned as to why they don't attend to something else than that which occupies their
particular notice. 56

55
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)71
56
(Animals) 10

20
 1872-1879

“This is by far the most important public measure ever gained in this country
by the Societies for the protection of animals; never before has so wide spread
and so prolific a source of cruelty been checked; never before has the fact that
animals have rights and they are entitled to good treatment, been
acknowledged by the highest legislative powers of our nation." 57
1873
Along with the great amount of attention paid to the well-being of livestock in transport
and the many hundreds of workhorses of Philadelphia was the reform of the treatment of stray
dogs. While the early 21st century features fiery debates over kill/no-kill shelters, in the late
nineteenth-century it was all that White and her allies could do to prevent the excessive cruelty
inflicted upon unclaimed stray dogs. Dogs were often dragged with ropes, strung up to be hung
and beaten to death as other dogs looked on. The humane societies of the era were ever on the
lookout for less cruel solutions, and in 1873 the WSPCA changed their methods of euthanasia to
include carbonous oxide gas. In contrast, in 1875, W.W. Keen, in his speech “The History of the
Philadelphia School of Anatomy and Its Relationship to Medical Teaching,” joked about the
‘ingeniousness’ of a co-worker’s ways of disposing of dogs that were no longer ‘needed’ for
experiments and normally required burial. He related with mirth that the dogs were tied to the
backs of the trains and “never needed sepulture." 58

In 1874, the WSPCA reported that the number of foreign inquiries was increasing in
frequency, even as their intake volume began to grow. The report for that year indicated that 856
maimed or sick animals were taken under the charge of Elizabeth Morris. Railroads also
continued to resist the enforcement of the transportation laws, attempting to put off White’s
inquiries by issuing promises of cattle car reform. Transportation companies also managed to
stave off change by resisting a bill which attempted to restrict the number of passengers on street
cars. It would also be the year in which the Morris Refuge Association for Homeless and
Suffering Animals would be founded; with Miss Elizabeth Morris as chairman. On the Humane
Education front, Junior Humane Societies were founded for boys.

Anti-Vivisection

While 1875 saw the foundation of Frances Power Cobbe’s National Anti-Vivisection
Society, 59 White and her allies were not long to follow in establishing such an organization in the
United States. In 1873, White referred to a letter from a doctor, Dr. George Hoggan that was

57
(Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Fourth Annual Report of
the Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Crulety to Animals) 6-7
58
(Keen, The History of the Philadelphia School of Anatomy and Its Relationship to Medical Teaching)25-26
59
Discussed wonderfully in The Old Brown Dog, by Coral Lansbury.

21
published in the London Morning Post. In the article, the doctor shared aspects of his own
experiences working with the notorious Claude Bernard. In reflecting on the callousness of the
vivisectors, Hoggan related the following: "I have often heard the professor say, when one side
of an animal had been so mangled, and the tissues so obscured by clotted blood that it was
difficult to find the part searched for, "Why don't you begin on the other side?' or 'Why don't you
take another dog? ‘What is the use of being so economical?" 60 One year later, Harper’s Monthly
lampooned the medical profession as part of “Professor Jingo” series. Even the famous Thomas
Eakins painting, The Agnew Clinic was not considered a masterpiece by many, but rather a
disturbing work of art. Featuring the corpse of a woman with ‘delicately’ placed fabric as her
clothing, it is troubling on a number of levels, but, primarily because of the underlying misogyny
and evocation of body-snatching and ‘god-playing’ suspected of the medical field. The fact that
Dr. Agnew retired from a position because the school wished him to lecture to women and the
fact that Eakins was accused of inappropriate interactions with female students does not do much
to counter these ideas. Eakins scholar Amy Werbel discounts any link between such paintings
and the ‘pranks’ of medical students with Shelley’s Frankenstein and the notion that dissection
was perceived as ghoulish, saying that “Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was already sixty years old
in 1878." 61 Sixty years is, in truth, but a short amount of time, and while the details of the
technology may change – some human concerns are far more timeless. As of the writing of this
book, 2016, George Orwell’s 1984 is 67 years old; however, the themes of Big Brother,
Doublethink and telescreens are just as relevant today as they were in 1949.

60
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)190
61
(Werbel) 59

22
 William Williams Keen

The speedy disposition of so many uninjected animals in summer, when the world
was mainly done, presented many serious obstacles, until, at last, during the regime
of one ingenious assistant (who generally superintended such matters), nothing was
heard of them either in the way of trouble or expense. On inquiry, a true stroke of
genius was discovered. The baggage trains of the Pennsylvania Railroad used to go
out Market Street at night, and he simply tied them by a rope to the tail of the train.
Those dogs never needed sepulture." 62
Dr. William Williams Keen
The History of the Philadelphia School of Anatomy and Its Relationship to Medical
Teaching, 1875

Of all those in the medical profession that would clash head-on with Caroline Earle
White, Dr. William Williams Keen was the most outspoken and prolific. Dr. Keen, who was
born in Philadelphia in 1837, just four years after White, is most well-known to medical
historians for his work in brain surgery 63 and his consultations with American presidents. Dr.
Keen was an intimate of the Philadelphia medical ‘esprit de corps,’ and shared with them many
views regarding vivisection, women and race. Not as frequently researched as other pro-
vivisectionists of his time, such as S. Weir Mitchell (another fierce opponent of White), and
Alexis Carrel, Keen’s memoirs are a revealing insight into an individual whose personal ethics
were not as lofty he purported them to be.

One of the most telling lectures given by W.W. Keen that is documented in the records
was given on March 1, 1875 at the dissolution of the Philadelphia School of Anatomy. The
lecture, which intended to be a discussion of the school’s role in medical teaching included
passages that were racist, insensitive, and would support the role of Dr. William S. Forbes, both
the creator of the Anatomy Act and one of its greatest violators. Along with Dr. Forbes, Keen
would praise Dr. Agnew, a notorious misogynist. It was clear that within this inner circle, which
would fall under dire scrutiny in the 1880 “Philadelphia Physician Factory” events, that everyone
was likely aware of the less than savory activities of their compatriots.

Even more troubling, however, was the degree to which Keen showed openly his lack of
respect toward human and animal life. Although it was fairly admitted by his apologists that his
sense of humor could be rather unsuited for pleasant company, his ‘jests’ in this speech cannot
be accounted for as just mere lapses of judgment. Aside from the irreverence toward animals,
Keen also made a statement in his memoirs that belied his inherent racism:

62
(Keen, The History of the Philadelphia School of Anatomy and Its Relationship to Medical Teaching) 25-26
63
He was purportedly the first brain surgeon in the United States.

23
 "It can now be easily understood how not so much even as a chip has ever been stolen from me
with such occupants in the building, both dead and alive, although the inhabitants of Chant
Street, when I first began, as Bret Harted described them, of "blazing ruins," and though the
door has often gone unlocked and the cellar was almost always accessible. Even a former office-
boy (of African extraction) could not be induced to put foot inside the building, alleging that
"he'd heerd of their layin' for colored boys before now!" 64

Considering the fact that this statement was made just five years before Dr. Forbes and his unruly
and racist students would mock the African American families who sought justice for grave-robbing that
had affected their own families, it was not only an example of insensitive humor, but a clear revelation of
how African Americans and others were viewed in the eyes of these ‘upstanding representatives’ of the
medical community.

One of Keen’s most popular tactics when it came to White and the AAVS was to publicly
state misrepresentations of facts. In 1893, he claimed that long time AAVS ally, Lawson Tait had
“had recanted and had admitted that great benefits had been gained by vivisection," a statement
which was later disproven by Tait’s own words. In a letter published by the Rock newspaper,
“where he had been attacked by Mr. Horsley, on the 24th of February, 1893, he stated that his
"professional brethren know perfectly well that he had not changed his mind on the subject of
Vivisection." 65 When denying the reality of Dr. Finger’s infamous experiments upon women
who had just given birth to children, Keen stated that the article that detailed the experiments
was false, and that “No such paper by Finger is published in that journal, at least from 1890 to
the present time.” However, the American Humane Society called Keen’s bluff, producing the
report which had been released in 1885. 66 By dodging the dates, Keen attempted to lead people
astray. In 1914, just months after the well-publicized trial of Dr. Sweet and four other University
of Pennsylvania employees, Dr. Keen claimed “"minute care" [was] shown for animals by
surgeons, physiologists and pathologists, when they have performed on them.” 67

Interestingly, in 1900, when Keen was President of the American Medical Association,
“a Dr. Bernhein, of Philadelphia, presented to one of the Sections an account of some twelve
experiments he had made upon human beings, -- six upon a mulattoe and six on a "woman
patient."” Anti-vivisectionists openly stated while these were not the worst cases of human
experimentation; it was troubling because of its “expressions of tendency toward that disregard
of human rights which undliers all such experiments on the ignorant and poor.” 68 Keen also
discounted experimentation done on insane patients; explaining that “they were probably
incurable,” and offered no further condemnation of the fact that poisonous substances were given
to them. 69

64
(Keen, The History of the Philadelphia School of Anatomy and Its Relationship to Medical Teaching)26
65
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)31
66
(Association)
67
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 11
68
(Association)23
69
(Association)

24
 Other doctors also were wary of Keen’s claims. In response to his article on brain surgery
in Harper’s Magazine, an English surgeon stated “Dr. Keen would like us to believe, only one
third recover, and of that third nearly every one is subsequently afflicted with paralysis. He adds
that the treatment for abcesses of the brain, has been much more successful, but that in the
localization necessary to this treatment, experiments upon animals have been of no use
whatsoever.” 70 In 1903, Dr. Frank Woodbury, “although saying he did not like to be quoted in
opposition to Dr. Keen” denied that Keen’s assertion that methods of brain localization was
achieved solely through vivisection and said “Methods were long ago learned by the results of
disease." 71 Others denied that surgery on dogs had helped improve surgery on humans, with Dr.
Tait and Dr. Frederick Treves stating that such experiments had led them astray” 72 Dr. William
Osler, when asked whether the abolition of Yellow Fever (an event trumpeted by Keen as an
example of vivisection’s successes) had anything to do with animal testing, he replied "It is not
absolutely, unless you speak of man as an animal." 73

When one doctor, who was certainly not a supporter of anti-vivisection, but was in
support of regulation, made the ‘mistake’ of saying that “the anti-vivisectionist agitation, 'with
all its expensiveness, idiocy, bad temper, untruth and vexatiousness,' continued because the
medical profession as an organized body refused to recognize the legitimacy of the concern for
animal and failed to act responsibly by establishing a code of ethics, enforcing the rules and
condemning those practitioners who transgressed,” Keen was wrathful. Like Ahab and the ‘Great
White Whale,’ Keen “wrote letters to several anti-vivisectionist publications challenging the
veracity of James’ assertions and continued in his own articles and books to dispute James's
reading of the corporate responsibilities of American physicians and physiologists.” 74 For Keen,
anti-vivisection and his personal animosity toward White would continue long after White’s
death.

In 1910, it was Keen who had masterminded the silencing of anti-vivisection discussion
at the meeting of the American Humane Association. Using his influence over President Taft
(Keen was known as a doctor to at least six Presidents), he wrote to “[call] his attention to this
and expressing the hope that he would not take such an anti-scientific (and also anti-human)
attitude.” 75 Taft not only agreed to block the discussion, but immediately sent a copy of his own
letter to the President of the Humane Association (Dr. Stillman), who “pledged that no
discussion of vivisection would be permitted at the congress.” Gloating in victory, Keen
smarmily stated in his memoirs “Thus, fortunately, I was able to block their game. Dr. Stillman
was true to his promise. But in their journals, the anti-vivisectionists fumed and frothed at being
this muzzled." 76

70
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)105
71
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 5
72
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 125
73
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 12
74
(Lederer) 252-3
75
Again, another misrepresentation. Anti-vivisectionists were generally not anti-human, and White most certainly
cared about the lives of human beings.
76
(James)215-6

25
 In 1916, Keen attacked The Journal of Zoophily over an old interchange that had
concerned testing of an antidote for snake bite. When White suggested antidotes to snake bites be
researched and administered to those whom had been bitten, he failed to take her entire statement
into context, and, instead, attempted to use one of the pro-vivisectionists’ favorite arguments:
that she valued animals above humans. What had actually been discussed was not whether
animals were more important than humans, but, rather, whether or not the drugs could be put to
more immediate and helpful use if attempted on the lives that needed them most at the time.
Keen’s was clearly attempting to misrepresent White, stating that “the last paper which should
urge any objection to "human vivisection," for its late editor-in-chief, Mrs. Caroline Earle White,
was an avowed advocate of "human vivisection.”” 77 It was one of his many biting criticisms
which seemed to emerge after the passing of White, and, as was typical, did not at all accurately
represent White’s views.

Another event that occurred after White’s passing in 1916 was the inappropriate honor
bestowed upon Keen in 1922: the Henry Jacob Bigelow Medal. While the awarding committee
stated of Keen that he “deserved [the medal] not only for your accomplishments and services to
medicine, but for that which means more than these - for that more enduring quality - your
professional character,” 78 the reality was that Henry J. Bigelow would not have approved of the
committee’s selection. Bigelow was known as an ardent and vocal opponent of vivisection. As in
the case of S. Weir Mitchell and Alexis Carrel, many honors were bestowed on men whose
personal beliefs would certainly disqualify them for such an honor today.

77
(Keen, The Inveracities of Antivivisection)
78
(Bostom Midlca and Surgical Journal Vol. 187. No. 18, page 650, November 2)

26
 1880-1882: The Philadelphia Physician Factory & the Trial of Forbes
"If you get into any trouble, I'll see you through.”
T.B. Miller to undercover reporters investigating the selling of medical diplomas 79

In 1880, the London edition of Puck Magazine published a cartoon entitled “The
Philadelphia Physician Factory.” The cartoon, which was originally published in the American
version of the magazine, was an embarrassing indication that the center of the budding medical
profession in the United States was riddled with problems. Historian Harold J. Abrahams said of
early Philadelphia physician education that the city had set the standard, but it was a troubling
standard indeed. According to Abrahams, the requirements for the M.D. required that students
attend schooling for only “two winters and take each professor's course of lectures. This
pedagogic foible, at first justified as expediency, became by 1820 the universal practice in
American medical schools because it was the custom in Philadelphia." 80

The scandal saw the light of day only because members of the Philadelphia press had
taken the initiative to investigate the rumors surrounding the selling of medical diplomas. The
resulting expose cast a shadow not only on the reputation of those who practiced medicine in
Philadelphia, but also in the United States. It was on February 27, 1880 that the revelation of the
diploma selling schemes began. It started when two reporters from The Philadelphia Record
contacted the Dean of the Philadelphia University of Medicine and Surgery. For the mere fee of
$100 each (plus some textbooks), Miller promised that he could make them practitioners of
medicine, with no actual formal schooling. Diplomas would be provided, with one of three
institutions listed on the document: The Philadelphia University of Medicine and Surgery, the
Quaker City Business College of the Arts and Sciences or the Pennsylvania Medical University.
Seals were to be applied to the certificates the next day. For Miller, however, that was the end of
his practice – the next day he would receive the news that the two ‘students’ were undercover
reporters and that his covert activities would be seeing the light of day.
Miller would not be the only ‘physician’ revealed as charlatan in the course of the
scandal, with other major players, a Dr. Buchanan and Dr. Paine, also unveiled in the New York
Times and the Chester Times in the same year. “There are some names uncomfortably near this
city, whose owners' cheeks will tingle when they see their names in print,” reads the latter article,
the news then spreading beyond their specific locales. 81 By July 30, word had been sent from
Secretary of State William M. Evarts to “Pennsylvania Governor H.M. Hoyt, urging him to take
steps to prevent further damage to American medical institutions such as had been done by the
sale abroad of fraudulent diplomas from the American University of Philadelphia.” 82

In 1882, another scandal would drape the Philadelphia medical community in shame and
would generate more distrust of the industry. Dr. Forbes, the same Dr. Forbes who created the

79
(Abrahams)419
80
(Abrahams) 23
81
(Abrahams) 431
82
(Abrahams) 449

27
Anatomy Act in order to secure an ample supply of ‘legal’ cadavers for medical research, was
indicted for his collusion in the stealing of bodies from an African-American burial ground. To
add appalling insult to profound injury, rather than providing apologies to the families, the
students and Dr. Forbes showed abject disrespect to the aggrieved families.

“Waiting for Dr. Forbes' lecture to begin on December 7, the students yelled threats to the
reporters who had shown up, physically expelled several, and sang racist songs threatening
"niggers" with more body snatching. When the story first broke at the college, one student was
reported to have said, "I shouldn't mind if we were [mobbed]. There are 600 of us, and I guess
we might have some fun. We might make a few fresh stiffs too." 83

The same disrespectful behavior was also shown at the trial, also exhibited by Forbes’ students
and supporters. “Some of them mockingly sang abolitionist songs and threatened black passersby
near the medical college with murder and dissection during the time of the trial.” 84 This wouldn’t
be the first, or last, time that some medical students and their faculty members took a callous
view of life and death, to the detriments of their own reputations.

83
(Werbel)138
84
(Werbel)

28
 1883-1888

"I do not ask you to urge the total abolition of experiments on animals, if you are
satisfied that they are sometimes of benefit to mankind, but that, wherever you may
be settled, you will agitate the subject unceasingly until you have obtained a law that
will render impossible such scenes as day to-day be witnessed in the laboratories of
nearly every part of the civilized world - scenes so atrociously cruelty that they would
disgrace a Sodom or Gomorrah - a law that will, in short, put a stop to the abuses of
Vivisection.... Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, of Boston, and Dr. Leffingwell, both of whom I
have quoted, unite in believing that vivisectional experiments should be restricted to
those that can be performed entirely without pain, by the through administration of
anesthetics and the killing of the animal operated on, before the return of
consciousness. "
"To the Graduates of the Twenty-Third Commencement of the Woman's Medical
College of Pennsylvania" 85
Caroline Earle White

85
(White, An Anwer to Dr. Keen’s Address Entitled Our Recent Debts to Vivisection)23

29
 On February 23rd, 1883, Caroline Earle White and her supporters founded the American
Anti-Vivisection Society – a major event not only in the course of her work, but also in the
course of anti-vivisection history. Twenty years after a group of met at the Freedman’s Society, a
group which included White and Adele Biddle, and at the urging of Frances Power Cobbe who
said that “she considered it a disgrace to America that not a single Anti-Vivisection Society
existed” 86 in the United States, the charter was officially signed. While some historians have
labeled White as an ‘extremist,’ such as in Susan Lederer’s 1987 work The Controversy Over
Animal Experimentation in America, 1880-1914, in which she describes White as the extremist
and Leffingwell as the ‘moderate,’ the initial position of the AAVS was one of restriction over
abolition. This changed five years afterward and the change came at the urging of another doctor
and early donor, Dr. Matthew Woods, who actually insisted on the organization moving to
abolition before he could completely support it. 87 Despite this change, the society would not
remain completely in favor of abolition for long, and White would always choose practicality
and diplomacy in order to realistically achieve more to help the animals. This is evident in the
history of her work and in her successes; especially those in which she appealed to legislators
and international figures quite effectively.

White’s husband, the respected lawyer Mr. Thomas Earle White was also an active
partner in her work. In an account related in the AAVS’ First Annual Report, Mr. White
addressed the need for oversight of the workings of vivisectionists. Refuting the infallibility of
the character of vivisectionists, he was not content for them to be the primary decision makers
when judging the amount of cruelty present in their procedures. Mr. White gave an example of
how one humane-minded donor’s funds were improperly used at to support unnecessary and
cruel experiments on animals. These experiments, according to White, “were not undertaken
with any practical relation to the treatment of any animal received there as a patient,” and was a
d direct violation of the trust” that had been placed in the “Brown Animal Sanatory Institution.”
Despite the protestations and evidences of one trustee, Mr. Shaen, the rest of the trustee board
(excepting Mr. Hutton of the London Spectator) voted to continue performing the experiments.
These members of the “Society for the Advancement of Medicine by Research” chose their own
interests over the interests of the donor – a trend that would reappear frequently in the years to
come. 88
Indeed, ‘esprit de corps’ would be a central motivating force for action or inaction on a
number of issues in which ethics or morality was challenged. Said Dr. Owen Wister in 1885:
“I do not doubt at all that the majority of medical men of standing and experience utterly
disapprove of unlimited vivisection; but whilst this majority is silent, those who favor the
unrestricted use of animals in so-called original research are active and noisy - noisy in their
writings at least, and busy in carrying into many households the false doctrines of the cause they
advocate, and thus, by creating prejudice, shutting the public ear to the truths we are

86
(A. A.-V. Society, Twenty-Fifth Annual Report of The American Anti-Vivisection Society) 5
87
(Woods)3-4
88
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, First Annual Report of the American Anti-Vivisection Society)18-19

30
endeavouring to inculcate. Silence then, is not golden in those who seek to prevent unnecessary
vivisection." 89
The Second Annual Report resounded with the voice of optimism, with predictions that
vivisection would be “only a transitory and not very creditable phase in the history of medicine,
doomed, it is probably, to a very short career, because it is opposed to the humanitarian spirit of
the age.” 90 Sadly, in that same year, details regarding a Dr. Finger’s experimentation on women
who had recently given birth would be an ominous indicator that things could become worse in
the realm of medical experimentation. Human vivisection would make the newspapers during
this period of time as well as one of the most infamous series of murders of all time. In 1888,
Whitechapel was rocked by the Jack the Ripper murders; murders which left the victims
‘dissected’ by an assailant assumed to be familiar with medical dissection, vivisection or
butchery.

Humane Society

White’s new organization would not cause her to lose sight of her other endeavors.
Autumn 1886 found White celebrating the decisions of the cable car companies to stop only at
street crossings and followed it up with an additional attempt to influence the Presidents of the
horse-car companies to stop their cars also only at the intersection of streets. By October, the
agents of the WSPCA were outfitted with uniforms – intended to both make the WSPCA’S
watchful eyes more visible to the public and also to inspire the agents to “to more active
exertions in discharge of the duty." 91 The Pennsylvania organization even extended its work to
the more impoverished state of New Jersey in 1888, with agents being empowered to make
arrests outside of their normal jurisdiction. While the Audubon Society and Women’s Society
both increased the pressure on those who manufactured (and wore) women’s headgear which
featured feathers of rapidly plundered species, pigeons too received attention. Arrests were
authorized for pigeon shooting in brand new legislation passed at this time. This 1888 law, still
in effect in 2015, was one in which White personally visited the legislators to advocate for. It has
recently been invoked in relation to a 2015 incident in which pigeons were taken from a New
York park, ostensibly to be clipped and used as targets for wealthy gun club patrons in
Philadelphia.

Not all of the WPSCA work during this period ran smoothly, however. White was
surprised in 1888 by the news that several of the women involved in the work of the animal
refuge had decided that they wished to separate from the WSPCA and form their own

89
(A. A.-V. Society, Second Annual Report of the American Anti-Vivisection Society) 22
90
(A. A.-V. Society, Second Annual Report of the American Anti-Vivisection Society)10
91
(Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Seventeenth Annual
Report of the Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals)6

31
organization. The process, which was at least somewhat painful for all involved, resulted in the
Morris Animal Refuge – an organization focusing on cats, dogs and other animals.

32
"To the Graduates of the Twenty-Third Commencement of the Woman's Medical College of
Pennsylvania: -"

"Having accidentally, a few days ago, been led to take up and read the address delivered before
you by Professor Keen, on the occasion of your graduation, I feel a strong desire to state to you
some of the facts on the other side, and to show you how illusory I, as well as those connected
with me in the Anti-Vivisection agitation, consider his claim to a long list of benefits derived,
within the last twenty-five years, from experiments upon animals.

I am not, it is true, a student or graduate of medicine; but the fact that I am, in the first place,
one of your own sex, interested as you are in the advancement of true science, and in the
progress of the human race; that, secondly, I was one of the first originators of the American
Society for the Restriction of Vivisection (the only such Association in existence in the United
States): and that, thirdly, for years I have given this subject of experimentation upon animals
careful and serious study, reading without reserve both sides of the question, will, I hope, entitle
what I now say to respectful consideration at your hands."

"I think his expression, "to pain or even slay" a few animals, decidedly an inverted climax, and
would substitute for it "to say or even to torture," since we do not object to the slaying of
animals, when by doing so we can derive undoubted benefit for mankind; but it is the torture, or
as the Doctor terms it, the "pain”' against which we protest, considering it a far greater evil than
death, and in fact involving death, as a general thing since we have scarcely ever hear of an
animal which was made the subject of severe experimentation and then allowed to recover and
live."

"For Dr. Keen's expression of a "few" animals, I should like to substitute "millions."

"Dr. Keen speaks at length of the value of experimenting upon animals to ascertain the effect of
drugs and poisons, which surprises me, since in no respect are erroneous deductions more likely
to be made than in these experiments. It is true that the action of these substances upon men and
the lower animals may sometimes be analogous, but no matter what experiments were made in
the hydrochlorate of cocaine upon the animals mentioned by Dr. Keen, they were absolutely
inconclusive as regard man until the crucial experiment was made upon the latter."

"Dr. Alfred Swayne Taylor, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Lecturer on Medical
Jurisprudence, in his examination before the English Royal Commission to investigate the
subject of vivisection, was asked the question, "Do you imagine that experiments are likely to do
much good for that purpose" (.i.e., of obtaining an antidote for snake bites)? He replied, "No, I

33
do not. I have read them all with great care. Ammonia has been recommended by Dr. Halford, in
Australia, but this has proved utterly inefficient when the experiments have been fairly performed
and in truth, if you consider for a moment the mode of death from poison, you will see how
difficult it is for any antidote by injection to operate."

"But Dr. Keen says, as if resolved to meet every difficulty that may arise, "We may reject
carbolic acid and the spray." Reject carbolic acid and the spray ! ! ! Then we reject what many
high authorities consider the essence of Listerism. Lawson Tait concludes by saying that Sir
Joseph Lister has done much good by careful attention to details, but for a knowledge of the fact
that this carefully attention to details, was so vitally necessary to success we are not indebted to
experiments on animals."

"I do not ask you to urge the total abolition of experiments on animals, if you are satisfied that
they are sometimes of benefit to mankind, but that, wherever you may be settled, you will agitate
the subject unceasingly until you have obtained a law that will render impossible such scenes as
may to-day be witnessed in the laboratories of nearly every part of the civilized work - scenes so
atrociously cruel that they would disgrace a Sodom or Gomorrah - a law that will, in short, put a
stop to the abuses of Vivisection.... Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, of Boston, and Dr. Leffingwell, both of
whom I have quotes, unite in believing that vivisectional experiments should be restricted to
those that can be performed entirely without pain, by the through administration of anesthetics
and the killing of the animal operated on, before the return of consciousness."

“An Answer to Dr. Keen’s Address Entitled Our Recent Debts to Vivisection”
Caroline Earle White
1883

34
 Love in the Tropics versus The Island of Doctor Moreau.

"Many good people who abhor ordinary cruelty stultify their judgment concerning the
extraordinary and feel rebuked when "the good of humanity" is hurdled at them as a telling
argument; and when it is hinted that they are hysterical and indulge sickly sentimentality, they
are silenced." 92
American Anti-Vivisection Society
Journal of Zoophily, Volume IV, No. 4, 1895, Pg. 46

"To be kind to the race - to save it from self-destructive over-individuation.… This kind-to-be-
cruel policy they formulate as that of "inhumane humanitarianism"...In a word, they are
pitilessly benevolent. As ethical revolutionaries, they "see things unfeelingly," with "cold
inhuman clearness." Given scientific self-discipline, they possess the "rational insensitiveness to
get facts as facts and not as dreads and horrors." 93
Leon Stover on the works and philosophies of H.G. Wells

A number of theories have been brought forward by historians of the anti-vivisection and
animal rights movements to explain its apparent disappearance from the annals of American and
English culture in the early-twentieth century. Some have attempted to explain this
disappearance as a result of the Great War, while others would argue that it was the advent of
anesthesia that had taken the ‘sting’ out of the opposition to the practice. 94 In comparing the
works, both fictional and non-fictional, of Caroline Earle White alongside the fictional and non-
fictional works of the well-known author H.G. Wells, another factor presents itself for
consideration. It is one that would have implications far beyond the perception of the ‘worth’ of
animals, but would have terrible implications for human relations as well. These were the
eugenics-based beliefs that would take root in the United States and ultimately manifest itself
horrifically in instances such as the Holocaust. Men such as Wells would change and muddle the
definition of what it meant to be “humanitarian” to all life.
In the consideration of both pain and the ‘humane motive’ in the nineteenth-century
England and the United States, the morality of slavery became a point of fiery contention,
featuring two sides that each claimed “God” and “humanity” were on their side. Historian
Margaret Abruzzo aptly observes in her book, Polemical Pain, that “[T]he messy history of
humanitarianism within the slavery debate reveals the limitations of a humanitarian ethic and the
difficulty of resting moral judgments solely on objections to pain.” 95 However, even after ethics
of the slavery question had resolved, the Gilded Age would bring to light more racial, economic,

92
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 46
93
(Wells) 49
94
A combination of human disassociation from pain due to the anesthetics and the trust that anesthetics would be
employed in animal vivisection.
95
(Abruzzo) 241

35
ethnic, and gender divides than ever before, and, combined with Darwin’s recent theory of
natural selection, emerging eugenicists continued where the pro-slavers left off. 96 Opacity
became the new rule, and those who would continue to vivisect both animals and people
depended on the ability to cloak their behaviors; an option never available to the slaveholder.
H.G. Wells, although a ‘staple’ of science-fiction reading lists, considered himself a ‘new
Puritan,’ and believed firmly in “inhumane humanitarianism.” His Island of Doctor Moreau was
not a cautionary tale, as had been Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but, rather, a novelization of
some of his most deeply held beliefs in what he felt would create the perfect society. An ardent
vivisectionist, he was the antithesis of Caroline Earle White and her allies.
Both novels begin with the stranding of both characters on a tropical island. Prendick, the
leading character of The Island of Doctor Moreau, and Hargrave, of Love in the Tropics bear
similar may feelings toward their fates at first glance, but even then their inner resolve shows
some hint of things to come. Whereas Hargrave weeps, he states that “[a]fter a time, however,
different feelings awoke in my breast. I was young and strong, and the love of life stirred within
me, impelling me to preserve my existence,” 97 Prendick bears less resilience and more bitterness.
“I was empty and very faint, or I should have had more heart. But as it was I suddenly began to
sob and weep, as I had never done since I was a little child. The tears ran down my face. In a
passion of despair I struck with my fists at the water in the bottom of the boat, and kicked
savagely at the gunwale. I prayed aloud for God to let me die.” 98 Each speaks of heart, but within
the shipwrecked Hargrave, there is, indeed, ‘love of life.’
In dealing first with the issue of cruelty to animals, the views of these two Gilded Age
thinkers, there is certainly transparency. Wells had gone as far as to debate George Bernard
Shaw on the issue of animal experimentation, and despite Wells expert Leon Stover’s assertion
that Wells had bested Shaw, Wells and his beliefs would remain a target of criticism of important
thinkers such as George Orwell. In response to Wellsian theory that “The modern state must
apply the "good, scientifically caused pain" of "social surgery" for the "maximum elimination of
its feeble and spiritless folk", Orwell replied that in Wellsian literature: “"one finds the same idea
constantly recurring: the supposed antithesis between the man of science who is working towards
a planned World State and the reactionary who is trying to restore a disorderly past.... History as
he sees it is a series of victories won by the scientific man over the romantic man.” 99 In an
interesting twist, Wells would consider Pavlov the better man because of his animal
experimentation, however, Pavlov was a great advocate for overhauling the vivisection system,
opposing it not only for ethical reasons, but because pain would contaminate the results. Moreau
showed no such concern with his House of Pain. While White may have consistently reminded
opponents that she was opposed only to ‘painful’ vivisection on animals, Wells approved of it
wholeheartedly.
In regard to the issue of pain, it is not only a question of whether pain is allowed to be
inflicted, but rather, what the very nature of pain was. Consider White’s view:

96
Darwin himself, who had once found animal vivisection horrific changed his view quickly after an experience
with anaesthetics.
97
(White, Love in the Tropics)17
98
(Wells)
99
(Wells)26

36
 "No one would maintain that we were justified in either robbing or murdering
a large number of poor people in order to confer a great benefit upon a large
portion of the human race; then why are we justified in inflicting such
indescribable tortures upon poor, helpless animals that happen to be in our
power? It is just as much of one of God's laws that we should be merciful as
that we should not steal or murder; and is it merciful to cut up sentient
creatures alive and torment them in every possible way that the imagination of
the vivisector can devise?” 100
Prendick, who does offer a modicum of resistance to Moreau at first, does ask Moreau
the application of such infliction of pain. Moreau replies in a way that both agrees and yet denies
the presence of pain as it exists in Moreau’s work:

“So long as visible or audible pain turns you sick; so long as your own pains drive you; so long
as pain underlies your propositions about sin,—so long, I tell you, you are an animal, thinking a
little less obscurely what an animal feels. This pain… Oh, but it is such a little thing! A mind
truly opened to what science has to teach must see that it is a little thing. It may be that save in
this little planet, this speck of cosmic dust, invisible long before the nearest star could be
attained—it may be, I say, that nowhere else does this thing called pain occur.” 101

Slavery may have ended, but imperialism certainly hadn’t, and as imperialism was a
mainstay of both England and the United States, it isn’t terribly surprising that the idea of
valuing one human life over another wouldn’t be extinguished along with formal practices of
slavery. Despite the common accusations that the anti-vivisectionists did not care about
humanity, and placed animals above them, consistent research of the movement reveals
otherwise. Caroline Earle White was constantly refuting this idea, and a poignant example of her
compassion toward people can be found in the introduction to her (FIRST) novel, Love in the
Tropics:
“As I know… that a book stands of falls upon its merits alone, I will merely say that, whatever be
its fate, it will not have entirely failed if it bring home to the minds of my readers what I believe
to be certain truth, that as warm a heart, as noble a nature, and as bright an intellect may be
found under a yellow, or brown, or a black skin as under a white one." 102
As in The Island of Doctor Moreau, Love in the Tropics begins with a shipwreck near
islands generally inhabited by Polynesians. White portrays them as a kind and beautiful people.
Wells may remain neutral (at best) when it comes to the Kanakas of Moreau’s Isle, but his real
world feelings toward the people of Polynesia are not so subtle, saying that “That large, naked,
virtuous, pink, Natural Man, drinking pure spring water, eating the fruits of the earth, and living
to ninety in the open air is a fantast; he never was nor will be. The real savage is a nest of
parasites within and without, he smells, he rots, he starves... As for his moral integrity, let the

100
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)9
101
(Wells) 138-139
102
(White, Love in the Tropics) Iii-iv

37
curious inquirer seek an account of the Tasmanian, or the Australian, or the Polynesian before
"sophistication" came.” 103
Even as the indigenous peoples in both of these books would have been perceived as
significantly different in the eyes of White and Wells, the idea of ‘womanhood’ would also bear
marked differences. Moreau’s Prendick sees gendered differences among the beast people,
ascribing to them descriptions such as “these weird creatures—the females, I mean—had in the
earlier days of my stay an instinctive sense of their own repulsive clumsiness, and displayed in
consequence a more than human regard for the decency and decorum of extensive costume.” 104
White’s ‘leading lady’ of Love in the Tropics, on the other hand, is treated positively. Narounya,
the native woman “wore a sulu of the finest native cloth, which reached from her waist below her
knees, and was ornamented with the feathers of various birds. Around her wrists and ankles she
had circlets of shells." 105 Polygamy too is addressed, and though neither White nor Wells
condone it, there is a distinctly different flavor to the choices of wording made to approve or
disapprove of the choices. White, who was certainly the more religiously affiliated of the two, is
kinder regarding the practice in Paloa, stating that “polygamy was practiced among the men of
distinction in Paloa, but that Owahi, with the good sense and moderation which distinguished all
his proceedings, chose to confine himself to two wives.” 106 Wells, however, not only leaves the
males out of the system of polygamy, but unsubtly implicates the females as the instigators of
immoral behavior. “Some of them—the pioneers in this, I noticed with some surprise, were all
females—began to disregard the injunction of decency, deliberately for the most part. Others
even attempted public outrages upon the institution of monogamy. The tradition of the Law was
clearly losing its force. I cannot pursue this disagreeable subject.” 107
As one investigates more deeply into both stories, and the passions that drove each of
these ‘humanitarians,’ the religious focus of Wells versus the minimal reference of religion to the
otherwise more religious White starts to lose much of its mystery. In The Island of Doctor
Moreau, the idea that even humanity should be subject to genetic shaping and to vivisection is
but alluded to. However, Wells himself put no such subtleties into his words when expressing his
own beliefs. Whereas he stated that “the new Puritans are necessarily cruel to individuals. This
kind-to-be-cruel policy they formulate as that of "inhumane humanitarianism." 108 White, for her
part was confronting a Christian clergyman (and doctor) who preached that vivisection with a
worthy purpose was not cruel. White challenged the pro-vivisection doctor by asking:
“But who, I will ask, is to be the judge of the purpose and the motive? Are a
few powerful men united in the pursuit of any object, who claim that their
motive sanctifies their action, to be allowed to inflict atrocities upon helpless
creatures, either human beings or the lower animals? Do we think at the
present time that Philip II of Spain was justified in burning alive heretics and
schematics, as it is said he did? Yet he had a far greater motive than the
vivisectors of today, for they say they are only trying to save our bodies, while

103
(Wells) 16
104
(Wells) 155.
105
(White, Love in the Tropics)29
106
(White, Love in the Tropics)25
107
(Wells) c
108
(Wells)49

38
 he hoped to save souls. Were Cotton Mather and his colleagues justified in
burning or in defending the burning of witches at the stake, and were our
Puritan ancestors who fled from religious persecution in England justified,
after they had obtained power in this country, in flogging and even putting to
death the innocent, gentle Quakers? 109
Indeed, Wells was far from alone as an advocate for scientific betterment of mankind at
any cost. White reported, in the Journal of Zoophily, that the “cruelty of the dog and ear grafting
in which Dr. Carrel cut off dogs' legs and ears and put legs and ears from other animals in their
stead was described by sworn witnesses who were at the Rockefeller, who mentioned it was
"awful." Indeed, one or two of the attendants left the institute because they could not endure the
sight of so much suffering.” 110 When questioned by Prendick regarding the scope of his work
and his goals, the vivisector replies:
“All in good time,” said he, waving his hand at me; “I am only beginning. Those are trivial
cases of alteration. Surgery can do better things than that. There is building up as well as
breaking down and changing…This is a kind of grafting in a new position of part of an animal
upon itself. …Monsters manufactured.” 111

In examining the works and beliefs of both sides of the vivisection debate, one sees some
arguments which could lead to both sides of the debate claiming moral victory. The key to
implementing ‘inhumane humanitarianism’ was not openly asking people to believe that pain
was good, rather, it was to convince people to accept the behavior out of fear and selfishness. In
a world of ag-gag law disputes and sweatshops, we can see what appears to be a primarily
successful outcome of silencing, discrediting or keeping evidence of what could be considered
‘unethical’ behavior out of the hands of those whom would share it. These debates occurred
before the heinous crimes of the Holocaust and the multitude of human experimentation cases
that continue to emerge. In a world which is now experimenting with the genetic makeup of
embryos, we have much to be concerned about.

Persecution of the Jews

"History repeats itself. How thoroughly is this illustrated in the annals of the Jews!...Heaven
forbid that on American soil they should ever taste the bitter cup of persecution. But who can
answer for the future? And who shall say that in the revolutions of time they may not even here
become victims to popular frenzy that in other countries, and at different times, has overwhelmed
them in unspeakable miseries.”
Caroline Earle White 112

109
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)27
110
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 415
111
(Wells) 133
112
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)136-7

39
40
 1889-1891
Humane Society

1889 brought several bouts of bad news to the White and the humane society movement
as a whole; the most notable blow the loss of Henry Bergh of the American Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. After a long battle with illness, Bergh succumbed, prompting
widespread mourning of this founder of the American humane society movement. Secondly, the
WPSCA was rocked by the brutal attack on one of their most prolific agents, Hebert Currier.
During his endeavors to arrest a carter, another man initiated the attack against Currier, leaving
the agent unconscious and severely injured. Both assailants were subsequently arrested, with one
sentenced to nine months in the state prison. 113

Activity levels were high for both of White’s organizations in 1890 and in 1891, with
significant actions taken both in respect to humane society and anti-vivisection movements.
While seen by some as a move in the positive direction, the increased cost of liquor licenses
ended up creating a minor crisis when it came to the watering stations that were distributed
throughout the city. Bar owners, in an effort to cut costs, began to neglect to stock watering
stations. As part of a solution, the WSPCA not only placed a new trough at Thirtieth Street near
the Callowhill bridge, but also bore the cost of maintaining a trough for a restaurant which had
refused to operate it in light of the water-rent." 114 The move was considered good not just for the
cattle and other animals that had been reportedly stampeding due to thirst, but to protect the
safety of the people in the streets as well.

Other issues continued to present challenges to White and her WSPCA allies as well. The
Western Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to animals reported that a bill was
being presented as a compromise to laws stating that abused horses be removed from their
owners upon the findings of abuse. In the tried and true tradition of working for the best of
people and animals, the arrest of the driver would be delayed until the end of the trip. In order to
secure more convictions for tail docking, the Society also began to offer rewards for the
reporting of horses with docked tails. Free public speeches were offered on humane horse
treatment and new arrests were targeted for the winter clipping of horses’ fur and owners’ lack of
furnishing blankets in cold weather.

Vivisection

113
(Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Twentieth Annual
Report of the Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Crulety to Animals)8.
114
(Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Twenty First Annual
Report of the Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevetion of Cruelty to Animals) 5

41
 Evidence of collusion against anti-vivisectionist sentiment was made clear in at least two
incidents of 1890-1891. White, on behalf of the American Humane Association was forced to
abandon a cruelty case against Dr. Ashton and Dr. Baldy in 1890 because of rising ill-feelings. In
1891, a letter from White to the New York World was refused publication by the editor because
“he did not wish any controversy on the subject in his journal because it was in favor of
Vivisection.” 115 These two instances would be only two of many cases to come in which outside
forces conspired to silence anti-vivisectionist voices.

However, not all news was bad. In New York, good news also arrived. An attempt to
force pounds to turn over dogs on demand for vivisectional experimentation was protested

115
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, Eighth Annual Report of the American Anti-Vivisection Society) 15-16

42
vigorously by the Mayor of New York. White would also express gratitude toward the
magazines and newspapers that provided coverage of animal rights issues:

"In spite of these discouragements we realize that there has been an immense change for the
better during the past year. At this time, a year ago, scarcely a newspaper in any part of the
country would publish anything against Vivisection; now the New York Tribune and Times have
both come out strongly in protest against the horribly cruel experiments that have been
performed during the last few months, and various other journals have shown a great
willingness to give a place in their columns, to anything we send them upon the subject.” 116
Caroline Earle White

In 1889 Dr. Edward Berdoe published The Futility of Experiments with Drugs on
Animals. In his book, Berdoe discussed in how many drug experiments on animals often gave
results that would not necessarily apply to human beings. His statement that we “frequently find
in their food that which would be fatal to mankind.” 117 is echoed today in similar statements
today regarding the inapplicability of toxicology testing on animals. Similarly, White reported an
experiment in which the transplantation of a rabbit eye into a human woman resulted not only in
failure but in a rapidly deteriorating condition in the woman. Concerns remain today as to the
viability of long-term reliability of drug tests conducted on animals with significantly shorter life
spans.

More ominously, fears about vivisection progressing to humans began to make the news
as well. On June 23, 1891, the Academy of Medicine was appalled at the news of an experiment
in Germany in which the cancers from patients were removed, but rather than disposed of, were
reintroduced into other parts of the body. The special correspondent of the British Medical
Journal, reported that “the public press accused Professors Hahn and von Bergmann of having
inoculated carcinomatous patients with particles of cancer, in places where they were not
diseased and of having thus artificially produced new cancerous foci.” 118

116
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, Eighth Annual Report of the American Anti-Vivisection Society)
117
(Berdoe)5
118
(Association) 10-11

43
44
 1892
"We would ask our readers, especially the members of our two societies to examine closely the
pages of the Journal of Zoophily....We claim that the Journal is literature in the best sense; not a
conglomeration of merely special facts, bombast, false sentiment, fanaticism, erroneous
deductions, pernicious advertisements, and monsters of that ilk, but that many interests dear to
the heart of humanity, besides those that we particularly advocate, are touched upon with a
precision that we shall always aim to keep worthy of confidence and esteem. (57)" 119

One of the richest sources of insight into Caroline Earle White’s words and work began
its long tenure in 1892: The Journal of Zoophily. The Journal of Zoophily was the monthly
publication of the American Anti-Vivisection Society and provided a wealth of information on
vivisection, animal welfare and human-interest issues.

The inaugural issue opened with a discussion of the influence of some popular
entertainments on the morality of those who observed them. Using the example of the movement
to make the Jesse James homestead a feature at the Chicago’s World Fair in 1893, the journal
would make the argument that such glorification of James was a plan to “turn felons into
heroes.” 120 She also criticized the apparent double standard in teaching boys to be protective of
the weak while also encouraging sports such as boxing which again glorified violence. The
connection between the endorsement or encouragement of violent acts was certainly a concern
when it came to acts of cruelty toward animals, but, interestingly enough, White suggested that
perhaps it was just such deification of ‘felons’ that had resulted in some of the grotesque crimes
being committed. It would only be a short time later that the deeds of the notorious deeds of
serial killer H.H. Holmes, some of whose work occurred during Chicago’s World Fair, would
strike fear and revulsion into lives across the country.

The Journal of Zoophily’s first issue would also tackle another long-term concern: the
behaviors and morality of university students. “It is one of the things that has never been
explained why students of American colleges should, on certain occasions, behave like
barbarians,” reads the opening sentence of the article, and calls for justice against a group of
students who had endangered the lives of people and animals during a circus procession. During
the course of the incident, Yale students had thrown ‘torpedoes’ at the animals and performers,
and, ultimately, a number of animals and people were injured as a result. “All this was doubtless
very amusing,” concludes the piece, “but the public will be still more amused if the perpetrators
of the outrage were brought to justice. If there is any reason why a college study is licensed to
make a what-you-may-call-him of himself, the public would like to have it declared from the
bench in due process of law.” 121

119
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 57
120
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)1
121
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 1-2

45
 The Journal of Zoophily also began with a defense of organizations such as the AAVS.
Mary F. Lovell cited Biblical principles to insist that animals should not be ignored in
humanitarian work, despite criticism that that time and efforts should be dedicated to humans
only. Lovell stated that “some philanthropists a disposition to undervalue the labors and the
sentiments of those who work for the welfare of animals.” 122 Alternatively, White addressed the
constant charge that the movement was one of sentimentality. Her explanation was exceptional
and showed her excellent grasp of human psychology and empathy:

True Feeling and Sentimentality: "Not enough attention is paid to the difference existing
between true feeling and sentimentality. There is a tendency, in women especially, to
romance, and the cultivation of what they delight in believing to be an exquisite
sensibility. This may exist without an atom of true sentiment, and, in fact, is likely to be
antagonistic to it. Real tenderness of heart has in it the elements of generosity and self-
sacrifice; sentimentality is chiefly egotism and the indulgence of morbid emotion. Hard
realities appear to the first imagination only to the last. The sentimentalist has no
conception of genuine, active sympathy because that usually involves contact with
something unlovely." 123

Vivisection

“It may perhaps be said that the diploma of any of the recognized medical schools should be
sufficient evident of the qualifications of its possessor. To this we would answer – First, we have
heard that even among physicians there is some difference of opinion as to which of the schools
should be recognized… Second, that although humanity and kindness are general characteristics
of the medical profession, a diploma does not always insure possession of those qualities.
Caroline Earle White 124

In the same way in which the behaviors of Yale students were analyzed in context of
morality, so too did Zoophily question the assumption that the acquisition of a medical degree
meant that the recipient was inherently capable of ethical behavior. With the sting of the
Philadelphia Physician Factory only twelve years past, such an assumption could not have been
lightly taken, despite vivisectionists’ statements otherwise. Concerns about the hardening or
corrupting influences of vivisection were heightened when, for example, one man, Carlyle
Harris, was convicted for the murder of his wife and spoke positively of vivisection from his cell.
A Canadian physician was executed in London in 1892 for the murder of a multiple number of
women “and undoubtedly put to death by one of the most agonizing of poisons, and under guise
of conferring a benefit, merely that in the contemplation of their suffering he might find pleasure
and excitement.” 125 Obsession with vivisection was described as one of the new deadly sins, “a

122
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 71
123
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 41
124
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 89
125
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 75

46
new Fiend of Scientific Cruelty come forth from the Pit, and entering into the souls of
physiologists, could we have more lured light casts into the depths of a possessed man's soul than
that of this description?”126 White was clear that such atrocities extended beyond those
committed against animals. She cited accounts such as those of Professor Neisser of the
University at Breslau. Dr. Neisser was fined, “having published the account of his scandalous
experiments to which, in the year 1892, he subjected children in the University Hospital." 127
Locally, trouble was brewing. S. Weir Mitchell of ‘the rest cure’ fame initiated one of his
most infamous public attacks on White’s organization in 1892. When White refused to provide
dogs for his experiments, not only was Mitchell indignant, but he went as far as to question her
authority. “I observe you answer me negatively,” he replied after her refusal, “without any
reference to the decision of your Society or its governing body. Allow me to ask, with entire
courtesy, if your action had official sanction of the organization over which you preside. 128” He
then went on to say that her response mattered not to him at all, but that other investigators
would be unable to do their work because they, unlike Mitchell, could not afford the cost of
constantly purchasing dogs. As Lovell observed, vivisection supporters were happy to claim
philanthropic sentiment, however, they found philozoic sentiment to be incompatible with
philanthropy. 129

126
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 28
127
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)25
128
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 88
129
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 120

47
 1893-1894

Humane Society

Although she was “not being as yet a convert to its theories,” White talked positively
about one of the topics discussed at 1893’s International Humane Congress: the Buddhist
attitudes toward meat-eating. In her examination of the issue, she once again proved that her
beliefs were not extremist, but, rather were moderated by careful thought and were contemplated
with an open mind. In one of many instances in which White discussed international or
intercultural views on animal issues, White said of the Buddhists who addressed the
inconsistencies of meat-eating and advocating animal welfare, that they believed that “that man
in order to lead a high and spiritual life must avoid the use of meat.” She went on to say in
Zoophily, “it is, in our opinion that men would be less brutal, less likely to yield to the lowest
animal instincts of their nature, and more susceptible to ennobling influences in such a case than
they now are. 130
Vivisection

"I have for some time been studying the literature of anti-vivisection, and the more I read
the more I am convinced that my search is in vain in looking for a coolly reasoned out
article against vivisection. I find feeling displayed everywhere and scientific logic
nowhere...Most of the death and misery that comes to man in the shape of disease comes
from animals we thus suffer vicariously for them. Why should they not in return suffer for
us....You could never have been born without vivisection... Did it ever strike you that the
Scripture motto you use of "Be ye therefore merciful," ends with "as your Father is also
merciful"? How is He merciful? Let the crucifixion tell....Pain that leads vicariously to
good must not be laid aside for mercy.”
Dr. R.G. Eccles 131

"Is not the Scripture full of evidence that the suffering of Christ was voluntary? ….Your
statement that we could never have been born without vivisection is another amazing one.
If there is vivisection in childbirth it is because of unnatural conditions produced by what
we call civilization.”
Mary F. Lovell 132

Just one year after Dr. S. Weir Mitchell’s public attack on White, Dr. W.W. Keen was
back in the fray, this time in order to advocate for Professor William E. Ashton. Ashton had been

130
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)168-9
131
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)111-112
132
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)

48
arrested for the neglect of dogs (both healthy and sick/post-vivisection), leaving the animals out
in the summer heat without water. At least one of the dogs died while Dr. Ashton had gone to
the country on vacation, and, thanks to Ashton’s neighbors, the WSPCA had had him arrested.
Keen, on the other hand, felt that Dr. Ashton had been the true victim of the cruelty.
Rather than addressing the neglect, which was the issue at hand, Keen suggested that Ashton
“had been engaged in a humane effort to improve surgical treatment of wounds and operations
involving the stomach and intestines, and thus lessening human suffering and save human
lifes.” 133 Adding to his hyperbolic defense, Keen went as far to suggest that Ashton had suffered
more severe torture than any vivisected animal had. “To be held up before an entire community
and branded as one who is guilty of wanton cruelty to dumb animals, inflicts upon any man with
a sensitive and refined mind, suffering which surpasses mere physical pain, but of which Mrs.
White's Society seems to take no account. If under the present law the Anti-Vivisection Society
can be so cruel it is not likely that with added weapons it would be less so." 134
Ultimately, Ashton and the ‘esprit de corps’ would ultimately claim victory in the case.
Rather than condemnation, the pro-vivisection medical community united behind Ashton and
forced White and her allies to relinquish their hopes for Ashton’s punishment. “When we found
the whole influence of the medical profession thus arrayed against we saw beforehand what the
result of the trial would probably be and abandoned the case.” 135 The earliest beginnings of a
medical lobby had also been sighted when a pro-vivisector professor was elected to a position
which most certainly was a conflict of interest. Reads the protest in Zoophily: “with regard of the
election of Wesley Mills, Professor of Physiology in the McGill College, Montreal, and a
practical vivisector as one of the Vice-Presidents of the American Humane Association….we
consider it a glaring inconsistency and a travesty on the word "humane," to have any such
experimenter an officer in any society bearing that name.” 136 As for the theft of pets for medical
experimentation, concerns regarding the encouragement of crime applied “not only to small
boys, but to men out of employment, that a regular system appears to have been organized in
West Philadelphia of stealing the dogs belonging to the inhabitants of that charming suburb." 137

In conclusion, my dear sir, I would say that the greatest obstacle that we have
to content against in the crusade we are waging is the ignorance of the people.
Could they but know what vivisection really is, our cause would be gained.”
Caroline Earle White
Jan 23, 1893 138

133
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)117
134
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)117
135
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)36
136
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 17
137
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 4
138
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 36

49
 Not all forces were ultimately arrayed against the anti-vivisectionists however. Robert G.
Ingersoll said of the empathetic members of the anti-vivisection crusade: “Pity is regarded as
childish - as something liable to interfere with scientific methods. How monstrous, how terrible it
all is - how fiendish!” 139 Dr. Sarah Ellen Blackwell encouraged students not to accept pro-
vivisectionist teachers while Dr. Philip G. Peabody of Boston spoke of vivisection as an
“inquisition” and “the hell of science.” 140 Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, professor of surgery in the
Harvard University Medical School, said of those physicians who defended the vivisection:
“Watch the students at a vivisection; it is the blood and suffering, not the science that rivets their
breathless attention. If hospital experience makes students less tender of suffering, vivisection
deadens their humanity and begets indifference to it." 141 In 1884, the American Antivivisection
Society became part of the National Council of Women, the organization headed by Susan B.
Anthony.

Violence and Vivisection

“One may, indeed, imagine a Universe wherein the idea of Justice does not exist,
where compassion and pity and sympathy are unknown, and where Might makes
Right. In such a world, no thought of the unrighteousness of an action would come to
mind. In such a world - unchecked except by fear - would flourish whatever tyranny
might desire and force and compel, - the prostitution of women, the slavery of the
weak, the murder of the helpless, the causation of any amount of physical pain upon
animals or children, if thereby what is hidden by Nature could be brought to light. It
would be the reign of selfishness and greed, of lust and force, of cruelty - and utility.”
Dr. Albert Leffingwell
Aurora New York, International Journal of Ethics 142

Caroline Earle White and other anti-vivisectionist or anti-cruelty advocates often referred
to connections between animal cruelty and violence. The nineteenth-century saw the emergence
of the social sciences and psychology, both of which attempted to trace the sources of aggressive
behavior. For White, there was a troubling pattern to be seen in the number of murders and other
acts of violence against women which seemed to be tied to the hardening of the human heart to
suffering via vivisection. When looking at the events of the nineteenth century, it is not hard to
see why White and others became convinced of the connection.

139
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)147
140
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
141
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)124
142
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 31-32

50
 Roots in Dissection and the Cult of the Beautiful Corpse

“Byrnewood passed slowly along the room, gazing around in mingled wonder and
loathing, while the lively conversation of the students broke strangely on his ear... "Sweet
girl, this was once upon a time! Many a poor devil has been dying for the love of her eyes
and lips. Just now she don’t look altogether loveable. The eyes are starting from their
sockets, and the lips falling to pieces. And then the bosom, ha ha! The Scalpel makes love
to it now!"”
The Monks of Monk Hall 143

“He then quotes Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson on the cruelties inflicted by Nature,
and alleges that "the majority of diseases are true inflictions of a stepmotherly nature
for which no raison d'etre can be found, and against which no protection is of any
avail (so far)" he thing asks if we have no "a right, being thus afflicted, to demand
from Nature a relief, and if she affords it not to try to wrest it from her by force by
any means available.” 144

Lippard’s The Quaker City, published in 1845 when White was about twelve years old,
was an example of one of the first popular portrayals of the vivisectionist as sadist and
misogynist. The serialized novel featured two doctors – Doctor McTourniquet and Dr. Ravoni -
who both used their powers to inflict harm. Edgar Allan Poe famously proclaimed in 1846 that
"the death of a beautiful woman is…the most poetical topic in the world." In 1894’s Trilby's,
scholar Bram Dijkstra described the main character’s “fear of becoming part of what he has
called the "cult of the woman as corpse"”

“ There was a beauty in that corpse, and grace, for the cloth was moulded into soft folds, as
though it veiled a woman’s form. The feet were thrust upward, the arms folded over the chest,
and the globes of the bosom rose gently in the light, even beneath their thick disguise.” 145

QUIVERING FLESH

"…there will come slowing creeping into consciousness a vague, abnormal, horrible sense of satisfaction
at the sight of this quivering flesh.” 146

In both erotica and anti-vivisectionist literature, the phrase “quivering flesh” is noticeably
common. In nineteenth century, there were a number of erotica titles that included main
characters who took advantage of their positions as physicians in order to seduce or otherwise

143
(Lippard)438
144
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)32
145
(Sappol)377
146
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)121

51
molest women. “Walter in My Secret Life,” says Ellen Bayuk Rosenman in Unauthorized
Pleasures: Accounts of Victorian Erotic Experience “sometimes impersonates a surgeon to
facilitate "some of his more difficult seductions.” while in The Amatory Experience of a
Surgeon, a pornographic text, features a young surgeon who “puts his sexual knowledge to
practical use in an endless series of seductions." 147 Marietta, or the tale of Two Students: A Tale
of the Dissecting Room and Body Snatchers, according to Michael Sappol in A Traffic in Dead
Bodies, “betrays some familiarity with the workings of the anatomy room.” 148 Even paintings
were sources of concern, with Eakins’ The Agnew Clinic painting leaving some critics to say “the
painting was little more than an excuse for "depicting the horrors of the dissecting table." 149
Could there also have been an erotic component to the painting? On a less subtle note, Athena
Vrettos points out the words of nineteenth-century pornographer/publisher Edward Ashbee: “"As
little, it is my belief, will my book excite the passions of my readers, as would the naked body of a
woman, extended on the dissecting table, produce concupiscence in the minds of the students
assembled to witness an operation performed about her.” 150
Indeed, the proximity between medical literature and pornographic literature was sometimes as
physical as it was ideological. Holywell Street, which was considered a place of “unrelieved
depravity,” was also a home to a number of medical book stores. Ellen Bayuk Rosenman states
that "Science and medicine claimed to stand aloof from sexuality, leaving the loyal reader of the
Penny Magazine to find his own suggestive vocabulary, while the theatre and popular literature
frankly promised titillation.” 151 In the 1880s, anatomical museums would clearly become more
associated with visceral delights than presenting any pretense of education. In fact, famous moral
crusader Anthony Comstock went personally to dismantle one museum, an event that was
described with a certain sense of implied misogyny as well. In the same way some refer to strip
clubs as gentleman’s clubs, these museums were said to appeal to a less that educationally-
motived audience. "[A]dolescent youth and green countrymen," 152 were amongst the primary
visitors. Most tellingly, not everybody was permitted to view the displays; later anatomical
museums were typically "For Gentlemen Only." 153

In 1911, an issue of the Christian Herald referred to what they called "The Mangling Mania."
They described it as follows: "Indulgence in the 'mangling mania,' as modern vivisection may be
denominated, is a sort of pseudo-scientific craze on which we shall doubtless look back with
shame as civilization advances." 154 The Washington Post published an article on December 15,
1913 which discussed "Eugene Sue's "Slasher," whose gory profession so worked upon him that
he became subject to paroxysms during which he "saw red," is not altogether a creature of the
imagination; and a scientific "slasher" must me all the more an object of fear, because of his
much greater intellectual power combined with the same desire to make the blood flow.” 155 In an
interesting parallel to this interpretation of medical authority, recent feminist critics such as

147
(Rosenman)31
148
(Sappol)217
149
(Werbel)35
150
(Vrettos)lxx
151
(Rosenman)12
152
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
153
(Dennis) 295j
154
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 26
155
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 188

52
Jacqueline Rose and Coral Lansbury have pointed out the alliance between Victorian
pornography, medical theatres and dissecting rooms. 156

That cruelty is the mark of the pervert, leading thinkers have long since determined, and
the evidence goes to show that the pervert finds expression in many ways - some worse
than others….. He was telling of a very painful case, when she asked him how she could
endure such things. He smiled and said that pain attracted him greatly, and he always
liked to be where there was pain.” 157

Here we have it! Morbid eagerness to operate - doubtless unwarrantably exceeding his
authority to do so - preceded by wanton cruelty to animals. Add the two facts together -
lust for pain, the unbridled desire to inflict it, the slashing of the women with the knife,
and the horse with the whip! How logically is all this the outcome of vivisection!" 158

We think this list furnishes evidence so incontrovertible of the truth of the charge we
have made that it ought to be brought to the notice of every physician in the country. We
never intended for a moment to claim that the majority of what we call murders in the
first degree were committed by members of the medical profession; but only, as we
stated, the greater part of those where a deliberate, cold-blooded intention was evident,
such as the administration of poison." 159

In 1892, White asked in a letter to the Editor of the Tribune: What is the underlying
cause of that mysterious outbreak of homicide among young physicians revealed by the criminal
record of 1892?

Does Vivisection Lead to Crime?

To the Editor of the World: -
An extraordinary theory has had its origin recently in the prevalence of crimes of the worst order
among physicians and medical students. This prevalence is comparatively new. We scarcely ever
heard of murders by members of the medical profession, but of late years we are confronted by a
long series committed either by doctors or students. Dr. Buchanan is now under sentence of
death for murdering his wife. Dr. Graves was convicted a short time ago of poisoning a friend.
Almy and Carlyle Harris, both medical students, have paid the penalty of their evil deeds, and
now Durant, another student of medicine, is charged with two most horrible murders, which, if
the charge be true, would proclaim him a monster of wickedness. Besides these, a great number

156
(Vrettos) 271
157
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 135.
158
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 136
159
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 68

53
of similar crimes have been committed by members of the medical profession in other countries.
The author of the Whitechapel murders in London is supposed to be a doctor or a student, from
his knowledge of anatomy. Does this not look as if the statement by the Anti-Vivisectionists that
the practicing and witnessing of cruel experiments upon animals harden the heart, debase the
higher nature and demoralize the character is a well-founded one? It behooves all to take this
into consideration. A little extra knowledge, admitting that it was gained through vivisection,
would be dearly paid for at the cost of the corruption of considerable portion of the community.
Caroline Earle White, May 25th, 1895" 160
-----------------
SIDE CHART

A SUMMARY OF REPORTED CRIMES COMMMITED BY DOCTORS, STUDENTS OR THOSE SUSPECTED OF

BEING FAMILIAR WITH MEDICINE AROUND THIS TIME PERIOD:
1888 Jack the Ripper Crimes
1892 Dr. Cream found guilty of poisoning young women.
1892 Dr. Graves said to have committed murder by poison in Colorado.
1892 Dr. Lamson said to have poisoned his brother.
1892 Dr. H.M. Scudder said to have poisoned his wife’s mother.
1892 Dr. Robert W. Buchanan of New York said to have poisoned his wife.
1893 Carlyle Harris, medical student, executed for the murder of his wife: praised vivisection as
beautiful.
1894 Dr. H.H. Holmes arrested: confessed to 27 murders, mostly women.

FIND ALMY

----------

160
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 74

54
 1895
Vivisection

The Anti-Vivisectionists of this state, or at least the active ones, are the very
persons who are trying to "take hold of this outrage," of which you speak and
"put a stop to it," although the putting a stop to it is not so easy as you seem to
imagine. Every conviction for docking in this state and the imposition of every
fine has been obtained by our "Women's Branch of the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," of which I am the President and which is
made up almost entirely of Anti-Vivisectionists. The greater portion of our time
is spent in endeavoring to prevent… just such cruelties as you mention and
those of a kindred nature. A bill making the docking of horses a crime has just
passed our State Senate and is now in the House of Representatives. The
introduction of this bill, and the work necessary to procure its passage, was
done by the Anti-Vivisectionists of the Luzerne County Humane Society. Such a
thing could hardly be possible as those feeling so keenly as the Anti-
Vivisectionists do, one form of cruelty, would not be opposed to all others. 161
Caroline Earle White

In 2014, Governor Chris Christie famously went against the public referendum which
wished to ban gestation crates for pigs, despite overwhelming support for the ban from his
constituency. Approving the move, however, would have lost him support in Iowa and would
have hurt him politically. Such actions are far from new or unique occurrences. In 1895, the
Journal of Zoophily responded angrily to the fact that Washington Governor McGraw refused to
sign a bill that was passed in the legislature – a bill that would prohibit vivisection in public
schools – it was another move perpetuated by political motives.
Two of the most famous works of nineteenth-century anti-vivisection literature would
also appear in 1895: Dr. Albert Leffingwell’s Vivisection in America and Henry H. Salt’s
Animals’ Rights. Salt, a philanthropist who also advocated for better schools and prisons, said of
Leffingwell’s work, that “if the physicians of this country could read [it], the majority of them
would become anti-vivisectionists, or at least would favor placing the practice under restraint.
" 162 Alas, physicians and other individuals of the upper classes often made their own rules when
it came to the rights of animals and even other humans. White wisely called out when she
publicly asked that, if, as Dr. Keen said, “a man's life is of so much more consequence than an
animal’s, and the claims of human beings are so far above those of the dumb creature, why

161
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)75-76
162
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)25

55
shouldn’t the wealthy owners of racehorses donate their prized horses to the production of
serums?”163
Rather than admit to their own biases, however, certain members of the medical
community continued to level many of the same false arguments toward anti-vivisectionists that
they had always resorted to. On Tuesday, February 6, 1896, White wrote to the editor of the
Philadelphia Record in response to an article which cited the London Lancet in order to defend
vivisection. Vivisection didn’t need to be examined for cruelty in its practices, the article stated,
because animals also suffered and were killed for food and the pleasure of sport. However,
White’s response was two-fold. Firstly, she asserted that anti-vivisectionists are well aware of all
this suffering and cruelty, but so far from "no particular pains being taken to lessen it," we are at
work a great part of the time trying to lessen it.” 164
Part of the problem, other anti-vivisectionist allies would say, was the fact that the public
was simply not aware of what was occurring. “We are told that operations on living, quivering
flesh are painless, and are absolutely needful. We are told a great many lies that bear the imprint
of the father of lies on their very face,” said Mary Johnson said of Auburndale, MA. 165 What
may also not have been apparent to the general public of the time was the number of physicians
who were hardly qualified to be physicians, even some fifteen years after the diploma-selling
scandals hit the newspapers. According to historian Abrahams, “By 1895, 21 states had
established or restored some form of licensure by examination and 14 others license only
graduates of approved medical schools, but there was no standardized system for accrediting
them." 166
Reporters, too, did not help matters. In one of the most famous interchanges between Dr.
W.W. Keen and White, both medical and public publications distorted the facts:

"Several of the leading journals, both lay and medical, misled by the sensational headings to Dr.
Keen's letters, in the late correspondence between him and Mrs. White have imagined that it
was a question of a man's life, and that it was to save a human being from death that Dr. Keen
proposed to try the experiment of replacing a man's nerve by that of a dog. This is a great
mistake. To save a leg, and to keep a man from being lame was what Dr. Keen hoped to
accomplish. The matter would have probably been clearly understood, had it not been for the
reporters. who, anxious to make a great deal out of very little, circulated the idea that a dog's
life was considered by Mrs. White of more consequence than that of a man, as untrue a
representation as they could have made." 167

163
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
164
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 29
165
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)9
166
(Abrahams)24
167
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 49

56
 Humane Society

Humane society movements were growing in strength; support for the idea that animals
possessed souls also occurred within the upper echelons of society, with William Waldorf
Astoria, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Elbridge T. Gerry among active members of the humane
societies. A reduction in cruelty was observed in large cities and, specifically, in Philadelphia.
The Society worked to encourage better treatment of horses by offering training and licensure for
drivers. Bentham was echoed in the argument for the process, the Journal describing it as a
“practical method of bringing about better treatment of horses, which will result in "the greatest
good for the greatest number." 168 They also worked to increase humane education, for example,
by engaging speakers to give lectures across the nation on “kindness to the dumb creation.” 169
Concern was also expressed regarding the number of seals slaughtered in the Bering Strait, an
action which left “twenty-seven thousand young ones starved to death, having lost their mothers,
on whose milk they subsist for about the first five months of their life...and the only question is,
how long will it take for the utter extermination of these victims of man's rapacity and greed." 170

168
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 8
169
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
170
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 1

57
58
 1896
“In the first place, a few weeks ago the Boston University School of Medicine, through
one of its employees, by the name of William Brown, advertised for cats, and
addressed a letter on the subject to a man giving the probably fictitious name of
James Cone, who had answered the advertisement. To this letter Cone replied, that
the price which Brown offered him for the cats, viz., twenty cents each, was not
enough, and added "I take too big a risk in stealing cats at twenty cents. Give me
thirty and I'll get all you want right along.” 171

Vivisection
The year 1896 saw the release of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau. Unlike the
ways it has been presented in 20th century movies, the book is not a cautionary tale against
vivisection; in fact, it plays heavily upon themes of scientific superiority and animal-baseness. In
the same year, a letter to the editor of the Transcript warned against the dangers involved when
one does not ask ‘who watches the watchers?’ The article, “Scientific Sacerdotalism” challenged
the idea that “scientists maintain that they alone are competent to decide such and such
questions, because these are scientific questions” 172 The article states that scientists who
advocate such beliefs are as guilty as priests who practice “religious sacerdotalism.” Boston
University replied to animal rights advocates’ requests to see the workings of their laboratories
with the response that their “doors are not open to idle curiosity.” 173 When confronted regarding
the arrest of a young boy who had taken up stealing cats and dogs in order to collect reward
money offered by medical labs, Harvard Medical College "decline[d] to be interviewed,” 174
while another young child who had been raising guinea pigs as pets was devastated to learn that
vivisectional labs had “deceitfully bought [guinea pigs] from him for vivisection, and [had] been,
in fact, vivisected.” 175
Interesting discussions regarding the deadening of empathy and the cultivation of
violence in those who were becoming acclimated to vivisection also emerged. England’s
Zoophilist reported that an individual who had gone about cutting off children’s ears in broad
daylight claimed in court that he “suffered from inherited surgical dilettantism, and that his
father and grandfather were employed in dissecting rooms.” The editor of the Zoophilist
inquired, "If surgical dilettantism is so bad a mania, what would vivisecting dilettantism be?"
Some doctors continued to report abuses that occurred in labs, such as cases where a scientist
was said to put an “animal in a bottle in a way that was excessively cruel" or in which “rabbits
[which] were taken and tied up by the heels and held out of windows." 176

171
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 31-32
172
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 59
173
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 37
174
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 25
175
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
176
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 40

59
 Some of the same, sexist arguments put forth by some doctors continued. Dr. Charles
Wardell Stiles, of Washington called anti-vivisectionists “old maids having a fondness for cats
and some people believing dogs are almost human.” He went on to state that “scientists cannot
allow such ideas to enter his work…we ought to be glad to turn a few of these useless, disease-
breeding, and injurious, ownerless street-curs, to some account.” 177

Indeed, the esprit de corps was stronger than ever and White pulled no punches in
commenting on how it was preventing any significant enforcement of anti-cruelty laws. "There
never yet has been a case where any society for the protection of animals arrested a vivisector for
cruelty and succeeded in obtaining a conviction,” White stated. “In an instance where the society
in this city prosecuted a young physician for cruelty, not in his experiments (in that case it might
be thought to be interfering with scientific research), but in the manner in which the poor animals
were neglected after the performance upon them of terribly severe operations, while they were in
a mutilated, suffering condition, did the medical profession aid our society in the attempt to have
the offender punished, or did a single one of its members publicly denounce the inexcusable
barbarity? No, indeed, leading physicians and the judge worked together to get it dismissed.”
178
It may be safe to say that in our era, with the increasing efforts of interest groups to pass Ag-
Gag laws and to label animal rights/environmental activists as terrorists, White would be
appalled.

177
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 10
178
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 46

60
 1897
“There is no other profession whose dictums meet with such blind acceptance as that
of medicine…Anti-vivisectionists are continually asking why, if the experiments are of
so innocent a character, they must always be done behind jealously closed doors.
…Vivisection, like other shameful things done in this world, would cease to be done if
the wholesome light of public investigation were thrown on it.” 179
Mary F. Lovell

1897 saw a number of public interactions between anti-vivisection society members and
pro-vivisectionist physicians and ministers. On February 18, 1897, Mary F. Lovell wrote a letter
chastising Reverend W.L. Laufman of Cadillac, Michigan for his sermon on the evils of tobacco,
in which he killed cats by placing nicotine on their tongues. Lovell not only pointed out that such
information was available in textbooks, but expressed her greater concern: “The inference is that
cats are to be viewed merely as material for experiments.” 180

White had to refute two ungrounded attacks from doctors in this year. The first
interchange occurred between a Dr. Robinson and White. It began with his misquoting her
statement on the connections between crimes and medical studies, insisting that she stated all
doctors were murderers. He then went on to state “that anti-vivisectionists are insane, by saying
that of course he does not mean to assert they are insane in the ordinary duties and acts of their
daily life, but on the subject of vivisection they are unquestionably possessed of an idee fixee
which obscures their mental vision, etc.” 181 He impugns White’s speech, stating that “another
one of my opponents, the Corresponding Secretary of the American Anti-Vivisection Society, a
person who, from the official position she holds, one would certainly expect to employ moderate
and well-considered language.” He goes on to deify the work of all vivisectionists and asks if
they “understand what sort of men the vivisectors are? I will tell them. They are men of giant
minds and great hearts; men but for whose occasional appearance among us, life would be so
dull and insipid as to not be worth living; men who make science advance with great strides; men
whose glorious names will remain in the annals of history forever and ever; men who are making
us all wiser and healthier, kinder and happier.” 182 It was a lofty pedestal upon which to place all
of vivisectors, and, oddly, it made him guilty of the same type of exaggeration of which he
accused of White and her allies.

There were continued calls for transparency in vivisection, with Mary F. Lovell boldly
countering the constant assertions by some doctors that regulation was not necessary because
anesthetics were always used. She asked for vivisectors to “Come into the light. Let us have light

179
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 80
180
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 45
181
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 68
182
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)

61
upon the dark places." She also forewarned what the consequences for people might be if such
assertions were always taken in faith:

The time will of course come when experimental research especially that which takes the
form of trying on the poor in hospitals whatever nostrum happens at the time to be the
medical fad can no longer be done in secrecy, but will be subject to full investigation;
and, while schemes for the best way of effecting this reform are being turned over in the
minds of anti-vivisectionists, it might not be amiss to consider at the same time ways of
familiarizing lay readers with the meanings of the terms which, in medical accounts of
laboratory work, disguise so much that is cruel. 183 80

Others reiterated such admonitions, with a Reverend L.S. Lewis stating that “vivisection
naturally and logically leads to experiments on helpless patients” while Fergusson Abott, at the
same event, referred to an incident in her speech regarding a dying child that was given to
students because “the young fellows must have practice.” “ 184
Other animals also received attention from the W.S.P.C.A. in 1897 due to a number of
cruelty incidents. A cat had been doused in oil and set on fire, forcing an agent of the Society,
Agent Troth, to put the poor creature out of its misery. In the same year, the mayor of New
Jersey ordered the killing of all unmuzzled dogs, a proclamation that, fortunately, was eventually
modified as the result of the New York Herald’s subsequent agitation. 185

183
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 80
184
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 88
185
100

62
 1898- Remaining positive.

"We wish to do justice to Dr. Goffe, the editor of the New York "Medical News," by telling our
readers that at least he has published Mrs. White's letter, or a portion of it at least, in answer to
his article stating that at the recent annual meeting of the Anti-Vivisection Society a particular
objection was made to autopsies, He says that he is glad to learn that the anti-vivisectionists do
not disapprove of autopsies. We wonder what ridiculous change will be
made against us next. " 186

Concerns about the ethical implications of for-profit organizations received a great deal
of press during this year. Cynicism is rife in the following two passages:
"Now, what is the genesis of medical colleges? ...But I know some of them have a very
mundane origin. Something in this wise: A number of doctors get together, -vary good
and capable and honest men in the man, - and they say "Go to! let us found another
college. The capital stock shall be so much. It shall be divided into shares. We will take a
certain number and we will persuade our friends to take certain others. We will elect a
faculty from the stockholders. The students will pay for tuition. The assessments on the
stock will come back to the professors in salaries. Nay, they shall be doubled, trebled. We
shall presently own our building and all its appurtances. The more up to date we are, the
more fads we have, the more students, the more money. It will be a profitable investment.
" 187

Another described vivisection as follows:

Vivisection is, as I have intimated, a capitalized institution. In the language of the street,
"there is money in it." If it were not so it would be abandoned by the college within two
years, and would survive only in secluded laboratories where the mania for discovery had
taken possession of some physiologist. 188

Imagery of sacrifice, often a powerful symbol used by both sides, was invoked by Dr.
Amanda Hale who said “a pseudo-science has laid its impious hand and upon her hundreds of
altars, in medical colleges and high schools and private laboratories." 189 What enabled this,
according to Hale, was that vivisectionists owed a great deal to the public who were moved to
support vivisection by its proponent’s constant references to death, fear and self-interest.

186
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)49
187
(A. A.-V. Society, “Supplement to the Journal of Zoophily”) 20
188
(A. A.-V. Society, “Supplement to the Journal of Zoophily”)21
189
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 137

63
 Money issues were also in focus in 1899 with a great deal of thought given to the idea
that not only had the medical profession and universities had more money on their sides, but,
also, that humane society organizations were limited as to what they could do. Zoophily refuted
accusations of neglect against humane societies in Chicago, stating that a judge’s criticism about
the abundance of overloaded animals was unfair. In the case of Chicago’s humane society, both
the welfare of children and the welfare of animals were the responsibilities of a single group,
“and [because] it takes a great deal of money to attend to the children, the animals are obliged to
go to the wall." 190 White also carefully monitored how various presses represented humane and
anti-vivisectionist thought. In the case of “Life,” White did not object to the idea of the pictures
themselves, a series which depicts a vivisector being on the receiving end of vivisection,
however, she did not choose to use the particular set in "our work, because it was only an
imaginary presentation.” 191

190
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)14
191
(A. A.-V. Society, “Supplement to the Journal of Zoophily”)

64
 Women

"A woman, a horse, and a hickory tree

The more you beat 'em the better they be
~folk proverb~
Carol J. Adams: Woman-Battering and Harm to Animals 192

"The above, which bears internal evidence of having been written in

Philadelphia, illustrates the way the "British Medical Journal," would like to
be supposed to look at the American Anti-Vivisection Society and its work. …
A lot of "misguided" women, wholly surrendered to a "morbid sentimentality
little short of fanaticism," must have been able to exercise a good deal of
"witchery" of some sort to be able to bring before the American Congress two
different years a bill which was recommended by the committee to which it was
referred, and was also competent to stimulate to frantic action every medical
society in the country. If there is any "witchery" that can do those sort of
things, we hope our friends have a good stock of it on hand, and will use it on
occasion. And we are sure they will.”
Caroline Earle White 193

To address the work of Caroline Earle White without addressing nineteenth- and early-
twentieth century women’s issues would not only be amiss, it would neglect a vital component of
her work. After all, White may not be known as a suffragist or specifically a women’s right
activist, but she did found the Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania S.P.C.A. and she paid a
great deal of time and attention to the work women could do in order to improve the world.
When White would have been about five years old, Alexander Walker had written a bizarre and
disturbing text, Beauty in Woman Analyzed and Classified with a Critical View of the
Hypotheses of the Most Eminent Writers, Painters, and Sculptors which promised “Walker's
treatise promises practical help for men who are attempting to "read" women on the city streets.
60).” 194 In 1850, on the other side of the Atlantic, a handbill was advertising chloroform as a
way to seduce women

192
(Adams and Donovan)55
193
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)79-80
194
(Rosenman) 60

65
 Philadelphia’s Quaker roots would, however, give American women their first chance at
entering the medical field without the need for international study in 1850 195 The Female
Medical College of Pennsylvania opened to students, and it was a needed opportunity for women
to take back control of their health. Elizabeth Blackwell earned her medical degree (the first for
a woman in the world) from Geneva Medical College in 1849, and, after completing her studies
in Europe, she returned to the United States in 1851 and settled in New York." 196 It would be
Elizabeth Blackwell and Anna Kingsford who first “saw parallels between the rise of surgery on
women, especially gynaecological surgery, and vivisection” with Blackwell seeing “only the
thinnest lines between animal vivisection and experimentation on poor women. 197 Aside from
dealing with the possibly of humiliation of forced ‘inspection’ via the Contagious Diseases Acts,
women were also being intimately examined by the primarily male doctors. Dr. Blackwell, who
called “the examined woman the fallen woman,” 198 ardently urged women to enroll in medical
school.

TEXT OF THE TIMES

“When a promising colt approaches the period of publicity, the greatest

possible care is devoted to its developments and to its education. It is not
exposed to the common gaze. No Eastern slave merchant regards with greater
jealousy the flower of his female flock than does the London dealer survey
what he believes will, in his sphere, probe "the prize of the season." The door
of its stable is constantly locked. All its requirements are profusely supplied. It
is never taken abroad, save when fully clothed and closely hooded. Only
before the earliest hour of business or after the gates have been shut upon the
bustle of the day does the dealer feast his eyes upon the bare perfections of his
treasured possession. The ceremony of unveiling is then slowly performed, and
every particular is minutely examined, lest unforeseen accident should have
interfered with the realization of equine loveliness. (376-377)"

------------------
Although women had broken into the medical profession as doctors before 1861, female
doctors made little headway during the Civil War. Despite the desperate needs for physicians,
when war broke out no female physicians were commissioned as doctors by either the Union or
the Confederate medical departments. Dr. Agnew, ally of Dr. W.W. Keen and Dr. S. Weir
Mitchell, resigned his position at the Pennsylvania Hospital in 1871 when he learned he would

195
(Abrahams) 23
196
(Clinton) 83
197
(Guerrini) 91-92
198
(Vrettos) 2

66
be expected to teach women from the Women’s Medical College." Says Amy Werbel in her
biographical treatise of Thomas Eakins, “The University of Pennsylvania Medical College was
without a doubt a profoundly sexist educational environment in the nineteenth-century, and for
much of his life, Agnew was without a doubt an atrocious sexist.” 199

Perhaps one of the most telling overlaps between women’s history and the history of
White and her organizations’ antagonists was the release of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte
Perkins Gilman. The book, based on Gilman’s treatment by White antagonist S. Weir Mitchell,
was released in 1892 and revealed the deep undercurrents of misogyny that lay within the
medical profession. Mitchell, who used the ‘Rest Cure’ on women because he claimed it worked
on “his successful wartime work with malingerers,” 200 was only much later rightfully vilified as
an example of the harm that could be done by physicians who enjoyed status protected by the
esprit de corps. Details of the cure were described by scholar Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz as
follows:

"A later generation looked on Mitchell's "rest cure" as a reversion to infancy, as milk diet
synonymous with the comfort of the breast, but it was neither loving nor mild. It involved
extreme rest (a nurse moved a patient who wanted to turn in bed), total seclusion (nurses and
masseuses were not to talk to patients), rubbing serious enough to raise the body temperature,
and feedings every two hours, consisting of malt extract, raw beef, butter, and wine. In addition,
cod liver oil was inserted up the rectum, and iron… concealed in the food fed to the patient.
Many patients also faced the withdrawal of the "tonics," often narcotic drugs, that they had
been taking. It was a harsh regimen." 201

Mitchell was a firm believer in the intellectual inferiority of women and believed that
women should spend more time outside in their later teen years, rather than “[cramming] their
heads with learning.” Horowitz, in Wild Unrest, quoted Mitchell: "To-day, the American woman,
is, to speak plainly, too often physically unfit for her duties as a woman." 202 Clearly he would
not have approved of Caroline Earle White’s intelligence and her interest in leading her
organizations. Similarly, scholar Catherine Clinton, in her work The Other Civil War: American
Women in the Nineteenth Century cited another theory that could have been used against the
activist and upper class White. Early neurologists “argued that hysteria preyed on women of the
genteel classes because they were more egocentric, narcissistic, and impressionistic - an
unflattering portrait promoted in the medical literature of the period." 203

On S. Weir Mitchell
""He, being old-fashioned, did not believe in the equality of the sexes, and so far from
believing in their equality, failed completely to comprehend how, under the
mathematics of the new psychology, unlike things can be measured by the same

199
(Werbel) 44-45
200
(Horowitz) 125
201
(Horowitz)
202
(Horowitz)
203
(Clinton) 151

67
 units. This, of course, is a trifling detail we have gotten rid of by the simple process of
putting it to one side. His opinion on the woman question is shown in the following
quotation:

"What I shall have to say in these pages will trench but little on the mooted ground of
the differences between men and women. I take women as they are to my
experience. For me the grave significance of sexual difference controls the whole
question, and, if I say little of it in words, I cannot exclude it from my thought of them
and their difficulties. The woman's desire to be on a level of competition with man
and to assume his duties is, I am sure, making mischief..." This is science, wisdom
and, of course, therefore, truth." 204

In 1893, Dr. Sarah Ellen Blackwell, made the following request to medical students and
expressed her hope that women would seek more and more authority:

"We look forward to the advent of woman in science, in art, in medicine, in politics, into all the
activities of the world, with the glad hope that they will bring a new and higher life into all of
these things...We want them to redeem medical science from inhumanity and from the
consequent distrust which is gathering against it." 205

In contrast to Blackwell’s call, a medical journal article written by Dr. Eccles in 1894
declared:

"Women in all ages and at all times have taken a more active part in hindering the world's
progress than men. They have always acted as a brake to progress. The always cling to the past
and all that it stands for with great tenacity. Through the whole past history of the world we find
them on the wrong side of every question. …It is, then, not surprising to learn that the moving
and directing power of anti-vivisection is found in women. The Illinois Anti-Vivisection Society,
on June 4th, held its annual meeting at Aurora, and elected women to fill every office in the
same, from president down to auditor of accounts." 206

By 1895, White and her allies were granted memberships to the National Council of
Women and would represent their work at the Washington triennial. Not all women, however,
would align with the movement. For example, White was frustrated by Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s
blind faith in the word of vivisectionists when it came to the promise that anesthetics were used.
“We believe that the only reason is justified by Mrs. Stanton is, that she does not know what it
really is,” said White in response to Stanton’s stance. “This is evident from the fact that she is
quoted as saying "there seems to be no reason that painless vivisection and subsequent painless
204
(Burr) 31
205
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 58
206
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 110

68
death should not be used in the interest of science." Could there be any greater ignorance than
this? As if the expression, 'painless vivisection and subsequent painless death," included
everything that was ever done in the way of experimentation and disposed of the whole
matter.” 207

Mona Caird, the feminist who was probably best known for her outspoken opinion
regard the ‘binding’ of women in marriage also made a connection between the treatment of an
animal and the treatment of women. One of her essays, “A defence of the so-called “Wild
Women”” stated:

"There is a strange irony in this binding of women to the evil results, in their own natures, of the
restrictive injustices which they have suffered for generations. We chain up a dog to keep watch
over our home; we deny him freedom, and in some cases, alas! even sufficient exercise to keep
his limbs supple and his body in health. He becomes dull and spiritless, he is miserable and ill
looking, and if by any chance he is let loose, he gets into mischief and runs away. He has not
been used to liberty or happiness, and he cannot stand it."

Humane people ask his master: "Why do you keep that dog always chained up?"
"Oh! he is accustomed to it; he is suited for the chain; when we set him free he runs wild." 208

Also in 1897, Dr. Kate Bushnell, spoke of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell’s frustration with the
American women in the medical field. Blackwell “told her of experiments as she had never
dreamed of, being made, and said that if the medical women of American did not soon move
against vivisection, she should never be able to forgive them, and should be almost sorry she had
ever done anything to help open the way for them into the profession." 209 One woman
conjectured that male opposition to anti-vivisection was due to jealousy. When Dr. Keen called
anti-vivisectionists “a lot of zoophilist women,” she suggested that “men grow spiteful and
contemptuous about women's love for animals their inspiration is purely personal and selfish.
Men, as you were told here yesterday, are egoists. Not realizing the women's affections are as
broad and deep as the boundless seas, they are not willing that even a little wavelet shall
overflow upon poor Fido or Prince. They want it all themselves." 210

In "Women Who Love Animals," Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox observed the connection
between the love of animals and the love of children, arguing that it was not at either/or
proposition as so many men suggested. The Philadelphia Inquirer declared that "Woman is the
Modern Reformer,” and in the article called "her irresistible foe." The article pointed out that the
protest against the Rockefeller Farm had “got such a hurricane started that they have put the
enemy on the defensive, and Dr. Flexner, in charge of the institution, admits that the work is
likely to be seriously damaged unless the women's opposition can be stopped.” 211

207
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 6.
208
(Caird) 64
209
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 85
210
(A. A.-V. Society, “Supplement to the Journal of Zoophily”) 22
211
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 2

69
 1910 and 1911 saw continued gendered arguments such as anti-vivisectionists described
as “skirted men and trousered women" 212 and at the 1911 meeting of the American Humane
Society, women were left completely out of any honors, leaving them to state that the decisions
were based on “an old-fashioned sex view of the case.” 213 The London Daily Mirror, in 1913,
ostensibly meaning it as a compliment declared: "Miss Lind-af-Hageby has, during the sixteen
days' hearing, achieved a feat of eloquence probably unparalled in the case of a woman” 214 As
for Ms. Af-Hageby, she was a firm supporter of women’s suffrage because she believed that it
was a way in which the movement could be advanced and that it “might play an important part in
the betterment of the world.” 215 Suffragist Alice Paul evidently had no love for vivisectionists,
as, in one of her letters she complained that “He sees deputations of male hooligans and the
unemployed and even vivisectionists." 216 There were men saw the potential in women to change
the world once given the vote. Colonel Sir Frederick Cardew “said in great and righteous cases it
was generally women who were the greatest and most altruistic fighters. His belief was that the
day women got the vote the death-knell of the cruel science of vivisection would be sounded.” 217
On the other side of the argument, “Mr. Philip H. Churchman, of Worcester, in the Gazette of
that city, base[d] an elaborate argument against women's suffrage on the ground that women, if
clothed with franchise, would put a stop to vivisection, as they already threaten to stop war." 218

Current scholarship continues to focus on the connection between women and animals.
Along with the highly acclaimed The Sexual Politics of Meat, by Carol J. Adams, a number of
other scholars have commented on the connection. In "Dismantling Oppression: An Analysis of
the Connection Between Women and Animals," by Lori Gruen, the author states”:

"The categories "woman" and "animal" serve the same symbolic function in patriarchal society.
Their construction as dominated, submissive "other" in theoretical discourse (whether explicitly
so stated or implied) has sustained human male dominance. …Reducing animals to objects
devoid of feelings, desires, and interests is a common consequence of the scientific mindset by
which those engaged in experimentation distance themselves from their subjects." 219

Josephine Donovan in “Animal Rights and Feminist Theory” aptly cites Donna Haraway’s
suggestion in “Primate Visions” that misogyny is built deep into the dream structure of
laboratory culture; misogyny is built into the objects of everyday life in laboratory practice,

212
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 86
213
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
214
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 67
215
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)74
216
(Alice Paul...) 196
217
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 126
218
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 180
219
(Gaard)61

70
including the bodies of animals, the jokes in the publications, and the shape of the equipment " 220
With cases of academic sexism frequently in the news, it is sure to be an issue for years to come.

220
(Adams and Donovan) 69

71
 1899

‘The charge that you make against us that we hated science with a mediaeval
hatred is too absurd, as well as false, to be worthy of a moment's
consideration. We hate cruelty, not science.”
Caroline Earle White 221

It was the year in which W.E.B. DuBois released the book The Philadelphia Negro. It
was also the year that the Cuban war ended, with White observing “that the Cuban troubles are
over, and that our hearts will no longer be wrung by accounts of atrocities committed by both of
the contending parties." 222

The same year, news came that children in Vienna had been experimented on.
Horrifyingly, one doctor justified the decision because “he could obtain them without expense,
whereas dogs [the usual subjects for this peculiar operation] cost money." 223 Dr. Janson of the
Charity Hospital in Stockholm would say that “calves, which would have served this end, could
only be obtained at a high price.” 224 Other papers reported similar stories and related their
confirmation: "The veracity of the awful cases of human vivisection in Germany, as recorded in
"The Abolitionist," April, 1899, has been substantiated by the proceedings in the Prussian Diet,
March 5, 1900, as recorded in the London "Daily Chronicle."” 225 Also in Germany, a playwright
attempted to bring light to the issue of vivisection through theatre; an attempt that would be
silenced by censors:

“A novel idea to expose vivisection and lay bare its horrors to the public gaze has been devised
by Dr. Ernest Arthur Lutze…."Der Vivisector," which has already been acted privately before
the members of the union. Mr. Martinus, the type of remorseless vivisectionist, is represented as
experimenting on unsuspecting patients in the institution of which he belongs. The Berlin
theatrical censors (the police) will not permit the piece, "for various reasons," to be produced in
public.
New York Journal 226

Other concerns about vivisection also appeared in newspapers. In the New York Medical
News one author stated: "There is s a wide-spread realization that it is only by the exact study of
the nature of the disease in human tissues that any secure advance can come in medicine." 227 A

221
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)27-28
222
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)7
223
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 26
224
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
225
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 38
226
(“The Vivsector: A Horrible Play Berlin People Are Not to See”)
227
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 57

72
different perspective questioned the motivations of bacteriological researchers by stating that the
“practice is steeped with commercial interests." 228

Inaccurate representations of the anti-vivisection movement continued, but not without

pushback from White. In one article, the author stated that the AAVS was against autopsies.

""Dear Sir: Will you please correct a serious misstatement which occurs in the issue of
Saturday, February 18th, of your journal, and which has recently been brought to my
notice...
At that meeting not only was there not a single word spoken upon the subject of
autopsies, but there has never, in the history of the anti-vivisection movement, been the
slightest objection made to them, or to anything else which came strictly within the
province of the medical profession, and had no connection with our work..
In view of the fact that this is the second article which has appeared in your journal
within the space of two weeks, totally misrepresenting the anti-vivisection meeting held
in Philadelphia on January 27th, does it not seem to you that your change against the anti-
vivisectionists of not always telling the truth is rather illtimed? Yours truly, Caroline
Earle White "" 229

The role of women and gendered arguments continued to be rife within the rhetoric of the
opposition. During an America Humane Association meeting, Coleridge commented that he
remembered the “days when we were ridiculed; we were 'a pack of hysterical women,' and all of
us who were men were 'effeminate' men; that is curious when we reflect that cruelty spells
cowardice.” 230 In Lady Grove’s address she stated: “under various names, such as
'sentimentality,' 'emotionalism,' 'morbidity,' 'hysteria,' we are twitted with our humanity when it
revolts against the treatment to which the lower animals are subjected; and if we happen to be
women, we must be prepared to have our very sex flung in our faces by those who had no more
choice in the matter than we had ourselves.” 231

Mark Twain
He wrote, "I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to
the human race or doesn't. ... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of
my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking
further".

228
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 81
229
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)40.
230
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)76.
231
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)76.

73
 1900
"We have received further accounts of shocking experiments made by doctors upon
human beings. A Professor Stubel, first assistant at the medical clinic in Jena,
describing his experiments upon several patients suffering from diabetes insipidus, a
disease which is accompanied by an intense thirst, writes in volume lxii of the
"Archives of Clinical Medicine," that as he knew exact inquiries into the condition of
his first patient, a man named Hertel, to be impossibly, without shutting him up, he
had him brought to the clinic and placed in a room in the upper story which had two
windows with strong iron bands, preventing egress or ingress. The door was shut and
securely locked, the doctor carrying the key always in his pocket. There the
unfortunate patient was kept several days with scarcely any water. He suffered such
torments from thirst that, endowed with almost supernatural strength, he wrenched
an iron bar out of one window, and getting onto the roof, tore another iron bar out of
the window leading into the room of the waiting woman, where he was caught, to
use the doctor's own words, just at the right time, as he was hastening to the hydrant
over the washstand." 232

In 1900, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was the third largest country in the United States. In
that city, one man, formerly convicted of abuse of a mare, was found guilty of murdering his
wife. Horses, indeed, received a great deal of attention the Journals for the year. Horse treatment
in Russia was praised, 233 and the Federated Humane Societies of Pennsylvania had passed the
“Old Horse Act” which regulated the trade in aged or sick horses. 234 Horses and other animals in
sport were also defended – in many arenas that we may often think have only been addressed
only later in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. For example, White addressed all of
the following as examples of animals abused in sport and entertainment: "Cock-fights, dog-
fights, fights between dogs and rats, matches between terriers and foxes, pigeon matches,
shooting matches were living animals are the targets, and either bow or guys are used, fox-hunts
and bear-hunts where the bears have been previously crippled, rabbit coursing, the stoning of
animals. long-distance rides, teaching tricks to wild beasts, feeding animals in public, such as
snakes, to which other living animals are given; cruel treatment of horses and donkeys on the
beach, employment of steel traps for snaring animals" 235

Vivisection

Numerous discussions regarding the concern that human life was also being devalued in
the name of scientific ‘discovery’ were taking place at the very beginning of the century.
Although not a new phenomenon, it was becoming increasingly clear that classism was

232
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 86.
233
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 125
234
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 400-1
235
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)100

74
beginning to merge with science; the harbinger to eugenics. Life addressed the issue satirically:
“Send your feeble-minded relatives of property right on to Dr. Berkley. No sickly sentiment
about him." 236 Amanda Hale cautioned readers about the role of commercialism and its danger to
human life: “that wretched, unchristian spirit of commercialism which does not hesitate at the
sacrifice of human lives for the sake of gain. Of all the ways in which human selfishness finds
expression, this is the most unpardonable and most offensive, and emphasizes most strongly the
deplorable lack of moral principle in the community.” 237

The medical community was not one of unified opposition to the anti-vivisection. Some
even had regrets. A Dr. Reid, who was dying of tongue cancer, reportedly said “This is my
punishment for the torture I allowed the animals to suffer!" Another, who "had once no pity for
the sufferings I inflicted on dozens of animals by vivisection," confessed at last that "[t]hose
incidents which weigh especially heavily on me are when I tormented animals unnecessarily, out
of ignorance, inexperience, folly, or God only knows why." 238

Transparency, one of the most important issues in regard to the regulation of animal
experimentation was frequently discussed, and it is one which is still at the forefront of the
movements today. While laws are in place and must be followed in order to acquire animals,
transparency is still not available. In the typical case of ‘who watches the watchers,’ only a
limited number of people are allowed to witness what goes inside of the labs. On July 17, 1900,
the British Medical Journal stated its belief that "Gross abuses in any profession should not be
hushed up, but should rather be made public as feeling as possible." 239 From the Journal of
Zoophily comes the following quote:

"No, as this is exactly what Dr. Girdner and Dr. Bowditch and all the rest of the
advocates for vivisection claim - viz., that in a great majority or in nearly all of the
experiments, the animal is under the influence of an anesthetic and is killed before
recovering consciousness, - how is it that they object so violently to a law which provides
that exactly what they say is done in most cases, shall be done? Does any intelligent man
believe that if this were true, they would have moved heaven and earth to prevent the
passage of this bill?”

Why, if after viewing "hundreds of experiments," which seemed to the writer in no way
cruel, he should be so bitterly opposed to allowing also the agents of humane societies to
witness them? Why should such a permission tend to "abolish the investigation into the
cause, the nature and treatment of disease, by the use of animals," if the work is distinctly
not cruel? Isn't this a trifle inconsistent?" 240

236
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 134
237
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 56
238
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 115
239
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 127.
240
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)29

75
 Our valorous, witty, and faithful ally, "Life," under the caption "And He is a Good Man
Too," quotes President Eliot as asking in defence of vivisection, "How many cats and guinea-pigs
would a mother sacrifice to save the life of her child?" "Life" suggests that most mothers would
be willing to sacrifice several college presidents for the same purpose.”

Canon Wilberforce puts this argument (?) in a similar way. An experimenter said to him:
"If the one you love best lay dying up-stairs, would you not sacrifice all the cats and dogs in the
world to save her?"
The Canon replied: "Yes, and I would sacrifice you and the whole College of Physicians
and Surgeons; but that would not prove that I was right." 241

“Mr. Rockefeller's doctors, backed by Mr. Rockefeller’s honest money, are certainly
making things lively for the animals; livelier even than Mr. Rockefeller made things for his
competition in the oil business. And that is saying a good deal.” - Life. 242

241
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 109
242
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 57

76
 1901-1902

How do we know that animals were created specially for our use? We do not
know it. Science shows that they existed ages before man. All the authority we
think we have for the belief that they were created for our use is in the Bible. It
states and animals were created before man, and the permission to use them as
food is not stated to have been given until after the flood. It is true that we read
of "dominion" over them in the first chapter of Genesis. Kings have dominion
over their subjects, but in civilization that is not supposed to imply any
invasion of the subject's rights or interference with his comfort." 243

By 1901, the advent of the automobile was beginning to reduce the number of horses
engaged in work on the streets. However, the W.S.P.C.A. remained a focus for some critics. In
response to an article in the North American on May 31st, an article which was described by
White as “calculated to do injury to the Women’s Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals and to misrepresent its aims and purpose,” prompted a response from White.
One of the staple arguments of the article, that the Society should be helping humans and not
animals was soundly refuted by White’s description of how, when aiding the welfare of the
horses, aid to the owners was also given: “If they are poor, and unable when their horses are sick
to give them the advantage of good veterinary surgeons and careful treatment, we will take them
and keep them for some time, providing them with such treatment and returning them to their
owners when cured. In the mean time, if we are able to do so, we furnish their owners with other
horses; and all this, as I understand, without exacting any payment whatever." 244
In New Jersey, one sixteen year old girl, whose admonitions to stop to a driver of
emaciated horses were ignored, became “indignant beyond expression,” and “suddenly jumped
up on the step of the wagon and pulled the club out of his hands and began to belabor him on the
back and shoulders with it.” 245 In 1902 President Roosevelt spoke out openly against the docking
of horse’s tails, an action that gained him wide respect for humane societies across the nation.

For other animals, defenses were voiced in relation to hunting. J.H. Kellogg voiced
virulently his belief that hunting should be prohibited and that “a fully awakened conscience will
recognize animal rights as well as human rights” and that “nothing short of the wholesale
massacre of human beings could be more hideous than going out with a shotgun to kill birds, or
with a rifle to destroy the graceful antelope or busy rabbits and squirrels, all actively at work
performing offices in the economy of nature.” 246 Opposition to “bagged or dropped foxes” was

243
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 98
244
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
245
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 139.
246
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 122

77
also expressed in a 1901 issue of the Journal; a controversy still fiercely debated in 21st century
Britain.

VIVISECTION

We know that we are contending with what has been well called "a medical
oligarchy…."I am an old man," said one of the best friends of our cause last
week. "I have only my professional income. I might be boycotted. I can not
come to help you." What undergraduate or young physician is inclined to risk
the displeasure of his elder and more eminent colleagues? Give these facts
their due in your attention.” 247

Things were looking up, according to the Journal “now that able medical men are
beginning to protest against the infernal torture of poor beasts, and also against its
uselessness.” 248 Dr. Stephen Smith published his book, Scientific Research: A View from Within,
and the book, which included full color pictures of what procedures on dogs and other animals
might look like, admitted that "I shall be blamed for making these disclosures by some who
would say the esprit de corps should have restrained me. To such I would say that there is
something higher than class bias - Truth." 249 White, for her part, felt confident that transparency
would soon reveal all:
"The time is past when doctors can defend all of this with a conspiracy of silence and
contempt" 10,839 experiments recorded, and in 1299 anesthetic was administered... 9540
without. " 250

One pro-vivisectionist, when asked to comment on those who were seeking to pass
restrictions on vivisection, condescendingly asked “Who are these people? I do not know them;
they are nobodies.” The reply was prompt: “the petition for the bill was signed by more
prominent Washingtonians than ever before petitioned Congress for any controverted measure -
headed by six justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, with the leading District
judges, lawyers, and clergymen.” There was, perhaps, good reason to believe that anti-
vivisection feeling was growing, as in 1902 the AAVS reported that they had seen an increase in
subscriptions of about twenty-five percent." 251

247
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 80.
248
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
249
(Smith) V-vi
250
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 87.
251
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 47

78
 Not everything was a victory, however, and some colleges and universities continued to
defy prosecution for the abuses of animals used in experimentation. In May 1901, a Philadelphia
resident at 1017 Walnut Street, near the Jefferson Medical College, contacted the W.S.P.C.A.
regarding the fact that she’d been disturbed by the cries of dogs that could be heard from the
building. Although White sent a letter to the board of the College, she received no immediate
response, and later, the incident was explained away by the school and no further investigation
was done.

In the Journal, one issue reported on ‘morality tests’ that were conducted on a mother
dog whose puppies were taken way from a nursing mother. Asked the editor: “is it the morality
of the animals or the morality of the investigator who could watch the mother and puppies
suffer? 252 In “Social Evolution” Benjamin Kidd asked listeners to ask if the benefits of such
research would be worth the reduction in altruistic tendency. 253

Humans continued to be experimented on as well. Edward Maitland, staunch ally of the

movement told of one encounter of a poor woman who was experimented on during the final
stages of consumption:

".. a pauper …must afford yet another lesson in return for the charity she has received.
… Taking a pin from his coat he thrusts it under the surface of each lid. She utters a cry,
and he withdraws the pin saying: "You feel that, do you? Why don't you open your eyes
then?" … Putting his ear to her back he shakes her violently with both hands in order to
hear the function of the liquid in the chest, an operation which has already been repeated
daily for the same purpose. At each shake the patient puts out her emaciated hands and
cries piteously, " Oh, Sir! Oh, Sir!" 254

Lovell wisely reminded readers of these dangers of classism: "But a man is worth more
than an animal," Which man? The brilliant statesman, the noble philanthropist, the learned
philosopher, are "worth more" than the idiot, the criminal, or the pauper. Shall the latter be
tortured for the benefit of the former?” 255 A letter to Geo.T. Angell from a vice-president of the
AMA would the state of physicians in this way:

"...Doctors, we find, range themselves in three distinct classes: First, the small minority
who have the courage, publicly or over their own signatures, to condemn cruelty…; the
second class are those who, from apathy, esprit de corps, or easy disbelief of the truth,
comfortably let our reform alone, thus sparing themselves all the trouble, the third class

252
Bringing to mind the Harlow monkey experiments which were resurrected in 2015 at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison
253
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 45
254
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)47
255
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 12

79
 is represented by scientists and professional men whose love of truth and humane
guidance has been blinded by cruelty long indulged, to whom truth is nothing is thereby
their cruel deeds can be, and to whom subterfuge and evasion, if they serve their purpose,
are not deemed unworthy of men holding highest social or professional standing.... Esprit
de corps silence once broken, and individual opinion once asserted, the diving line
between the humane and the non-humane would be quickly and surely established." 256

Emile Zola

256
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 77

80
Article by Emile Zola "Conservator", Philadelphia, May, 1901.

Why is it that the sight of a lost dog in a crowded street gives me a pain in the heart? Why does
his misery provoke a pity so full of anguish as to entirely spoil my walk? Why, for the whole
evening, and even until the next day, does the recollection of this lost dog haunt me with a sort of
despair? I find myself wondering what he is doing, whether he has been found, and if he has
anything to eat. Why do the sufferings of an animal upset me so? Why is it that I feel that alt the
animals of creation are my little relatives? Why does the very thought of them fill me with pity,
tolerance, and tenderness? Why do regarded animals as of my family, like men, as much as II131
|Often I have asked myself this question. I believe that neither physiology nor psychology can
answer it in a satisfactory way. There are three attitudes toward animals. There are their friends,
their enemies, and those who are indifferent to them. A census would be necessary to establish
the proportion of each. Then it would still be unexplained why they are loved, why they are
hated, or why they are neglected. Perhaps some general law might be found. I am surprised that
no one has yet undertaken this work, for I imagine that the problem is one closely allied to all
sorts of grave questions, touching even the foundation of our humanity. *
It has been said that animals take the place of children with old maids. That is not true. The love
of animals persists and does not give way before maternal love when it is awakened. Mothers
may be passionately fond of their children and retain the same affection for animals that they had
in their youth. This affection is a special faculty. It is a distinct manifestation of the universal
love, and not a modification or perversion of any particular form of love.
One loves God, and that is a divine love. One loves his children; one loves his parents; these are
the maternal love and the filial love. One loves a woman, and it is the eternal, sovereign love.
Finally, one loves animals. This is still a love another love which has its conditions, its
necessities, its pains, and its joys. Those who do not experience it joke about it, are annoyed by
it, declare it absurd, just as those who do not like certain women will not admit that others can
possibly like them. It is, as are all the fine feelings, silly and delicious, full of pains and sweets.
Who will study this thing out? Who will discover to what depths the roots of this love for
animals go into our being? For myself, when I consider the matter, I am sure that my charity for
animals is based upon the fact that they cannot speak, explain their needs, or tell their troubles. A
creature which suffers and which has no means of making us understand how and why it suffers
is it not frightful, is it not harrowing? But this charity is only pity. How can we explain the love
for animals? Here is the question : Why is it that the animal in health, the animal which does not
need me, is still my friend, my sister, a companion that I seek and that I love Why this affection
in me, and why in others indifference and even hatred? Animals have not yet a country. So far
there are no such things as German dogs and French dogs. There are only dogs which suffer
when they are beaten. Is it not possible for nations to start a harmony based upon the love which
we feel for animals? From this universal love of animals, which has no frontier, could not we
build up a universal love of men for one another? Dogs the whole world over are brothers, petted
everywhere with the same tenderness, treated according to the same code of justice. Do they not

81
suggest one whole people with a liberty in common
As opposed to the warful and fratricidal idea of separate nationalities, is not that a dream in the
direction of a state of future happiness-Emile Zola, in Conservator," Philadelphia, May, 1901.
257

1903
"All vivisectors, however, - in fact a great proportion of them, - are not enlightened. The most
ignorant country lout, who fancies that he would like to be a doctor, and comes to the city and
enters a medical college, is at liberty to cut up alive and torture un unmentionable ways all the
dogs, cats, and rabbits that he can lay his hands upon. The medical profession knows this, yet
does not take the slightest step to have this outrage abolished." 258
Caroline Earle White

Humane Society

Vegetarianism received a re-visitation in the Journals of Zoophily for 1903. Vegetarian

Annie Besant asserted that work in the Chicago slaughterhouses deadened the emotions and led
to the ostracization and criminalization of those who did the work. Internationally speaking, the
Journal of Zoophily, also cited the culture of the Jains, who would not harm an animal and which
was said to have not seen a murder in 4000 years.
Concerns about humane education and entertainments also were voiced. Circuses and
other animal shows were addressed in a speech at the American Humane Association. The
Journal spoke positively of the paper by Huntington Smith, “Cruelty Practiced in Connection
with the Exhibition of Animals," and stated that the article “will draw the attention of the public,
and spectators at shows will become more observant as to what their amusement consists in, and
by what means it must have been produced." 259 The annual National Women’s Christian
Temperance Union in 1903 also addressed cases of animal cruelty and encouraged the adoption
of “the systematic teaching of the law of kindness to every living creature has proved to be a
sure, preventative of crime.” 260

Vivisection
The concerns over the hardening of the hearts of slaughterhouse workers was paralleled
in the anti-vivisection literature; both in the cases of harm against animals and humans. Unlike
the “true surgeon [such as] Dr. Lorenz” the man who showed no mercy to animals could be
counted upon to be immune to human suffering as well. 261 White also attacked the continued
lack of training of doctors; still inadequate after decades of voiced concerns. “The most ignorant

257
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)113
258
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 58
259
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 14
260
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 2
261
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)

82
country lout, who fancies that he would like to be a doctor, and comes to the city and enters a
medical college, is at liberty to cut up alive and torture in unmentionable ways all the dogs, cats,
and rabbits that he can lay his hands upon,” White observed somewhat virulently, also indicating
that most doctors were not “enlightened" 262 In one case, the editor an issue from 1903 confessed
that one intern had told her that not only was it easy for him to handle painful cases, but that he
had “smiled and said that pain attracted him greatly, and he always liked to be where there was
pain.” 263

Religious alignments along the lines of pro/anti-vivisection also came under scrutiny.
White tended to be aware of the different factors that could influence the practices of religion
and stated that “that all sincere Christians, even if sometimes misled by special pleading, are at
heart desirous of conforming to the merciful teachings of the Almighty, and exercising kindness
as far as possible towards every creature that tis the work of His hands." 264” While much has
been said of the influence of religion in the history of humane society and anti-vivisection work,
the sides which different religions and factions held were often quite dynamic. Consider White’s
observation of the changing views:

“There is a melancholy suggestiveness in the fact that the large liberal religions element
here, which thirty years ago was earliest and most cordial in its welcome to Miss Cobbe's
"Essay on Intuitive Morals," is now mostly in sympathy with vivisection. Science is now
its god, and its ethics is relegated to the background.

In this connection it is significant that most of the great philanthropic work of the day is
being done by the evangelical branch of the church." 265

Catholics often appeared on both sides of the fence, with some bishops supporting it. This
included not only in regard to animal cruelty, but also in regard to war. "A great movement
against war has been going on in England during the past few years” read another article, “I find
among its leaders Frederic Harrison, the positivist; Herbert Spencer, the agnostic; and John
Morely, the atheist; but the whole bench of bishops has been on the side of bloodshed." 266

Aside with photo: Here is the picture of the contemporary college president
drawn in the paper by the editor of the "New England Journal of Education,"
not long ago "The glory of the college president of old was in sitting on one
end of a bench with an earnest student on the other; but to-day it consists in

262
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 58
263
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)135
264
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)108-9
265
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 31
266
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)111

83
touching toes under the mahogany with the private secretary of a Rockefeller
or a Carnegie."

84
 1904
"We are now told that the exhibit at the World's Fair, at St. Louis, to which we
were all looking forward with a good deal of anticipation of hopeful results,
cannot take place...We can only say, "How long, Lord, how long is such a
treatment to be our portion?” 267
Caroline Earle White
“Esprit de corps” continued to bind physicians together, drive out outsiders and influence
the insularity of vivisectional policy. “Habit and prejudice are as potent in the vivisector as in the
other men when professional and economical interests are concerned,” 268 observed White. Even
long-time White ally Albert Leffingwell felt that he couldn’t go on working with the AAVS
without experiencing externally-sourced bias that would harm his work and theirs. Such biases
armored the pro-vivisectionist cause and it helped toward eliminating any chance of outside
regulation or observation. This was especially true in discussions regarding the potential
suffering involved in vivisection. White wrote to the editor of The Star and asserted that one can
“no more lay claim to be an unbiased observer than could slave-holders of the abuses of slavery,
prison authorities in times gone by of the effects of torture, or employers of the dangers of child-
labor in factories." 269 Bias and collusion against anti-vivisection thought made itself clear in
more direct and devastating ways as well. In 1904, Margaret M. Halvey complained that the
majority opinion that ‘might makes right’ resulted in denial of anti-vivisectionist representation
at the St. Louis World’s fair.
Dr. Amanda Hale related a theory of regulation of animal experimentation as supported by Dr.
G.G. Taylor:
Dr. Taylor makes three conditions under which he would permit vivisection:
(1) that the experimenter should be a skilled anatomist and physiologist;
(2) that anaesthetics should be employed whenever possible; and
(3) that when a fact has been determined repetitions of the experiments are
unjustifiable. 270

"Finally, we are told that he asserts animals do not suffer much, being constituted differently
from human beings. This absurd statement furnishes a strong argument against himself, for if
animals are so difference from ourselves any dedication that we may draw from experiments
upon them are of little to now value.” 271
Caroline Earle White in the Baltimore Sun

267
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 43.
268
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 22.
269
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
270
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 1
271
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 88.

85
 Vivisectionist Memoirs: Aside:

1904 - A great deal of interest has been excited in antivivisection circles by the
appearance of a book called The Confessions of a Physician," by V. Veresaeff, a
Russian doctor. “He gives a long account of his treatment of a monkey called Stepka
to whom he became apparently much attached, yet he did not hesitate to put him to
a miserable death by depriving him of his spleen and then inoculating him with
typhoid. … In my younger days," we read in his posthumous memoirs, I was pitiless to
suffering. The sufferings of animals are truly horrible and sympathy with them is not
sentimentality; but we must bear in mind that there is no way round where the
building up of scientific medicine its goal the healing of mankind, is at stake." 272

272
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 86

86
 Rats (and mice, and other ‘non-animals’)

"This demonstration may surely be classed, partially at least, as the good resulting
from intended evil. The dreadful experiment of Professor Watson, which bids fair to
make Chicago's "tortured rat" as well-known as was "the brown dog" of transatlantic
fame, aroused thousands to the possibilities of vivisection mania. In an editorial, as
clever as it was caustic, a journal of our own city, never committed to the specific
support of Anti-vivisection, said in a recent issue: "The Chicago professor may have
demonstrated to his own satisfaction that rats possess the sixth sense of direction; he
certainly demonstrated to the world at large another medical fact, namely, that
scientists can live without hearts" - which was probably more than Professor Watson
set out to prove!" 273

273
(Anti-Vivisection Society, Twenty Fourth Annual Report of the American Anti-Vivisection Society) 14

87
 Rats and mice may be considered ‘animals’ in phylogenetic trees, in zoology and in the
public mind, however, when it comes to legal protections as awarded in the Animal Welfare Act
of 1970, they are not considered animals at all. Even today, people are often surprised at the
efforts of humane societies and other groups who work to rescue and adopt out rats; the idea of a
‘humane society’ typically causes most people to think solely of cats and dogs, or, occasionally
rabbits or guinea pigs. Caroline Earle White and other activists, however, were outraged at
cruelty to every animal, and, in the case of Dr. Watson, that fury made national news.

It was Professor Watson of the Chicago University who drew national attention to the
kinds of experiments that could be done on animals, and, in this case, “which on account of its
cruelty aroused the indignation of the whole country, judging from the articles in the newspapers,
(1907)” The experiment involved the gradual removal of all five sense from rats in order to
determine whether or not they had a sixth sense. 274 The progression of the experiment was as
follows: first, the eyes were removed and their feet were frozen. After this, he, according to
Watson’s own words, “[turned] them loose, to observed if they possessed any instinct of the
direction they ought to take.” According to the accounts, such experiments proved to Watson that
“that the inferior animals do possess one sense more than others - the sense of direction.”

News of these experiments left a number of people outraged and appalled. The same
Philadelphia Standard and Times closed with an article which concluded with the following:
“Rats and mice, it would seem, can manage to get along somehow without the aid of eyes and
tails, and so can scientists without ears.” 275 Other publications and organizations stepped in to
give feedback with the Chicago Tribune describing the process as the experiments so far as
having “been made by removing the eyeballs of rats, their sense of smell, hearing and taste, and
to some extent their sense of feeling,” and indicated skepticism at Watson’s statement that: "The
rats suffer no pain and apparently no inconvenience in the loses of their eyesight, and they are as
healthy after as before the operation." 276 Dr. W.R.D. Blackwood sent a letter to the North
American which stated that “Vivisectionists must surely possess a sixth sense, otherwise they
could not with such delight wallow in the tortures which they enjoy so much day after day in
repetition of so-called "established" functions.” 277 David Belais, President of the New York City
Humane Society, challenged the funding that was being given to the Chicago University and
stated that “Truly, mankind is in need of a sixth sense, but it should be a sense of humanity." 278

When Professor James Rowland Angell (not to be confused with the founder of the
Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Geo. T. Angell), leveled words
such as “Ignorant', "narrow-minded," "loud-voiced," and "contemptibly libelous" toward the
“American Anti-vivisection Association of Philadelphia,” the Philadelphia Record replied “that
there will always be narrow-minded and ignorant persons who will wish to test all scientific

275
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 19
276
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 28
277
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 32
278
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 31

88
achievement by that touchstone, but it is hardly conceivable that in an enlightened country like
our own such intellectual bigotry should prevail." 279

However, the defense of rats and mice were not limited to the Watson experiments. In an
issue of the Journal of Zoophily in 1900, questions were raised about the theories regarding the
transmission of plague. While it was admitted that “quite possibly they are carriers of
contagion… cats would prove far more dangerous to the human family than the rats." 280 In 1902,
the Philadelphia Press published the results of an experiment that showed that the "waltzing
mice" of China and Japan has ended in the supposition that their peculiarity was due to some
disease of the inner ear. Now, however, after a thorough examination of the ears of these
remarkable animals, Dr. K. Kishi comes to the conclusion that the organs are perfectly healthy
and that the dancing is the effect of centuries of confinement of the race in small cages. 281 In
1903, the Journal reported that miners would not return to coal mines in Scranton until rats
returned to the mine as “[t]hey act as scavengers and give warning of impending danger, thus
saving the men's lives. 282 In 1908, the plague was once again addressed, and, in opposition to a
plan to annihilate all of the rats stated that “The accusation has never been proved, as regards
India, and it has never been scientifically demonstrated there whether the rat or the flea is most to
blame which it is that begins the havoc.” 283 Calling it a “holy war [that has] been preached by
certain noted vivisection leaders against the rat,” she goes on to say that “ vivisectors don't pause
to consider such trivial objections as this, and things began to look very bad for the rodent when
one of the leading scientists in the world came to its rescue.” Sir E. Ray Lankester, director of
the Natural History Museum, set forth in the Daily Telegraph facts which put an entirely
different complexion on the whole affair. They impel us to regard the much vilified rat far from
being an enemy is actually a friend and protector.” 284

279
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 69
280
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 56
281
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 99
282
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 56
283
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 61
284
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)

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 1905-1906

The Inevitable Tendency of Vivisection

"'The Final Experiment Must Always be on Man.' Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman,
President of Cornell University, is reported, in the New York Tribune of June
16, 1910, to have said: 'If the hospital is to be effectively used the members of
the faculty of the medical school must have the same freedom and right of
control in regard to it which they possess in connection with their laboratories
in the medical school." 285

In 1905, The Journal of Zoophily was proud to announce a new edition of Linda af-
Hageby’s Shambles of Science. The Journal also published a rebuttal from the Animal Rescue
League in regard to an article in the Transcript which E.T. Brewster attributed that the cries of
vivisected animals to fear, and that there was no pain involved. "Mr. Brewster’s theories,” said

285
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 398

90
President Anna Smith, “are certainly comforting to those who wish to believe that the lower
animals may be frozen, starved, beaten, tortured without any fear that they possess capacity for
suffering worth considering.” 286
Also considered was a reference to J.W. Muller’s “Man the Destroyer,” E. Kay
Robinson’s “Religion of Nature” and J. Howard Moore’s “The Universal Kinship.” Muller’s
work touched on the contradictions of a civilization which preaches “love and kindness and
tolerance” while remaining in actions that indicate that what man truly believes in is “the terrible
survival of the fittest." Zoophily also gave warm praise to zoologist Robinson of whom they said
“any intelligent believer in evolution that the deductions made by the author who sees in the
relationship between man and the other animals in indication that they share with man his
emotions and sensations, are superior to those of him who, for a reason favorable to man only,
denies to the other animals their sensitiveness.” 287 One example of mankind and mankind’s
technology as ‘destroyer’ was indeed cited in a 1906 article in the Philadelphia Record when it
was reported that “the cat population of Philadelphia is being reduced at the rate of 10,000 a
year, and the trolley car is responsible for this decrease in the number of tabbies.” 288
Such anthropocentrism was not just something White abhorred because of the cruelty to
animals, but it was also because of the very nature of selfishness it encapsulated. When presented
with arguments of the ‘goodness’ of all animal experiments, White asked:
“But who… is to be the judge of the purpose and the motive Are a few powerful men
united in the pursuit of any object, who claim that their motive sanctifies their action, to
be allowed to inflict atrocities upon helpless creatures, either human beings or the lower
animals? Do we think at the present time that Philip II of Spain was justified in burning
alive heretics and schismatics, as it is …and are we to disgrace our manhood and our
womanhood by defending a practice which is conducive to the lowest impulses of our
nature, and which, appealing to our selfish desire to have perhaps a few more years of
existence, no matter at what cost, makes us forget who has said, Whoso loveth his life
shall lose it?” 289

Were anti-vivisectionists, as they were often accused, exaggerating? With some reports
of experimentation of human beings already disclosed, a particularly troubling one was revealed.
Dr. Richard P. Strong, director of the Biological Laboratory of the Philippine Bureau of Science
made a deal with the Government of the Philippines to give condemned criminals the cholera
virus in order to test inoculations for the virus. Such organized testing would remain a presence
in prisons for years to come, and one of the strongest advocates was yet to come to the forefront:
eugenicist Alexis Carrel.

286
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 18
287
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 103
288
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 101
289
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 27

91
 1907

Mrs. Caroline Earle White: Before beginning what I was going to say, I should like to answer
one or two things that have been said by the speakers this evening. One was where Dr. Tomkins
said that we were called cranks and where the Rev. Anna Shaw said she was asked this morning
if she was coming "to a meeting of those cranks."

Reformers are always called cranks, it makes no difference what it is - whether it is for the
abolition of African slavery or whether it is for any good end whatever in the world; those that
are favorable to it are called cranks; so we must not mind that at all; we must expect it, as an
accompaniment of our efforts to do good.” 290
Caroline Earle White

Humane Society
By 1907, every state in the United States had some sort of anti-crulety legislation. News
of vegetarianism connected the United States and France in 1907, with news that a restaurant
would be opening which purchased products from the Battle Creek Sanitarium Co., Battle Creek,
Michigan, will be sold. Horses were also indirectly protected ben General Order No. 237 which
prohibited the dumping of waste water on the highway. Even President Roosevelt spoke against
cruelty to animals, and, although he was an active hunter, this was still a significant boost for the
anti-cruelty cause. In a statement true to the spirit of Jupe in Dickens’ Hard Times, the Journal of
Zoophily criticized the teaching children about animals in terms of their ‘uses.’ “A child by this
means is brought to look at a live cow or horse not as a sentient creatures which things, and
suffers, and has preferences, and is very likely (as we know nothing to the contrary) to be a soul
wearing for the present a body as we ourselves do, but as a temporarily animaled collection of
knife-handles and spoons, and leather, and glue, and beef, and milk. This is "practical"
teaching.” 291 Such generalities could be seen in the ways in which the acceptance of animals and
humans as “material” came about in the indoctrination of vivisectors. How could such concerns
be countered? A sentiment was expressed by the English Royal Commission regarding what
could silence such worries: "public opinion would have long age demanded protection from
scientific torture for lower animals were it not that a craven fear of death is fostered in the public
mind by the influence of the materialists who are also what are called medical scientists.” 292

VIVISECTION

290
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 52.
291
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 64
292
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 42

92
 "But a writer in 1907 responded to criticism with the following: "The most
curious misconception [is] that the aim of science is for the cure of diseased -
the saving of human life. Quite the contrary, the aim of science is the
advancement of human knowledge at any sacrifice of human life." 293

"The great first cause of man's inhumanity to not-men is the same precisely as
the first great cause of man's inhumanity to man - selfishness- blind, brutal,
unconscionable egoism. That, in fact, having committed a crime, which ever
since has overwhelmed the world in misery, that man should be permitted to
put forth his hand to repeat the predatory presumption upon the tree of life,
and live forever…, can you feel that he is fit to have care of any feeble
defenceless invalid? Records of experiments on hospital patients attest to the
contrary." 294

Agitation once again disturbed the peace of Battersea over the “Old Brown Dog” that had
been done to death in 1903, and, as a result, guards had to take turns guarding the statue.
295
Unfortunately real blockades would also occur in White’s work. In 1907, the meeting of the
American Humane Society forbade any discussion of vivisection and the Rockefeller farm,
causing Mary F. Lovell to bitterly comment that “One would be inclined to think that there are
humanitarians who do not after all regard pity and compassion as virtues to be adhered to, but
only as suited to a particular set of circumstances and conveniently gotten rid of at all.” 296
Although 1907 saw the very first case of a cruelty conviction by someone in the medical
profession, there was certainly no reason to trust that all vivisectors would necessarily now
become honest. In questioning the field’s commitment to anaestization and self-regulation, the
following concerns were anticipated: 1 – that the vivisector could be trusted to self-regulate, and
2- that “vivisectors, who are already somewhat inclined to complain of the expense of obtaining
the necessary animals, will be willing to incur this additional cost?" 297

Finally, White anticipated at least one future event in medicine: the conclusion that it
would be chemistry, not vivisection, which would be of the most use determining toxicity. It
would be a discovery which the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine would use as
one of its main points of persuasion for change in medical testing. Said White in a letter:

“Your article deserves thanks, not contention. You are kind enough to say that I am a keen,
perhaps obstinate, controversialist, and that you hope I may be ere long convinced that there is
some good in vivisection. Would you be surprised to hear that I admitted as much long ago, and

293
(Hornblum) 77.
294
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 144
295
The ‘Old Brown Dog’ was a statue representing the cruelty of animal experimentation and it was a focal point
for movements in England. For more information: (Lansbury)
296
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)142
297
(A. A.-V. Society, Twenty-Fifth Annual Report of The American Anti-Vivisection Society) 9

93
 who could doubt it after the masterly (no word is too good for it) unraveling of the sardine
poisoning case the other day by Dr. Stevenson? This prince of toxicologists 'vivisected' some
mice and guinea-pigs, and proved his case; but with it all there is a suspicion in my mind that if
modern chemistry would give itself up to such work seriously, that splendid science could probe
the presence of these mysterious poisons in a way far better than that of trusting to the random
medieval method of poisoning mice and guinea-pigs. The spectroscope solved in a trice, the
other day, the mystery of the 'winking star' for the astronomer. Is not the possibility of sardine
poisoning, open to all and any of us, a far more important matter than the size and shape of the
orbit of Algol? (69)" 298

CHILDREN OVER ANIMALS ASIDE

Sir Having had so pleasant a correspondence with you heretofore on the subject of
vegetarianism, concerning which we both agree, I am doubly grieved at feeling it my duty to
address you in regard to a matter in which we are diametrically opposed. I find that the American
Health League, of which you are an officer, has announced itself in favor of vivisection; but it is
not that you condone cruelty, since we all have a right to our own opinions, and you may not
know the extreme cruelty that there is in vivisection, which grieves me so sorely, but it is the
positively infamous manner in which we anti-vivisectionists are misrepresented in your official
organ, entitled American Health." In the last number of this periodical, which I have just
received, is a cartoon copied from Colliers Weekly representing Death on a monument with
several dead children lying around and containing an inscription as follows: To the memory of
those who might have been saved." In the foreground are a man and woman surrounded by dogs,
one of which the woman is nursing, and written below is the sentence, A memorial to the
countless thousands of men, women and children that the anti-vivisectionists would have
cheerfully sacrificed rather than allow one animal to perish.” The circulation of such a picture as
this is, I repeat, infamous in the face of the fact that we antivivisectionists have thousands of
times maintained, and have so published to the world, that we do not object to the death of any
number of animals if accomplished in a humane manner and if for the benefit of the human race,
but what we do strenuously oppose is the long-drawn-out suffering and torture of innocent,
helpless creatures, the work of God’s hands, who are unable to ask for pity or to express the
sufferings they endure. We consider a man better than a horse, but we think also that the soul is
of more importance than the body, and to risk that immortal soul and to degrade and demoralize
the character by the infliction or advocacy of infernal cruelty is too dear a price to pay for a few
more years of life, admitting that it were possible to gain through vivisection such a benefit. If
the verse at the foot of the cartoon in Colliers Weekly" had said in the place of rather than allow

298
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 69

94
one animal to perish, “rather than break the laws of Godwit would have come nearer to the truth.
Hoping you will express your disapprobation of the publication of this cartoon, I remain,
Yours sincerely, Caroline EARLE WHITE. Phila. 299.

299
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 91-92

95
 1908-1912

"You know that we are going to be criticized... Though we may not get total
abolition at once, we shall eventually; just as cruelties to human beings have
been abolished. Two hundred years ago it was considered justifiable, useful,
and profitable to torture human beings; and even so good a man as Sir
Thomas More defended it. With the progress of humanity in kindness and
compassion, however, the torture of human beings has been stopped." 300

In 1908, Mary F. Lovell was feeling positive about the future. The sudden surge in the
interest of animal welfare was welcomed. In one case, White was ‘besieged’ by reporters after a
particular interview in the Philadelphia Inquirer was published. In 1910 they boasted that their
twenty-six fountains had served 300,711 horses, 25,499 smaller animals and 170,652 others 301
In 1910, the American Anti-Vivisection also sought to bring attention to the horrors of
vivisection though exhibits, the work being achieved by an Exhibit Committee formed in that
year. They would not only provide their own displays, but would also supply materials to
interested groups. 302

300
(Anti-Vivisection Society, Twenty Sixth Annual Report of the American Anti-Vivisecion Society) 43-44
301
(Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Forty First Annual
Report of the Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) 7
302
(Santoro)

96
 In 1910, the American Humane Society stated: “it is to be remembered that thanks to the
activities of the Anti-Vivisection Society here and abroad, the men who do these things are less
frank in declaring than they were once, but that the same spirit is dictating the same kind of
outrage, not upon animals only, but upon human beings as well, even now is evidenced by the
experiments upon children in this city, to which so little attention was given when they were
made public some months ago.” 303

Chicago was the subject of two controversies during this period of time. Troubling to
White and her allies, however, was what they named “Chicago’s Dark Spot” and what White
called “a blot on the name and fame of any city of the United States in this age of progress and

303
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 171-2

97
enlightenment!" 304 In contrast to the many times White and others were able to prevent dogs
from being seized from their own pounds, in this case, the position of Chicago’s Health
Commissioner was awarded to Dr. W.A. Evans, who immediately opened the doors of the pound
to vivisectors. 305

London medical students, once again, displayed uncouth and aggressive behavior in
1908, which Miss Lind af Hageby wrote was “the result of the demoralizing effects of
vivisectional demonstrations before them.” 306 During the demonstrations, police had to be called
to disperse the group. By 1910, the Old Brown Dog monument had been removed, due in no
small part to the fact that new offices were filled by pro-vivisectionists. Pro-vivisectionist
organizations were indeed coalescing, with the medical community forming “the Council of
Defense of Medical Research in 1908, an effective lobbying force for vivisection.”
In a similar criticism of the lack of respectful behavior, the Journal of Zoophily stated
that “the American Humane Association is sending out at this time a powerful appeal for the
development of a humanitarian spirit." 307 Students in Grand Rapids were been arrested for
exceptionally cruel experiments on a horse without anesthetics. According to the New York
Anti-Vivisection Society President Diana Belais, “An old blind horse was subjected to untold
torture by the Dean of the Grand Rapids College and so called students, and the general police
laws of Michigan were sufficient to convict all those concerned, despite the fact that they claim
to be working in the interest of science.” She went on to comment on the physicians code which
was intended “preserve an arcanic, fraternal silence as to the abuses of vivisection, under pain of
professional death, it is indeed, difficult for us to secure facts which we may give to the
public.” 308

Laws to restrict vivisection continued to be resisted, and those resistances were

meticulously noted by the anti-vivisection activists. In light of the resistance the New York World
asked why “the medical profession should be in such a state of excitement over the socalled anti-
vivisection bills.” Because the measures were to do nothing more than regulate experimentation,
said the article, “The World fails to see wherein these provisions are likely to work harm to the
legitimate advancement of medical science.” 309 Zoophily commented that another journal had
warned that and if unrestricted vivisection is permitted to go on, “it is only a matter of time until
the indigent and helpless in our public institutions will fall victims to the ambitious vivisector
who glories in the notoriety common to those figures in the medical profession who are best
known as daring operators.” 310 Transparency was continually opposed, even in the face of
legislation; although the “Right of Entry Bill” was passed in 1911. Said the Journal years later:

"As usual, cruelty in vivisectional experimentation was denied by its upholders, Dr.
Hutchinson even assuring the audience that anyone suspecting cruelty in a laboratory,

304
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)67
305
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
306
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 2.
307
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 29
308
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
309
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
310
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 50

98
 had but to call a magistrate. One of the audience, however, called his attention to the
"Right of Entry Bill,” introduced into the legislature of Pennsylvania during the year
1911. This bill provided that any police officer, constable, or any agent of any S.P.C.A.
should have authority to any building where it was suspected cruel acts were being
committed. Medical influence prevailed, however, and when the bill passed it was with
the amendment providing that "no search warrant shall be issued under the provision of
this act which shall authorize any policeman, constable, agent of a society or other person
to enter upon or search premises where scientific research work is being conducted by or
under the supervision of reputable scientific school or where biological products are
being produced for the care of prevention of disease….With the curious logic of the
vivisectionist, Dr. Hutchinson replied that this had no bearing on the case! " 311

In 1912, a Dr. Biggar was quoted as saying that: "the savageries of men high in the medical
profession are profoundly dangerous to national morality, and he urges millionaire supporters of
animal research institutions to demand pledges from experimenters that the practice of
vivisection be hedged with rigid restrictions." 312 It was not difficult to see why such feeling was
beginning to prevail. During 1910-1911 the news featured stories of two the most notorious
cases of human experimentation in the early twentieth century United States: The testing on
children at St. Vincent’s and those at the Rockefeller Institute. Shockingly, both accounts were
covered rather casually in the journals and newspapers, initially.

For example, the surgeon who took the lead on St. Vincent’s was quoted as saying:

"I am not worrying over what the public may think; I do not care to make any statement
till I have consulted with the two physicians who were associated with me, who may
decide to say nothing about it. If there is any blame it must fall on me. Personally, I do
not care what the public think." 313

In 1911, the December Journal of Experimental Medicine published Dr. Noguchi’s “inoculations
of "46 normal individuals, chiefly children between the ages of two and eighteen years, and 100
individuals suffering from various diseases of non-syphilitic nature" as experiments." 314

The Rockefeller Vivisection Farm

The beginning of the big business in lab animals

“From the heavy demands of the Institute for animals it would seem that the
animal flotsam and the strays of the city that it has so far gathered do not have
sufficient vitality long to withstand scientific experiments. They exasperate the

311
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 28
312
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 364
313
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 172
314
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 8.

99
 experimenters by dying too soon. We must breed sturdier, healthier animals -
those that are more tenacious of life and will longer endure....

These sentient creatures, with their susceptibility to anguish, are only "raw
material" in the Language of the Institute!” 315

Concerns about the role of money and power in the United States occurred within the movement
and around the world. Dr. Herbert Snow, in 1910 that “there was little about which one can be
sanguine for future good in a nation that spends more than two-thirds of its income upon wars
and rumors of wars and seeks to make itself a world power by unblushing theft of other people's
land.” He also commented on the growing classism and the creation of the ‘idle’ class, much
reminiscent of old aristocracies, but this time masked under “and our boasted production of
wealth.” 316 In Germany, one paper remarked upon “the ways that millionaires are applying
some of that money which they have succeeded in extracting from their fellow-citizens' pockets
through their foul tactics for the purpose of also making the animal creation their victims.” 317 In
a 1910 article, Joseph M. Greene had an article in Zoophily which stated that, "The truth of the
matter is that all the "Serums" and "antitoxins" are kept alive by a powerful medi-commercial
clique dominated by the leading experimenters, such as Kock, Behring, Haffine, Flexner. This
clique holds the average doctor and his "opinions" in the hollow of its hand.” 318 In 1911, when
Zoophily addressed a hostile article written against the anti-vivisectionists, the response was also
skeptical of the article’s motivations: “When antivivisection sentiment prevails, there will no
longer be comfortable incomes to be derived from the occupation of chairs of experimental
research in physiological laboratories supported by millionaires. Of course we do not expect Dr.
Cannon to inform the public of these views." 319 In 1910 the discovery of vivisection at a college
threatened its funding. Wisconsin’s Beloit College was threatened with the loss of a $5000
endowment when it was discovered that vivisection, banned in the terms of the gift, was being
used to teach zoology and biology." 320 However, even bright moments like this were marred by
the fact that, even should a college allow vivisection, any oversight of it continued to remain
elusive.

Early twentieth century panic over rabies also caused unnecessary harm as well. The New
York Medical Journal featured an interview with a veterinarian who stated that “the laboratory
has not cleared the field but, rather, made the confusion and mystery which have always
surrounded rabies even more confounding. Prof. Carlo Ruata, of Italy, has recently declared "the
statistics of our anti-rabies institutes a public fraud.”" 321 Others who challenged the integrity of
the medical profession were Dr. Norman Barnesby, in his book Medical Chaos and Crime.

315
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 57.
316
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 171-2
317
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 114.
318
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 81.
319
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 218.
320
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 26.
321
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 13.

100
While White was rightfully disappointed in Barnesby’s lack of interest in vivisection, he did, at
least, clearly criticize the monetary graft that was going on in the profession.

1912 saw calls to reduce fur-wearing, food reform (the reduction of meat consumption
and better health to prevent the needs for “cures”) and Horse Tag Day which was meant to
collect money for the maintenance of the Philadelphia fountains. "Society owes to the horse a
debt of gratitude a thousand times greater than it does to thousands of men who abuse him” said
Henry Ward Beecher," 322 and Zoophily also made mention of ceremonies were held for horses
“killed and wounded in our wars with China and Russia,” while “a Buddhist priest is traveling all
over Japan to raise funds for erecting a monument to the memory of the warhorses lost in our
national struggles.” 323 The Buddha was also praised as a protector of animals and a preacher of
the tenet: thou shalt not kill, even when it came to the animal creation. White suggested that such
precepts had once been part of Biblical stories, but that the early church had suppressed the
“apocryphal gospels.” 324

322
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 415.
323
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 283
324
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 343.

101
HISTORY TIDBIT – A LINK TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
1908 - "A new organization has been formed through the efforts of our anti-vivisection friends in

102
New York entitled the "American Society for Humane Medical Research." It has issued a
prospectus beginning as follows"…. It has obtained an act of incorporation one of its
incorporators being Miss Maud Ingersoll, daughter of Robert G. Ingersoll, and the first meeting
after incorporation was held at her house. All the sympathizers with this move net are urged to
become members; the membership being five dollars for a year. Applications for membership
can be made to Mrs. W.W. Badger, No. 50 East 29th St, New York." 325

ANNIE LOWRY ASIDE & PHTOO

'In 1909, there came into the possession of the Society the twenty thousand dollars (less the
collateral inheritance tax) bequeathed by Mrs. Annie L. Lowry for this purpose." 326

“Right or wrong, the opponents of vivisection have managed to build up a world-wide

organization, which promises to police the game with never ceasing watchfulness, if nothing
more, and the gentlemen of the medical profession who practise the art of vivisection might do
worse than to consider these good people seriously at this time.” 327

Mrs. Caroline Earle White, of this city, the justly celebrated widow of Richard
P. White, and mother of Thomas Earle White, has probably written more
literature on the subject of vivisection than any one other author in the world,
and it is from her study that the worldwide campaign has been waged. At
Witherspoon Hall, recently, Dr. D. J. McCarthy addressed the County Medical
Society and its friends in defense of vivisection, and when so doing took
occasion to remark that no person opposes vivisection except sentimental
persons, who do not know what they are talking about, or persons who have
enlisted in the movement as seekers for notoriety. ….The same is true of Mrs.
Caroline Earle White, whose writings gave her a national reputation and who
was considered with the foremost humanitarians of the world some years
before she became Corresponding Secretary of the American Anti-Vivisection
Society.

325
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 114.
326
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 20.
327
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 9-10

103
 From the Philadelphia Evening Star 328
PHOTO
Nor could he understand by what process of reasoning it could be supposed that increasing the
number of inspectors under the vivisection laws was any safeguard against the horrors of
vivisection or any concession to protests and arguments of antivivisectionists. On the contrary,
the more inspectors there were the more salaries would be created and the greater the number of
vested interests there would be. Vivisection was a bad an immoral thing, and appointing
inspectors to see that this wicked thing was efficiently done was like appointing inspectors to see
that burglary was carried out under regularized conditions”

Bernard Shaw on Vivisection

-London Post" 329

Trophy Hunting Aside

In 1912, another case of the wealthy creating exceptions for themselves was
featured in the Journal in the form of an article regarding the illegal practice
of trap-shooting ducks. The perpetrators, says the article, was “the exclusive
Clove Valley Road and Gun Club, the membership of which is made up largely
of New York millionaires” 330

328
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
329
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 369
330
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 282

104
 ALEXIS CARREL

Indian Mirror: Thus, man is the only creature with the right to live and to
enjoy existence, and he is the "lord of creation," for whose health and profit
and pleasure all the lower creatures may be sacrificed with impunity. And this
ideal of the survival of the fittest means also the survival of the "white" man
alone." 331

"In March 2000, the British Laboratory PPL Therapeutics announced the
successful cloning of five piglets by the biologists of the Roslin Institute..."

They named two of them Alexis and Carrel.

To the British biologists’ surprise, the choice for the last two names sparked
outrage in France. All of a sudden, they found themselves at the core of a small
scandal for associating their epochal experiment with a name that, to their
French counterparts, symbolized fascist eugenics. (1)" 332

In 1894, the writer Emile Zola published Lourdes, a scathing criticism of the ‘miracles’
of the famous nineteenth-century French shrine. Little Bernadette’s account of a vision of the
Virgin Mary transformed the small town in the Pyrenees into a major destination for Catholic
pilgrims and for the curious. While Zola’s work reflects a reason-based skepticism, one young
scientist’s visit to the shrine, and the subsequent rumors that purported that the medical student
believed in the miracles of Lourdes would lead to his departure from his French medical school
only six months following his visit. This “deeply religious” medical student’s name was Alexis
Carrel, and, although widely recognized as a Nobel Prize winner, he would later be one of
eugenics’ most passionate supporters and a repatriate to France after the Vichy regime was
established in the wake of Germany’s invasion of the country.

In truth, Alexis Carrel may never have become as famous as he was to become if it were
not for Simon Flexner and the Rockefeller Institute, two committed and outspoken opponents of
the anti-vivisection movement. In the same year in which Carrel failed to give credit to former
co-researcher Dr. C.C. Guthrie during a demonstration of their work at Johns Hopkins, 1906,
Carrel received an offer for a position with the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.
Although turned down for a position at Harvard, the committee declaring that Carrel was only “a

331
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 115-6
332
(Reggiani) 1

105
very expert sewer,” 333 he found a welcome home in New York. His work with the Institute
would largely focus on organs and organ transplantation – often describing experiments in which
the organs of animals could be kept alive for extended periods of time outside of the animal. By
1911, it was evident that his reputation and scope of interest had expanded; five years after
beginning his career with the Institute, he was called upon by the American Breeder Association
to give his expert opinion on how the population could be improved by using eugenics. 334
However, despite his public collaboration with the ABA, Carrel’s reputation and achievements
lost none of their luster, and, in 1912, Carrel was awarded the Nobel Prize – an honor that would
not go undisputed, and not only by anti-vivisectionists.

In 1912, The Journal of Zoophily featured an extended commentary on Carrel’s

reputation in a segment written by Katherine S. Nicholson. Although the Rockefeller Institute
had gladly paraded Carrel’s ‘achievements,’ old colleagues were not so complimentary. “Several
members of the Academy, however, attack Dr. Carrel's assertions, declaring these to be too
marvelous to be taken on trust without evidence of a most convincing kind,” 335 reads the article.
French doctors, such as Dr. Pouchet, insisted that they would not accept the results unless a
French team of biologists were allowed to personally witness the results of Carrel’s work with
their own eyes; a request to which Carrel did not respond. Said one report: "The French Society
against vivisection has resumed its work. The audience, a numerous one, indignant at learning
that the Nobel Prize has been awarded to the vivisector, Dr. Carrel, unanimously voted the grand
prize of Physiology with Vivisection to the Savant Dr. Foveau de Courmelles, specialist and
professor of electro-therapy and radiology." 336

As for Caroline Earle White, she had no reservations questioning the integrity Carrel’s
work at the Rockefeller Institute, stating the cruelty involved in which he “cut off dogs' legs and
ears and put legs and ears from other animals in their stead” caused revulsion in some and even
led to the resignation of some assistants of the Institute. 337 Experiments like those such as the
infamous ‘immortal chicken heart’ 338 (an experiment that was later discredited) made headlines.
With “assertion[s] that he had kept portions of animal's hearts alive and beating vigorously for
months, while immersed in a special antiseptic solution, and that these portions after a short time
surrounded themselves with new cells and grew to more than sixty times their original size,” 339
the general public was both intrigued by the prospect of immortality, but they also reminded
others of the lessons of Shelley’s Frankenstein. The fears of the latter would not be assuaged by
Carrel’s advocacy of implementing such testing on human subjects. Cincinnati’s Times-Star
published an article in June of 1912 expressing the goals of the ‘antivivisectionist enemy’ and
quoted Carrel as saying: "Vivisection is the greatest aid to medical science. Why electrocute a

333
(Reggiani) 21.
334
(Reggiani) 32.
335
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 369-370.
336
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 6.
337
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 415
338
An experiment that was later discredited.
339
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 369-370.

106
condemned man? Why not give me his body? The condemned man will not suffer any more and
he will render a last service to society, which he has dishonored." 340
Reminiscent of 21st-century controversies regarding the participation of doctors in
assisted suicides, reservations were expressed regarding Carrel’s plan. In 1913, a health
commissioner in Missouri stated that "if society could be educated to accept his (Dr. Carrel's)
program of human vivisection it would be of great use in the solution of problems of disease...
The difficulty would be in finding physicians stout-hearted enough to carry out a decree of
capital punishment." 341 Life magazine was more direct in delineating its mistrust of Carrel’s
enthusiasm about the concept of human vivisection and who these targets might come to include:
“And hospital patients, how about them? Of what use are these clever stunts unless "verified" on
human beings?” 342 Human vivisection, especially that which was done without the victim’s
knowledge, wasn’t new or unreported before Carrel’s views began to become public, but he was
a major figure in promoting the practice and in encouraging the increasingly growing popularity
of early-to-mid-twentieth century eugenics movements.

Warnings of humanitarians and antivivisectionists went unheeded, and years after White
passed away in 1916, Carrel and his allies continued on their course. In 1924, Carrel openly
expressed his firm belief in white supremacy, stating that New York was in danger of being
weakened by immigration which would “profoundly weaken the dominant white races." 343. He
would become intimate friends with other famous Nazi-sympathizers, including Charles
Lindbergh and Henry Ford while gaining fame through his 1937 work, Man, The Unknown.
Carrel would even heartily approve of one Nazi publisher’s request for an endorsement of their
own eugenics program, contributing the following passage: "The German government has taken
energetic measures against the propagation of the defective, the mentally diseased, and the
criminal. The ideal solution would be the suppression of each of these individuals as soon as he
has proven himself dangerous." 344 Carrel would return ‘home’ only after Nazi Germany, a
regime which he had praised for creating a "faith that drove the youth to sacrifice itself for an
ideal,” 345 had removed the republic and the Vichy government was implemented. Indeed, late
20th century French protesters’ later dubbing of him as the “"ome au precures des chambes a
gaz” was, indeed, far from hyperbole.

"It takes a number of year to tell whether a problematical procedure in medicine is good or not.
In the meantime its introducer is either famous or rich our both - its victims dead, buried, and
forgotten”. 346
From the Fourteenth Annual Report of the American Anti-Vivisection Society

340
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)126
341
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 131
342
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 73.
343
(Reggiani) 65
344
(Reggiani) 71.
345
(Reggiani) 67.
346
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 26.

107
 1913
1913 - "For our Antivivisection Society, this year has proved eventful; we have
received some generous bequests and many other tangible expressions of approval
and sympathy. At the Annual Meeting held in March we had three speakers, Mr. John
Cowper Powys, Mr. Frank Stephens, and Dr. Blackwood. Now that we have begun to
imitate the example of England by instituting public discussions, we trust that there
may soon be noticed a corresponding increase of the knowledge of the "crime" as
Victor Hugo calls vivisection." 347

In 1913, the Caroline Earle White’s American Anti-Vivisection Society had not just one,
but two major court cases tied to dogs and pro-vivisectionists. Human vivisection again became
a major point of concern, as did the clear indications that the medical community was beginning
to form alliances and lobbies in order to defeat growing anti-vivisection sentiment.

Bill No.436

It is the most arrogant demand I have ever heard or read of. To think that a
physician or self-stated physician could get a dog from the pound for a dollar
when its owner, may be a poor little boy or girl, would have to pay just double
that, is enough to arouse the ire of any fair-minded person." 348

In 1913, a group in the House of Representatives attempted to pass Bill No. 436,
a piece of legislation that would force pounds to give up animals for a price. The
attempt was not well-received by White and her allies, or, even by public opinion. In the
Philadelphia Ledger, one article explained that the bill would require “for example, the
owner of a stray dog now has to pay $2 for its redemption, whereas the dog might be
claimed, under the provisions of this bill, and called off by any medical school, society
or manufacturer of biological products for half that fee, or for 50 cents in the case of a
cat.” To the delight of the anti-vivisectionists, the bill was received with, and
subsequently dismissed with mirth. According to reports, Dr. Dickinson, the proponent
of the bill, had observed “members were barking like dogs and giving out cat-calls,”
and, indeed, the bill was voted down 90 to 27. Yelps, laughter and whines resounded
through the chambers, and one representative’s proposed amendment was accompanied
by “another dog chorus.” The Philadelphia Press reported that Representative Frey had
quipped that “it was more humane to kill the bill that way.” 349

347
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 3-4
348
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 42.
349
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 41.

108
 The Trial of J.E. Sweet

From the Philadelphia North American Sunday, June 8th, 1913

"Dr. J.E. Sweet, assistant professor of surgical research at the University of

Pennsylvania, was held in $400 bail for court by Magistrate Haggery
yesterday after a dozen or more witnesses had told stories of cruelty to dogs in
the vivisection and experimental laboratories of the University.

Doctor Sweet was held mainly on the evidence of Miss Henrietta Ford Ogden,
a prominent society woman, of 301 North Nineteenth street, who admitted that
every Friday for six months she had crawled through a hole in the fence so
that she could gain entrance to the kennels of the University and see evidence.

Miss Ogden declared that in the last two years she had purchased more than
800 dogs from the University kennels to prevent them from being experimented
on. She found home for many of these animals, and those she failed to provide
for she killed by a painless chloroform method which she had invented." 350

In 1913 came the trial of Ogden vs University of Pennsylvania. Dr. J.E. Sweet, an
assistant professor of surgical research, along with four other members of the university, had
been indicted on cruelty charges. One of the leading witnesses, Samuel S. Guer, was at one time
in charge of the kennels and testified regarding the University of Pennsylvania’s purchase of
stolen dogs. He also stated that “previous to a hearing on an antivivisection bill before the
legislative health and sanitation committee last April, the professors and surgeons at the
University made haste to remove evidence of cruelty to dogs.” When inquiring about better
treatment of the dogs, Guer was told “We haven’t got the money.”” 351 Another witness, a certain
Officer Smith managed to prevent some of the dog stealing, an act for which he was given “the
proud distinction of having secured the greatest number of convictions for dog-stealing." 352

The behavior of pro-vivisectionist students and professors in the courtroom echoed that
of Dr. Forbes’ trial, with a complete lack of respect shown toward the official proceedings. The
prosecuting attorney requested removal of the students. "These gentlemen," declared Attorney
Scott, "will not have much to laugh at when they find themselves in the same predicament as Dr.
Sweet, as they soon sure will be." Unfortunately, the magistrate chose not to eject them, but he

350
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 87.
351
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 77.
352
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 28.

109
did issue a warning that if the behavior continued he would “commit the next person [he saw]
acting in a disorderly manner.” 353

HUMAN VIVISECTION

Human vivisection also gained international attention and/or disdain. In France, the
Pasteur Institute was one of a few institutions that advocated taking condemned murderers for
vivisection. Rutherford B.H. Gradwhol spoke of such plans positively, stating that "there could
be no question of cruelty, for by anesthesia we can absolutely control pain," but expressed
concerns that it would be difficult to find doctors willing to take part in the execution." 354 Indeed,
as other later controversies regarding the role of physicians in death penalty showed, such
suggestions went against the Hippocratic Oath, the oath in which all doctors pledge to ‘do no
harm.” As Mary F. Lovell commented, “Men whose moral degeneration is such that they do not
hesitate to tamper with the eyesight of orphan children: to add to the misery of the insanity by
developing in them additional ailments; and to infect helpless hospital patients with shameful
and loathsome diseases, would not feel concerned to save a mere criminal from physical anguish,
deep and prolonged, if he had been delivered over to them, and scientific curiosity could have
full sway.” 355

In the meantime, news broke about Dr. Hideyo Noguchi’s experimentation on forty-six
human beings. Noguchi, like Carrel, was a member of the Rockefeller Institution. Their usage of
children used in inoculations for syphilis horrified the public, and Jessica L.C. Henderson rightly
challenged their own justifications: “If vivisectors desire to prove that they are not cowards, let
them attempt experimenting upon the children of the well-to-do or upon the children of Anti-
vivisectionists.” 356 Mrs. Florence Pell Waring of the Vivisecting Investigation League of New
York called for a law for the protection of orphan children. “Let the light shine in upon the
hospitals as well as upon the laboratories,” she said, “only by knowing the secrets of both can we
protect children as well as animals.” 357 In Tuesday, December 9th edition of Washington D.C.’s
The Evening Star, President H. Clement of the Boston Society also challenged the twisted logic
behind the selection of subjects for vivisection. “The doctors justify themselves,” he said, “by
saying that any poor baby of the slums is worth a thousand dogs… But certain children's hospital
experimentation of record does not suggest excessive tenderness of infants of the slums." His
view of the Rockefeller institution was one which he believed represented the corruption of
money and influence in society, a society which was “a festering, toppling mass stand[ing]
crowned with the Rockefeller Institute” 358

353
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 88.
354
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 131
355
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 132
356
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 43-45
357
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 186.
358
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)

110
 Skepticism about the influence of money and power’s role in the medical community was
often the subject of wry humor as well.

Evening Bulletin: "Doctor," asked a friend, "how do you manage to stand the high cost of
living?"
"By cutting out something," replied the surgeon." 359

"Jerome S. McWade, the Duluth capitalist, was sneering about the new Friedmann
consumption serum and the American bankers’ $1,000,000 offer to its investor if it would
really cure....
'And what will your new serum do dear?
"Do?," said Dr. Squills, "Why, it will get nineteen articles about me in the leading
magazines, it will put my photography and a column story in 1,1000 newspapers and it
will elevate my prices 1,000 per cent" – Exchange 360

The issue of money, however, also became a threat wielded against the universities and
vivisectors in the case of Columbia College in 1913. An article in the Philadelphia Public Ledger indicated
that “the residents of Wilkinsburg, a suburb of Pittsburgh, have sent a petition to the Pennsylvania
legislature that the state appropriation of $36,000 be withheld from Columbia Hospital” because of the
way in which the dogs held by the hospital howled so often and so loudly that citizens were deprived of
sleep and peace." 361

The Coming Lobby and the Alliances

"As usual, cruelty in vivisectional experimentation was denied by its upholders, Dr.
Hutchinson even assuring the audience that anyone suspecting cruelty in a laboratory had
but to call a magistrate. One of the audience, however, called his attention to the "Right
of Entry" Bill, introduced into the legislature of Pennsylvania during the year 1911. This
bill provided that any police officer, constable, or any agent of any S.P.C.A. should have
authority to any building where it was suspected cruel acts were being committed.
Medical influence prevailed, however, and when the bill passed it was with the
amendment…"In the face of such happenings and their occurrence is unfortunately
frequent, one thinks involuntarily of the cynicism credited to a popular author: "There is
other things in the world besides money- and money will buy them all." 362

359
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 46.
360
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)
361
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 68
362
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 29

111
 However, the unbreakable esprit de corps of the profession was not fading. In an article
called “Medical Freedom,” the author observed that there was an increase in the power of the
place-hunting and privilege-seeking doctors in national, State and municipal government.” 363
During the trial of Sweet, one said "for I know that there are hundreds of them that would stand
where we are now if they were not afraid it would ostracize them." 364 Henry B. Lanius of the
Pennsylvania Legislature attempted to pass a law safeguarding people from the possibility of
hospital or laboratory vivisection, a bill, he said, was defeated through the efforts of the medical
organizations of Pennsylvania, which, he said, “massed one of the most powerful and resourceful
lobbies ever assembled at Harrisburg to bring about the defeat of the bill." 365 The Evening
Bulletin also indicated concern at the idea of a lobby, suggesting that “doctors would do better to
get in closer touch with public sentiment and to cultivate an intelligent public opinion,” and that
a lobby was not the answer. 366

Lewis Carroll

What! is it possible that one so gentle in manner, so full of noble sentiments, can be hard-
hearted? The very idea is an outrage to common sense! And thus we are duped every day
of our lives. Is it possible that the bank director, with hos broad honest face, can be
meditating a fraud? That the chairman of that meeting of shareholders, whose every tone
was the ring of truth in it, can hold in his hand a 'cooked' schedule of accounts, That my
wine merchant, so outspoken, so confiding, can be supplying me with an unadulterated
article?...
When vivisection shall be practiced in ever college and school; and when the man of
science, looking forth over a world which will then own no other sway than his, shall exult
in the thought that he has made of this fair green earth, if not a heaven for man, at least a
hell for animals. (174)"

1914-1916

"Lasting peace cannot follow as a consequence of this war unless indeed the
combatants carry slaughter to the point of general extinction, or unless
offended heaven permits some star, deflected from its course to enter the orbit

363
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 11
364
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 94.
365
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 187.
366
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 151

112
 of this unpleasant planet, and with swift destruction to terminate altogether
man's mundane existence....

Effects can only follow causes. When the ideas of kindness and compassion are
present to the consciousness of the necessary proportion of mankind that
proportion will decrease that war and the means of making it shall forever be
eliminated.” 367

It was during the final years of White’s life that World War I broke out, adding global
international strife to the list of things against which White and her allies would protest. In May
1914, a protest was sent to War Department asking that horses which could no longer serve in
military action not be sold, a request which was agreed to. In December, The American Humane
Association, along with members of the board of the W.S.P.C.A, attempted to initiate legislation
that would prevent horses being shipped to belligerent nations in the war zones." 368

Some doctors actually suggested that The Great War would "sound the death knell of the
Antivivisection movement." 369 Many historians of the humane society movements often suggest
that the World War I and World War II reduced interest in anti-vivisection, but the ‘radio
silence’ was the result of complex interactions of factors, and, quite likely, the increased
agreements between highly placed medical figures, businessmen and political figures. Consider,
for example the ways in which voices were silenced. One of the greatest, and most telling, blows
occurred when the American Medical Association and the city of San Francisco made a deal to
prevent any Anti-Vivisection groups from exhibiting at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San
Francisco. Money was the key, with the American Medical Association saying that they would
be glad to host their own convention in San Francisco in exchange for the rejection of anti-
vivisection discussion. The Journal of Zoophily called such a deal evidence of their “great fear of
allowing the public any opportunity of seeing or knowing anything of the other side.” 370

Some of the more desperate lines of thinking and the formations of alliances were
sometimes greeted by mirth, and that included ways in which anti-vivisectionists were lumped
together with enemies of the United States.

"The most amusing incident of the Congress seems to have been the deliverance of Dr.
High Cabot, of Boston. He said, "The average man or woman must be taught that upon
animal experimentation depends the public health. Away with the sentimentalists who put

367
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 179.
368
(Women’s Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Forty Sixth Annual Report of the
Women’s Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) 5.
369
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 180.
370
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”)

113
 animals above their own children. That is an attitude incompatible with the fundamental
principles of democracy. Russia is the place for such persons." We are too dense to
understand this. Why Russia? And where are the people who prefer animals to their own
children? Antivivisectionists, if these are meant, are not only anxious to protect their own
children, but have also been concerned to protect, if possible, by legislation, poor and
friendless children from experimentation in hospitals and other places." 371

Bad news arrived in 1914: The 1913 case, Ogden vs. the University of Pennsylvania had
not resulted favorably. "The trial of certain professors of the University of Pennsylvania for
cruelty, which was alluded to in our report for 1913,” read the report, “was held during the early
part of this year, and resulted in a disagreement of the jury, which necessitates further action.” 372
It was a sign that, even in the face of evidence, convictions remained difficult, if not impossible.
As they awaited the final decisions, anti-vivisectionists could only count as a confirmed loss the
fact that the 1915 saw important legislation to grant "right of entry to humane officers to places
where experiments are performed on living animals, and also prohibiting vivisection in the
public schools.” 373 Despite the overwhelming vote for approval in the Senate and Assembly, a
personal representative was sent from the Rockefeller Institute, and, ultimately, the Governor
proceeded to veto it and call it unconstitutional.

Domestically, the humane society and fountain owners had to step forth with a “spigot
service” due to an outbreak of glanders, an illness which typically affected horses. The work
went on until 1915, when the ban was lifted. The reputation of the W.S.P.C.A’s fountains was
indeed a global one, and The Journal of Zoophily reported that the Metropolitan Drinking
Fountain and Cattle Trough Association of London had sent an inquiry regarding the fountains
which they had seen in pictures. 374 Also in 1915, at a Conference of the American Anti-
Vivisection Society, White was “presented with a gavel made from the wood of a tree growing in
Independence Square, a tree which had waved over Independence Hall itself.” 375

Other animal welfare concerns also highlighted this period of time. White, who would
rather have seen people stop wearing furs, advocated that animals be raised for their fur because
it would involve less suffering than the steel jaw traps currently being used. A medal was
awarded to one young man who rescued a cat from a lake. The Evening Ledger spoke
approvingly of the fact that less sport hunting was being done, but remarked also with some
disappointment in regard to The Great War: “Anyway, the number of men who say on a bright

371
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 100.
372
(Women’s Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Forty Sixth Annual Report of the
Women’s Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) 4.
373
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 184.
374
(Women’s Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Forty Seventh Annual Report of the
Women’s Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruetly to Animals) 7.
375
(Researchers) 48.

114
morning, "This is a fine day; let's go out and kill something" is growing less - except in Europe
where they are shooting men. Nov 10, 1915" 376

Sadly, it was in 1916, the very year of White’s passing that former whisperings and
rumors of corruption within the medical professions remained. An official investigation revealed
that “four physicians and four druggists now awaiting trial, have, in collusion, since the first of
the year distributed yearly 150,000 grains of heroin and other drugs among addicts, receiving in
return more than $18,000." 377

“One thing is certain. The efforts of humanitarians, in the near future, must be
largely enlisted in securing legislation directly against vivisection, which, step
by step, is encroaching so persistently upon their rightful prerogative: the
protection of animals, and likewise of helpless children from abuse. Not
infrequently it is found that our hospitals and foundling asylums are assisting
the laboratories by contributing their share of material for research.” 378

376
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 180
377
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 52
378
(American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 7.

115
116
117
 END
"When it comes to the last hour of your life, do you not think if reasoning faculties are spared to
you that it will be a great consolation to feel that you always protected the poor, the helpless and
the unfortunate, and that you exercised a particular care toward those animals, who, unable to tell
you of their sufferings and miseries, could only by an imploring look beseech your assistance.
Would you not like to feel that there could be truly applied to you that passage in Pope's
universal prayer, slightly altered, where he says:
"Blest is the man whose kindly hear
Fees all dumb creatures' pain,
To whom the supplicating eye
Is never raised in vain.
Peace from the bosom of his God,
My peace to him I give;
And when he kneels before the throne
His trembling soul shall live."
CAROLINE EARLE WHITE

American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Journal of Zoophily,” Journal of Zoophily XXII, no. 12

(1913).

118
 It seems to me there are two kinds of utility, and two orders of human welfare, and two kinds of
expendiences. As man individually is a twofold being, so the community has a twofold life, a
higher life of which the welfare consists in justice, freedom, faith, chastity, sobriety, sympathy,
tenderness of the strong for the rights of the weak; and a lower life of which the welfare consists
in physical health and commercial prosperity. We are materialistic enough in these days,
Heaven knows! but I do not suppose anyone will deliberately say that the welfare of the higher
life of a nation is more important than the welfare of the lower; or maintain that it would profit a
nation much to gain a world of gold and corn and cotton, and add ten years to the average
length of mortal life, if, at the same time, it lost its soul of honor, its courage, justice, and
humanity." 379

Caroline Earle White

379
(A. A.-V. Society, “Journal of Zoophily”) 10

119
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IMPORTANT: SOME PHOTOS MAY BE PROPERTY OF TEMPLE UNIVERISTY
AND/OR OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHA. THIS BOOK DRAFT
IS NOT INTENDED FOR PUBLICATION IN ITS CURRENT STATE.

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