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Darwin Correspondence Project

From Werner von Voigts-Rhetz1   [after 18 April 1881]2

Oberkirch (Grand Duché de Baden)

Très honoré Monsieur

En lisant la lettre que vous avez adressée à Mr. le professeur Halmgren pour lui faire connaître vos opinions sur la vivisection, j’ai pensé involontairement au dicton français: “Noblesse oblige”, mot qui s’applique avec autant de raison à l’aristocratie de la pensée qu’à celle de la naissance.3 Une grande responsabilité pèse en effet sur un nom, devenu célébre comme le vôtre par de profondes recherches scientifiques, dans ce sens que les idées qu’il couvre de son autorité ont infiniment plus d’importance que celles qui proviennent de quelque source obscure. Or si je vous demande la permission, Monsieur, de vous présenter quelques observations que m’inspire votre lettre au professeur Halmgren, je vous prie de ne voir dans cette démarche qu’un hommage rendu à votre grand mérite et à l’influence qu’il est appelé à éxercer dans toutes les questions scientifiques.

Vous convenez dans votre lettre, Monsieur, d’avoir pris une part active aux efforts faits il y a quelques années en Angleterre afin de faire passer un bill contre les abus résultant des expériences sur les animaux vivants et lequel cependant aurait laissé aux physiologistes la liberté de poursuivre leurs recherches scientifiques, mais, ajoutez vous, “l’enquête ouverte par la commission Royale sur les plaintes, portées contre les physiologistes Anglais, prouvait que celles-ci n’étaient pas fondées”.4

Cette première assertion nous place devant une énigme que nous nous sentons incapables de résondre.— Ayant en de tout temps une très haute idée de lésprit pratique et consciencieux des Anglais en général, nous nous demandons comment une commission, composée de sommités scientifiques de l’Angleterre aurait pu proposer et comment le Parlement Anglais aurait pu sanctionner un bill contre des abus qui n’avaient jamais éxisté. Nous trouvons l’explication encore plus difficile en nous rappelant d’avoir lu la description d’une scène de laboratoire physiologique Anglais publiée par Mr. le Dr. Hoggan et qui révèle des faits d’une cruauté révoltante—5 Nous gardons également le souvenir des expériences très variées d’asphyxie faites sur 76 chiens et n’aboutissant selon l’aveu des expérimentateurs eux-mêmes à aucun résultat pratique.6 Nous vous demandons aussi pourquoi Sir Will. Thompson, un des plus grands savants des temps modernes, aurait pu dire sans motif à Glasgow (British Medical Journal No. 744 p.p. 454–455) qu’il éxistait une tendance vers l’extension inutile de la vivisection et qu’il était convaincu que la répétition d’expériences cruelles sur les animaux, seulement pour démontrer aux étudiants ce qui avait été fait jusqu’à présent, était absolument inutile (altogether unnecessary)7

Enfin en ouvrant le rapport de la Commission Royale, nous y lisons des déclarations comme celles-ci: “It is manifest that vivisection is from its very nature liable to great abuse and it is not to be doubted that inhumanity may be found in persons of very high position as physiologists”—it cannot be doubted that very severe experiments are constantly performed” “besides the cases in which inhumanity exists, there are others in which carelessness and indifference prevail to an extent sufficient to form a ground for legislative interference” etc et ce rapport est approuvé par la signature du président de la commission Mr. Huxley—8

Les notes ci dessus ne nous paraissent pas prouver que la commission et d’autres juges en dehors d’elle aient trouvé les accusations formulées contre les physiologistes Anglais aussi peu fondées qu’elles vous ont paru. Mais quand même vous auriez payé dans ce cas, Monsieur, votre tribut à l’imperfection humaine, à laquelle même les esprits les plus éminents n’échappent pas toujours, c’est-à dire si vous vous étiez trompé dans l’interprétation des sentiments et des opinions de la commission Royale, le mal ne serait pas grand. Les Anglais ne sont pas gens à se payer d’autorités, même les plus illustres, ils aiment à aller au fond des choses, ils ont du reste dans le rapport de la commission le moyen en main de corriger une erreur, si erreur il y a.

Ainsi passons à la suite de votre lettre—Vous dites, très honoré Monsieur, que vous craignez cependant, d’après tout ce que vous avez entendu dire, qu’on ne fasse peu de cas dans quelques autres parties de l’Europe des souffrances des animaux et vous ajoutez que s’il en était ainsi vous seriez bien aise de voir intercèder dans ces pays la législation contre l’inhumanité. Ces sentiments vous honorent sans doute et nous luttons de ce côté de la Manche pour les faire triompher. Mais ce qui m’étonne ce sont vos incertitudes, votre connaissance si vague des faits qui ont donné lieu à notre lutte. N’auriez vous pas entendu ou lu les déclarations faites devant la commission Royale par le Dr. Allemand Klein qui n’hésitait pas à dire publiquement que les souffrances des animaux pendant les expériences lui étaient parfaitement indifférentes et qu’il en était de même sur tout le continent?9 N’auriez vous pas vu le livre du docteur Cyon: “Methode pour servir de guide aux vivisecteurs et à ceux qui veulent le devenir” et qui chante entre autres les jouissances du vrai vivisecteur?10 N’éxiste-t-il pas déja toute une littérature, due à la plume de savants et de médecins très distingués, et qui met hors de doute les cruautés révoltantes et pour la plupart stériles, commises jour par jour dans les laboratoires physiologiques de la France, de l’Allemagne et surtout de l’Italie? Et n’est-il pas à craindre, Monsieur, que votre déclaration, basée sur le simple oui dire et par conséquence peu affirmative sur des abus éxistant dans quelques pays de l’Europe ne fasse croire aux personnes insuffisamment informées du véritable état des choses, que le mal ne fut pourtant pas aussi grand qu’on le dit et qu’elles puissent persévérer dans leur indifférence.

Vous dites que la physiologie ne peut faire aucun progrès sans avoir recours aux vivisections— Cuvier, le grand naturaliste français, ne partageait pas cette opinion, il dit dans une lettre adressée au Dr. Carpenter: “La nature a fourni les moyens d’apprendre ce que les expériences sur les animaux vivants n’apprendront jamais”.11

Plus loin vous parlez des immenses progrès que la physiologie aurait fait depuis ces derniers 50 ans. Dans une lettre que le savant professeur Haeckel addresse à son collègue, le professeur Fr. Zöllner, célébre auteur du “livre des comêtes” nous lisons entre autres: “Helmholtz est sans doute un de nos plus grands naturalistes—voilà pourquoi il n’a plus pu tenir dans cette espèce de camera obscura à laquelle on donne aujourd’hui le nom de physiologie et qu’il a fait choix de la physique.12 Parmi nos physiologistes du jour, dont la présomption est aussi grande que l’horizon restreint, Helmholtz a été toujours un phénomène. Les résultats fournis par nos vastes et splendides laboratoires physiologiques sont malheureusement toujours en sens inverse des grands frais qu’ils ont occasionnés— Ceux qui viennent d’être établis à Leipzig ne manqueront pas non plus de briller par la sterilité des travaux de leurs directeurs”.13

Vous dites, Monsieur que vous attendez d’immenses bienfaits pour l’humanité de l’application de la physiologie au traitement des maladies (bien entendu de cette physiologie dont les progrès ne sont pas possibles selon vous sans la vivisection), même des vivisecteurs très passionés comme Flourens sont toujours avec vous dans cette attente. Ce grand mâitre de la vivisection dit à cet égard: “Nos mains sont aujourd’hui encore vides, mais notre bouche est pleine de promesses pour l’avenir—”14 Il est vrai que cet avenir se laisse un peu attendre car on pratique les vivisections depuis 2000 ans. La récolte applicable à la médecine est néanmoins jusqu’à présent assez maigre au dire de beaucoup de savants et de médecins quand on passe les résultats tant vantés par le crible d’une critique scientifique. J’ai suivi rigoureusement l’ordre des idées exposées dans votre lettre—je n’ai donc pas dit un mot de la question morale, qui devrait primer toute autre considération, même celle de l’utilité—ou adopterions nous, quand cela nous parait commode, la maxime qu’on a de tout temps reprochée à tort ou à raison aux Jésuites que le but justifie les moyens?—15 Je laisse décider à la conscience de chacun s’il peut être permis de sacrifier de la manière la plus cruelle et souvent la plus frivole des myriades d’êtres sensibles et de haute organisation, qui s’élèvent par les facultés de l’âme si près de nous, qu’on les a nommés avec raison “nos frères inférieures”—? Il y a un temps où les savants cherchaient la pierre phylosophale et le secret de faire de l’or—

Nous sourions aujourd’hui en jetant un regard retrospectif sur ces recherches là. Je suppose qu’il viendra un temps, pourvu que la civilisation ne s’arrête pas dans sa marche, où les générations futures au lieu de sourire et de s’accuser d’ingratitude envers nos vivisecteurs de profession, se détourneront avec douleur de leur oeuvre sanglante et infructueuse.

En vous priant, Monsieur, de ne pas m’en vouloir, d’avoir exprimé avec la plus entière franchise dans cette lettre mes convictions peut-être erronies, mais bien sincères, je saisis cette occasion pour vous assurer des sentiments de la plus haute considération avec lesquels j’ai l’honneur d’être | votre | très obéissant serviteur | W. de Voigts-Rhetz

Footnotes

For a translation of this letter, see Appendix I.
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the printed version of CD’s letter to Frithiof Holmgren, [14] April 1881, which appeared in The Times, 18 April 1881, p. 10.
See letter to Frithiof Holmgren, [14] April 1881; the letter appeared in The Times, 18 April 1881, p. 10. Noblesse oblige: nobility obligates (French); the phrase is taken to mean that someone with power and influence should use it to act honourably to others and fulfill social responsibilities.
See letter to Frithiof Holmgren, [14] April 1881. CD wrote that the accusations were ‘false’.
George Hoggan had testified before the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes in 1875, giving descriptions of experiments; one of his main points of discussion was whether substances used to immobilise animals also acted to eliminate pain (see Report of the Royal Commission on vivisection, pp. 178–82, 200–11; for more on Hoggan’s concerns about vivisection, see Holmes and Friese 2020, pp. 14–17).
William Thomson had made the statement at a meeting of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Glasgow. It was reported in the British Medical Journal, 3 April 1875, pp. 454–5.
See Report of the Royal Commission on vivisection, p. xvii. Thomas Henry Huxley was one of the commissioners (ibid., pp. v–vi).
Edward Emanuel Klein was a researcher at the Brown Animal Sanatory Institution. He had testified that he used anaesthetics only for the sake of convenience (Report of the Royal Commission on vivisection, p. 184).
Elie de Cyon wrote in the first chapter of his book Methodik der physiologischen Experimente und Vivisectionen (Methodology of physiological experiments and vivisections; Cyon 1876, pp. 14–15): ‘Der echte Vivisector muss an eine schwierige Vivisection mit derselben freudigen Aufregung, mit demselben Genusse treten, wie der Chirug an eine schwierige Operation, von der er ausserordentlichen Erfolg erwartet.’ (The true vivisector must approach a difficult vivisection with the same joyful excitement and the same delight as the surgeon does a difficult operation from which he expects extraordinary success.) Cyon was briefly mentioned in the Report of the Royal Commission on vivisection, p. 355.
Georges Cuvier was known for his work in comparative anatomy, while William Benjamin Carpenter had worked on comparative physiology and relied on animal experiments in his studies (see, for example, Carpenter 1854, p. 687).
Ernst Haeckel alluded to Hermann von Helmholtz’s move from physiology to physics in 1871, when he became professor of physics at Berlin (for more on the relationship between physiology and physics in Helmholtz’s work, see Bevilacqua 1993). Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner was an astrophysicist; he wrote more than one book on comets, but Voigts-Rhetz probably refers to Über die Natur der Cometen: Beiträge zur Geschichte und Theorie der Erkenntnis (On the nature of comets: contributions to the history and theory of knowledge; Zöllner 1872). For more on the controversy that arose regarding Zöllner after the publication of the book, see Kragh 2012, pp. 399–400.
Voigts-Rhetz probably refers to the laboratory established in 1879 by Wilhelm Wundt; it became known as the Institute for Experimental Psychology (DSB).
The quotation from Pierre Flourens has not been identified. Flourens had studied the localisation of brain function in experiments on pigeons (see Flourens 1824).
The Jesuit religious order (Society of Jesus) was frequently associated with the idea that the ends justified the means (see, for example, EB 9th ed. 13: 651).

Bibliography

Bevilacqua, Fabio. 1993. Helmholtz’s Ueber die Erhaltung der Kraft. The emergence of a theoretical physicist. In Hermann von Helmholtz and the foundations of nineteenth-century science, edited by David Cahan. Berkeley, Calif., and London: University of California Press.

Carpenter, William Benjamin. 1854. Principles of comparative physiology. 4th edition. London: John Churchill.

Cyon, Elias. 1876. Methodik der physiologischen Experimente und Vivisectionen. Giessen: J. Ricker’sche Buchhandlung. St Petersburg: Carl Ricker.

DSB: Dictionary of scientific biography. Edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie and Frederic L. Holmes. 18 vols. including index and supplements. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1970–90.

EB 9th ed.: The Encyclopaedia Britannica: a dictionary of arts, sciences, and general literature. 9th edition. 24 vols. and index. Edinburgh: A. and C. Black. 1875–89.

Flourens, Marie Jean Pierre. 1824. Recherches experimentales sur les propriétés et les fonctions du système nerveux, dans les animaux vertébrés. Paris: Crevot.

Holmes, Tarquin and Friese, Carrie. 2020. Making the anaesthetised animal into a boundary object: an analysis of the 1875 Royal Commission on Vivisection. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42: article 50.

Kragh, Helge. 2012. Zöllner’s universe. Physics in Perspective 14: 392–420.

Report of the Royal Commission on vivisection: Report of the Royal Commission on the practice of subjecting live animals to experiments for scientific purposes; with minutes of evidence and appendix; 1876 (C.1397, C.1397-1) XLI.277, 689. House of Commons Parliamentary Papers.

Zöllner, Johann Karl Friedrich. 1872. Über die Natur der Cometen: Beiträge zur Geschichte und Theorie der Erkenntniss. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.

Translation

From Werner von Voigts-Rhetz1   [after 18 April 1881]2

Oberkirch (Grand Duchy of Baden)

Most honoured Sir

In reading the letter that you addressed to Professor Halmgren to make him aware of your views on vivisection, I automatically thought of the French dictum: “Noblesse oblige”, a phrase that applies with as much reason to aristocracy of thought as to that of birth.3 A great responsibility rests in fact on a name like yours, made famous as a result of extensive scientific research, in the sense that the ideas to which it imparts its authority have infinitely more importance than those that come from some obscure source. So if I ask your permission, Sir, to offer you some observations that your letter to Professor Halmgren has inspired in me, I beg you not to see in this approach anything but homage rendered to your great merit and to the influence that it is called to exercise in all scientific questions.

You admit in your letter, Sir, to having taken an active part in efforts made some years ago in England to enable the passage of a bill against abuses arising from experiments on living animals, which, however, would have left physiologists the freedom to pursue their scientific research, but, you add, “the public enquiry by a Royal Commission on the complaints against the English physiologists proved that these were unfounded”.4

This first assertion puts before us a puzzle that we feel unable to resolve.— Having at all times a very high opinion of the practical and conscientious nature of the English in general, we wonder how a commission, made up of leading scientific experts in England, could have proposed and how the English Parliament could have sanctioned a bill against abuses that had never existed. We find the explanation still more difficult when we recall having read the description of a scene in an English physiological laboratory published by Dr. Hoggan that reveals facts of revolting cruelty—5 Equally we remember very varied experiments in death by suffocation made on 76 dogs and not abandoned despite the admission of the experimenters themselves that there was no useful outcome.6 We ask you too why Sir Will. Thompson, one of the greatest scholars of modern times, could have said for no apparent reason at Glasgow (British Medical Journal No. 744 p.p. 454–455) that there was a tendency towards the unnecessary extension of vivisection and that he was convinced that the repetition of cruel experiments on animals, merely for the purpose of showing students what had been done up until now, was altogether unnecessary7

Lastly in opening the report of the Royal Commission, we read there declarations like these: “It is manifest that vivisection is from its very nature liable to great abuse and it is not to be doubted that inhumanity may be found in persons of very high position as physiologists”—it cannot be doubted that very severe experiments are constantly performed” “besides the cases in which inhumanity exists, there are others in which carelessness and indifference prevail to an extent sufficient to form a ground for legislative interference” etc and this report is endorsed by the signature of the president of the Commission Mr. Huxley—8

The above notes do not appear to us to show that the commission and other judges outside it found the accusations formulated against English physiologists as ill founded as they seemed to you. But, Sir, even if in this case you would have paid your tribute to human imperfection, from which even the most eminent spirits do not escape, that is to say if you were to be mistaken in your interpretation of the feelings and opinions of the Royal commission, the evil would not be great. The English are not a people who are fobbed off by authorities, even the most illustrious, they like to get to the bottom of things, they have moreover in the report of the commission the means at hand to correct an error, if error there is.

So let us turn next to the rest of your letter— You say, most honoured Sir, that you believe however, from all that you have heard said, that this is scarcely the case concerning the sufferings of animals in some other parts of Europe and you add that if it was so you would be very pleased to see legislation intercede against inhumanity in these countries. Without doubt these sentiments do you honour and we on this side of the Channel are struggling to ensure their success. But what astonish me are your uncertainties, your very muddled acquaintance with the facts that gave rise to our struggle. Would you not have heard or read the declarations made before the royal Commission by the German Dr. Klein, who did not hesitate to say in public that the sufferings of animals during experiments was a matter of perfect indifference to him and that it was the same all across the continent?9 Would you not have seen Doctor Cyon’s book: “Method to be used as a guide to vivisectionists and to those who wish to become one”, which sings among other things of the joys of the true vivisectionist?10 Does not a whole literature already exist, owing to the pens of most distinguished scholars and doctors, that puts beyond doubt the revolting and for the most part pointless cruelties committed day by day in the physiological laboratories of France, of Germany and especially of Italy? And is it not to be feared, Sir, that your declaration, based on simple yea-saying, and as a result showing little conviction about abuses existing in some countries of Europe should encourage belief in people who are insufficiently informed about the true state of affairs that the evil could not, all the same, be as serious as is said and that they could persevere in their indifference.

You say that physiology cannot make any progress without having recourse to vivisections— Cuvier, the great French naturalist, did not share this opinion, he says in a letter addressed to Dr. Carpenter: “Nature has supplied the means of learning what experiments on living animals will never teach”.11

Further on you talk of the immense progress that physiology has made in the last 50 years. In a letter that the learned Professor Haeckel addressed to his colleague, Professor Fr. Zöllner, the celebrated author of the “book of comets” we read among other things: “Helmholtz is without doubt one of our greatest naturalists—that is why he could no longer fit in this sort of camera obscura that today is given the name of physiology and why he made the choice of physics.12 Among our physiologists of today, whose presumption is as great as the horizon is limited, Helmholtz was always an oddity. The results produced by our huge and splendid physiological laboratories are sadly always in an inverse relation to the great expenses they have occasioned— Those which have just been established at Leipzig will not fail to shine either, in the futility of the work of their directors.”13

You say, Sir, that you await great benefits for humanity from the application of physiology to the treatment of disease (of course of this physiology whose progress is not possible according to you without vivisection), even the most enthusiastic vivisectionists like Flourens are always with you in this expectation. This great master of vivisection says in this regard: “Today our hands are still empty, but our mouth is full of promises for the future—”14 It is true that this future makes you wait a bit since vivisection has been practised for 2000 years. The harvest applicable to medicine nevertheless is until now, according to many scholars and doctors, meagre enough, when the results that are so vaunted are passed through the sieve of scientific criticism. I have carefully followed the order of the ideas expressed in your letter—so I have not said one word about the moral question, which should have prevailed over every other consideration, even that of utility—or shall we adopt, when it seems convenient to us, the maxim that has been criticised for all time as wrong or Jesuitical that the end justifies the means?—15 I leave it to each person’s conscience to decide whether is it permitted to sacrifice, in the most cruel and often most frivolous method, the myriads of creatures both sensitive and of sophisticated organisation, who are elevated by the faculties of soul so close to us that they have rightly been called “our lesser brothers”—? There was a time when scholars used to seek the philosopher’s stone and the secret of making gold—

We smile today in casting a backward glance on those researches. I suppose there will come a time, as long as civilisation does not cease its progress, when future generations instead of smiling and accusing themselves of ingratitude towards our professional vivisectionists, will turn away with grief from their bloody and fruitless labour.

In begging you, Sir, not to blame me for having with the utmost frankness expressed in this letter my perhaps mistaken, but completely sincere convictions, I take this opportunity to assure you of the most respectful sentiments with which I have the honour to be your | most obedient servant | W. de Voigts-Rhetz

Footnotes

For a transcription of this letter in its original French, see Transcript.
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the printed version of CD’s letter to Frithiof Holmgren, [14] April 1881, which appeared in The Times, 18 April 1881, p. 10.
See letter to Frithiof Holmgren, [14] April 1881; the letter appeared in The Times, 18 April 1881, p. 10. Noblesse oblige: nobility obligates (French); the phrase is taken to mean that someone with power and influence should use it to act honourably to others and fulfill social responsibilities.
See letter to Frithiof Holmgren, [14] April 1881. CD wrote that the accusations were ‘false’.
George Hoggan had testified before the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes in 1875, giving descriptions of experiments; one of his main points of discussion was whether substances used to immobilise animals also acted to eliminate pain (see Report of the Royal Commission on vivisection, pp. 178–82, 200–11; for more on Hoggan’s concerns about vivisection, see Holmes and Friese 2020, pp. 14–17).
William Thomson had made the statement at a meeting of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Glasgow. It was reported in the British Medical Journal, 3 April 1875, pp. 454–5.
See Report of the Royal Commission on vivisection, p. xvii. Thomas Henry Huxley was one of the commissioners (ibid., pp. v–vi).
Edward Emanuel Klein was a researcher at the Brown Animal Sanatory Institution. He had testified that he used anaesthetics only for the sake of convenience (Report of the Royal Commission on vivisection, p. 184).
Elie de Cyon wrote in the first chapter of his book Methodik der physiologischen Experimente und Vivisectionen (Methodology of physiological experiments and vivisections; Cyon 1876, pp. 14–15): ‘Der echte Vivisector muss an eine schwierige Vivisection mit derselben freudigen Aufregung, mit demselben Genusse treten, wie der Chirug an eine schwierige Operation, von der er ausserordentlichen Erfolg erwartet.’ (The true vivisector must approach a difficult vivisection with the same joyful excitement and the same delight as the surgeon does a difficult operation from which he expects extraordinary success.) Cyon was briefly mentioned in the Report of the Royal Commission on vivisection, p. 355.
Georges Cuvier was known for his work in comparative anatomy, while William Benjamin Carpenter had worked on comparative physiology and relied on animal experiments in his studies (see, for example, Carpenter 1854, p. 687).
Ernst Haeckel alluded to Hermann von Helmholtz’s move from physiology to physics in 1871, when he became professor of physics at Berlin (for more on the relationship between physiology and physics in Helmholtz’s work, see Bevilacqua 1993). Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner was an astrophysicist; he wrote more than one book on comets, but Voigts-Rhetz probably refers to Über die Natur der Cometen: Beiträge zur Geschichte und Theorie der Erkenntnis (On the nature of comets: contributions to the history and theory of knowledge; Zöllner 1872). For more on the controversy that arose regarding Zöllner after the publication of the book, see Kragh 2012, pp. 399–400.
Voigts-Rhetz probably refers to the laboratory established in 1879 by Wilhelm Wundt; it became known as the Institute for Experimental Psychology (DSB).
The quotation from Pierre Flourens has not been identified. Flourens had studied the localisation of brain function in experiments on pigeons (see Flourens 1824).
The Jesuit religious order (Society of Jesus) was frequently associated with the idea that the ends justified the means (see, for example, EB 9th ed. 13: 651).

Bibliography

Bevilacqua, Fabio. 1993. Helmholtz’s Ueber die Erhaltung der Kraft. The emergence of a theoretical physicist. In Hermann von Helmholtz and the foundations of nineteenth-century science, edited by David Cahan. Berkeley, Calif., and London: University of California Press.

Carpenter, William Benjamin. 1854. Principles of comparative physiology. 4th edition. London: John Churchill.

Cyon, Elias. 1876. Methodik der physiologischen Experimente und Vivisectionen. Giessen: J. Ricker’sche Buchhandlung. St Petersburg: Carl Ricker.

DSB: Dictionary of scientific biography. Edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie and Frederic L. Holmes. 18 vols. including index and supplements. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1970–90.

EB 9th ed.: The Encyclopaedia Britannica: a dictionary of arts, sciences, and general literature. 9th edition. 24 vols. and index. Edinburgh: A. and C. Black. 1875–89.

Flourens, Marie Jean Pierre. 1824. Recherches experimentales sur les propriétés et les fonctions du système nerveux, dans les animaux vertébrés. Paris: Crevot.

Holmes, Tarquin and Friese, Carrie. 2020. Making the anaesthetised animal into a boundary object: an analysis of the 1875 Royal Commission on Vivisection. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42: article 50.

Kragh, Helge. 2012. Zöllner’s universe. Physics in Perspective 14: 392–420.

Report of the Royal Commission on vivisection: Report of the Royal Commission on the practice of subjecting live animals to experiments for scientific purposes; with minutes of evidence and appendix; 1876 (C.1397, C.1397-1) XLI.277, 689. House of Commons Parliamentary Papers.

Zöllner, Johann Karl Friedrich. 1872. Über die Natur der Cometen: Beiträge zur Geschichte und Theorie der Erkenntniss. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.

Summary

On vivisection. Has read CD’s letter to Frithiof Holmgren and answers the points raised in it.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-13127
From
Werner Adolf Friedrich Wilhelm (Werner) von Voigts-Rhetz
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Oberkirch
Source of text
DAR 180: 14
Physical description
ALS 6pp (French)

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13127,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13127.xml

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