In Humane Professions: The Defence of Experimental Medicine, 1876–1914, once again, vivisection proves a rich topic for histories of science and the emotions, although the author, Rob Boddice, often prefers the term feeling. Boddice positions the book as “a logical sequel” (3) to his earlier work The Science of Sympathy: Morality, Evolution, and Victorian Civilization (2016). Those hoping, however, for an extension of Boddice's work on sympathy and pain or of nineteenth-century human-animal relations will be disappointed. As its title suggests, this is not the aim. Instead, in Humane Professions Boddice is concerned with how the discourse and practice of humanity was cultivated hand in hand with the development of the scientific self and the coordinated defense of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century experimental medicine. Key here is the contact between discourse and practice. Boddice does more than examine political and rhetorical strategies; he is preoccupied with how the defense was enmeshed with “emotional, sensory, intellectual, and practical involvement in the justifications for and methods of animal experimentation” (15). In this vein, Boddice's reflections on the laboratory as an aesthetic and epistemic site are illuminating, and he is equally insightful when exploring the relationship between knowing, seeing, and experiencing.
The work is organized chronologically. The first three chapters focus on the development of the transnational defense that originated in Britain during the late nineteenth century. Boddice swiftly covers familiar territory such as the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act, the 1881 International Medical Congress, and the establishment of the Association for the Advancement of Medicine by Research in 1882, occasionally lingering to challenge or augment existing accounts. Plenty of new material is included in the last two chapters, which concern the early twentieth century and demonstrate the success of the common strategy in an Anglo-American context.
As a study of the arguments for (rather than those against) vivisection, Humane Professions itself represents a substantial contribution. Hitherto, the actions of those defending experimental medicine have been addressed superficially and usually presented as merely reactive to the latter, allowing antivivisectionist tropes such as “head versus heart” and of the hardened or unfeeling operator to appear the dominant note of the time. Boddice's attention to the other humane party is a valuable reframing. The focus also allows him to extend the typical geographical range—taking in the United States and Germany along with Britain—and to exceed the decades that saw the birth and peak of antivivisection activity that has preoccupied most scholars.
Depth is not sacrificed for impressive breadth. Like Boddice's previous work, a key strength of Humane Professions is Boddice's sensitive engagement with a rich range of primary sources, including correspondence; society papers; speeches; and visual material such as paintings, photographs, and cartoons. This allows Boddice to identify and address weaknesses in well-worn scholarship. For instance, he points out that in the go-to work Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society (1975), Richard French views the Physiological Society and the Association for the Advancement of Medicine by Research indirectly—through Home Office documents and memoirs. As he puts it, “hardly anybody seems to have thought it necessary to appraise the narrative from the point of view of the medical establishment by actually consulting the records in question” (42). Boddice opens up dense and technical texts in a deft and lucid manner, paying close attention to style, tone, language, and form as well as content. This produces fascinating close readings of the tropes of these organizational scripts while also attending to their wider implications (relating, for instance, to politics, gender, and class). His own writing benefits from this skill: it is remarkably reflexive, precise, and engaging.
Through painstaking archival research, Boddice has identified tensions between those attitudes expressed in private and the “narrations and representations designed for political and public ears” (15). “Trust” is identified as “a guiding principle” and a rehearsed argumentative fallback: it “justified the practice of vivisection as none of the public's business, coupled with the claim that the public could not have understood it even if it were” (67). Indeed, through a sustained exploration of “trust,” among other favored tactics, Boddice unsettles the idea that these communities were insular, disinterested in persuading laypeople to their view, and that any attempt to do so was chiefly by intellectual rather than emotive or rhetorical means. This is not to suggest duplicity. We should take seriously, he insists, that the individual vivisector conceptualized himself and his profession as genuinely humanitarian.
The remarkable homogeneity of medico-scientific communities in Britain, Germany, and the United States is convincingly established without the loss of nuanced differences. For instance, Boddice notes that German scientists were employed by the state, meaning that attacks on their character and practice took on more radical and politicized meanings than they did elsewhere. In America, especially after the outbreak of the First World War, vivisection was figured as a practice of mercy that became “emblematic” of the nation's unique values and virtues (174). Although Boddice navigates transnationality well in many respects, he relies on significantly more case studies from the United States and Britain; discussions relating to Germany remain largely confined to chapter two. Furthermore, France is not mentioned, and its absence is left unexplained. If this were a work concerned with antivivisection agitation that never really took hold across the Channel despite British efforts, this might be understandable. However, because this is not the case, one wonders whether French experimenters were less invested in the joint rhetoric of humanity.
Notwithstanding, Humane Professions represents an ambitious and important contribution to growing fields, including, but not limited to, histories of humanitarianism, of science, and of the emotions. Although Boddice deals with some scientists, organizations, and texts that may be obscure to most readers, the book remains accessible, lively, and thought provoking throughout. It will certainly appeal to medical humanities scholars, especially those interested in the development of modern science and the formation and articulation of the scientific self.
