THE SHAMBLES OF SCIENCE
Riots-inspiring anti-vivisection exposé by two leading Swedish-British feminists, medical students, and early animal rights activists, withdrawn by its publisher after sparking a lawsuit.
Very good.
Price: $5,000.00
THE SHAMBLES OF SCIENCE
"I have no objection to vivisection, provided that the vivisectors experiment on themselves." – Lind af Hageby
Rare copy of the shocking anti-vivisectionist work, a revised diary of the authors' firsthand observations originally published as EYE-WITNESSES. This edition includes the later-suppressed chapter "Fun," whose allegations of grotesque experimental cruelty led Stephen Coleridge of the British National Anti-Vivisection Society to directly accuse physiologist William Bayliss of violating the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act. Bayliss responded with a lawsuit, and once victorious, achieved the suppression of THE SHAMBLES OF SCIENCE and the surrender of all the publisher's remaining copies to his lawyers. When the text was once more made available, the offending story — allegedly false in some particulars — had been excised. The furor surrounding the so-called 'Brown Dog Affair' extended beyond legal proceedings to riots and vandalism committed by pro-vivisectionist medical students against an opposing coalition of women suffragists, trade unionists, and other segments of the British public generally opposed to extreme cruelty with or without questionable scientific justification.
The association between early 20th-century feminism and animal cruelty reform was a strong one, arising out of the ferment of late-Victorian reformist movements and accelerated by a medical profession that historically had not hesitated to alternately infantilize and animalize women patients. The frequent association of disparate progressive causes in the interest of coalition building was another factor, as was the absolutist ethical philosophy ably expressed by Lind af Hageby and Schartau. The question of whether suffering by the powerless should trouble the powerful, and the question of how much suffering may be deemed acceptable collateral damage in the noble pursuit of knowledge, were of consuming interest to both overlapping groups of activists; and indeed they still are.
A text of great historical importance to law, science, feminism, and social reform, SHAMBLES has no records at auction and appears in only two institutional holdings (via OCLC) in the United States.
The Object
London: Ernest Bell, 1903. Full title: The shambles of science: extracts from the diary of two students of physiology. 8'' x 5.25''. Original pale peach printed wrappers. xvi, 206, [2] pages. Wrappers rather soiled, spine sunned and slightly cocked. Moderate edge scuffing, with small tears to spine ends.
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