vivisection

vivisection
Squeamishness about the dissection (let alone vivisection) of animals is a mark of much ancient medicine and zoology, and there is no firm evidence for vivisection in those Hippocratic works (see medicine §4) which are generally dated to the 5th or 4th cent. bc. (The passage in the Hippocratic treatise On the Heart describing the vivisection of a pig (9. 80 Littré) is generally dated to the 3rd cent. bc.) Physicians and zoologists from Aristotle onwards do, however, seem to have vivisected animals and in some cases even humans. Practitioners themselves rarely show signs of concern with the morality of causing animals suffering in the name of knowledge, although such concern was voiced in other quarters (see animals, attitudes to and knowledge about).

Two ancient physicians are notoriously connected with the practice...

[The entire page is 401 words long]

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