Victorians and Vivisection

Animal rights and medical ethics may seem to be§fairly recent, unrelated controversies. However, in§the late nineteenth-century, literature that§critiqued science was fueled by the vivisection§controversy. Vivisection, the method of§experimentation on living animals that propelled§medicine from an art of observation to a science of§experimentation, becomes complicated by its§connection to eugenics, gender and procreative§issues, and for its role in revisiting Darwinian§debates about the relationship between human and§non-human animals. The ethical issues raised in§several late-Victorian novels are explored from a§Darwinian perspective, and the book ends with an§analysis of Octavia E. Butler s twentieth-century§novels to illustrate the current relevance of these§cultural debates. This text should be useful for§academics, scholars, and students of Victorian§literature, history, culture, and/or science; those§interested in the work of Charles Darwin and the§relationships between human and non-human animals;§science fiction enthusiasts; and all who are§fascinated by the rapidly changing field of medical§and scientific technology.