Of mice and medical men: The medical profession's response to the vivisection controversy in turn of the century America

From approximately 1875 to 1910 the American medical profession was involved with a controversy over animal experimentation that continues to this day. Fighting for their professional identity and position in society, organized medicine found themselves at the center of a battle which has no real winner.; This dissertation examines the vivisection controversy to reveal the arguments, characteristics, and rhetoric of this fight as it is articulated in the popular press. The professional medical literature also provides a vivid description of how the vivisection battle was fought by the academic medical men who were in the forefront of this agitation. This study also highlights the politics and polemics of a very well thought-out and organized campaign to raise the prestige of the medical profession, utilizing the vivisection agitation as a means to draw attention to the many advances being made in medicine due to animal experimentation.; These medical men, as major leaders of organized medicine in the United States, had a mission to elevate the standard of medical education in America by incorporating the laboratory into the curriculums of the leading medical schools in the country. By elevating the standard of medical education, these physicians hoped to raise their prestige in the eyes of the American public. Their political expertise united them in their fight to elevate the status of their profession and became a model by which future political battles would be waged by the medical profession.; This antivivisection controversy which took place during a time of rapid industrialization and societal change can be instructive to those who wish to view the current animal rights movement in its historical context in order to more fully understand the dilemma facing society today.