This post on The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice website is not pleasant reading, giving details of how stray dogs
were used as human proxies to study physiology in England before the days of anesthetics.
As readily available subjects, dogs would often be strapped or nailed to a
table and cut open to reveal the inner workings of the still living animal both
as teaching aids to allow student surgeons to hone their skills and as
scientific test subjects.
Some of these early
vivisectionists, such as Robert Hooke, did occasionally show remorse for the
suffering they caused whilst others in society were openly critical of “these
barbarities”. To me, this illustrates the fact that perhaps more than in any other
animal stray dogs stimulate a dichotomy of attitudes in us from callousness on
one hand to pity on the other.
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