Alfort (1846–1863)

For some 17 years, complaints and petitions had been made to various French authorities about the vivisection of horses at the Veterinary College at Alfort, Paris. *The Times* of 8 August 1863 reported that,

*"* ... *at Alfort a wretched horse is periodically given up to a group of students to experimentalize upon. They tie him down and torture him for hours, the operations being graduated in such a manner that sixty and even more may be performed before death ensues".*

British Veterinary Surgeons joined elements of the French Press to demand reform. The attack of the *British Medical Journal* was based on the exclusion of anaesthetics:

*"It has never appeared clear to us that we are justified in destroying animals for mere experimental research under any circumstances; but now that we possess the means of removing sensation during experiments, the man who puts an animal to torture ought, in our opinion, to be prosecuted"*

The beneficial role of anaesthetics during noxious animal experiments was being increasingly recognized. Responding to the Alfort a ffair, the RSPCA o ffered a £50 prize for the best essay received on the subject of vivisection. Dr Markham, Physician to Saint Mary's Hospital London, and Mr Fleming, Veterinary Surgeon to the Third Hussars, won prizes for essays recommending the use of anaesthetics in experiments [15].

### Cobbe (1822–1904) and Schi ff (1823–1896)

As one of the 19th century's most e ffective anti-vivisectionists, the Anglo-Irish reformer Frances Power Cobbe had a major e ffect on ensuring anaesthetics became a legal requirement in animal experiments in the UK. Prompted by the Alfort scandal, she published, *"The Rights of Man and the Claims of Brutes"* in 1863. In the same year, she petitioned Moritz Schi ff "to spare his animals as much pain" as possible. In response, Schi ff offered that all his animals had anaesthetics. This may have been true: unlike most of his French and German peers in physiology, Schi ff recognized that there

*"was a real problem in reconciling the needs of science with the most refined humanitarian sentiment"*

and that

*"Should the physiologist make use of live animals, he had to suspend their sensitivity, by means of opium, ether or chloroform, depending on which vital functions he wanted to examine and thus to maintain as normal"* [35]
