Species of Compassion: Aesthetics, Anaesthetics, and Pain in the Physiological Laboratory

• Main Author: Rob Boddice
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Open Library of Humanities 2012-12-01
• Series: 19 : Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
• Subjects: compassion; pain; vivisection; humanity
• Online Access: http://www.19.bbk.ac.uk/articles/628

This essay explores the interplay of different species of compassion with regard to physiological practices in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Drawing on the lexicon from which ideals of late-Victorian compassion were formed, it illustrates their contested nature, demonstrating how physiologists developed their own concepts of compassion based on the theories of Darwin and Spencer. Within this purview, the essay examines the historical specificity of antivivisectionist compassion as well as ways in which pain in the laboratory was conceptualized, experienced, and managed ethically.<!--[if gte mso 10]> <mce:style><! /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} > <! [endif] > <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;" mce_style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: " mce_style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: " lang="EN-GB">This article explores the interplay of different species of compassion with regard to physiological practices in the last quarter of the nineteenth century in Britain. The lexicographical web of late-Victorian compassion included ‘humanity’, ‘pity’, ‘commiseration’, ‘tenderness’ (or ‘tender sympathy’), and ‘sympathetic pain’, all of which projected contested ideals of both individual character and moral conduct. As well as showing the historical specificity of antivivisectionist compassion – a complex aesthetic of pain closely linked to disgust – the article will principally demonstrate that physiologists (and the community of evolutionary scientists in general) were applying their own newly, but no less highly, developed form of compassion that emerged straight from the pages of Darwin and Spencer. There is a story here of pain awareness and pain imagination within physiology, specifically connected to feelings of ‘humanity’. In practice, this story centres on anaesthesia and its role in allowing physiologists to live up to an ideal of ‘imperturbability’. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: " mce_style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: " lang="EN-CA">It includes an investigation into what physiologists thought about causing pain in animals, as well as analysis of what changed after the use of anaesthetics became widespread. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: " mce_style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: " lang="EN-GB">The article inquires anew about the ways in which pain in the laboratory was conceptualized, reflexively experienced, and ethically handled.</span> </bo ></bo-->