Protection against dog distemper and Dogs Protection Bills: the Medical Research Council and anti-vivisectionist protest, 1911-1933.

The National Insurance Act of 1911 provided, by creating the Medical Research Committee, explicit government support for experimental, scientific medicine. This official gesture was made against a background of concern about some of the methods of scientific medicine, especially the use of living animals in medical research. Organized protests against animal experiments had gathered strength during the middle of the nineteenth century and resulted in the establishment of a Royal Commission to enquire into the practice of subjecting animals to experiments. The recommendations of that Commission led to the passing of the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act, which governed all experiments calculated to give pain, and carried out on vertebrates. This paper will extend the examination of laboratory science and laboratory animals into a later period, the first decades of the twentieth century. It will focus on the use of one particular animal, the dog, in one specific laboratory, the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) in London, and will examine three related themes: the use and justification of the dog in experimental laboratory research into canine distemper at the Institute from its establishment in 1913 until the mid-1930s; this will be set against the protests of anti-vivisectionist groups and their use of the dog as a motif of animal suffering; and the moves by both opponents and proponents of animal experimentation to promote their views and to influence public opinion and members of the legislature.