Comments on: More on small animal guillotines — an invisible practice http://www.corporeality.net/museion/2009/07/14/more-on-small-animal-guillotines-an-invisible-practice/ Medical Museion @ University of Copenhagen Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:52:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.1 hourly 1 By: Robert G. W. Kirk http://www.corporeality.net/museion/2009/07/14/more-on-small-animal-guillotines-an-invisible-practice/comment-page-1/#comment-247342 Robert G. W. Kirk Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:34:48 +0000 http://www.corporeality.net/museion/?p=1561#comment-247342 This is an interesting discussion. I concur with Thomas that little if any historical work has been done on killing laboratory animals. This is likely as such practices are particularly invisable to the historian, being tacitly communicated and existing in locally specific forms. They also touch on key ethical issues of course. There have been some ethnological/sociological studies that address the act of sacrifice (Arnold Arluke in Anthrzoos in 1998), much of which feeds into Birke, Arluke and Michael's 2007 The Sacrifice: How Scientific Experiments Transform Animals and People. There is also a volume by the Animal Studies Group on Killing Animals (but does not lab animals directly as I recall). From my own work on the history of lab animal welfare my sense is the guillotine may have been relatively unique to biomedicine in terms of animal killing, but it is not a subject I have looked at in great detail as yet and am unsure if there were/are applications in the meat industry. There were (and no doubt are) numerous tools that would shed a material light on the history of lab animal practice - none more unexpected than the automated rat milking machine I came across a few weeks ago - it is good to see some being preserved. This is an interesting discussion. I concur with Thomas that little if any historical work has been done on killing laboratory animals. This is likely as such practices are particularly invisable to the historian, being tacitly communicated and existing in locally specific forms. They also touch on key ethical issues of course. There have been some ethnological/sociological studies that address the act of sacrifice (Arnold Arluke in Anthrzoos in 1998), much of which feeds into Birke, Arluke and Michael’s 2007 The Sacrifice: How Scientific Experiments Transform Animals and People. There is also a volume by the Animal Studies Group on Killing Animals (but does not lab animals directly as I recall).

From my own work on the history of lab animal welfare my sense is the guillotine may have been relatively unique to biomedicine in terms of animal killing, but it is not a subject I have looked at in great detail as yet and am unsure if there were/are applications in the meat industry. There were (and no doubt are) numerous tools that would shed a material light on the history of lab animal practice – none more unexpected than the automated rat milking machine I came across a few weeks ago – it is good to see some being preserved.

]]> By: Morten http://www.corporeality.net/museion/2009/07/14/more-on-small-animal-guillotines-an-invisible-practice/comment-page-1/#comment-247341 Morten Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:59:49 +0000 http://www.corporeality.net/museion/?p=1561#comment-247341 There's definitely a research project there. Also, the whole history of guillotines are connected to the history of medicine from the French revolution onwards: Word History: "At half past 12 the guillotine severed her head from her body." So reads the statement containing the first recorded use of guillotine in English, found in the Annual Register of 1793. Ironically, the guillotine, which became the most notable symbol of the excesses of the French Revolution, was named for a humanitarian physician, Joseph Ignace Guillotin. Guillotin, a member of the French Constituent Assembly, recommended in a speech to that body on October 10, 1789, that executions be performed by a beheading device rather than by hanging, the method used for commoners, or by the sword, reserved for the nobility. He argued that beheading by machine was quicker and less painful than the work of the rope and the sword. In 1791 the Assembly did indeed adopt beheading by machine as the state's preferred method of execution. A beheading device designed by Dr. Antoine Louis, secretary of the College of Surgeons, was first used on April 25, 1792, to execute a highwayman named Pelletier or Peletier. The device was called a louisette or louison after its inventor's name, but because of Guillotin's famous speech, his name became irrevocably associated with the machine. After Guillotin's death in 1814, his children tried unsuccessfully to get the device's name changed. When their efforts failed, they were allowed to change their name instead. Taken from: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/guillotine From high-featured French Revolution to invisible laboratory rat practice... There’s definitely a research project there.

Also, the whole history of guillotines are connected to the history of medicine from the French revolution onwards:

Word History: “At half past 12 the guillotine severed her head from her body.” So reads the statement containing the first recorded use of guillotine in English, found in the Annual Register of 1793. Ironically, the guillotine, which became the most notable symbol of the excesses of the French Revolution, was named for a humanitarian physician, Joseph Ignace Guillotin. Guillotin, a member of the French Constituent Assembly, recommended in a speech to that body on October 10, 1789, that executions be performed by a beheading device rather than by hanging, the method used for commoners, or by the sword, reserved for the nobility. He argued that beheading by machine was quicker and less painful than the work of the rope and the sword. In 1791 the Assembly did indeed adopt beheading by machine as the state’s preferred method of execution. A beheading device designed by Dr. Antoine Louis, secretary of the College of Surgeons, was first used on April 25, 1792, to execute a highwayman named Pelletier or Peletier. The device was called a louisette or louison after its inventor’s name, but because of Guillotin’s famous speech, his name became irrevocably associated with the machine. After Guillotin’s death in 1814, his children tried unsuccessfully to get the device’s name changed. When their efforts failed, they were allowed to change their name instead.

Taken from: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/guillotine

From high-featured French Revolution to invisible laboratory rat practice…

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