Vivisection and Experimental Medicine.

Virtually all advances in physiology and endocrinology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were based on vivisection — the experimental use of living animals to observe physiological processes under laboratory conditions. The most successful forms of vivisection began with the French physiologist Claude Bernard, who discovered the liver's glycogenic function by severing a rabbit's cerebellar peduncle nerve and noting the abnormally high levels of sugar (glycosuria) that resulted. In endocrinology at the turn of the century, the chemical actions of the ductless glands were studied by extirpating the gland and observing the resultant metabolic changes in the animal subjects. The procedure led in 1901 to the isolation of adrenaline (epinephrine) by Japanese American chemist Jokichi Takamine and Johns Hopkins Medical School chemist-pharmacologist John Jacob Abel.

Organized Opposition to Vivisection.

The rise of the movement to curtail the experimental use of...