The idea of vivisection –  performing surgical experiments on live animals in the name of science –  makes many people squeamish. Not surprisingly, the ethics of animal  experimentation were hotly debated in the Victorian period too. Asha  Hornsby (University College London) shows how novelists of the time  sought to understand the mentality of the vivisectionist, who needed to  maintain uncannily cool dispassion as he prodded and dismembered the  furry creature before him.

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