Genre:

Regular Feature, Biography

Relevant illustrations:

photo.

Subjects:

Gender, Vivisection, Experiment, Controversy, Publishing, Darwinism, Descent, Morality

Publications cited:

Cobbe 1894

    Notes that Frances P Cobbe's 'campaign against vivisection has lasted many times the duration of the siege of Troy', and portrays her as 'the paladin and knight-errant of dumb creatures' (329). The campaign began in 1863 when 'her attention was drawn to the diabolical tortures inflicted by the vivisectionists of the Continent upon helpless animals, not for purposes of research, but solely for purposes of demonstration and experiment' (334). Suggests that 'Some idea may be formed of the activity with which Miss Cobbe has prosecuted this campaign from the fact that in the six years ending November, 1892, no fewer than 320 books, pamphlets and leaflets were issued by the Victoria Street Society, of which 271,351 copies were printed. Miss Cobbe wrote 173 of these papers herself' (335). Also observes that 'Darwin's "Descent of Man", with its theory of the nature and origin of Sense, seems to her of absolutely fateful import, but she did not quarrel with him until he became a chief priest of the vivisectors' (337).