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Lot 28

DARWIN (CHARLES)

10 November 2009, 11:00 GMT

London, New Bond Street

Sold for £4,320 inc. premium

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DARWIN (CHARLES)

Autograph letter signed (“Charles Darwin”), to the eminent scientist and politician Lyon Playfair, thanking him for copies of his bill on vivisection (“…By undertaking this work, you have in my opinion done a great service in the cause of humanity & science…”), but expressing reservations (“…I fear the clause about registering every experiment, done without anaesthetics, though in itself a good step, may be a source of much trouble & difficulty, especially for the impossibility of explaining to the unscientific the probable advantage of any particular experiments…”), 3 pages, Playfair’s docket and traces of mounting on blank verso of second leaf, 8vo, Down, 15 May (docketed 1875)

Footnotes

DARWIN ON VIVISECTION AND THE PROBLEMS OF EXPLAINING SCIENCE TO THE LAYMAN. Darwin had a well-known abhorrence for cruelty and had been greatly distressed by operations he had witnessed when a medical student in Edinburgh: "During a particularly bad operation of a child, Charles finally fled the room, unable to watch, and determined never again to enter an operating theatre. The vision remained to haunt him for life" (Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin, 1992, p.27). Nevertheless he still believed that professional science required animal experiments, and to this end helped Playfair draft his bill; Playfair having, in 1875–6, "engaged in the heated parliamentary debates on vivisection, promoting a bill on behalf of physiologists that sanctioned painful experiments when performed under anaesthesia, rendering Playfair the target of highly personalized attacks from antivivisectionists" (Graeme J. N. Gooday, ODNB). That same year Darwin appeared as a witness before the royal commission on the subject. This letter is recorded by the Darwin Correspondence Project.

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