Rob Boddice

In this compelling history of the co-ordinated, transnational defence of medical experimentation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Rob Boddice explores the experience of vivisection as humanitarian practice. He captures the rise of the professional and specialist medical scientist, whose métier was animal experimentation, and whose guiding principle was 'humanity' or the reduction of the aggregate of suffering in the world. He also highlights the rhetorical rehearsal of scientific practices as humane and humanitarian, and connects these often defensive professions to meaningful changes in the experience of doing science. Humane Professions examines the strategies employed by the medical establishment to try to cement an idea in the public consciousness: that the blood spilt in medical laboratories served a far-reaching human good.

What does it mean to feel something? What stimulates our desires, aspirations, and dreams? Did our ancestors feel in the same way as we do? In a wave of new research over the past decade, historians h

This book introduces students and professional historians to the main areas of concern in the history of emotions. It discusses how the emotions intersect with other lines of historical research relat

This book introduces students and professional historians to the main areas of concern in the history of emotions. It discusses how the emotions intersect with other lines of historical research relat

What is pain? Has the experience of pain always been the same? How is pain related to the emotions, to culture, and to pleasure? What happens to us when we feel pain? How does pain work in the body an

In his Descent of Man , Charles Darwin placed sympathy at the crux of morality in a civilized human society. His idea buttressed the belief that white, upper-class, educated men deserved their sense

In his Descent of Man , Charles Darwin placed sympathy at the crux of morality in a civilized human society. His idea buttressed the belief that white, upper-class, educated men deserved their sense

Edward Jenner is a giant of modern medicine. Throughout history, smallpox had plagued humanity with disfigurement, blindness, and death. It was an incurable blight, the suffering of which Jenner helpe

This collection explores assumptions behind the label ‘anthropocentrism’, critically enquiring into the meaning of ‘human’. It addresses epistemological and ontological problems in charges of anthropo