Vivisection

[7][8] Research requiring vivisection techniques that cannot be met through other means is often subject to an external ethics review in conception and implementation, and in many jurisdictions use of anesthesia is legally mandated for any surgery likely to cause pain to any vertebrate.

[9] In the United States, the Animal Welfare Act explicitly requires that any procedure that may cause pain use "tranquilizers, analgesics, and anesthetics" with exceptions when "scientifically necessary".

[16] There was also an increased recognition that medical practices needed to be improved, as many of the current therapeutics were based on unproven, traditional theories that may or may not have helped the patient recover.

For example, the discovery of the different functionalities of dorsal and ventral spinal nerve roots was achieved by both Magendie, as well as a Scottish anatomist named Charles Bell.

Bell used an unconscious rabbit because of "the protracted cruelty of the dissection", which caused him to miss that the dorsal roots were also responsible for sensory information.

[18] Magendie faced widespread opposition in British society, among the general public but also his contemporaries, including William Sharpey who described his experiments aside from cruel as "purposeless" and "without sufficient object", a feeling he claimed was shared among other physiologists.

The scientific community felt as though the government was restricting their ability to compete with the quickly advancing France and Germany with new regulations.

[20] Ferrier would continue to vex the anti-vivisection movement in Britain with his experiments when he had a debate with his German opponent, Friedrich Goltz.

They made the moral argument that given recent developments, scientists would venture into more extreme practices to operating on "the cripple, the mute, the idiot, the convict, the pauper, to enhance the 'interest' of [the physiologist's] experiments".

The early Christian writer Tertullian states that Herophilos vivisected at least 600 live prisoners, although the accuracy of this claim is disputed by many historians.

In an extensive article on the subject, Iranian academic Nadia Maftouni believes him to be among the early supporters of autopsy and vivisection.

In the Filipino island of Mindanao, Moro Muslim prisoners of war were subjected to various forms of vivisection by the Japanese, in many cases without anesthesia.