Physiology (experimental) and medicine

“Opposition to the practices of medical science reached far outside of the clinical sphere. It was also a result of the application of methods of animal experimentation that proved inseparable from laboratory research. Strong feelings toward these procedures existed both among members of the general public and within sections of the medical profession in Britain. . . . The inclusion of scientific principles into medicine was also problematic because concern existed that clinicians would begin to see their responsibility as normalizing a deviant physiological process rather than caring for a sick human being (I. Miller, 346) . . . Experimental physiology was therefore inherently wrought with problems of internal ethics and public accountability. . . . Accordingly, antivivisection sentiment, including that from within the medical profession, exerted a powerful inhibitory influence on the adoption of the ideals and technologies of physiological exploration, more so in the British clinic than in other countries” (347). . . . Fears of human experimentation were certainly deeply immersed within vivisection controversies. It appeared perfectly plausible to many contemporaries that the human patient might eventually fall victim to the cruel, experimental urges of the modern medical man, particularly if the ethos of laboratory science was allowed to intrude too far into the British clinical experience (353, cites Lederer, Subjected to Science). . . . [-Re gastric analysis] Modern procedures were there not altogether rejected either as an over-simplistic science versus intuition dichotomy might suggest. It was not uncommon for British practitioners to argue that modern forms of gastric analysis should be restricted until a later date when their accuracy and usefulness was more certain. . . a postponement of the introduction of medical science until question related to clinical value were firmly settled (354-55). . . . patient discomfort seems to have been the leading factor in reducing the British physician’s motivation to abandon familiar methods. It was an aspect that held the strongest cultural resonance due to its potential association with apparently needless exercises in medical experimentation and brutality” (356). . . . enthusiasm of those who were initially eager to use gastroscopic methods was often dampened by accidental, and sometimes fatal, perforations of the gullet or stomach” (357). . . . “Fears of the cruelty and pain of the laboratory being directly transferred into the clinical setting appeared to be turning into reality within the controversy surrounding the suffragette hunger strike, which took place in British prisons from July 1909, and is likely to have contributed toward the wariness of both doctor and patient to engage with laboratory technologies” (359). . . . [Re its use in force-feeding of suffragettes], “Representations of the stomach tube as instrument of human torture therefore constituted a climax in debates regarding the extent to which technologies accrued from scientific medicine might be utilized for scientific purposes, or for torture, at the expense of questions related to the patient’s health (371).