John Vs Dalton

Vivisection is the dissection of living animals for experimental purposes. Vivisection has been around for over 2000 years. However, it was not until the 18th century when the use of research animals in laboratory became widespread in Europe. Since then, animal experimentation has been one of the most debated issues because some people think that vivisection is an immoral and cruel thing while others think that it is necessary. While John Dalton supports vivisection and thinks it is necessary for humans to learn more, Frances Cobbe thinks that vivisection is not only cruel, but also morally wrong. After reading both authors’ work, John Dalton’s work is ultimately more structured and persuasive to his audience than Frances Cobbe’s chaos and
emotional work. John Dalton (1825-1889) is an American physiologist born in Chehnsford, Massachusetts.
He was graduated at the medical department of Harvard University. He became a professor of physiology in the University of Buffalo, and was the first professor in the United States to teach vivisection. As a physiology Dalton supports vivisection and thinks that it is necessary for humans to learn more from vivisection and to improve from it. Therefore, he wrote “vivisection” in 1866 to be read before other physicians and physiologists in the New York Academy of Medicine. Dalton wrote “vivisection” to persuade people that vivisection is actually not that cruel and is needed for humans to improve and to discover new things that would help the entire human race. In his speech, Dalton gives a variety of examples and lots of reasoning to defend vivisection so that people will accept
it. Frances Cobbe (1822-1904) was an Irish writer and a social reformer. She also founded some animal advocacy groups, including the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection in 1898. Cobbe published her work to the public, thus targeting all men and women in America. Cobbe’s work is more like trying to show how cruel and unethical vivisection is, thus persuading people to disapprove vivisection. In her work, Cobbe tries to offer her audience a lot of examples, so that people can envision horrible situations in order to shock people into supporting her causes. Using different styles to present their own point of view, Dalton ultimately proves that his work is more persuasive. Dalton’s organized and structured work gives a sense of professionalism and authority.
The audience can tell that Dalton has a medical background and has a respectable reputation; therefore he himself already has lots of creditability. Dalton recognizes that cruelty is the main concern of the opposed audience, so he has to start with cruelty. “First, as to its cruelty. The injustice of this charge may be appreciated, when we remember the aim and motive of all such experiments” . If he can’t show that vivisection is not cruel, then the other advantages of vivisection won’t really matter that much anymore. Dalton writes in such a way to not make the audience dislike the work, he offers rebuttal to every point he makes, but then he will ultimately backs his own point again. Moreover, because most of his audience has a medical background, Dalton does not have to spend that much of an effort to convince the other side. It is more like reassuring the people in what they believe
in.
Cobbe’s work is chaotic and emotional because it is not really organized and readers can hardly really follow to what she is trying to direct; moreover, since she is not a doctor she doesn’t have the creditability and people will think that she might not even know what she is talking about, she could just be feeling sorry for the animals as she has a background of animal rights. However, Cobbe did try to make an effort to make the whole paper seem more commendable to other people that has a high social status by having letters from high social status. At the start of her work, with these names at the front, her paper may gain more creditability. Cobbe’s style is more chaotic and more into the morality. Moreover, Cobbe’s audience is all the “men and women in America” that is a lot more diverse than Dalton’s. Middle class people would like Cobbe’s work more, but more intelligent or high-class people will prefer Daltons. Dalton’s style of having an organized and structured work that gives a sense of professionalism and authority will be more persuasive than Cobbe’s emotional and chaotic work. Dalton’s work will appear to be more persuasive to people with higher education and medical backgrounds that recognizes the advantages that vivisection brings to humans. Likewise, Cobbe’s work will appear to be more persuasive to people with lower education and people who relies on their feelings to judge. However, I think that what separates these two works is how Dalton dealt with people who are opposed to vivisection. Dalton cleverly admits that cruelty sometimes do happen, but only when vivisection is done “reckless, unfeeling, or unskilful persons. But this abuse of a practice, which is rare and exceptional, cannot with any reason be urged against the practice itself when conducted with judgment and propriety” . By using this technique, Dalton’s work will be able to tackle the audience’s main concern at the start and really focus on the advantages of vivisection.
Dalton provides many arguments and examples about why vivisection is not cruel. First Dalton discusses some techniques that help animals not feel the pain, and he emphasized that “at the present day, the great majority of physiological experiments are so performed as to be entirely painless” . His point is that because they did not cause the pain in purpose, it shouldn’t be regarded as cruel. Moreover, Dalton also gave the idea that what he is doing is actually not that cruel compared to other people, as other people also kill animals for food and for other needs. Dalton states that “ Physiologists have sometimes been charged with recklessness and disregard of the lower creation following out their passion for experiment…it does not seem a very reckless or extravagant thing to sacrifice a comparatively small number of dogs and rabbits for the acquisition of knowledge which is to benefit the human race” . Ultimately, pain caused on animal or deaths of animals intentionally are really the main concern from the audience here and Dalton’s arguments do a great job in convincing that cruelty is actually not cruel.
Cobbe does not really give an introduction about what vivisection is and has lots of repetitive example, therefore resulting more like whining than really trying to persuade people as from page 28-31 Cobbe just stated out a whole bunch of examples but does not really explain anything about it. Cobbe also does a good job in presenting the most horrific examples, “the dog, mutilated and bleeding, twice escaped from under the implacable knife, and threw its front paws around Majendie's heel, licking as if to soften his murderer and ask for pity. I confess I was unable to endure that heart-rending spectacle” . These examples could really touch people’s heart. However, her work as a whole is weak and lack persuading skills as she seems like she is trying to force the audience to recognize the torture that is happening to think that it is bad, but she does not really explain and reason it. Thus, Cobbe is more into the morale part and she is ultimately trying to have people’s emotion overcome their logic.
With many more arguments and different examples, Dalton clearly delivered to the audience that why cruelty is actually not that cruel after all. With repetitive and horrific examples, Cobbe will be able to capture some of the mid-lower class people as they enable their emotions to overcome their logic, and they do not understand clearly how important vivisection is to the community as a whole. To the upper class people and people with medical backgrounds, Cobbe’s work will sound like someone who is whining and who takes a lot of pity on animals that are being used in experiments. Moreover, Cobbe also did brought out accomplishments about vivisection, this will ultimately undermine her argument, as people without medical background will start to realize the importance and advantages of vivisection. All in all, as a person who does not have any medical backgrounds, after reading both works, I am influenced by Dalton and convinced that vivisection is necessary. Even if it is cruel, it is not causing pain in purpose and that it is sometimes necessary.