Walter B. Cannon Papers, American Philosophical Society

A key spokesman for the medical establishment against the antivivisection movement, Walter B. Cannon was head of the Council for the Defence of Medical Research of the American Medical Association from 1908 to 1936. He and his colleague William W. Keen monitored antivivisectionist activity, mobilized the medical profession, lobbied politicians, testified in public hearings, and wrote tirelessly in defense of animal experimentation. Cannon was George Higginson Professor of Physiology at Harvard Medical School and head of its physiology department. Keen was a prominent surgeon and neurologist from Philadelphia.

The Cannon Papers consist of over 1.5 linear feet of correspondence, 1905-1928, primarily between Cannon (1871-1945) and Keen (1837-1932) regarding their mutual opposition to the antivivisection movement.

Background note

William W. Keen, portrait by Robert William Vonnoh, 1912

Walter B. Cannon was widely noted for his trailblazing research in gastrointestinal physiology and as a pioneer in understanding the influence of emotional states on bodily functions and on "the understanding of nerve transmission and hormonal regulation of the body"(Lederer, p.340). Born on October 19, 1871 at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, he studied biology and zoology under Charles B. Davenport as an undergraduate at Harvard, and upon entering medical school at Harvard, he followed the suggestion of Henry P. Bowditch, studying the phenomenon of swallowing and viscereal movements in animals using the recently discovered x-ray technology. He remained at Harvard for the next four decades as instructor and assistant professor in physiology, and later as George Higginson Professor in Physiology and chair of the Department of Physiology (1906-1942). His tenure at Harvard was interrupted only by service with the Army Medical Corps during the First World War, when he was stationed in France and England in 1917-1918.

Cannon's investigation into the digestive system resulted in his first monograph, Mechanical Factors of Digestion (1911). In it, he noted with great interest the correlation between emotional disturbances and the digestive process in animal subjects. Accordingly, in the years preceding and immediately after World War I, he devoted much energy into research on the sympathetic nervous system and functions of the suprarenal medulla; for instance, the secretion of the adrenaline during stress, the "fight or flight" mechanism, and the complete surgical removal of an animal's sympathetic nervous system. During the war, he worked on the treatment of trauma and wound shock. His later work incorporated study of the autonomic nervous system, the homeostatic mechanisms of the body (a term Cannon introduced in 1926), and attempts to isolate the "sympathetic trasmitter." His experiments on chemical neurotransmission and search for "sympathins" bore some resemblance to those carried out by Nobel laureates Otto Loewi (1936) and Ulf von Euler (1970).

Cannon was also a leading figure in medical education in the early half of the 20th century. Active in a number of professional organizations including the American Medical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physiological Society, he was author of a several books which found a wide audience, including Bodily Changes (1915) and The Wisdom of the Body (1932), which were intended for the general reader, and his autobiographical The Way of an Investigator: A Scientist's Experiences in Medical Research (1945).

The ill health Cannon endured for decades and the cancerous condition he developed in later life are probably traceable to his experiments with x-rays during the early days of his research. He died in Franklin, New Hampshire on October 1, 1945.

From relatively early in his career, Cannon played a singularly important role in the medical establishment's opposition to antivivisection. By 1914 he was "indispensable" to the AMA, and Saul Benison has remarked that "few physicians or scientists in the country knew more than he did about the antivivisectionists and few had as much experience in defending medical research. Nor was there anyone on the defense council or elsewhere who appeared willing to shoulder the responsibility of countering the new militant campaigns the antivivisectionists had promised at their congress. Through circumstances beyond his control, Cannon had become indispensable" (Benison p.282). Between 1909 and 1926, Cannon published over thirty pamphlets and pieces, mostly as editorials and articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association in defense of animal experimentation.

Cannon's interest in antivivisection issues began when he observed legislative hearings on the subject while still in medical school, and he became directly involved after joining the physiology department in 1900, partly inspired by Bowditch's zeal in combatting antivivisection and partly because of his conviction that animal experimentation was necessary for medical advancement. He sat on the medical school's Committee on Animals which was responsible for securing and caring for laboratory animals, which he felt were critical to his research, from his early experiments with x-rays that demonstrated the process by which a metal ball traveled along a goose's oesophagus to his sympathectomies in cats in the 1910s.

Cannon began to take a leadership role in the fight against antivivisection in 1908 when he was nominated unanimously as Chairman of AMA's newly established Council on the Defense of Medical Research. He remained at the helm for eighteen years, serving for part of that time on the AMA's Council on Health and Public Instruction (1910). In addition to acting on behalf of a national organization, he was chief representative of the pro-animal experimentation community at Harvard and the state of Massachusetts.

Despite his ardor, Cannon occasionally expressed weariness with the struggle against antivivisectionists. From the start, testifying at public hearings and in the state legislature was time consuming and exhausting, and Cannon spent equal energy in promoting the importance of animal experimentation to human health among medical practitioners, pushing for the publication of a series of pamphlets to advance the cause. In general, he was a staunch proponent of the need for the medical community to win public support, doing his best, for example, to side-step the public row over Udo Julius Wile's "dental drill experiment" in 1916. Cannon refused to criticize the experiments openly, which involving puncturing the brain of insane human patients, despite his disapproval of them, for fear of further injuring the cause of promoting medical research.

Cannon wrote regularly to editors and reporters of newspapers and popular magazines requesting that they print articles favorable to animal research, and in addition to submitting his own letters, he provided provivisection materials. At the same time, he spearheaded the effort to devise a set of uniform laboratory rules in medical schools in 1910 to blunt antivivisectionist criticism that such laboratories were unregulated.

Constant monitoring of antivivisection activities, including attending traveling exhibitions, was a key component of Cannon's tactics, but he only began to confront antivivisectionists head on in 1913, prompted in part by the increasing attention toward vivisection of humans, especially Noguchi's luetin experiments. Cannon perceived the human vivisection issue as a threat to the credibility and respect of medical researchers, and his attacks on the antivivisectionists grew increasingly virulent and personal as the decade wore on. However the fact that the majority of antivivisectionists were women seems to have caused him some discomfort and led him to adopt a more measured tone. These women were not infrequently involved in other reform movements that Cannon supported. On the other hand, Cannon was also astute enough to realize that humane societies were moving away from the more radical antivivisection camp and his overtures to the AHA and MSPCA in 1914 proved fruitful.

Although Cannon's activism was centered primarily on the national, rather than local level, he nevertheless kept abreast of developments in different states and abroad, enlisting colleagues and younger researchers to deal with specific responses. He worked closely with Simon Flexner and Henry James, jr., at the Rockefeller Institute, for example, and sought counsel from UK counterparts who had experience handling antivivisection sentiments. But not all members of the medical community shared his vehement opposition to curbing animal experimentation, and on his part, Cannon was never shy in directing his venom towards physicians who supported the antivivisection cause. His conflict in 1909-1910 with his former teacher William James was particularly, and was exacerbated by broader philosophical and ethical differences.

Throughout his adult life, Cannon steadfastly maintained that science held the key to the betterment of the human condition, and that science was synonymous with "truth" and "knowledge". To Cannon, the sanctity of science should not be curtailed or tarnished by arbitrary limitations or falsehood -- scientists should be afforded maximum freedom in their research and should be allowed to spread their message, and in fact, it is a scientist's obligation to maximize their freedom through educating the public and promoting a borderless ethic in scientific discourse. These convictions led Cannon not only to do battle with the antivivisection movement, but to assist Jewish doctors from Nazi-controlled Europe, for example, to bring medical relief to the Spanish Republic, and to support the formation of scientific ties with the Soviet Union. Cannon's therefore viewed his opposition to antivivsection as a fundamentally "moral" proposition. Convinced that animal experimentation was essential to medical progress, he considered antivivisectionists' efforts to throw roadblocks in the way of scientific progress as "immoral," and he fulminated over what he perceived as their use of distortions, fabrications, and mistatements, or their sheer, unadulterated ignorance.

The Antivivisection Movement

It is never easy to pin down the moment that a "movement" was born and even harder to determine the point at which it expired. American antivivisectionism began to appear only in the aftermath of the fierce debate in the UK that culminated in the act to restrict animal experimentation of 1876. Taking their cue from their British counterparts, a small number of Americans began to voice opposition to animal experimentation, but due to the rarity of animal experimentation in this country before the last quarter of the 19th century, the movement was slow to coalesce.

The first antivivisection bill in America was introduced in New York in 1880, and although it was defeated in the legislature, antivivisectionist pressure was ratecheted up over the next twenty years. At both state and national levels, legislative proposals to regulate vivisection came very close to becoming law, and public opinion swung largely to the antivivisection cause. Devising ever more ingenious strategies, the opponents of animal research kept busy with lecture tours and traveling exhibitions, protests and mass meetings, legislative protests and attempts at stopping medical schools from obtaining pets kept in city pounds. By the outbreak of the First World War, however, the antivivisection movement had passed its peak, and by the end of the 1920s, it was no longer considered by defenders of vivisection to be a serious threat.

One of the keys to the success of the antivivisection movement during its heyday was the network of humane societies and animal protection organizations that provided a structure for airing their perspective. The first such organization in America was the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, founded in New York by Henry Bergh in 1866, which, like many SPCAs, was also concerned with child abuse and welfare. Bergh was one of the first -- if not the first -- to challenge animal experimenatation at a time when such practice took place very infrequently in America, and it was he who initiated an antivivisection education program at the ASPCA in 1874, and who instigated the antivivisection bill before the New York legislature in 1880.

These radical beginnings, however, soon faded, and although the humane societies remained opposed to human vivisection, by the turn of the century they shrank from opposing animal research. It has been argued that this was largely due to the humane movement's "overall conservatism" in that period and the fact that it "avoided challenging the assumptions that underlie institutionalized exploitation," including "institutional cruelties in farming, vivisection, and exploited wildlife" (Finsen and Finsen p. 51).

In any event, the onus of antivivsetion activity fell elsewhere. Caroline Earle White, who had helped to organize the Pennsylvania SPCA in 1867 and who had served as President of its Women's Branch for fifty years, formed the American Antivivisection Society in 1877 to coordinate the efforts of the various humane societies across the country and to provide support for regulating animal experimentation. Begun in Philadelphia, the Society was followed by similar groups in Boston (1895), Maryland (1898), Chicago (1903), and New York (1908). Like the humane societies, these groups sought to promote the general welfare of all animals, from transportation of animals, to bullfights and wearing animal fur and skin, but as the humane societies began to shy away from supporting the abolition of vivisection, the AAVS did not. As a result, these two communities took increasingly divergent paths, much to the detriment of the antivivisection movement.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of those who challenged the antivivisectionists were members of the medical profession. Among their leaders were William Henry Welch, professor of pathology and dean of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, who led the fight against federal legislation to restrict animal experimentation in 1896 to 1901. His successor in anti-antivivisectionism was William Williams Keen, head of the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School, who presented testimony during the Senate hearings in 1900. In Philadelphia, in addition to Keen, the physiologist Richard Mills Pierce and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania were active in anti-antivivisectionism, and after the establishment of the Rockefeller Institute in 1904, they were joined by Henry James, jr., and Simon Flexner. In 1908, the AMA stepped in to help coordinate the response of the medical community, forming a Council for the Defence of Medical Research, of which Cannon was appointed head.

The most vocal defenders of vivisection often argued against all forms of outside interference in medical education and research. They opposed not only the abolition of the use of animals, but even its regulation, maintaining that any concession on their part would lead to dire consequences for medical science. However, just as the antivivisectionists were not uniformly in favor of total abolition, not all medical researchers were so extreme. There was even a small contingent of antivivisectionist physicians who, like Arthur Leffingwell, commanded a degree of "authority" in the medical community.

If one generality applies to the antivivisectionists, it was that they were predominately female. White, renowned as founder of the AAVS, and a brilliant lecturer, was perhaps the most prominent, but women were the backbone of the movement at the grassroots level as both leaders and participants. Women such as Mary F. Lovell and Diana Belais organized antivivisection societies, provided funding, wrote articles and edited the magazine Zoophilly, sought support from women's organizations, and lectured widely. The movement's leaders were generally drawn from families of good social standing, and many were active in other social reform movements (e.g. temperance movement).

Women shaped the movement from its ideological underpinnings to its rhetoric, strategy, and tactics. They stressed emotional elements such as compassion, affection, and caring for the young and defenseless, traits commonly regarded at the time as distinctly "feminine" and "maternal". They considered themselves responsible for setting children on the correct moral path, which included steering them away from cruelty to animals, and they took advantage of their association with women's groups to spread their antivivisection message.

The principal objection to animal experimentation among antivivisectionists was a moral and ethical one. They argued that it is fundamentally immoral to sacrifice sentient creatures to gain scientific knowledge, but more subtly, that claimed that vivisection decreased the moral sensibility of physicians, and by impairing their sense of compassion, would jeopardize public safety. Whether in the laboratory or slaughterhouse, they contended that cruelty to animals corrupted morality. Their ethical concern therefore extended to and included human subjects, especially orphans and hospital patients. Arguing that it was their particular duty to protect the young from exposure to the cruelty inherent in animal experimentation, they succeeded in securing legislation to prohibit vivisection in elementary and secondary schools.

Of all the proposals to regulate vivisection in the last decades of the 19th century and first quarter of the 20th century, the bils presented to Congress in 1896 and 1900 respectively presented the greatest challenge to the medical community. Representative James McMillan of Michigan introduced a bill in 1896 to regulate vivisection in the District of Columbia, modelled on the British act of 1876. After a public hearing, however, the vote was postponed due to the Spanish American War. A similar proposal was put forward in 1900 by Senator Jacob Gallinger from New Hampshire, who had conducted the Senate hearings in 1896. Antivivisectionists had hoped that by securing restriction at the federal level, it would be easier to bring about changes in local laws. Despite support from the public, academics, religious leaders, Supreme Court justices, and even a number of physicians, however, the bill languished due to intensive last minute political lobbying by Welch and other physicians.

The Gallinger bill served as a wake up call for the medical establishment. Even though the bill was defeated, the experience was sobering. Quick to learn their lesson, physicians realized the need to redouble their efforts to defend animal research, making full use of their political connections to push their agenda. Provivisection activists were quick to urge the Council for the Defence of Medical Research to be aggressive in the political sphere, as wellas they public sphere, and they closed ranks around their common cause. Even though Welch and Keen did not agree on everything, leading defenders of animal research always made sure to keep their disputes private and their community in excellent order.

Ultimately, the decline of the antivivisection movement can be traced to several causes beyond the effective response of the medical community. For quite some time it has been maintained that the discovery of diphtheria antitoxin and other major medical developments brought the antivivisectionists to their knees, and that the outbreak of war in 1914 altered moral priorities. Soldiers had to be vaccinated against typhoid and urgent questions about illnesses affecting the troops tempted medical researchers to turn increasingly to laboratory animals for answers. Antivivisection advocates uniformly opposed these activities, and as a result lost support among the general public. More generally, antivivisectionists were not helped by their tendency to misrepresentation and exaggeration, and their use of inaccurate, vague and outdated references. Although antivivisectionists continued to press for legislative changes into the 1920s, they were so thoroughly unsucessful that the many members of the medical community felt confident in declaring victory. Where Cannon had contributed twelve pieces against antivivisection between 1921 and 1926, he wrote only a single article on the subject in the 1930s.

Scope and content

A significant resource for study of the response of the American medical community to antivivsectionist agitation during the first quarter of the twentieth century, the Cannon Papers are essentially a long conversation between two of the leading anti-antivivisectionists in America, Walter B. Cannon and William W. Keen. In over 650 letters, mostly quite brief, written between 1905 and 1928, Cannon and Keen engage in a sustained dialogue on the best strategies for defending vivisection to a skeptical public and on the best method for organizing the medical community. The collection is arranged chronologically.

Although the dominant theme of the collection is vivisection, Keen and Cannon were active as physicians and medical educators, and their correspondence inevitably touches on other subjects. At various points, the two discuss surgery, neurology, tuberculosis, typhoid vaccination, the treatment of shock, and evolution, and a number of organizations and individuals are mentioned, including the American Philosophical Society, the Mayo Clinic, American Medical Association, University of Minnesota, the League of Nations, the University of Pennsylvania, Joseph Lister, Woodrow Wilson, William H. Taft, Edward W. Bok, and S. Weir Mitchell.

Administrative information

Restrictions

None.

Provenance

Acquired, 1973.

Preferred citation

Cite as: Walter B. Cannon Papers, American Philosophical Society.

Processing information

Catalogued by Carmen Lee, 2000.

Other finding aids

Also described in Lily Kay, Molecules, Cells, and Life

Additional information

Related material

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia has an important collection of correspondence of W. W. Keen regarding vivisection.

The bulk of the papers of Walter B. Cannon are housed in the Rare Books Department of the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

References

Obituary of Walter B. Cannon, Journal of the American Medical Association 129 (Oct, 1945): 526.

Finsen, Lawrence and Susan Finsen, The Animal Rights Movement in America (New York, 1994).

Lederer, Susan, Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America Before the Second World War (Baltimore, 1995).