John Locke's Use Of Animals In Research

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Around 6th through the 2nd century many physicians would perform experiments on animals, just to satisfy their curiosity. They would study their anatomy to understand the differences between animals and humans. Galen of Pergamum (129-216 CE) was one of the first to ever dissected and vivisected animals for his testing. Vivisection is when resesrcher operate on living animals to study the animals body when it is a life. He would dissect sheeps, pigs, goats, and monkeys to better his surgical skills, and for his own research purposes. He discovered that arteries carry blood not air as many physicians believed over 400 years, and he also discovered the difference between arteries and veins. He learned more about nervous system by cutting animals …show more content…

John Locke was one of the philosophers who was fully aware that animals can feel, and he believed anyone that tortures any living thing should be looked down upon to prevent that person doing any harm to society. Nevertheless animals still had no moral existence and physicians kept with their studies on animals. William Harvey (1578-1657) was one of the founder of modern science, he observed the blood flow of small animals and marine life to better understand how blood flows throughout the body (Wolfram Research, 2007). He published a book in where he describes how he discovered that the reason blood flows through the body is by the heart's contractions. His new findings contradict those of Galen ideas fifteen hundred years ago. In the eighteenth century physicians were researching blood pressure, physical respiratory and cardiovascular system. At this time many physicians started to contribute to the public health, and in medicine. Some researchers started to feel guilty about how animals were being treated during their testing, but this still did not stop them from their research and they continued. At the start of this century it had been made public how researchers use animals for their testing, and that is when people started to wonder if this is ethical. By the end of the eighteenth century the philosophers discussed if vivisection was worth the little benefits it gave to human beings in any

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