History of animal testing
The history of animal testing goes back to the writings of the Ancient Greeks in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, with Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and Erasistratus (304–258 BCE) among the first to perform experiments on living animals.Galen, a physician in 2nd-century Rome, dissected pigs and goats, and is known as the "Father of Vivisection."Avenzoar, an Arabic physician in 12th-century Moorish Spain who also practiced dissection, introduced animal testing as an experimental method of testing surgical procedures before applying them to human patients.
In 1242, Ibn al-Nafis provided accurate descriptions of the circulation of blood in mammals. A complete description of this circulation was later provided in the 17th century by William Harvey.
In his unfinished 1627 utopian novel, New Atlantis, scientist and philosopher Francis Bacon proposed a research center containing "parks and enclosures of all sorts of beasts and birds which we use ... for dissections and trials; that thereby we may take light what may be wrought upon the body of man."
In the 1660s, the physicist Robert Boyle conducted many experiments with a pump to investigate the effects of rarefied air. He listed two experiments on living animals: "Experiment 40", which tested the ability of insects to fly under reduced air pressure, and the dramatic "Experiment 41," which demonstrated the reliance of living creatures on the air for their survival. Boyle conducted numerous trials during which he placed a large variety of different animals, including birds, mice, eels, snails and flies, in the vessel of the pump and studied their reactions as the air was removed. Here, he describes an injured lark:
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