In the parlance of the Victorian anti-vivisection movement, vivisection is a ‘practice of cruelty’ that, in Collins’ words, ‘fatally the nature of man’ (38). Although the anti-vivisectionist case collapsed, and Dr Ferrier was neither convicted nor fined for his experiments, both Wells and Collins’ novels continued the public exploration of moral science that the trial began, encouraging ‘readers to question the motives, methods, and value of physiological research’ (Otis 42). Laura Otis considers both texts––and both scientists––as popular responses to the 1881 trial of Dr David Ferrier, an experimental physiologist who found himself charged with violating a regulation in the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act: vivisecting without a license. Identified by literary critics as notorious ‘mad-scientist villain,’ Moreau and Benjulia practice vivisection, and in their respective laboratories they pursue what look to be ‘arcane intellectual goals redolent of ideological evil’ (Stiles 319, 323). Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and Wilkie Collins’ Heart and Science (1883), push the moral boundaries of science by digging through living bodies to discover ‘the fastness’ that holds the human core (Wells 130). Department of English, Royal Military College of Canadaĭrs Moreau and Benjulia, the experimental physiologists of H.G.
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