Animals and their Pathologists in London, 1846-1900

Speaker: Dr Abigail Woods (Imperial College, London)

This talk uses the records of the Pathological Society of London, a key institution for the advancement of pathology, to reveal the place and purpose of animals within human pathological anatomy during the later 19th century.

While animals, both wild and domestic, accounted for less than 5% of the specimens exhibited at their meetings, they were nonetheless regarded as legitimate subjects of pathological research by doctors. Their routes into PSL meetings illustrate the ubiquity of animals within Victorian society, the professional and social settings in which Victorian doctors encountered them, and the networks through which they were acquired for pathological purposes.