The Wellcome physiological research laboratories 1894–1904: The home office, pharmaceutical firms, and animal experiments

Abstract

An additional, but hitherto unrecognized, problem was the constraint put upon medical research by the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act, which regulated the use of living animals in experimental work. The Act had, from its very beginnings, aroused much hostility and resentment among the medical profession because of its restrictions and impositions.3 One requirement of the Act was that all premises where experiments were performed on animals had to be registered with the Home Office. Until 1901, these were either laboratories associated with hospitals, medical schools, or medical corporations, or, very occasionally, the private laboratories of medical men. The first pharmaceutical manufacturer to apply for the registration of laboratories owned by him was Henry Wellcome, proprietor of Burroughs Wellcome and Co. His submission aroused several debates about the application of the existing law to new experimental methods, the desirability of drug standardization and physiological testing, and the propriety of allowing a "commercial" manufacturer the same privileges, even for his private laboratories, accorded to medical organizations. Thus, Wellcome's application provides a focus for the study of some of the ambivalent attitudes towards science, and for an analysis of the effect of the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act on the development of pharmaceutical research in Britain.4