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Michael Brown, Rob Boddice. The Science of Sympathy: Morality, Evolution and Victorian Civilization, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume 73, Issue 2, April 2018, Pages 225–226, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrx045
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Extract
The history of emotion has been around for a long time, but it is only in relatively recent years that it has been possible to speak of an emotional “turn.” In this book we can begin to see the fruits of such an approach for the histories of science and medicine. The central argument of Boddice’s concise and highly engaging study of late Victorian Britain is a simple yet powerful one; from the 1860s onwards and, more particularly, following the publication of the Descent of Man in 1871, a raft of Darwinian men of medical science elaborated a new vision of sympathy that eschewed pity for the objects of experimental research in favor of the long term social benefits that their actions would supposedly bring about. Boddice’s central focus is vivisection, but he also engages with the histories of vaccination and eugenics, shedding important light on scientific identity and scientific culture in the post-Darwinian era. Throughout, he demonstrates not only the inherent instability of this intellectual and affective late-Victorain posture, but also its conflict with the “commonplace compassion” of popular sentiment.
