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The Connaught Laboratories and Farm, 1916-1925: Considering the Horse, the Calf and the Guinea Pig

Thu, March 31, 1:00 to 2:30pm, Westin Seattle Hotel, Cascade 1C

Abstract

The University of Toronto opened the Connaught Laboratories and Farm in 1916 in the midst of heated public debates about vaccination, pasteurization, and vivisection. In 1906, and again in 1919, the Toronto Board of Education voted against compulsory vaccination of school children, amid charges that vaccine was “filthy animal matter” derived from sickened calves. In 1915, Toronto was the first Canadian city to mandate the pasteurization of milk; opponents argued that pasteurization artificially masked contaminated milk and unhealthy cows. These debates drew attention to the permeability of the animal-human boundary, to the health and wellbeing of the animals involved, and the growing power of the medical profession and the state, concerns which converged in 1920 in the formation of the Canadian Anti Vivisection League.

This paper will consider the ways that the Connaught responded to these debates, with particular attention to the different responses to the biomedical use of specific species. Although the laboratory initially housed three animal species -- horses for the production of tetanus and diphtheria antitoxins, guinea pigs to measure the strength of the antitoxins, and calves for the production of vaccine -- early publicity focused on images of the healthy horse (and scientific flasks containing the microbes). The calf was accorded a minor role, and the guinea pig was almost invisible. Their efforts to reassure the public were largely successful until the early 1920s, when antivivisectionists drew attention to the University’s use of a much more valued species, the dog, in the production of insulin.

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