Bill Wasik

Our Kindred Creatures is the history of a moral transformation, how society came to recognize the cruelty in how we treat our ‘dumb’ animals, with the hope that we will continue to implement protections as we become aware of the unseen cruelty behind the products we buy.

Between 1866 and 1896, the first crusaders organized animal protection groups and pushed for laws to prevent cruelty. These forgotten crusaders raised awareness of how horses were treated, the over-hunting of animals for sport or fashion, unneeded medical experiments, the abuse of circus animals, inhumane slaughterhouse practices, and the use of animals in deadly sports.

Civilization has come a long way since 1866 when Henry Bergh realized that cruelty to animals anethised humans to cruelty to each other. He began by challenging those who beat their horse on the streets. Today’s cruelty is behind the scenes, easy to ignore. But it exists, in puppy mills and factory farms. If we were aware of the suffering behind every glass of milk or pork chop we eat, it would quell our appetite. Additionally, the animals grown for consumption greatly impacts the climate crisis. And, the climate crisis and habitat destruction threatens wildlife.

This is a disturbing read, and unsettling. Chapters cover the slaughter of the buffalo, and the hunting of birds for fashionable hats, and the continuing controversy between medical science and antivivisectionists.

But it is also inspiring. We learn of the dedication of reformers who instituted the organizations to enforce animal protection laws and groups and publications that taught children kindness to animals.

I loved reading the story of Black Beauty, serialized in an American magazine, “Our Dumb Animals.” Told in the first person by Black Beauty, the novel follows his life from pleasant early years through the various owners and jobs he performs. He meets horses who tell of the pain of tail docking and rein checking, all for fashion. Anna Sewell had spent years writing the novel while suffering from ill health. She never lived to see her novel’s success. The book went on to be a bestseller.

It can be easy to be pessimistic about humans’ capacity for moral transformation. Social scientist often find, in interview with individual subjects, that no amount of reason and evidence will unsettle their instincts about right and wrong, even when those instincts manifestly result in prejudice or hatred toward others.

[…]Yet on large timescales…we know that moral change does happen, often at profound scale and remarkable speed.

from Our Kindred Creatures

Bergh’s idea that insensitivity to cruelty to animals fosters insensitivity to human beings can still be seen today in how we cage farm animals and how we have caged illegal immigrants.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.… (más)

Rabies is the deadliest disease known to humankind and is still almost 100% fatal. It has been terrifying people for as long as we have recorded history. In Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus, Wasik and Murphy look at the history of rabies, the relationship between man and dog, the myths of werewolves and vampires, which might originate with rabies, the search for a vaccine, current treatment options, and hope for defanging rabies in the future throughout this thoroughly researched book. This can be slow and dry and there are quite a few extended digressions from the disease at hand. It was interesting enough to learn the method by which rabies sidesteps the human immune system and the ways in which it continues to spread around the world through unvaccinated dogs and in the US via bats. In an effort to make it accessible to a general audience, the authors didn't overwhelm the reader with a lot of technical science but that left them with less than a books' worth of information definitively about rabies. What is presented, and much of it is at best merely speculated to be connected to rabies, often incredibly tenuously, is almost entirely within the cultural sphere. That's unfortunate because the cultural history was not nearly as interesting as I'd hoped, even adding in information about zombies, wild (and ineffective) old time remedies, and ways in which rabies is depicted in books and movies among other things. You really have to be invested in rabies to find this an interesting read.… (más)