Animal Testings

Synonyms

Animal experiments; Animal research; In vivo research

Definition

For “animal testing” we mean a scientific test that involves the use of animal testing.

Introduction

The scientific experiments on living beings find a first historical confirmation within the “Corpus Hippocraticum” (end V – the beginning of the fourth century BC). In Aristotle’s treatise “Parts of animals”, we can trace a first attempt at describing the inside and outside of animals by dissection (not of the human being). In the III sec. with the School of Alexandria Erofilo and Erasistrato the human body was studied for the first time by dissecting corpses. In the “Anatomical Procedures” of Galen, the dissection modalities of numerous animal species observed by him (pigs, mice, monkeys) are instead described. Galen also, taking up the idea of the soul of Aristotle, writes “The Usefulness of the Parts of the Body” claiming that the animal in the completeness of its body structure encloses its soul.

Since then,...