Anguish, by August Friedrich Albrecht Schenck, c. 1878. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
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Miscellany
The first known “laboratory rat” was used in 1828 in an experiment about fasting. Guinea pigs have been put to scientific use since the 1780s, when Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier measured their heat production. The first recorded usage of guinea pig to liken a person or a thing to a test subject was in 1891, by George Bernard Shaw in his book The Quintessence of Ibsenism.
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals—except the weasel.
—The Simpsons, 1993
