ABSTRACT
In England, the early defenders of the animal welfare cause tended to enjoy close relations with members of the judiciary and the clergy. Most of their French counterparts, on the other hand, were doctors and veterinarians, working in alliance with aristocratic landowners who had been reduced to managing their country estates, having been sidelined by the July monarchy (Pierre, 1998). Indeed among the ten founding members of the SPA – to whom, almost forty years later, the society’s membership would pay tribute – there were no fewer than six doctors, two veterinarians and an agronomist (BSPA, 1881). Representatives of these professions continued to wield a great deal of influence well into the last quarter of the 19th century, and the SPA would accordingly present itself in terms of its essential contribution to the progress of the applied sciences
[The works of the SPA] can be put into two categories. The first involves the definition of your mission, explaining its significance, making it popular and attractive, generating righteous fervor; they constitute your literature and your philosophy. The rest of your work, which is within the domain of the applied sciences, addresses particular questions concerning the methods of application, in real life, of your declared principles.
(BSPA, 1855, p. 104)