This Week, on Ye Olde Grey's Anatomie

We've hit double digits on December, and instead of working on my finals papers like I ought to be doing, I have decided to make a triumphant return to celebrate this very eventful day in history. There were seriously like five or six really interesting things that happened on December 10th, but as usual I picked the one that made me chuckle the most.

The year: 1907. The place: Trafalgar Square. The who: 1000 angry British....med students?

It all started in 1903, when a professor of physiology at University College, London performed (for an audience) a vivisection on a little brown terrier dog that was probably, in life, really cute and friendly and never peed on the carpet ever. The prof claimed the dog was anesthetized and that it was all good because it was For Science; a bunch of Swedish feminists claimed the dog was actually alive and struggling at the time of said...sectioning. People were naturally outraged, since puppies are one of the lovable animals that we cry abuse about while nomming on some bangers and mash.

Thus ignited the Brown Dog affair, which would go on to last seven years and basically tear the country asunder. All because of a dog.

Anyway, after the vivisection gone awry, anti-vivisectionists (Edwardian England's answer to PETA) put up a memorial statue of the dog in question, with the caption "Men and women of England, how long shall these things be?" This just goes to show that the British will commemorate literally anything in statue form. The med students- actually officially known as "anti-doggers", because I cannot make this stuff up- started a slow but steady stream of vandalism attempts on the statue.

Naturally the next logical step for London's best and brightest upcoming medical professionals was to make effigies of brown dogs and riot with them through the streets to tear down the offending statue, barking like crazy people the whole way. By the time they reached Trafalgar Square, 400 police officers on horseback were waiting for them. The "riot" was put down, but for the next three years med students would regularly invade meetings of local suffragettes while barking in a vaguely accusatory fashion. But at the end of the day they lost, because they killed puppies and probably never got laid. Nobody likes a puppy killer.

By the way, all that remains of the old Brown Dog statue today is a small hump on the pavement at the center of Latchmere Recreation Ground. The sign on a nearby fence reads "No Dogs."

Oh, and also, on December 10th, 1906:
Shine on, TR, you crazy diamond. You totally deserved that Nobel Peace Pri--hey.