The Brown Dog affair
The controversy was triggered by allegations that, in February 1903, William Bayliss of the Department of Physiology at University College, London had performed illegal dissection before an audience of 60 medical students on a brown terrier dog: adequately anaesthetized, according to Bayliss and his team, but conscious and struggling according to the Swedish activists. The procedure was condemned as cruel and unlawful by the National Anti-Vivisection Society. Bayliss, whose research on dogs led to the discovery of hormones, sued for libel and won.