You can click here for the NPR link, but here is the short of it:
The chemist, Joseph Priestly (who discovered Oxygen) wanted to discover how it was that we breathed. So he conducted experiments on mice. In particular, he would put mice in a tank, remove all oxygen from the tank and watch what happened to the mouse (it would die). He did these experiments over and over again. Keep in mind that this is 1773.
One night, Joseph packed up to leave his lab and he placed a mouse in a cage on his desk. This was to be the mouse he was going to experiment on the next day. After he left, his lab assistant, Anna, was cleaning up and had this moment with the mouse – she looked at it, it looked at her – and she had this epiphany. So she penned this poem, from the point of view of the mouse, and stuck it between the bars of the cage:
For here forlorn and sad I sit
Within the wiry grate,
And tremble at the
approaching morn
Which brings impending fate…
The well-taught
philosophic mind
To all compassion gives,
Casts round the world an equal eye
And feels for all that lives.
We don’t know the fate of that little field mouse, but it’s the first written record of animal rights.
But no matter what the fate of the mouse, the story a great reminder to “cast an equal eye and feel for all that lives” within this world – for all animals (including humans).
