JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

“An appalling attempt to muzzle the watch-dog of science”, by Friedrich Graetz (ca. 1840-1913), was published in the 14 March 1883 ( v. 13, no. 314) issue of Puck magazine. The caption reads: “The Society for the Suppression of Blasphemous Literature proposes to get up cases against Professors Huxley and Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, and others who, by their writings have sown widespread unbelief, and in some cases rank atheism”. Thomas Henry Huxley (“Darwin’s Bulldog”), John Tyndall, and Herbert Spencer were all champions of Darwin and eovlution, and evidently were found to be dangerous by the entirely real society—I thought that the name might have been a euphemism, but it evidently existed (according to English Modernism, National Identity and the Germans, 1890–1950 by Dr Petra Rau).

From the Library of Congress description http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2012645455/:

“Illustration shows Herbert Spencer as a statue of a large dog at the entrance to a public building emitting rays of light labeled “Science”; many diminutive men, wearing oversized top hats, scamper about with ladders and muzzles in an attempt to silence Spencer’s views on religion and science. On a nearby flagpole hangs a banner that states “Freedom of Thought”.”