Ethel Douglas Hume

Ethel Douglas Hume (4 May 1874 – 16 July 1950) was a British anti-vivisectionist, animal welfare writer and traveller. She is best known for authoring a controversial book in 1923 which accused Louis Pasteur of plagiarizing Antoine Béchamp's theories.

Biography

Hume was born in Batticaloa, Ceylon. She was educated in Germany, Italy and London. She lived in Canada for a year and travelled to the Malay Peninsula and to Japan. Hume's book has been cited by proponents of alternative medicine but was criticized by historians. Early reviewers were not aware that Hume was female. In 1934, a review in The Quarterly Review of Biology dismissed the book as a "bit of anti-vivisection and anti-vaccination propaganda". A review in the Isis journal the same year, described the book as an attack upon Pasteur and to discredit vaccination. The review concluded that "the emotional basis, the intellectual feebleness, and the anti-scientific and anti-social character of the whole anti-medical movement is superbly illustrated in the motivation and in the pseudo-scientific and ofttimes painfully unintelligent content of this subsidized book of propaganda."

Hume's book was republished as Pasteur Exposed: The False Foundations of Modern Science (1989).

Animal welfare

Hume was an anti-vivisectionist and supporter of animal welfare. She authored The Mind-Changers, a book which documented the history of the changing public opinion on treatment of animals. It contains biographical sketches of pioneers against animal cruelty. Prince Christopher wrote the foreword and George Arliss wrote the introduction. In 1919, Hume lectured on "Hydrophobia and the Mad Dog Scare" for the London and Provincial Anti-Vivisection Society. Hume was a vegetarian and associated with the Bristol Vegetarian and Health Culture Society.

Selected publications

The Globular Jottings of Griselda (1907) The Multiplicities of Una (1911) Life's Primal Architects: An Essay on the Bacteriological Work of Antoine Béchamp (1915) Béchamp or Pasteur? A Lost Chapter in the History of Biology (1932 edition, first published 1923) The Mind-Changers (1939)