The trajectory of the ideological-literary anti-vivisection movement is traced across three successive English novels (by Wilkie Collins, Gertrude Colmore, and Walter Hadwen) and shown first to be moralitycentred and character-focussed in its directionality, but increasingly moving towards scientific exposure of the practice as methodologically flawed and dangerously misleading for the human patient. This movement of narrowing focus upon the medical perils of vivisection is shown to reach its culmination in the medical historiography of novelist Hans Ruesch, who abjures formal novel-writing but retains rhetorical and literary styles and devices in his presentation of the vivisection issue.