That kind of morbid experimentation was apparently still in fashion during the Cold War:
> Dr. Pavel Naumov … conducted animal biocommunication studies between a submerged Soviet Navy submarine and a shore research station; these tests involved a mother rabbit and her newborn litter and occurred around 1956 … . When the submarine was submerged, assistants killed the rabbits one by one. At each precise moment of death, the mother rabbit's brain produced detectable and recordable reactions.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00792R0006003... (page 12)
It started as a threat assessment.
Two of my previous comments on Swann and the CIA’s remote viewing program: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19427917 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17238552
>One treatment for gout involves stuffing a puppy with snails and sage and roasting him over a fire: the rendered fat was then used to make a salve
While extremely horrific to read, it reminds me of a similar belief relying on animal abuse in the 18th century regarding the latitude problem. People back at shore would dip the bandages from a wound inflicted on a dog, which would supposedly cause the dog on board to yelp. Dip the bandage precisely at the hour, and you'd supposedly have a means of telling time on board[^1]. Admittedly, this might have been satire, but I found it an interesting anecdote.
It also reminds me of early books of knowledge and the speculum literature that developed and grew during the period mentioned in the article. The plants section of those texts, to my knowledge, generally focused on their medical applications. There's a sense that magic was seen as not only present, but also commonplace, and honestly there's a thrilling sort of mystery in reading those sorts of texts.
I'm excited to compare these to some of the writings of Al Rhazes and others, in that also give medicinal and medical advice.
[^1]: https://erenow.net/common/longitudethetruestory/5.php