Soap, fertilizer, glycerin for blowing up soldiers, margarine

A. Remington Kellogg...was among the first to commission “vivisections” on porpoises even though, in his own words, “a live porpoise can be handled about as readily as a satchel of dynamite.” This did not deter the intrepid scientists who “fell to the unlovely task of restraining the furiously squealing animal in order first to expose the skull and then to saw into it to expose the brain.” When these operations were performed, Kellogg was witness to “a strangely large brain, one with elaborate patterns of convolution such as were generally thought to be more or less unique to human beings.”

-- from a review by Michael Greenberg of The Sounding of the Whale by D. Graham Burnett