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Research Materials and Reproductive Science in the United States, 1910–1940

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Physiology in the American Context 1850–1940

Abstract

In order to observe or produce the phenomena they study, all working scientists must obtain and manage research materials.1 In the United States at the turn of this century, the shift of emphasis from descriptive morphological approaches to experimental physiological approaches in the life sciences radically altered scientists’ needs for research materials and had significant consequences for the organization of such materials.2 This chapter focuses on the consequences of that shift for the acquisition and organization of research materials in the case of reproductive physiology during the first half of this century.

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Notes

  1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the meetings of the American Association for the History of Medicine, San Francisco, CA, 1984. I am grateful to Howard S. Becker, Kathy Charmaz, Nan P. Chico, Joan H. Fujimura, Elihu M. Gerson, Marilyn Little, Sheryl Ruzek, Leonard Schatzman, S. Leigh Star, and Anselm L. Strauss for their ongoing support of the project on which this paper is based. Merriley Borell, Jane Maienschein, and other participants in the conference from which this volume emerged also provided invaluable assistance. The Special Collections of the University of Chicago, the University of California, Davis, the Chesney Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and the Rockefeller Archives graciously allowed me access to unpublished materials. The research has been supported by the Tremont Research Institute, the University of California, San Francisco, and the Rockfeller University.

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  2. This shift of emphasis took place in most areas of biological, medical, and agricultural research. See, for example, Garland Allen, Life Sciences in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1978); Adele E. Clarke, “Emergence of the Reproductive Research Enterprise: A Sociology of Biological, Medical and Agricultural Science in the United States, 1910–1940” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California, San Francisco, 1985); William Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century: Problems of Form, Function and Transformation (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977); Coleman, “The Cognitive Basis of the Discipline: Claude Bernard on Physiology,” Isis 76(1985): 49–70; Gerald L. Geison, “Divided We Stand: Physiologists and Clinicians in the American Context,” in The Therapeutic Revolution: Essays in the Social History of American Medicine, ed. Morris J. Vogel and Charles Rosenberg (Philadelphia, PA: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1979) pp. 67–90; Geison, Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology: The Scientific Enterprise in Late Victorian Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1978); Gerson, “Styles of Scientific Work and the Population Realignment in Biology, 1880–1925” (paper presented at the Conference on History and Philosophy of Biology, Ohio, 1983); Gerson, “The Realignment of Population Biology, 1880–1925” (paper presented at the Society for Social Studies of Science, Philadelphia, PA, 1982); A. McGehee Harvey, Adventures in Medical Research: A Century of Discovery at Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976); Rosenberg, “Rationalization and Reality in Shaping American Agricultural Research, 1875–1914,” in The Sciences in the American Context: New Perspectives, ed. Nathan Reingold (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1979) pp. 143–163; Rosenberg, No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976); and Margaret Rossiter, “The Organization of the Agricultural Sciences,” in The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America, 1869–1920, ed. Alexandra Oleson and John Voss (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1979) pp. 279–298.

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  3. For some of the leading examples of such developments, see the other chapters in this book, especially these of Diana Long, Merriley Borell, and Jane Maienschein.

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  4. For analyses of problems of disciplinary emergence and substantive cases, see Adele E. Clarke, “Emergence”; Geison, ed., Professions and Professional Ideology in America (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1983); Geison, “Scientific Change, Emerging Specialties and Research Schools,” Hist. Sci. 19(1981): 20–40; Loren Graham, Wolf Lepenies, and Peter Weingart, eds., Functions and Uses of Disciplinary Histories (Boston: Kluwer, 1983); Robert Kohler, From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry: The Making of a Biomedical Discipline (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982); Gerard Lemaine, Roy MacLeod, Michael Mulkay, and Weingart, eds., Perspectives on the Emergence of Scientific Disciplines (Chicago: Aldine, 1976); Philip J. Pauly, “The Appearance of Academic Biology in Late 19th Century America,”J. Hist. Biol. 17(1984): 369–397; Rosenberg, “Toward an Ecology of Knowledge: On Discipline, Contexts and History,” in The Organization of Knowledge, pp. 440–455; Rosenberg, “Rationalization and Reality”; and Rosenberg, No Other Gods.

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  5. See, for example, Maienschein, “Agassiz, Hyatt, Whitman and the Birth of the Marine Biological Laboratory,” Biol. Bull. Woods Hole 168 Suppl. (1985): 26–34; Maienschein, “Early Struggles at the Marine Biological Laboratory,” Biol. Bull. Woods Hole 168 Suppl. (1985) 192–196; Reingold, ed., The Sciences in the American Context; and Jeffrey Werdinger, “Embryology at Woods Hole: The Emergence of a New American Biology” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana Univ., 1980).

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  6. In terms of the history of materials, for example, articles have appeared on the history of cell lines and tissue cultures, but the question of biological materials is largely subordinated to the careers of the individuals who developed them and their institutional settings. See, for example, Frederick B. Bang, “History of Tissue Culture at Johns Hopkins,” Bull. Hist. Med. 51(1977): 516–537; Harvey, Adventures; and Jan A. Witkowski, “Experimental Pathology and the Origins of Tissue Culture: Leo Loeb’s Contribution,” Med. Hist. 27(1983): 269–288. Works focused on other matters occasionally discuss biological materials tangentially; see, for example, Coleman, “The Cognitive Basis of the Discipline”; George W. Corner, Seven Ages of a Medical Scientist: An Autobiography (Philadelphia, PA: Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1981); Bruno Latour, Les Microbes: Guerre et Paix Suivi de Irreductions (Paris: Metaillie, 1984); Susan E. Lederer, “Hideyo Noguchi’s Luetin Experiment and the Antivivisectionists,” Isis 76(281) (1985): 31–48; and Lederer, “The Rights and Wrongs of Making Experiments on Human Beings,” Bull. Hist. Med. 5$(1984): 380–398. On instrumentation in physiology, see chapter XIII by Merrily Borell in this book.

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  7. See, for example, Kohler, From Medical Chemistry; and Geison, “Divided We Stand.” The blurred boundaries between disciplines at the turn of the century were clear to the historical actors themselves. Ross Harrison, for example, once stated that departmental affiliations, “present fortuitous attachments,” were often a matter of institutional contingency. See John B. Blake, “Anatomy,” in The Education of American Physicians: Historical Essays, ed. Ronald L. Numbers (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1980), p. 43.

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  8. Rosenberg, “Toward an Ecology of Knowledge.”

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  9. See, for example, Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1982); Rue Bucher and Anselm L. Strauss, “Professions in Process,” Am. J. Social. 66(1961): 325–334; Bucher, “Pathology: A Study of Social Movements Within a Profession,” Soc. Prob. 10(1962): 40–51; Eliot Freidson, “The Division of Labor as Social Interaction,” Social Problems 23(1976): 304–313; Everett C. Hughes, The Sociological Eye (Chicago, IL: Aldine Atherton, 1971); Strauss, “Work and the Division of Labor,” Sociological Q. 26(1985): 1–19; Strauss, Negotiations: Varieties, Contexts, Processes and Social Order (San Francisco, CA: Bass, 1979); Strauss, Professions, Work and Careers (San Francisco, CA: Sociology, 1971). My own approach draws on the grounded theory research method as developed by Barney G. Glaser and Strauss. See Glaser and Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research (New York: Aldine, 1968); Glaser, Theoretical Sensitivity: Advances in the Methodology of Grounded Theory (Mill Valley, CA: Sociology, 1978); and Strauss, Qualitative Analysis [in German] (Munich, FRG: Wilhelm Fink, 1985), [in English] (Boston, MA: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987).

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  10. See, for example, the varied perspectives of Gerson, “Scientific Work and Social Worlds,” Knowledge 4(1983) pp. 357–377; Latour and Steve Wolgar, Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979); John Law, “Theories and Methods in the Sociology of Science: An Interpretative Approach,” in J. Soc. Sci. Inf. 13 (1974): 163–172; Karen Knorr-Cetina and Michael Mulkay, eds., Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1983); Star, “Simplification in Scientific Work: An Example from Neuro-science Research,” Soc. Stud. Sci. 13(1983): 208226; Star, “Scientific Work and Uncertainty,” Soc. Stud. Sci. 15(1985): 391–427; and Rachel Volberg, “Constraints and Commitments in the Development of American Botany, 18801920” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California, San Francisco, 1983).

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  11. At the conference from which this book is derived, Robert Frank noted that materials, instruments, and techniques are commonly “packaged” together in scientific work. A classic example is the hypophysectomized rat, discussed later. For an analysis of the relation of such packaging to overall scientific research production, seen Fujimura, “Constructing Doable Problems in Cancer Research: Articulating Alignment,” in Soc. Stud. of Sci., in press.

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  12. There is considerable debate about whether this was really a shift, or whether it was instead an integration into biology of approaches previously reserved to medial domains, and about whether the changes were revolutionary or evolutionary in character. See Allen, “Morphology and Twentieth Century Biology: A Response,” J. Hist. Biol. 14(1981): 159–176; Allen, “Naturalists and Experimentalists: The Genotype and the Phenotype,” in Studies in the History of Biology 3, ed. Coleman and Camille Limoges (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1981) 179–209; Allen, “The Transformation of a Science: T. H. Morgan and the Emergence of a New American Biology,” in The Organization of Knowledge, ed. Oleson and Voss; Allen, Thomas Hunt Morgan: The Man and His Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1978) 173–210; Allen, Life Sciences; Keith R. Benson, “American Morphology in the Late Nineteenth Century: The Biology Department at Johns Hopkins University,” J. Hist. Biol. 18(1985): 163–205; Benson, “Problems of Individual Development: Descriptive Embryological Morphology in America at the Turn of the Century,” J. Hist. Biol. 14(1981): 115–128; Frederick B. Churchill, “In Search of the New Biology: An Epilogue,” J. Hist. Biol. 14(1981): 177–191; Coleman, “The Cognitive Basis of the Discipline”; Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century; Paul L. Farber, The Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline (Boston, MA: D. Reidel, 1982); Farber, “The Transformation of Natural History in the Nineteenth Century,” J. Hist. Biol. 15(1982): 145–152; Maienschein, “Experimental Biology in Transition: Harrison’s Embryology, 1895–1910,” in Studies in the History of Biology 6, ed. Coleman and Limoges (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1983) 107–127; Maienschein, “Shifting Assumptions in American Biology: Embryology, 18901910,” J. Hist. Biol. 14(1981): 89–113; Maienschein, Ronald Rainger, and Benson, “Introduction: Were American Morphologists in Revolt?” J. Hist. Biol. 14(1981): 83–87; and Werdinger, “Embryology.” For analyses of the shift in population biology, see Gerson, “The Realignment.”

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  13. My chief sources here include the Frank Rattray Lillie Papers, the Zoology Department Papers [hereafter, the Zoology Papers], University of Chicago Archives, and the President’s Papers [hereafter, the President’s Papers] from Special Collections, University of Chicago Archives; the Embryology Department Papers of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC (also held at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution, Chesney Archives); the Animal Science Department Papers [hereafter, the Animal Science Papers], Univ. of California, Davis, Special Collections; the Rockefeller Foundation Papers, Rockefeller Archives Center, North Tarrytown, NY; and the Hunterian Laboratory Papers, Johns Hopkins Medical Institution, Chesney Archives.

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  14. Lillie to President Judson, 10 December 1914, p. 3 and part of his proposal, “Department of Zoology: The Chief Need,” p. 1. Zoology Papers, box IV, folder 2.

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  15. Lillie also noted that Princeton University was currently building such a vivarium at a cost of about $25,000: see E. G. Conklin to Lillie, 23 January 1915, Zoology Papers, box IV, folder 2. Such sharing of architectural plans and facilities proposals was common practice in scientific networks.

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  16. See, for example, the President’s Reports to the Regents of the University of California, ca. 1910–1940, sections on Gifts to the University, especially to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

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  17. See, for example, Corner, Seven Ages; and E. C. Amoroso and Corner, “Herbert McLean Evans, 1882–1971,” Biogr. Mem. Fellows R. Soc. Lond. 21(1975): 83–186.

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  18. The application of statistical methods to materials and colonies is a problem worthy of investigation. See, for example, Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (New York: Knopf, 1985); and Donald MacKenzie, Statistics in Britain, 1865–1930 (Edinburgh: Univ. of Edinburgh Press, 1981).

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  19. Elsewhere (Clarke, “Emergence”) I discuss these assumptions of physiological parallelism and argue that they led to systematic research biases that routinely emphasized similarity and deemphasized diversity both within and across species. Cf. William Wimsatt, “Reductionist Research Strategies and Their Biases in the Units of Selection Controversy,” in Scientific Discovery: Case Studies, ed. T Nickles (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel, 1980) pp. 213–259.

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  20. See, for example, Constance Holden, “An Omnifarious Data Bank for Biology?” Science Wash. DC 228(1985): 1412–1413; and W. Lane-Petter, “The Experimental Animal in Research,” in Techniques in Endocrine Research, ed. Peter Eckstein and Francis Knowles (London: Academic, 1963), pp. 149–159.

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  21. Such collections are expensive to develop and maintain, whether of zoological or botanical specimens. See, for example, Miriam Rothschild, Dear Lord Rothschild: Birds, Butterflies and History (Philadelphia, PA: Balaban, 1983); and, in botany, Volberg, “Constraints.”

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  22. The secondary literature has little to say about collecting expeditions for norphological specimens; in contrast, there is a growing scholarly and popular literature on collecting expeditions for live animals for zoos. On morphological expeditions, see Donna Haraway, “Signs of Dominance: From a Physiology to a Cybernetics of Primate Society: C. R. Carpenter, 1930–1970,” Studies in the History of Biology 6, pp. 129–219. On zoo expeditions, see for example, David Attenborough, The Zoo Quest Expeditions (London: Lutterworth, 1980); Robert Bendiner, The Fall of the Wild and the Rise of the Zoo (New York: Dutton, 1981); William Bridges, Gathering of Animals: An Unconventional History of the New York Zoological Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1966); and more popular books such as Frank Buck, with Edward Anthony, Bring ‘Em Back Alive (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930); Gerald Durrell, A Zoo in My Luggage (Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1964); and Cecil S. Webb, A Wanderer in the Wild: The Odyssey of an Animal Collector (London: Hutchinson, 1953).

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  23. I am indebted to S. Leigh Star for this insight. She is currently preparing a manuscript on the topic “preserving natural history” that will fill significant gaps in the secondary literature.

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  24. The issue of access to materials is, of course, not limited to mammalian reproductive science, but rather affects most if not all sciences. For example, one of the major features of both the Naples Zoological Station and the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory was ease of access to plentiful and fresh materials, especially marine invertebrates. In these cases, the scientists went to the site of the materials to do research. See, for example, Allen, Life Sciences; Maienschein, “First Impressions: American Biologists at Naples,” Biol. Bull. Woods Hole 168 Suppl. (1985): 187–191; Maienschein, “Agassiz”; Maienschein, “Early Struggles”; and Werdinger, “Embryology.”

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  25. Robert M. Yerkes, “Provision for the Study of Monkeys and Apes,” Science 43(1916): 231.

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  26. See Becker, Art Worlds, for a discussion of the ways in which organizational commitments become conventionalized, and the ultimate consequences of such conventions.

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  27. See Clarke, “Emergence.” I am indebted to Reuben Albaugh, extension agent emeritus, University of California, Davis, for an interview that confirmed this aspect of his work. The Animal Science Papers record expenditures for herds and research. The [Annual] Reports of the Secretary of the University of California, ca. 1890–1940, document the not insignificant income (used for subsequent research) that various agricultural programs generated through services to farmers and ranchers and through sales of animals and products that grew out of such research.

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  28. Charles Otis Whitman, “A Biological Farm for the Experimental Investigation of Heredity, Variation and Evolution and for the Study of Life Histories, Habits, Instincts and Intelligence,” Science 16(1902): 504–510. See also Whitman, “A Biological Farm,” Biol. Bull. Woods Hole 3(1902): 214–224.

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  29. See chapter VII by Maienschein in this book and Pauly, “The Appearance.”

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  30. Whitman, “A Biological Farm for the Experimental Investigation,” p. 504, emphasis in original.

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  31. Whitman, “A Biological Farm for the Experimental Investigation,” p. 505, emphasis in original. Lillie, quoted earlier along similar lines, was Whitman’s student and successor as both Chairman of the Department of Zoology at the University of Chicago and as chief executive officer of the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory.

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  32. See Rosenberg, No Other Gods; Rosenberg, “Rationalization and Reality”; and Rossiter, “The Organization.”

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  33. Whitman, “A Biological Farm for the Investigation,” p. 507. The history of materials, record keeping, and the breeding of colony animals evolved into the notion of controlled, standardized materials, perfected models with extensive control of genetic, environmental, and other sources of variation. An early criterion was known age; a later criterion was freedom from certain parasites or pathologies; recently, a host of new standards have been invoked. See, for an early example of an argument for standardization, the Hull Zoological Laboratory Report, President’s Report, University of Chicago Archives, 1902, p. 438. See also Yerkes, “Provision”; Yerkes, “The Significance of Chimpanzee-Culture for Biological Research,” Harvey Lect. 31(1935–1936): 57–73; Robert M. Saver ed., “Care and Diseases of the Research Monkey,” Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 85(1960) art. 3 pp. 735–992; and D. A. Valerio et al., Macaca mulatta: Management of a Laboratory Breeding Colony (New York: Academic, 1969). Also of interest are the Rockefeller Foundation Papers on the National Research Council’s work on “Genetic Stocks, 1939–1941,” Rockefeller Archives Center, RG1.1, S200D, box 51, folders 1855–1856.

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  34. Whitman, chair, and faculty members J. M. Coulter, T. R. Williston, Frank R. Lillie, Edwin O. Jordan, and William L. Tower for the biological departments, to Martin Ryerson, president of the board of trustees, 1 December 1906, President’s Papers I, box 15, folder 12.

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  35. President’s Report, University of Chicago Archives, 1902, p. 437. There seems to have been some misunderstanding of the meaning of the term “biological farm.” Whitman (“A Biological Farm for the Investigation,” p. 509) drew a careful distinction between a farm as a research endeavor and public zoological or botanical gardens. In the President’s Papers at the University of Chicago, however, the biological farm proposal was filed under “Animal Husbandry,” likely reflecting earlier misunderstanding. See President’s Papers I, box 7, folder 1. The Rockefeller Institute purchased a New Jersey farm for laboratory animal production in 1908, subsequently called “Hell Farm” by antivivisectionists (Lederer, “Hideyo Noguchi,” p. 37). Many years later, Geoffrey H. Bourne referred to primate research centers in their breeding capacity as “animal farms.” See Bourne, ed., Nonhuman Primates and Medical Research (New York: Academic, 1973), p. 490.

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  36. Florence Rena Sabin, Franklin Paine Mall (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1934), p. 213.

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  37. See Amoroso and Corner, “Herbert McLean Evans”; Sabin, Franklin Paine Mall, pp. 200201.

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  38. Corner, Seven Ages, pp. 21, 43, 86, 102–106.

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  39. Ibid., p. 106.

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  40. Carl G. Hartman, “The Scientific Achievements of George W. Corner,” American Journal of Anatomy 98(1956), p. 8. Hartman further noted that Corner later used materials from rabbits, monkeys, and occasionally dogs, guinea pigs, and humans in his research on the corpus luteum. Applying cytological criteria, Corner was able “as early as 1915 to distinguish seven stages of pregnancy as reflected in the corpus luteum of the sow;” parallel research on the rat by Joseph Long and Herbert Evans followed six years later.

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  41. The funds were provided by the Department of Anatomy, Ibid., p. 159.

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  42. Wilson was then a member of Corner’s Department of Anatomy at Johns Hopkins. Karl M. Wilson, “Histological Changes in the Vaginal Mucosa of the Sow,” Am. J. Anat. 37(1926): 418–432.

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  43. When abattoirs disappeared from New York City, as zookeeper Crandall noted, they could no longer keep certain animals such as vampire bats for which they had relied on abbattoirs for a regular supply of fresh blood. Lee S. Crandall in collaboration with William Bridges, A Zoo Man’s Notebook (Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago, 1966), p. 21.

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  44. See Lillie to G. O. Fairweather, 3 October 1918, Frank R. Lillie Papers, University of Chicago Archives, box VII, folder 14 [hereafter, Lillie Papers]. There is routine mention of the stockyards as a source of materials in both the Lillie Papers and the Zoology Department Papers.

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  45. Lillie to Wallace Heckman, Faculty Exchange, 14 March 1919, Lillie Papers, box VII folder 15.

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  46. See Lillie, “The Free-Martin: A Study of the Action of Sex Hormones in the Foetal Life of Cattle,” Journal of Experimental Zoology 23(1917): 371–452; and H. H. Newman, “History of the Department of Zoology in The University of Chicago,” Bios 19(1948): 215–239.

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  47. See, for example, Bernhard Zondek and Michael Finkelstein, “Professor Bernhard Zondek: An Interview,” J. Reprod. Fertil. 12(1966): 3–19. Zondek’s comments on stallion urine as an excellent source of female estrogenic hormones are especially interesting.

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  48. I am indebted to Andrew Nalbandov, professor emeritus of the University of Illinois, for the interview on which this information is based.

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  49. This was considerably easier than collecting sperm from many domestic species for artificial insemination. See Harry A. Herman, Improving Cattle by the Millions (Columbia, MO: Univ. of Missouri, 1981).

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  50. See H. H. Cole and G. H. Hart, “The Potency of Blood Serum of Mares in Progressive Stages of Pregnancy in Effecting the Sexual Maturity of the Immature Rat,” American J. Physiol. 94(1930): 57–68; and Zondek and Finklestein, “An Interview.”

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  51. For this information, I am indebted to Perry T. Cupps and Hubert Heitman of the University of California, Davis.

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  52. . I have not included some fascinating accounts of access to cadavers at Hopkins and Rochester due to limitations of space, and because of their tangential use in reproductive biological research. But see Sabin, Franklin Paine Mall; and Corner, Seven Ages.

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  53. Elemer Scipiades, “Young Human Ovum Detected in Uterine Scraping,” Carnegie Contrib. Embryol. 163(1938): 97.

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  54. Letter from Mall to President Woodward, 21 March 1914, Department of Embryology drawers, folder “Embryology Miscellany I,” Carnegie Institute of Washington (hereafter, Embryology file). The Department of Embryology, Carnegie Institute of Washington, established in 1913, was physically located at and was closely associated with Johns Hopkins University and its medical school. See Mall, “Note on the Collection of Human Embryos in the Anatomical Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University,” Bull. Johns Hopkins Hosp. XIV 143(1903): 29–33; and “The Embryological the Carnegie Institution,” undated but printed document, Embryology file.

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  55. Mall, “Early Human Embryos and the Mode of their Preservation,” Bull. Johns Hopkins Hosp. IV 36 (1893): 115.

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  56. Mall, “The Embryological Collection,” p. 29.

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  57. See “Data Bearing Upon the Cause of Abortion and Age of the Embryo,” undated form bearing Mall’s name and the Johns Hopkins Medical School address. Embryology file.

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  58. Mall, “Note On the Collection,” from The Embryological Collection,“ pp. 29–30.

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  59. “Request...” from Mall, June 1913. Embryology file. This document appears to have been mailed to departmental alumni of the medical school.

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  60. Letter “Dear Doctor,” from Evans, undated. Embryology file.

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  61. For example, the Department of Embryology also collected alligator, monkey, and baboon embryos. For alligators, see letter to President Woodward from George L. Streeter, 4 February 1919, regarding a trip to British Guyana by Albert M. Reese of West Virginia University, Embryology file. Regarding monkey embryology, see Personnel file of Dr. Chester H. Heuser; and, regarding baboon embryology, see Personnel folders of George L. Streeter, letter to O. A. Scherer from Corner, 20 August 1947; Personnel drawers at the Carnegie Institute of Washington.

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  62. A. H. Schultz, “The Rise of Primatology in the Twentieth Century,” in Proceedings of the Third International Congress of Primatology, Zurich, 1970, vol. 1, ed. J. Biegert and W. Leutenegger (New York: S. Karger, 1971) p. 4.

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  63. Corner, Seven Ages, p. 205.

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  64. G. W. D. Hamlett, “Primordial Germ Cells in a 4.5-M. M. Human Embryo,” Anat. Rec. 61(1935): 273.

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  65. See Lillie’s paper on the freemartin calf for the classic study of fetal endocrine interrelations. Lillie, “The Free-Martin.”

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  66. A. W. Diddle and T. H. Burford, “A Study of a Set of Quadruplets,” Anat. Rec. 61(1935): 282.

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  67. Edgar Allen, J. P. Pratt, Q. U. Newell and L. J. Bland, “Human Tubal Ova; Related Early Corpora Lutea and Uterine Tubes,” Carnegie Contrib. Embryol. 27(1930): 45–75.

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  68. Allen and his associates reported that Corner had recovered the first primate ovum from rhesus (1923); Allen recovered three tubal primate ova (1927, 1928); and degenerating uterine ova were recovered by Corner (1923) and Hartman (1929). Ibid.

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  69. Ibid., p. 48. There is no mention in their article of informed consent processes in relation to the research.

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  70. Arthur T. Hertwig and John Rock, “On a Complete Normal 12-day Human Ovum of the Pre-villous Stage.” Anat. Rec. 73 Suppl. (1939): 26–27; and Carl G. Hartman, “Studies on Reproduction in the Monkey and their Bearing in Gynecology and Anthropology,” Endocrinology 25(1939): 676. In their article Hertig and Rock do not, in fact, discuss their means of access to the materials; this was likely done in conversation with Hartman who reported it. See also, Loretta McLaughlin, The Pill, John Rock, and the Church (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1982), esp. chapt. 4, “The Human Egg Hunt.” McLaughlin notes (p. 61) that Hertig had worked with Streeter at the Carnegie Department of Embryology in 1933 on primate embryology.

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  71. McLaughlin, The Pill, pp. 59–60.

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  72. Ibid, p. 63. McLaughlin pursues the informed consent and abortion issues; see pp. 63–64.

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  73. Ibid, p. 66.

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  74. The results of this research focused on (1) the timing of ovulation in terms of the extrusion of the first polar body; (2) the stage of development of corpora lutea in relation to ovulation; (3) the timing of ovulation in relation to the menstrual cycle and related epithelial changes; and (4) determination of whether ovulation always accompanies menstruation. Allen and associates, “Human Tubal Ova,” pp. 73–4.

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  75. Yerkes, Almost Human (New York: Century, 1925), p. 269.

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  76. See the Hunterian Laboratory Papers in the Chesney Archives at Johns Hopkins.

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  77. Ibid. Antivivisectionists often influenced the access of scientists and faculty to these mundane materials, and animal house managers went further and further afield to achieve their quotas.

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  78. See the Rockefeller Foundation Papers on the National Research Council’s work on “Genetic Stocks, 1939–1941,” Rockefeller Archives Center, RF RG1.1, S200D, Box 51, folders 1855–6. The Rockefeller Foundation provided extensive support to Charles Stockard, Department of Anatomy, Cornell University Medical School, to develop a colony of genetically standardized dogs.

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  79. Aside from works on antivivisectionism, these issues have not been subjected to adequate historical research.

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  85. The development of colonies of smaller laboratory animals deserves study, especially in relation to the emergence of the biological supplies industry. See, for example, the Hunterian Laboratory Papers, Chesney Archives at Johns Hopkins.

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  93. See also G. E. Coghill, “Studies on Rearing the Opossum (Delphys Virginiana),” Ohio J. Sci. 39(1939): 239–249.

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  96. Among other such efforts were those of Allen at Washington University, St. Louis, and Gertrude Van Wagenen and John Fulton at Yale. See Carl Backman, “Institutional History,” (unpublished manuscript, 1982); Backman, “Resource Utilization in Biomedical Science: Patterns of Research on Nonhuman Primate Reproductive Physiology,” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1983); Allen, “The Time of Ovulation in the Menstrual Cycle of the Monkey, M. Rhesus,” Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. Med. 23(1926): 281–383; and van Wagenen, “The Monkey,” in The Care and Brreding of Laboratory Animals, ed. E. J. Farris (New York: Wiley, 1950), pp. 1–42.

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  100. Regarding the physical sciences, see Reingold, “The Sciences in the American Context.” Regarding the life sciences, see, for example, the Grants-In-Aid files of the Rockefeller Foundation, RF RG1.1 S200 B38 F433 and passim, Rockefeller Archives Center. In 1939, requests to the Rockefeller Foundation for support of various colonies to produce standardized materials became so numerous that Warren Weaver of the Foundation requested the assistance of the National Research Council in developing an improved understanding of the needs in this area to which the Foundation could best respond. See the Rockefeller Foundation Papers on the National Research Council’s work on “Genetic Stocks, 19391941,” RF, RG1.1, S200D, Box 51, folders 1855–1856, Rockefeller Archives Center.

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  101. Foundations and other philanthropies had earlier sponsored buildings and expeditions to collect specimens. See, for example, Haraway, “Signs of Dominance.”

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  102. By comparison, Sewall Wright’s major colony of guinea pigs at the University of Chicago after 1924/1925 was costly for its day, with an annual feed budget of about $2500–$3000 (Zoology Department Papers, box 11, folder 3). However, such figures did not begin to approach primate colony costs.

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  104. Corner, Seven Ages, pp. 163–164.

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  105. For example, the head zookeeper of the New York Zoological Park in 1908, Samuel Stacey, was himself the son of the Duke of Wellington’s water bailiff—in charge of water fauna. As a youth, Sam Stacey had become the Dutchess’ “bird boy” and eventually moved on to the London Zoological Gardens as a bird keeper, coming to New York for the same purpose and to train a staff of bird keepers. Crandall, Zoo Man’s Notebook, pp. 3–4.

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  106. For an account of a private primate colony in Cuba, see Yerkes, Almost Human.

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  109. Regarding this shift of focus, see Heuser and Streeter, “Development of the Macaque Embryo,” Carnegie Contrib. Embryol. 181(1941): 15–55. The Department had been committed for many years to the development of a human embryo collection and related embryological work. Streeter argued that a monkey colony would allow conceptions to be controlled and fetuses to be dated (unlike those of human materials), while a host of other problems could also be pursued. For the full rationale for this colony, see Memorandum to Doctor Merriam from George L. Streeter, 20 April 1925, folder “Embryology-Director, 19131935,” Department of Embryology Files, at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C.

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  111. In Vollman’s words: “Thus, for the first time, a primate became a laboratory animal.” Somehow Corner’s earlier work was ignored in this claim, which is odd in that (according to both Corner and Hartman) Hartman’s breeding practices were based in part on Corner’s research, which had yielded crucial data on the timing of fertility and the menstrual cycle that was helpful in breeding programs. Ibid., p. vii. Hartman also published on the development of primate colonies. See Hartman, “Bimanual Rectal Palpation as Applied to the Female Rhesus Monkey,” Anat. Rec. 45(1930); 263; and Hartman, “The Mating of Mammals [including monkeys],” in Special Issue: Animal Colony Maintenance, Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 46(1945): 23–44.

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  116. See Yerkes, “Provision”; Yerkes, Almost Human; Yerkes, “Yale Laboratories,”; and Yerkes, “Creating a Chimpanzee Colony.”

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  117. Quite similar arguments were made regarding federal assumption of sponsorship of major primate colonies. See Willard H. Eyestone, “Scientific and Administrative Concepts Behind the Establishment of the U.S. Primate Centers,” in Some Recent Developments in Comparative Medicine. Symposium of the Zoological Society of London no. 17: 1–9, ed. R. N. Fiennes (London: Academic Press for Zoological Society, 1966).

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  118. Yerkes, “Yale Laboratories.”

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  119. For a discussion of such commitments and their consequences, see Becker, Art Worlds; and Elihu Gerson, “On Quality of Life,” Am. Soc. Rev. 41(1976): 793–806.

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  1. Adele E. Clarke
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  1. Program in History of Science, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA

    Gerald L. Geison (professor of history) (professor of history)

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© 1987 American Physiological Society

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Clarke, A.E. (1987). Research Materials and Reproductive Science in the United States, 1910–1940. In: Geison, G.L. (eds) Physiology in the American Context 1850–1940. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7528-6_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7528-6_15

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