Abstract
Since its emergence as a discipline in the nineteenth century, physiology has occupied a special position as a bridge between biology and medicine. Because it stands at the juncture, its boundaries have been difficult to define and spokesmen for the discipline have long worried that it was in danger of being pulled apart, on one hand by the various clinical specialties and on the other by branches of biology.2 This “ambivalent attachment” to “two worlds” is vividly illustrated in the founding and early history of the American Physiological Society (APS). Organized on 30 December 1887, the society had its immediate origin in the medical tradition. It was a product of a conflict within the medical community between the older American Medical Association (AMA) and the more recently established and more exclusive medical specialty societies. At the same time it was the firstborn of a series of biological specialty societies, offshoots of the American Society of Naturalists, itself a specialist offshoot of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In its foundation and first twenty-five years, APS was shaped by its uneasy alliances with these two very different groups of organizations.
The American Physiological Society...from its inception has struggled with ambivalent attachment to the two worlds, of biological science and medical practice.
Ralph Gerard, 19581
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Notes
Ralph W. Gerard, Mirror to Physiology: A Self-Survey of Physiological Science ( Washington, DC: American Physiological Society, 1958 ), p. 73.
See, for example, Gerard, Mirror to Physiology; E. F. Adolph et al., “Physiology in North America, 1945,” Federation Proc. 5 (1946): 407–436; Peter F. Hall, “Fragmentation of Physiology: Possible Academic Consequences,” Physiologist 19 (1976): 35–39; Gerald L. Geison, “Divided We Stand: Physiologists and Clinicians in the American Context,” in The Therapeutic Revolution,ed. Morris J. Vogel and Charles E. Rosenberg (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), pp. 67–90; and Philip J. Pauly, “The Appearance of Academic Biology in Late Nineteenth-Century America,” j. Hist. Biol. 17 (1984): 369–397.
William H. Howell and Charles W. Greene, History of the American Physiological Society Semicentennial, 1887–1937 (Baltimore, MD: American Physiological Society, 1938), pp. 1–4. The originals of these letters and the constitution are found in Society Minutes, vol. 1 [18871919], American Physiological Society Archives, Bethesda, MD (hereafter, APS Society Minutes). Council meetings were recorded separately in Council Minutes, vol. 1 [1887–1919] APS Archives, Bethesda, MD (hereafter, APS Council Minutes).
Henry H. Donaldson, “The Early Days of the American Physiological Society,” Science 75 (1932): 599–601; Russell H. Chittenden, The Development of Physiological Chemistry in the United States ( New York: American Chemical Society, 1930 ), pp. 41–43.
Robert E. Kohler, From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry: The Making of a Biomedical Discipline ( Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982 ).
Hebbel E. Hoff and John F. Fulton, “The Centenary of the First American Physiological Society Founded at Boston by William A. Alcott and Sylvester Graham,” Bull. Hist. Med. 5 (1937): 687–734.
Kohler, From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry,p. 110; Geison, “Divided We Stand,” p. 73.
Ralph H. Bates, Scientific Societies in the United States, 3d ed. ( Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965 ), pp. 85–136.
Howell and Greene, American Physiological Society Semicentennial,pp. 5–6; APS Society Minutes, 30 December 1887; APS Council Minutes, 30 December 1887.
Adolph, “Physiology in North America, 1945,” 416.
Membership can be determined from published annual membership directories, 1888–1913, in the APS Archives. Attendance of members at early meetings is listed in APS Society Minutes.
Chittenden, The First Twenty-five Years of the American Society of Biological Chemists (New Haven, CT: American Society of Biological Chemists, 1945); K. K. Chen, ed., The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics: The First Sixty Years, 1908–1969 (Bethesda, MD: American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, 1969 ). Eighteen men attended the organizational meeting of the pharmacologists and thirty-four more were later named charter members.
Kohler, From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry,pp. 121–214; Kohler, “Medical Reform and Biomedical Science: Biochemistry—A Case Study,” in Therapeutic Revolution,ed. Vogel and Rosenberg, pp. 28–66.
When the Seventh International Medical Congress (IMC) was held in London in 1881, the British Physiological Society invited foreign physiologists to attend and hosted a dinner for them at the congress. Among the guests was Bowditch. As president of the Section of Physiology of the IMC, Michael Foster gave an address on “The History of Physiology in England.” See Edward Sharpey-Shafer, History of the Physiological Society During its First Fifty Years, 1876–1926 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1927 ), pp. 55–56, 60.
Transactions of the International Medical Congress, Ninth Session,5 vols. (Washington, DC, 1887) (hereafter, Transactions IMC) 5: 736.
Howell and Greene, American Physiological Society Semicentennial,p. 21. The fifth founder, Chittenden, was understandably omitted because he had only become professor of physiological chemistry at Yale two years previously and he did not have a medical degree.
J. Am. Med. Assoc. 2 (1884): 565, 566, 573; “The International Medical Congress and the American Medical Association,” Boston Med. Surg. J. 112 (1885): 485–486. Details of the initial organization of the congress can be found in John Shaw Billings to S. Weir Mitchell, 11 October 1884, 12 December 1884, 27 March 1885, 5. Weir Mitchell Correspondence, College of Physicians, Philadelphia, PA (hereafter, Mitchell Correspondence); and in the letters and announcements sent by Billings to Mitchell dated 2 December 1884–20 January 1885 in the International Medical Congress Papers, 9th, Washington, DC, 1887, College of Physicians, Philadelphia, PA (hereafter, IMC Papers). See esp. Billings to Mitchell (“Circular 3”), 20 January 1885, which contains the names of the appointees.
Billings to Mitchell, 14 December 1884, IMC Papers.
Other members of the Council included Henry F. Campbell of Augusta, GA; Charles N. Ellinwood of San Francisco; Austin Flint, Jr. of New York; W. Lee of Washington, DC; and John I. Mason of Newport, RI.
The International Medical Congress and the American Medical Association,“ Boston Med. Surg. J. 112 (1885): 485–486.
An amendment gave the state delegations the power to select their representative and a second resolution gave the new committee power to elect its own officers and to appoint the officers of the IMC. See Transactions IMC 5: 736.
Ibid.
On the American Medical Association (AMA), the Ninth IMC, and medical ethics, see Lester S. King, American Medicine Comes of Age, 1840–1920: Essays to Commemorate the Founding of the Journal of the American Medical Association, July 14, 1883 (Chicago, IL: American Medical Association, 1984), pp. 37–41. On the controversy over the AMA code of ethics, see also Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic, 1982), pp. 93112.
Many examples of this type of conflict in science are described in Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America ( New York: Vintage, 1979 ).
Billings, Resolution, n.d. (“Whereas an unfortunate difference of opinion…), Billings Papers, New York Public Library, box 67. The changes made by the new committee when it met in June are detailed in Boston Med. Surg. J. 113 (1885): 41–42, 44–45.
Ibid.: 45–46,117–118,163–164,284–286,356,382,383,427,601–602.
The only charter members of APS on the list of those registered for the IMC were Henry Gustav Beyer who, as an employee of the U.S. Navy in Washington, DC, was obliged to attend, and Victor Vaughan. The list of registrants is printed in Transactions IMC 1: 89151.
The Meeting of the International Congress at Washington,“ Boston Med. Surg. J. 117 (1887): 269–271; ”The Meeting of the Congress,“ Med. News 51 (1887): 322–324.
Letter from Washington,“ Boston Med. Surg. J. 117 (1887): 271.
The papers were published in Transactions IMC 3: 231–348. Biographies of a number of the participants appear in Howard A. Kelly and Walter A. Burrage, Dictionary of American Medical Biography [1928] (Boston, MA: Milford House, 1971).
Transactions IMC 5: 735–761, esp. 761.
Mark M. Ravitch, A Century of Surgery: The History of the American Surgical Association,2 vols. (Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott, 1981) 1: 76–77, 86. Membership in the American Surgical Association was limited to 100 fellows and twenty-five honorary fellows.
Transactions of the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons. First Triennial Session Held at Washington, D.C., September 18th, 19th and 20th 1888 (New Haven, CT: Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons, 1889) (hereafter, Transactions CAPS),pp. xiii-xxii.
Mitchell, H. Newell Martin, and Henry P. Bowditch to Warren P. Lombard, 23 May 1887, APS Archives, Bethesda, MD.
Howell and Greene, American Physiological Society Semicentennial,p. 5; Donaldson, “Early Days of the American Physiological Society,” 600.
Thomas Frederick Crane to Mitchell, 27 October 1888, 22 May 1889, and 30 May 1889. Mitchell Papers, Trent Collection, Duke University, Durham, NC.
Transactions CAPS,p. xxii.
APS Society Minutes, 18–20 September 1888.
The minutes of the meeting were published in Transactions CAPS,pp. xxiii-xxxvi, and the list of attendees in ibid., pp. xxvii-xlvi.
The Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons,“ Boston Med. Surg. J. 119 (1888): 314; ”Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons,“ Med. News 53 (1888): 326–343; ”Cerebral Localization at the Washington Congress,“ Med. News 53 (1888): 421–422.
Nicholas A. Michels, “The American Association of Anatomists: A Sketch of Its Origin, Aims and Meetings,” Anat. Rec. 122 (1955): 685–714.
Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons,“ 326.
Donaldson, “Early Days of the American Physiological Society,” 600.
Charles Sedgwick Minot, “The Relation of the American Society of Naturalists to other Scientific Societies,” Science 15 (1902): 241–244.
Martin, who appears to have had a large hand in the drafting of the constitution of the APS, was a charter member of both the American Society of Naturalists and the Physiological Society in Britain, the two chief models for the APS. The constitution and lists of members of the Naturalists by year are found in Am. Soc. Naturalists Records 1 (1884–1895). In its early years, so as not to conflict with AAAS, the programs of the naturalists emphasized methodology and education rather than biological research.
Bowditch to Mitchell, 1 June 1887, Mitchell Correspondence.
American Society of Naturalists,“ Am. Nat. 22 (1888): 91–92.
Howell and Greene, American Physiological Society Semicentennial,pp. 19–21.
John Call Dalton, History of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New York: Medical Department of Columbia College (New York: published by order of the college, 1888), pp. 165–197; Frederic Schiller Lee, “The School of Medicine,” in A History of Columbia University, 1754–1904,ed. Brander Matthews et al. (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1904), pp. 307–334, esp. p. 328.
On the founding of these societies, see Michels, “American Association of Anatomists”; Edwin Butt Eckel, The Geological Society of America: Life History of a Learned Society (Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America, 1982); Brother C. Edward Quinn, “Ancestry and Beginnings: The Early History of the American Society of Zoologists,” Am. Zool. 22 (1982): 735–748; Samuel W. Fernberger, “The American Psychological Association, 1892–1942,” Psychol. Rev. 50 (1953): 33–60; Botanical Society of America: Fifty Years of Botany ( New York: McGraw-Hill, 1958 ).
APS Society Minutes, 30 December 1887; Howell and Greene, American Physiological Society Semicentennial, p. 56.
APS Society Minutes, 30 December 1896.
John Harley Warner, “Physiology,” in The Education of American Physicians: Historical Essays, ed. Ronald L. Numbers ( Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1980 ), pp. 48–71.
Biographies of the charter members appear in Howell and Greene, American Physiological Society Semicentennial,pp. 6–51.
Ibid., pp. 2–3.
Dues were set each year by the Council. See APS Council Minutes.
Persons nominated, deferred, and rejected each year are found in APS Council Minutes.
Beginning with the 1895 meeting, abstracts were published in Science after the meetings. Abstracts from the 1897 meeting until the founding of Federation Proceedings in 1942 are found in the American Journal of Physiology.
William F. Bynum, “A Short History of the Physiological Society, 1926–1976,” J. Physiol. Lond. 263 (1976): 23–72, esp. 58.
Howell and Greene, American Physiological Society Semicentennial,pp. 78–83, 97–98; APS Society Minutes; APS Council Minutes. After 1914, the journal was edited by Donald Russell Hooker and the APS Council took over the function of the editorial board. Regular review procedures were not initiated until 1933.
Programs of meetings are found in APS Society Minutes.
Patricia Peck Gossel, “William Henry Welch and the Antivivisection Legislation in the District of Columbia, 1896–1900,”J. Hist. Med. 40 (1985): 397–419.
APS Society Minutes, 7 May 1907.
APS Council Minutes, 18 December 1908, and 29 December 1908.
For the first special meeting, in 1888, the Society was charged $72.90 for its share of the congress, leaving Martin, secretary-treasurer of APS, with a deficit of $13.63. See APS Society Minutes, Treasurer’s Report, 1888–1889.
Saul Benison, “In Defense of Medical Research,” Harv. Alumni Med. Bull. 44 (Jan.-Feb. 1970): 16–23.
E. D. Cope and J. S. Kingsley, “Editors’ Table,” Am. Nat. 23 (1889): 32–34. The years 1910 and 1911 are exceptions. The Naturalists, frustrated with the large meetings with the AAAS, decided to meet separately from the AAAS in Ithaca, NY in 1910 and Princeton, NJ in 1911. Both locations were without medical schools. The APS held its meeting with just the biochemists and pharmacologists in New Haven, CT in 1910 and with the AAAS in Baltimore/Washington in 1911.
E. G. Conklin, “Fifty Years of the American Society of Naturalists,” Am. Nat. 68 (1934): 385401. Programs of the Naturalists’ meetings can be found in the American Society of Naturalists Archives, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA. Details of the meetings can also be found in Am. Soc. Nat. Rec. 1 (1884–1895) and 2 (1896–1913).
Conklin, “Fifty Years,” 388–389; Bowditch, “Reform in Medical Education,” Boston Med. Surg. J. 139 (1898): 643–646.
APS Society Minutes, 29 December 1893.
Am. Soc. Nat. Rec. 2, pt. 1 (1896): 32.
APS Society Minutes, 29 December 1898; William T. Porter, “On the Teaching of Physiology in Medical Schools,” Boston Med. Surg. J. 139 (1898): 647–652; APS Society Minutes, 29 December 1899.
Am. Soc. Nat. Rec. 1 (1884–1895): 281–282,304–307,309,335–337; Quinn, “Ancestry and Beginnings,” 736; APS Society Minutes, 29 December 1893 and 27 December 1894.
APS Council Minutes, 28 December 1892.
Minot, “Relation of American Society of Naturalists.”
Proc. AAAS (1901): 386.
Reid Hunt to Joseph Erlanger (and enclosure), 21 January 1908, Erlanger Papers, Washington University School of Medicine Archives, St. Louis, MO, folder 136.
H. E. Summers, “The Cleveland Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,” Science 37 (1913): 41–46.
APS Society Minutes, 30 December 1908.
Business Minutes, 1908, and A. B. Macallum to A. N. Richards, 11 May 1912, American Society of Biological Chemists, Minute Book, American Society of Biological Chemists, Bethesda, MD.
APS Council Minutes, 29 and 30 December 1912, and 28 December 1913; APS Minutes, 31 December 1912, and 29 December 1913; Science 37 (1913): 193–194; Science 39 (1914): 217–218.
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Appel, T.A. (1987). Biological and Medical Societies and the Founding of the American Physiological Society. 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_7
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