Abstract
Through Johns Hopkins’s membership in the Society of Friends (Quakers) physiology first became a part of biology in the United States. As it turned out, physiology was only rarely accepted as a central part of biology. Although examples of this alliance remain few, they are nonetheless important and it is the earliest examples from the late nineteenth century that I shall explore in this chapter.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Allen Kerr Bond, When the Hopkins Came to Baltimore (Baltimore, MD: Pegasus, 1927); John C. French, A History of the University Founded by Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1946), esp. pp. 1–26; Hugh Hawkins, Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University ( Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1960 ), pp. 3–20.
Philip Pauly, “The Appearance of Academic Biology in Late Nineteenth-Century America,” J. Hist. Biol. 17 (1984): 369–397.
Daniel Coit Gilman, “The Original Faculty,” in The Launching of a University and Other Papers (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1906), pp. 47–56, 51; Inaugural Addresses (Baltimore, MD: John Murray, 1876), pp. 15–64, esp. 43; Thomas Henry Huxley, “On the Study of Biology,” in Science and Education (London: Macmillan, 1893), pp. 262–293, esp. 263.
Gilman, “Original Faculty,” p. 52; Gilman to Henry Newell Martin, 14 March 1876, Gilman Papers, Special Collections, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (hereafter, Gilman Papers).
Huxley, “Address on University Education,” in Science and Education,pp. 235–261, esp. 254.
Huxley to Gilman, 20 February 1876, Gilman Papers, to recommend Martin; Martin to Gilman, 5 April 1876, Gilman Papers; he declined at first but by 29 May 1876 he had accepted and had outlined a program for Johns Hopkins University; French, History, pp. 3440; Charles E. Rosenberg, “Henry Newell Martin,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography vol. 9 (New York: Scribner): pp. 142–143; Russell Chittenden, “Henry Newell Martin,” Dictionary of American Biography, pp. 337–338.
Martin to Gilman, n.d., Gilman Papers; Brooks to Gilman, 18 June 1876, Gilman Papers. Brooks explains that he has an offer at the University of Cincinnati but wants to be Martin’s assistant; French, History, pp. 40–42.
Martin to Gilman, n.d., but responds to 29 April 1881, Gilman Papers. For more on Brooks’s role see Keith Rodney Benson, “William Keith Brooks ( 1848–1908 ): A Case Study in Morphology and the Development of American Biology” (Ph.D. diss., Oregon State Univ., 1979 ).
Rosenberg, “Towards an Ecology of Knowledge: On Discipline, Context, and History,” in The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America, 1860–1920, ed. Alexandra Oleson and John Voss ( Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1979 ), pp. 440–455.
Actually, salamanders are particularly appropriate here because one of the principals of this story, Charles Otis Whitman, spent many hours trying to locate the salamander Necturus near the Allis Lake Laboratory in Milwaukee. He wanted to study the embryological development of an interesting local species and knew that Necturus was alleged to exist in the lake waters of northern Wisconsin. Unfortunately the species proved elusive and, after several futile attempts to locate specimens, Whitman and his student/associate Edward Phelps Allis had just about given up. The local fisherman they had hired insisted that he knew just where to find some of these salamanders: “under almost any stone or stump in the water along the edge of the lake.” However, Whitman and Allis had already spent a day overturning every rock in sight and found nothing. They concluded that they had been victims of another “fisherman’s story” and that no Necturus,or mudpuppies, were to be found there at all. When their hired fisherman, Meyers, insisted that they meet him at 5:00 A.M. the next morning for one last try, they reluctantly agreed, even though they planned to catch a six o’clock train. As Allis later recalled, Meyers had told them: “`You’ll find one under that big stone out there in the middle of the race. I see his hole.’ Whitman laughed at him and told him he had better go out and find it himself. But Meyers, somewhat nettled, said he wasn’t going to get wet to the middle for one of those ded things. So I [Allis] told Whitman it wouldn’t do any harm to try it; and out he went, trying not to look foolish at allowing himself to be sent on such an errand. He waded out with great deliberation, turning over a few other stones as he went, like a child who wants to make believe that he isn’t doing what he has been told to do. Meyers in the meantime had left, saying that he had something to do and couldn’t hang around any longer and that if we didn’t find a puppy under that stone we would under another a little further out. ”Whitman had now, in his leisurely course, reached the stone he was after and with a smile at me bent down to turn it over. He turned it, then dropped it, and standing up looked at me for a moment. `There was one,’ he said, in an awe-stricken voice. Then he picked up the stone, and without a word brought it ashore and showed me, attached to its under surface, a few large eggs. I can’t believe it,’ he said. `Why, Mr. Allis, I would give my year’s salary for those eggs.“70 From Dornfeld, ”The Allis Lake Laboratory, 1886–1893,“ Marquette Med. Rev. 21 (1956): 115–144, esp. 126–128.
Martin, “Physiological Papers,” in Memoirs from the Biological Laboratory, vol. 3 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1895); Larry Owens, “Pure and Sound Government. Laboratories, Playing Fields, and Gymnasia in the Nineteenth-Century Search for Order,” Isis 76 (1985): 182–194, points out the unusual nature of the Hopkins Laboratory. Students and assistants worked together with Martin so that even the major contributions came from the group together rather than from Martin alone.
Class of ‘80,“ Hopkins Medley (Baltimore, MD: Guggenheim, Weil, 1890), pp. 56–58; these are the students listed in the files of correspondence, Gilman Papers.
William Keith Brooks, response in Science 3 (1896): 708, to Conway MacMillan, “On the Emergence of a Sham Biology in America,” Science o.s. 21 (1893): 184.
Howell did, for example, as well as others not named. Brooks to Gilman, Gilman Papers.
Frederic Schiller Lee, “The Scope of Modern Physiology,” Am. Nat. 28 (1894): 380–388, esp. 380, 388, and 473–482.
After his Ph.D., Lee went to Leipzig for a year, then taught biology at Sarah Lawrence for a year, physiology at Bryn Mawr, and physiology at Columbia from 1891; For more on Lee, see chapter III by Alejandra Laszlo and chapter X by Richard Gillespie, in this book.
In addition to Lee’s one year at Sarah Lawrence. Henry Herbert Donaldson began in physiology, then received an M.D. degree and eventually moved into a research position at the Wistar Institute.
W. Bruce Fye, “H. Newell Martin-A Remarkable Career Destroyed by Neurasthenia and Alcoholism, ”J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci. 40 (1985): 133–166.
Allan Chesney, The Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, vol. 1 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1943 ), pp. 230–233.
Fye, “H. Newell Martin,” p. 161; Gilman Papers reinforce the validity of Howell’s convictions.
Robert Kohler, From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982); Chapter 11 discusses biological programs. See also chapter III by Laszlo, chapter XIII by Merriley Borell, and chapter VIII by Pauly in this book on particular programs at Harvard and Columbia in general physiology.
Dornfeld, “Allis Lake Laboratory,” p. 120.
Dornfeld, “Allis Lake Laboratory,” pp. 121–124, 133.
Whitman to Alexander Agassiz and Anton Dohrn to Whitman, Agassiz Collection, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University.
25. MBL Minutes, vol. 1 (Board of Trustees, 1888), MBL Archives.
Brooks to Gilman, 21 June 1889, Gilman Papers.
Pauly, “Appearance,” 383.
Whitman, “Biological Instruction in Universities,” Am. Nat. 21 (1887): 507–579; esp. 517518.
Cornelia Clapp, “Some Recollections of the First Summer at Woods Hole, 1888,” Collecting Net 2 (4) (1927): 3, 10; Jane Maienschein, “Agassiz, Hyatt, Whitman and the Birth of the Marine Biological Laboratory,” Biol. Bull. Woods Hole 168 suppl.(1985): 26–34.
In particular by Henry Fairfield Osborn, “The Hereditary Mechanism and the Search for the Unknown Factors of Evolution,” Biol. Lect.,1894 (1896): 79–100; “Evolution or Heredity,” Biol. Lect.,1890 (1891): 130–141; Whitman to Osborn, Osborn Collection, C. O. Whitman folder, Archives, Department of Vertebrate Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, New York.
Whitman, Report of the Director, MBL, 1890, p. 21. Elaborated in “Specialization and Organization,” Biol. Lect. 1890 (1891): 1–26.
Whitman, Report of the Director,1891, pp. 14–17, esp. 15.
Whitman, “General Physiology in its Relation to Morphology,” Am. Nat. 27 (1893): 802807, esp. 804–805.
Whitman, Report of the Director,1892, pp. 29–36, esp. 35.
Whitman, Report of the Director,1892, p. 35.
Pauly, `Jacques Loeb and the Control of Life: An Experimental Biologist in Germany and America, 1859–1924“ (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins Univ., 1980 ), pp. 127–128.
Pauly, “Loeb,” pp. 128–129.
Kenneth R. Manning, Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983 ).
Lincoln C. Blake, “The Concept and Development of Science at the University of Chicago, 1890–1905” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Chicago, 1966), esp. “C. O. Whitman: The Adaptation of Science,” chapt. 4, pp. 122–150.
Whitman published Methods of Research in Microscopical Anatomy and Embryology (Boston, MA: S. A. Cassine, 1885) following an earlier series of articles about method.
Franklin Paine Mall to Harper, 8 February, 7 April, and 9 April 1892, Whitman Collection, University of Chicago Archives, Joseph Regenstein Library, Chicago, IL (hereafter, Whitman Collection, Chicago).
Whitman to Harper, 19 December 1891, for example, Whitman Collection, Chicago.
Whitman to Harper, memo, n.d., Whitman Collection, Chicago.
Whitman looked to Germany for models and for ammunition for experiments, but he also called for particularly American work as well.
Whitman to Harper, n.d., Whitman Collection, Chicago.
Pauly, “Loeb,” p. 130; Loeb to Harper, 30 June 1891, Harper Collection, University of Chicago Archives, Joseph Regenstein Library, Chicago (hereafter, Harper Collection, Chicago).
Whitman Collection, Chicago; Whitman Collection, MBL Archives. Whitman had hoped that the endowment would be used for the MBL and an inland research station as well as the University of Chicago. He was bitterly disappointed that his inland station was postponed yet again.
Whitman to Harper, letters in Chicago and MBL Archives, throughout the 1890s document his frustration. He got Watase, Wheeler, Loeb, and others in succession.
Whitman to Harper, letters in Chicago such as that of 4 September 1899, document this concern. Also, biographical notes about Whitman gathered by Frank Lillie discuss Whitman’s growing dismay about the Chicago situation. His letter of 13 March 1896 laments the use of endowment funds to meet basic costs rather than extending resources for biology.
Whitman to Harper, 4 September 1899, Whitman Collection, Chicago, in response to a letter from Harper. Quoted with permission from Chicago Archives.
Whitman to Harper, 3 May 1899, Whitman Collection, Chicago. Regrets the loss of Wheeler earlier and of impending loss of Watase.
Oscar Riddle, ed., Posthumous Works of Charles Otis Whitman. I. Orthogenetic Evolution in Pigeons; II. Inheritance, Fertility, and the Dominance of Sex and Color in Hybrids of Wild Species of Pigeons; Harvey S. Carr, ed., III. The Behavior of Pigeons ( Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1919 ).
Lillie, The Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory (Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1944); Maienschein, “Early Struggles at the Marine Biological Laboratory Over Mission and Money,” Biol. Bull. Woods Hole 168 suppl. (1985): 192–196.
Whitman, Report of the Director,1892, pp. 12–13.
Whitman to Edwin Grant Conklin, Whitman Collection, MBL. His former Japanese student Chiyomatsu Ishikawa reported, in a biographical sketch translated in the Whitman Papers, Chicago, that Whitman had turned his entire attention to his pigeons, pp. 17–18.
Whitman to Conklin, n.d., Whitman Collection, MBL; Brooks to Gilman, Gilman Papers.
Whitman to Osborn, Osborn Collection; Whitman to Wilson, Whitman Collection, MBL.
At Chicago, Albert Prescott Mathews and Loeb battled over questions of priority, for example, Harper and Whitman Collections, Chicago.
Jacques Loeb, Untersuchungen zur Physiologischen Morphologie der Thiere. I. Heteromorphosis. II. Organbilding und Wachsthum ( Würzburg, Germany: Hertz, 1891, 1892 ).
Loeb, “On Some Facts and Principles of Physiological Morphology,” Biol. Lect. 1893 (1894): 37–61, esp. 60–61; Pauly, “Loeb,” provides a useful summary of those MBL lectures.
Pauly, “Loeb,” and his book on Loeb with Oxford University Press, in press.
Loeb, “On Some Facts,” 45.
E. S. Russell, Form and Function (London: John Murray, 1916), discusses the physiological and morphological traditions.
Whitman, “History of the Egg of Clepsine Previous to Cleavage,” Q. J. Microsc. Sci. 71 (1978): 215–315, esp. 300.
Maienschein, “Preformation or New Formation-or Neither or Both?” in A History of Embryology,ed. Timothy Horder, et al. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1987 American Physiological Society
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Maienschein, J. (1987). Physiology, Biology, and the Advent of Physiological Morphology. 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_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7528-6_8
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7528-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive