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Bibliographic Essays: Life Sciences in the Twentieth Century, By Garland E. Allen, Page 7 |
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PHYSIOLOGY Despite
its great importance in the growth of the biological sciences in this
century, physiology has received far less attention from historians
of science than is its due. This may be in part because physiology's
close historical relationship to medicine has made it seem more the
province of historians of medicine. There is also the fact that physiology
underwent its revolution in methodology over a century ago, with the
widespread introduction of physicochemical and experimental methods
to supplement descriptive, anatomical work. Whatever the exact reason,
the result is that the reader looking for an entrance into the genneral
history of twentieth-century physiology will have to consult a variety
of separat, more specialized sources. Rather
than covering the vast array of subjects that rightfully fall under
the history of physiology (such as plant physiology and pathology, etc.),
I focus on three areas that have been major concerns in the twentieth
century: general physiology, neurobiology and endocrinology. For a brief
introduction and overview of twentieth-century physiology, it is worthwhile
to consult Karl E. Rothschuh's History of Physiology (Huntington,
N.Y.: Krieger, 1973). Chapter 7 (pp. 264-361) deals with the twentieth
century; while it does not provide in-depth coverage, the broad outline
establishes the framework within which more specialized topics can be
placed. The Prussian-born
American physiologist Jacques Loeb (1859-1924), a long-time investigator
at the Rockefeller Institute and a close professional friend of such
figures as T. H. Morgan, Boss Harrison, J. McKeen Cattell, and W.J.
V. Osterhout, set the style of experimental and quantitative biology
that influenced a whole generation of biologists, especially in the
United States. Loeb championed what he called "the mechanistic conception
of life"--the title of a major address he gave in 1911 and of a book
of essays collected in 1912 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press,
1964). The reprint edition benefits from a superb introduction by Donald
Fleming. The Mechanistic Conception of Life was a celebration
of the mechanistic materialist viewpoint in twentieth-century biology.
The introduction and a selection of several of the essays make for stimulating
reading and are well within the reach of most undergraduates, especially
those with a year or more of college biology. A new biography of Loeb
is Philip J. Pauly's Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering
Ideal in Biology (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987). As the title
suggests, Pauly emphasizes that Loeb's guiding ideal was the scientific
control of life. Opposition
to the "mechanistic conception of life" came from a number of sources--principally
embryology and areas of general physiology--from the 1920s onward. Prominent
among those who advanced a more holistic approach were the physiologist
Walter Bradford Cannon (1871-1942) and the physiological chemist Lawrence
J. Henderson (1878-1942). Cannon's work, is summarized in his popular
book The Wisdom of the Body (1932; New York: Norton, 1960), which
is eminently accessible to undergraduate readers. Henderson's work is
summarized, along with a number of other chemical topics, in his semipopular
The Fitness of the Environment (1913; Boston: Beacon Press, 1958).
This paperback edition contains an introduction by George Wald. The
development of the idea of homeostasis is the subject of a superb essay
by Donald Fleming, "Walter B. Cannon and Homeostasis," Social Research,
1984, 51:609-640. Henderson's
work has been the subject of several studies. John Parascandola's "Organismic
and Holistic Concepts in the Thought of L. J. Henderson," Journal
of the Histoty of Biology, 1971, 4:63-113, relates Henderson's scientific
to his philosophical work. Henderson and Cannon were strongly interested
in social regulation and equilibrium, as was fitting for products of
the "Progressive Era," and sought in physiological processes analogies
for the notion of social and economic balance. A specific discussion
of Henderson's view of the interrelationship between social and physiological
equilibrium theory can be found in Cynthia Eagle Russett's The Concept
of Equilibrium in American Social Thought (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
Univ. Press, 1968). See also Stephen J. Cross and William R. Albury,
"Walter B. Cannon, L.J. Henderson, and the Organic Analogy," Osiris,
1987, N.S. 3:165-192. Endocrinology
(the study of the nature and effect of hormones, or "chemical messengers,"
produced by the endocrine glands) is an area of general physiology that
has shown enormous growth in the twentieth century. It has also been
the subject of numerous historical studies. Arthur F. Hughes has prepared
a brief but useful introduction titled "A History of Endocrinology,"
Journal of the History of Medcine and Allied Sciences, 1977,
32(3): 292-313. While it is largely descriptive and chronological, Hughes's
study demonstrates the close link between clinical pathology and the
gradual discovery of the role of hormones in maintaining physiological
balance. The history of endocrinology is the subject of a special issue
of the Journal of the History of Biology, 1976, 9. A general
introduction to the historiography of endocrinology is provided for
the volume by Diana Long Hall and Thomas F. Click (pp. 229-233). Hall
has explored some social and technical aspects of the history of sex-hormone
research in "Biology, Sex Hormones, and Sexism in the 1920s," Philosophical
Forum 1974, 5:81-96. In this fascinating article she suggests that
sexist biases about the importance of male over female hormones proved
to be a barrier to the technical solution of problems associated with
extracting, isolating, and characterizing the chemical nature of sex
hormones (principally testosterone and estrogen) in the 1920s. On a
somewhat more specific aspect of endocrinology, Michael Bliss's The
Discovery of Insulin (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1982) provides
a close picture of the technical problems that investigators in any
field of endocrinology had to surmount in order to identify, isolate,
and purify a given hormone. The insulin story also provides a fascinating
picture of the role of drug companies in encouraging and financing hormone
research in the period (1920s) before government subsidy of basic scientific
research. Although
neurobiology (as it is now called) has always been subsumed under physiology,
its rapid growth in the twentieth century, along with its institutionalization
in separate university departments and separate funding programs, has
made it an almost completely autonomous discipline. Neurobiology can
be divided into two major areas: neurophysiology, or the study of the
process by which nerve cells transmit a message; and neurology, the
study of the structure and organization of the nervous system. One of
the few comprehensive historical reviews of both areas is Mary A. B.
Brazier's "The Historical Development of Neurophysiology," in Handbook
of Physiology, edited by J. Field, H. W. Magoon, and V.E. Hall (Baltimore:Waverly,
1960), Section I, Volume I, pp. 1-57. Although this article lacks historical
analysis, it does trace the history of a variety of neurophysiological
problems from ancient times to the early decades of this century. Another
general work, though less systematically organized than Brazier's, is
The Neurosciences: Paths of Discovery, edited by Frederic G.
Worden, Judith P. Swazey, and George Adelman (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1975). Two articles in this collection stand out as particularly
interesting: Richard Jung's "Some European Neuroscientists: A Personal
Tribute" (pp. 477-511), and Judith P. Swazey and Frederic G. Worden's
"On the Nature of Research in Neuroscience" (pp. 569-587). Swazey and
Worden look at the development of twentieth-century neurobiology in
terms of Thomas Kuhn's concept of scientific revolution. Two major
questions confronted neurologists at the end of the nineteenth and beginning
of the twentieth centuries: What was the basic anatomical element of
the nervous system (individual cells, or a continuous nerve network)?
How were parts of the nervous system (e.g., peripheral nerves and spinal
cord) integrated to produce an overall functioning system? The first
question involved considerable debate in the period of the 1870s through
the 1890s, though it was resolved ultimately in favor of the neuron
theory (individual nerve cells as the basic structural and functional
unit of the nervous system) by the early 19009. Central to that debate
was the work of the Spanish cytologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal
(1852-1934), whose autobiography Recollections of My Life, translated
by E. Horne Craigie with the assistance ofJuan Cano (Philadelphia: American
Philosophical Society, 1937), contains considerable information about
the debate, the clash of paradigms, and Ramón y Cajal's exquisite
techniques for bringing about the resolution. A more recent and historically
oriented account is Susan Billings's "Concepts of Nerve Fiber Development
1839- 1930," Journal of the History of Biology, 1971, 4:275-306,
which shows how study of the embryological development of the nervous
system (which Ramón y Cajal wisely exploited) helped to demonstrate
that the nervous system arises from many discrete individual cells. The structural
and functional organization of the nervous system has been an area of
great advancement during the twentieth century. Much work on the mode
of action of the reflex response (as well as on how reflexes are learned)
and on the relation between inhibition and excitation of nerve tracks
was done by Russian neurologists in the latter part of the nineteenth
and especially the early part of the twentieth century. The chief figures
there were Ivan Michailovich Sechenov (1829-1905) and Ivan P. Pavlov
(1849-1936). Pavlov's inerest in digestion led him, under Sechenov's
innuence, to study the now-classic conditioned reflex involved in salivation.
Pavlov's life and work is the subject of one English-language volume:
B.P. Babkin's Pavlov, A Biography (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press,
1949). This source provides valuable insight into a whole school of
neurological work that has had as much influence on psychology as on
neurobiology in this century. While the
general features and functions of the reflex were understood by the
turn of the century, its manner of organization (especially in terms
of connections with the brain) was not. A towering figure in elucidating
the relationship between central and peripheral nervous systems, and
especially the integrative function of the spinal cord, was the British
physiologist Charles Scott Sherrington (1857-1952). Regnar Granit's
biography, Charles Scott Sherrington, An Appraisal (London: Nelson,
1967), is outstanding, though it suffers somewhat from historical presentism
since the author is himself a distinguished neurobiologist. That deficiency
is not a problem in Judith Swayze's Reflexes and Motor Integration:
Sharington's Concept of Integrative Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
Univ. Press, 1969). Swayze concentrates on a detailed but clear and
insightful analysis of Sherrington's scientific background, his experimental
methods, and the development of his hypotheses about integrative action. The history of neurophysiology is less extensively explored than that of neurology, partly because major progress has been made only in the past several decades. What few historical sources exist treat specific problems and are thus episodic. Concerning the development of the neurotransmitter hypothesis (that conduction across the synapse between adjacent neurons occurs by a chemical rather than electrical process), its antagonists and protagonists, see Michael V. L. Bennett's "Nicked by Occam's Razor: Unitarianism in the Investigation of Synaptic Transmission," Biological Bulletin, Suppl., June 1985, 168:159-167. This article is the only source I know of that deals with this intriguing controversy in mid-twentieth- century neurophysiology. Forward and Introduction This page last modified: |