Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Senescence, Growth, and Gerontology in the United States

  • Published:
Journal of the History of Biology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper discusses how growth and aging became interrelated phenomena with the creation of gerontology in the United States. I first show that the relation of growth to senescence, which had hardly attracted scientific attention before the twentieth century, started to be investigated by several experimental scientists around the 1900s. Subsequently, research on the connection between the two phenomena entered a new domain through the birth of gerontology as a scientific field comprised of various disciplines, many of which addressed growth. Due to gerontologists’ efforts, the association between aging and growth became stronger and more multifaceted within the discursive and organizational matrix constituting the new science, leading to a broader definition of senescence with an ambiguous connection to chronological age. Furthermore, as gerontologists borrowed the cultural agendas as well as research methods from studies of growth, aging began to be defined as a phenomenon that could be actively controlled and managed in both social arenas and laboratory environments.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • 1942. “Discussion on Growth and New Growth.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 35: 587–600.

  • Achenbaum, W. Andrew. 1986. Social Security: Visions and Revisions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Achenbaum, W. Andrew. 1995. Crossing Frontiers: Gerontology Emerges as a Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Adler, Majorie. 1958. “History of Gerontological Society, Inc.” Journal of Gerontology 13: 94–102.

    Google Scholar 

  • Allen, Garland E. 1975. Life Science in the Twentieth Century. New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armstrong, David. 2000. “The Temporal Body.” Roger Cooter and John Pickstone (eds.), Medicine in the Twentieth Century. Amsterdam: Harwood, pp. 247–259.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bacon, Roger. 1683. The Cure of Old Age and Preservation of Youth. London: Tho. Flesher and Edward Evets.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ballenger, Jesse F. 2006. Self, Senility, and Alzheimer’s Disease in Modern America: A History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baugh, Reginald F. 1987. “Aldred Scott Warthin: The Man behind the Tumor.” Archives of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery 113: 365–367.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bichat, Marie François Xavier. 1809. Tobias Watkins (tr.), Physiological Researches upon Life and Death. Philadelphia: Smith and Maxwell.

  • Birren, James E. 2004. Ingrid G Farreras, Caroline Hannaway, and Victoria A. Harden (eds.), Mind, Brain, and Behavior: Foundations of Neuroscience and Behavioral Research at the National Institutes of Health. Amsterdam: IOS Press, pp. 169–182.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bowler, Peter J. 1996. Life’s Splendid Drama: Evolutionary Biology and the Reconstruction of Life’s Ancestry, 1860–1940. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brosco, Jeffrey P. 2004. “Weight Charts and Well Child Care: When the Pediatrician Became the Expert in Child Health.’ Alexandra Minna Minna and Howard Markel (eds.), Formative Years: Children’s Health in the United States 1880-2000. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 91–120.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bryson, Dennis. 1998. “Lawrence K. Frank, Knowledge, and the Production of the ‘Social’.” Poetics Today 19: 401–421.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carrel, Alexis. 1911. “Rejuvenation of Cultures of Tissues.” Journal of the American Medical Association 57: 1611.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carrel, Alexis. 1924. “Tissue Culture and Cell Physiology.” Physiological Reviews 4: 1–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carrel, Alexis. 1931a. “The New Cytology.” Science 73: 297–303.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carrel, Alexis.1931b. “Physiological Time.” Science 74: 618–621.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carrel, Alexis. 1935. Men, the Unknown. New York: Harper.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carrel, Alexis, Burrows, Montrose T. 1911. “On the Physicochemical Regulation of the Growth of Tissues: The Effects of the Dilution of the Medium on the Growth of the Spleen.” Journal of Experimental Medicine 13: 562–570.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carrel, Alexis, Ebeling, Albert H. 1921. “Age and Multiplication of Fibroblasts.” Journal of Experimental Medicine 34: 599–623.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carroll, Douglas. 1966. “The First Almshouse: Abating a Public Nuisance (1773–822).” Maryland State Medical Journal 15 (1): 87–90.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chudacoff, Howard P. 1989. How Old Are You? Age Consciousness in American Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohn, Alfred E., Murray, H.A. Jr. 1925. “Physiological Ontogeny. A. Chicken Embryos. IV. The Negative Acceleration of Growth with Age as Demonstrated by Tissue Cultures.” Journal of Experimental Medicine 42: 275–290.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohn, Alfred E., Murray, H.A. Jr. 1927. “Physiological Ontogeny I. The Present Status of the Problem.” Quarterly Review of Biology 2: 469–493.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, Thomas R. 1992. The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, Thomas R., Winkler, Mary G. 1985. “Aging in Western Medicine and Iconography: History and the Ages of Man.” Medical Heritage 1: 336–347.

    Google Scholar 

  • Comfort, Alex. 1956. The Biology of Senescence. New York: Rinehart.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooke, Kathy J. 2002. “Duty or Dream? Edwin G. Conklin’s Critique of Eugenics and Support for American Individualism.” Journal of the History of Biology 35: 365–384.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cowdry, Edmund Vincent. 1933. “The Structure and Physiology of Blood Vessels.” Edmund Vincent Cowdry (ed.), Arteriosclerosis: A Survey of the Problem. New York: Macmillan, pp. 53–76.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cowdry, Edmund Vincent. 1939. “Ageing of Tissue Fluids.” Edmund Vincent Cowdry (ed.), Problems of Ageing: Biological and Medical Aspects. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, pp. 642–694.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crampton, C. Ward. 1908. “Physiological Age—A Fundamental Principle. I.” American Physical Education Review 13: 141–154.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crowe, Nathan P. 2011. A ‘Fantastical’ Experiment: Motivations, Practice, and Conflict in the History of Nuclear Transplantation, 1925–1970. Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dublin, Louis I., Gebhart, John C. 1923. “Do Height and Weight Tables Identify Under-nourished Children?” American Journal of Public Health 13: 920–927.

    Google Scholar 

  • Featherstone, Mike, Hepwood, Mike. 1991. “The Mask of Ageing and the Postmodern Life Course.” M. Featherstone, M. Hepwood, and B.S. Turner (eds.), The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory. London: Sage, pp. 371–389.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, Lawrence. 1946. “Gerontology.” Journal of Gerontology 1: 1–11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, Lawrence. 1947. “Live Long and Like It.” Crozer Quarterly 24: 316–325.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert, Scott F. (ed.). 1991. A Conceptual History of Modern Embryology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gluckman, P.D., Hanson, M.A., Buklijas, T. 2010. “A Conceptual Framework for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease.” Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease 1: 6–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gould, Stephen Jay. 1977. Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graebner, William. 1980. A History of Retirement: The Meaning and Function of an American Institution, 1885–1978. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grant, Richard L. 1979. “Concepts of Aging: An Historical Review.” Gerald J. Gruman (ed.), Roots of Modern Gerontology and Geriatrics. New York: Arno, pp. 443–478.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grmek, M.D. 1958. “On Ageing and Old Age: Basic Problems and Historic Aspects of Gerontology and Geriatrics.” F.S. Bodenheimer and WW Weisbach (eds.), Monographiae Biologicae, 5 vols (2). Junk: Den Haag, pp. 1–106.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grob, Gerald N. 2011. “From Aging to Pathology: The Case of Osteoporosis.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 66: 1–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gruman, Gerald. 1979. “Introduction.” Gerald Gruman (ed.), Roots of Modern Gerontology and Geriatrics. New York: Arno, pp. 1–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haber, Carole, Gratton, Brian. 1994. Old Age and the Search for Security: An American Social History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haeckel, Ernst. 1879. The Evolution of Man: A Popular Exposition on the Principal Points of Human Ontogeny and Phylogeny, 2 vols. New York: Appleton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harden, Victoria A. 1986. Inventing the NIH: Federal Biomedical Research Policy, 1887–1937. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harrison, Ross G. 1906. “Observations on the Living Developing Nerve Fiber.” Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine 4: 140–143.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harrison, Ross G. 1910. “The Outgrowth of the Nerve Fiber as a Mode of Protoplasmic Movement.” Journal of Experimental Zoology 9: 787–846.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hayflick, Leonard. 1965. “The Limited In Vitro Lifetime of Human Diploid Cell Strains.” Experimental Cell Research 37: 614–636.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hayflick, Leonard, Moorhead, Paul S. 1961. “The Serial Cultivation of Human Diploid Cell Strains.” Experimental Cell Research 25: 585–621.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hippocrates. 1939. Francis Adams (tr.), The Genuine Works of Hippocrates. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins.

  • Hirshbein, Laura Davidow. 2000. ““Normal’ Old Age, Senility, and the American Geriatrics Society in the 1940s.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 55: 337–362.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hockey, Jenny, James, Allison. 1993. Growing Up and Growing Old: Ageing and Dependency in the Life Course. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hopwood, Nick. 2009. “Embryology.” Peter Bowler and John Pickstone (eds.), The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 6: The Modern Biological and Earth Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 285–315.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hufeland, Christopher William. 1797. The Art of Prolonging Life. London: Bell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hunt, G. Halsey, Mohler, Stanley R. 1958. Aging: A Review of Research and Training Grants Supported by the National Institutes of Health. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

    Google Scholar 

  • James, W.T., McCay, C.M. 1944. “An Analysis of the Effect of Retarded Growth on Behavior in Dogs.” Journal of Comparative Psychology 37: 173–185.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jennings, Herbert Spencer Jennings. 1909. “The Problem of Age, Growth and Death. A Study of Cytomorphosis; Heredity.” Psychological Bulletin 6: 140–143.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jennings, Herbert Spencer Jennings. 1939. “Senescence and Death in Protozoa and Invertebrates.” Edmund Vincent Cowdry (ed.), Problems of Ageing. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, pp. 32–52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jennings, Herbert Spencer, Lynch, Ruth Stocking. 1928. “Age, Mortality, Fertility, and Individual Diversities in the Rotifer Proales Sordida Gosse. I.” Journal of Experimental Zoology 50: 345–407.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jr. Foundation, Josiah Macy. 1950. Twentieth Anniversary Review of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. Macy Foundation: New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jr. Foundation, Josiah Macy. 1955. The Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, 1930-1955: A Review of Activities. New York: Macy Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Katz, Stephen. 1996. Disciplining Old Age: The Formation of Gerontological Knowledge. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Katz, Stephen. 2005. Cultural Aging Life Course, Lifestyle, and Senior Worlds. Peterborough: Broadview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kermack, W.O., McKendrick, A.G., McKinlay, P.L. 1934. “Death-Rates in Great Britain and Sweden: Some General Regularities and Their Significance.” Lancet 226: 698–703.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuh, Diana, Davey-Smith, George. 1993. “When Is Mortality Risk Determined? Historical Insights into a Current Debate.” Social History of Medicine 6: 101–123.

    Google Scholar 

  • Landecker, Hannah. 2003. “On Beginning and Ending with Apoptosis: Cell Death and Biomedicine.” Sarah Franklin and Margaret Lock (eds.), Remaking Life and Death: Towards an Anthropology of the Biosciences. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, pp. 23–59.

    Google Scholar 

  • Landecker, Hannah. 2004. “Building ‘a New Type of Body in Which to Grow a Cell’: Tissue Culture.” Darwin H. Stapleton (ed.), Creating a Tradition of Biomedical Research: Contributions to the History of the Rockefeller University. New York: Rockefeller University Press, pp. 151–174.

    Google Scholar 

  • Landecker, Hannah. 2007. Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laubichler, Manfred D, Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 2006. “August Weismann and Theoretical Biology.” Biological Theory 1: 195–198.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lederer, Susan E. 1995. Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lowry, O.H., McCay, CM, Hastings, A.B., Brown, A.N. 1942. “Histochemical Changes Associated with Aging. III. The Effects of Retardation of Growth on Skeletal Muscle.” Journal of Biological Chemistry 143: 281–284.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lynch, Henry T. 1985. “Aldred Scott Warthin, M.D., Ph.D. (1866–1931).” CA-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 35: 345–347.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maienschein, Jane. 1978. “Cell Lineage, Ancestral Reminiscence, and the Biogenetic Law.” Journal of the History of Biology 11: 129–158.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maienschein, Jane. 1983. “Experimental Biology in Transition: Harrison’s Embryology, 1895–1910.” Studies in the History of Biology 6: 107–127.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maienschein, Jane. 1991. Transforming Traditions in American Biology, 1880–1915. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maienschein, Jane, Rainger, Ronald, Benson, Keith R. 1981. “Introduction: Were American Morphologists in Revolt?” Journal of the History of Biology 14: 83–87.

    Google Scholar 

  • Markel, Howard. 2004. “For the Welfare of Children: The Origins of the Relationship between U.S. Public Health Workers and Pediatricians.” Alexandra Minna Stern Stern and Howard Markel (eds.), Formative Years: Children”s Health in the United States, 1880–2000. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 47–65.

    Google Scholar 

  • Masoro, Edward J. 2002. Caloric Restriction: A Key to Understanding and Modulating Aging. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCay, C.M. 1933. “Is Longevity Compatible with Optimum Growth?” Science 77: 410–411.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCay, C.M. “America Is Learning What to Eat.” New York Times Magazine (March 28).

  • McCay, C.M., Crowell, Mary F. 1934. “Prolonging the Life Span.” Scientific Monthly 39: 405–414.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCay, C.M., Ellis, G.H., Barnes, LeRoy L., Smith, C.A.H., Sperling, Gladys. 1939. “Chemical and Pathological Changes in Aging and after Retarded Growth.” Journal of Nutrition 18: 15–25.

    Google Scholar 

  • McKellar, Shelly. 2004. “Innovation in Modern Surgery: Alexis Carrel and Blood Vessel Repair.” Darwin H. Stapleton (ed.), Creating a Tradition of Biomedical Research: Contributions to the History of the Rockefeller University. New York: Rockefeller University Press, pp. 135–150.

    Google Scholar 

  • Medawar, Peter Brian. 1940. “The Growth, Growth Energy, and Ageing of the Chicken’s Heart.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Series B Biological Sciences 129: 332–355.

    Google Scholar 

  • Metchnikoff, Elie. 1905. Old Age. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, pp. 533–550.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mills, Mara. 2012. “Trained Judgment, Intervention, and the Biological Gaze: How Charles Sedgwick Minot Saw Senescence.” Nancy Anderson and Michael R. Dietrich (eds.), The Educated Eye: Visual Culture and Pedagogy in the Life Sciences. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, pp. 14–43.

    Google Scholar 

  • Minot, Charles S. 1886. “The Physical Basis of Heredity.” Science 8: 125–130.

    Google Scholar 

  • Minot, Charles S. 1896. “On Heredity and Rejuvenation.” American Naturalist 30: 1–9.

    Google Scholar 

  • Minot, Charles S. 1897. “Cephalic Homologies: A Contribution to the Determination of the Ancestry of Vertebrates.” American Naturalist 31: 927–943.

    Google Scholar 

  • Minot, Charles S. 1901. “The Embryological Basis of Pathology.” Science 13: 481–498.

    Google Scholar 

  • Minot, Charles S. 1908. The Problem of Age, Growth, and Death: A Study of Cytomorphosis. London: J. Murray.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moreira, Tiago, Palladino, Paolo. 2008. “Squaring the Curve: The Anatomico-Politics of Ageing, Life and Death.” Body & Society 14: 21–47.

    Google Scholar 

  • Minot, Charles S. 2009. “Ageing between Gerontology and Biomedicine”.” BioSocieties 4: 349–365.

    Google Scholar 

  • Minot, Charles S. 2011. ““Population Laboratories’ or “Laboratory Populations’? Making Sense of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, 1965–1987.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42: 317–327.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nyhart, Lynn K. 1995. Biology Takes Form: Animal Morphology and the German Universities, 1800–1900. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oppenheimer, Jane M. 1966. “The Growth and Development of Developmental Biology.” Michael Locke (ed.), Major Problems of Developmental Biology, 25 vols. New York: Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Park, Hyung Wook. 2008. “Edmund Vincent Cowdry and the Making of Gerontology as a Multidisciplinary Scientific Field in the United States.” Journal of the History of Biology 41: 529–572.

    Google Scholar 

  • Park, Hyung Wook. 2010. “Longevity, Aging, and Caloric Restriction: Clive Maine McCay and the Construction of a Multidisciplinary Research Program.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 40: 79–124.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pauly, Philip J. 1996. “How Did the Effects of Alcohol on Reproduction Become Scientifically Uninteresting?” Journal of the History of Biology 29: 1–28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pearl, Raymond. 1922. The Biology of Death. Philadelphia: Lippincott.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prescott, Heather Munro. 2004. “‘I Was a Teenage Dwarf’: The Social Construction of ‘Normal’ Adolescent Growth and Development in the United States.” Alexandra Minna Stern and Howard Markel (eds.), Formative Years: Children’s Health in the United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 153–182.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richards, Robert J. 1992. The Meaning of Evolution: The Morphological Construction and Ideological Reconstruction of Darwin’s Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenberg, Charles E. 1987. Care of Strangers: The Rise of America’s Hospital System. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schäfer, Daniel. 2002. “‘That Senescence Itself Is an Illness’: A Transitional Medical Concept of Age and Ageing in the Eighteenth Century.” Medical History 46: 525–548.

    Google Scholar 

  • Selcer, Perrin. 2008. “Standardizing Wounds: Alexis Carrel and the Scientific Management of Life in the First World War.” British Journal for the History of Science 41: 73–107.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shock, Nathan W. 1951a. Trends in Gerontology. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shock, Nathan W. 1951b. A Classified Bibliography of Gerontology and Geriatrics. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shock, Nathan W. 1957. A Classified Bibliography of Gerontology and Geriatrics, Supplement One, 1949–1955. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shock, Nathan W. 1963. A Classified Bibliography of Gerontology and Geriatrics, Supplement Two, 1956–1961. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, C.A.H., Light, R..F, McCay, C.M. 1939. “Advanced Aged in Relation to Dental Caries in White Rats.” Journal of the American Dental Association 26: 1700–1703.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smuts, Alice Boardman. 2006. Science in the Service of Children, 1893–1935. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stieglitz, Edward J. 1941. “Aging as an Industrial Health Problem.” Journal of the American Medical Association 116: 1383–1387.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stockard, C.R. 1921. “Developmental Rate and Structural Expression.” American Journal of Anatomy 28: 115–277.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strehler, Bernard L. 1972. “Editorial.” Mechanisms of Ageing and Development 1: 1.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strickland, Stephen P. 1972. Politics, Science, and Dread Disease: A Short History of United States Medical Research Policy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Titcomb, John W., Cobb, Eben W., Crowell, Mary F., McCay, C.M. 1928. “The Nutritional Requirements and Growth Rates of Brook Trout.” Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 58: 205–231.

    Google Scholar 

  • Todd, T. Wingate. 1937. Atlas of Skeletal Maturation. London: Henry Kimpton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, B.S. 1994. “The Postmodernisation of the Life Course: Towards a New Social Gerontology.” Australian Journal on Ageing 13: 109–111.

    Google Scholar 

  • Warthin, Aldred Scott. 1929. Old Age: The Major Involution: The Physiology and Pathology of the Aging Process. New York: Hoeber.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weismann, August. 1889. Edward B. Poulton, Selmar Schönland, and Arthur E. Shipley (eds.), Essays upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems. Oxford: Clarendon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weismann 1893. W. Newton Parker and Harriet Rönnfeldt (tr.), The Germ-Plasm: A Theory of Heredity. London: Walter Scott.

  • Witkowski, J.A. 1980. “Dr. Carrel’s Immortal Cells.” Medical History 24: 129–142.

    Google Scholar 

  • Witkowski, J.A. 1985. “Ross Harrison and the Experimental Analysis of Nerve Growth: The Origins of Tissue Culture.” T.J. Horder, J.A. Witkowski, and C.C. Wylie (eds.), A History of Embryology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 149–177.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Nick Hopwood, Nathan Crowe, Stephen Katz, and Segwon Jung for their valuable comments. The current paper is a revised version of my manuscript presented at the 2011 MBL-ASU History of Biogerontology Workshop at Tempe, Arizona. I appreciate the critiques and suggestions by the attendees, including Jane Maienschein, Paolo Palladino, Hannah Landecker, Michael Dietrich, Manfred Laubichler, Lijing Jiang, Crispin Barker, and Maria Strecht. This work was supported by the New Faculty Award of the National Research Foundation of Korea.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore, 637332, Singapore

    Hyung Wook Park

Authors
  1. Hyung Wook Park
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hyung Wook Park.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Park, H.W. Senescence, Growth, and Gerontology in the United States. J Hist Biol 46, 631–667 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-012-9348-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-012-9348-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation