Abstract
Anyone beginning a survey of the literature on the history of general physiology finds a peculiar situation. Thomas S. Hall’s two-volume History of General Physiology provides solid coverage of the intellectual developments up to 1900 and indicates that general physiology has been a fundamental subject that has engaged the interest of leading figures from the beginnings of scientific and medical thought.1 However, general physiology after 1900 has received no such attention. Robert E. Kohler’s From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry—the only work to discuss early twentieth-century general physiology in a systematic fashion—explains the reasons for this contrast. For Kohler, American general physiologists were less significant as followers of a great intellectual tradition than as a small group of chemical biologists, largely independent of physiology per se, who had only middling academic success. In spite of a charismatic leader Jacques Loeb—and considerable foundation interest in the 1920s, general physiology was a minor specialty, never realizing the potential that chemical biology—reappearing as molecular biology—eventually possessed.2
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Notes
Thomas S. Hall, History of General Physiology, 2 vols. (Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1975 ). Originally published as Ideas of Life and Matter, 2 vols. ( Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1969 ).
Robert E. Kohler, From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry: The Making of a Biomedical Discipline (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982), pp. 108–114,286–323. Paul F. Cranefield pointed out the peculiar historical position of general physiology in his provocative “The Organic Physics of 1847 and the Biophysics of Today,” J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci. 12 (1957): 416.
Kohler Medical Chemistrypp. 306, 322–323.
Timothy Lenoir, The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology ( Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Reidel, 1982 ).
Ibid.; Rudolph Wagner Lehrbuch der speziellen Physiologie3d ed. (Leipzig, Germany: Voss, 1845); Claude Bernard Leçons sur les Phénomènes de la Vie Communs aux Animaux et aux Végétaux2 vols. (Paris: Baillière, 1878–1879); Harry Paul From Knowledge to Power: The Rise of the Science Empire in France 1860–1939 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 93–97.
Philip J. Pauly, “The Appearance of Academic Biology in Late Nineteenth-Century America,” J. Hist. Biol. 17 (1984): 378–382.
Ibid., pp. 387–389; on Frederic Schiller Lee’s later career at Columbia see chapter III by Alejandra Laszlo in this book. On the delicate questions raised by the interest of women in biology see Margaret Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 ( Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1982 ), pp. 73–99.
Charles Otis Whitman to William Rainey Harper, n.d. [1892?], Presidents’ Papers 18: 6, University of Chicago Archives, Chicago, IL; Whitman, Report of the Director, Marine Biological Laboratory, 4th Session,1891, p. 16; idem, “General Physiology and its Relation to Morphology,” Am. Nat. 27 (1893): 802–807. On Whitman see chapter VII by Jane Maienschein in this book.
On Jacques Loeb see W. J. V. Osterhout, “Jacques Loeb,” Biogr. Mem. Natl. Acad. Sci. 30 (1930): 318–401; Pauly Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987).
Pauly, Controlling Life,pp. 65–86. See, for example, the announcement in Anat. Anz. 7 (1892): 558.
Loeb to Nathan Zuntz, 23 September 1894, Dokumentensammlung Darmstädter, Handschriftenabteilung, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, West Berlin, FRG. This letter was written in German, except for the American colloquialism “Pull.”
Loeb, “The Biological Problems of To-day: Physiology,” Science 7 (1898): 154–156.
Max Verworn Allgemeine Physiologie: Ein Grundriss der Lehre vom Leben (Jena, Germany: Fischer, 1895); Loeb, “Einige Bemerkungen über den Begriff, die Geschichte und Literatur der allgemeinen Physiologie,” Arch. Gesamte Physiol. Mens. Tiere (Pfluegers) 69 (1897): 266267. On the implications of the cell-state concept see Paul Weindling, “Theories of the Cell State in Imperial Germany,” in Biology Medicine and Society 1840–1940ed. Charles Webster (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 99–155.
Loeb, “Bemerkungen,” 249, 259; idem, “Biological Problems,” p. 155.
See typescripts of fourteen lectures, dated January through March 1897, in Jacques Loeb Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, box 59, file “lecture material” (hereafter, Loeb Papers); Loeb to Charles Benedict Davenport, 17 February 1897, Charles Benedict Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia, PA.
Approximately one-fourth of Loeb’s The Dynamics of Living Matter (New York: Macmillan, 1906) discussed the physicochemical properties of protoplasm; the rest summarized the role of electrolytes in tissues, then discussed tropisms, fertilization, heredity, and regeneration. These were the subjects on which Loeb had worked since the late 1880s; while united by his interest in physical chemistry and experimental control, they were not explicitly related to his definitions of general physiology, and they certainly did not provide the basis for a systematic account of a discipline.
Loeb to Franklin Paine Mall, 2 February 1898,: Franklin Paine Mall Papers, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Department of Embryology Deposit, Allen Mason Chesney Medical Archives, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD.
Mall to Simon Flexner, 31 October 1902, Simon Flexner Papers, American Philosophical Society; on the Nobel nominations see table in Claire Salomon-Bayet, “Bacteriology and the Nobel Prize Selections, 1901–1920,” in Science, Technology, and Society in the Time of Alfred Nobel ( Oxford, UK: Pergamon, 1982 ), pp. 392–400.
Mall to Loeb, 23 January 1904, Loeb Papers. This action was apparently one of the stimuli for the 1904 revolt, led by Samuel J. Meltzer, against Russell Chittenden’s leadership of the American Physiological Society. See Mall to Loeb, 9 April 1905, Loeb Papers. Lee, who had translated Verworn’s book, abandoned general physiology around this time to study fatigue. See chapter X by Richard Gillespie in this book.
See, for instance, his address at the opening of his laboratory, “The Limitations of Biological Research,” Univ. Calif. Publ. Physiol. 1 (1903): 33–37. His collection of early papers, Studies in General Physiology,2 vols. (Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1905), had been in press since 1902.
Kohler, Medical Chemistry,pp. 149–154.
Mall to Loeb, 23 May, 6 November, 23 November 1909, Loeb Papers; Loeb to Anne Loeb, 6 July, 8 July, 11 July 1909, Loeb Papers.
Loeb to George Howard Parker, 11 March 1918, Loeb Papers.
Loeb to Thomas Hunt Morgan, 29 September 1917, Loeb Papers.
The prospectus Loeb originally sent to Flexner fluctuated in reference between a `Journal of Physico-chemical Biology“ and ”Journal of General Physiology“; he later noted that he adopted ”general physiology“ at the urging of ”friends“—almost certainly Flexner. See Loeb to Flexner, 18 April, 16 May, 24 May, 27 May 1918, Simon Flexner Papers, American Philosophical Society; Loeb to Filippo Bottazzi, 28 December 1920, Loeb Papers.
Loeb to Flexner, 7 December 1921, Loeb Papers.
General physiology was a good example of the use of a few European precedents—William Bayliss’s Principles of General Physiology and the status of individual German scholars such as Otto Warburg and Otto Meyerhof—to justify a major American effort.
Kohler, Medical Chemistry,p. 322.
Herbert Spencer Jennings to Raymond Pearl, 23 October 1909, 23 January 1910, Herbert Spencer Jennings Papers, American Philosophical Society; Jennings to Edwin Grant Conklin, 18 July 1909, Edwin Grant Conklin Papers, Firestone Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.
Sharon Kingsland, “Raymond Pearl: On the Frontier in the 1920’s,” Hum. Biol. 56 (1984): 15; idem, “A Man Out of Place: Herbert Spencer Jennings at Johns Hopkins, 1906–1938,” Am. Soc. Zool. (unpublished paper, December 1985 ).
Lee to Nicholas Murray Butler, 14 October 1919, Columbia University Central Files, Low Library, Columbia University, New York, NY; W.J. Crozier to Selig Hecht, 22 March 1926, Selig Hecht Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University (hereafter, Hecht Papers); Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Announcements, 1920–1930; H. B. Williams, “Physiology,” typescript, 4 p., June 1926, Dean’s Office Files, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY.
Crozier to Osterhout, “Friday” [June 1928], W.J. V. Osterhout Papers, American Philosophical Society; Lawrence R. Blinks to Pauly, 15 December 1985.
John F. Fulton, Physiology (Clio Medica V) (New York: Paul Hoeber, 1931), pp. 110–111; see Cranefield. Fulton, Physiology (Clio Medica V) (New York: Paul Hoeber, 1931), pp. 110–111; see Cranefield, “Organic Physics,” 410–411. On human science at Yale in the interwar years see J. G. Morawski, “Organizing Knowledge and Behavior at Yale’s Institute of Human Relations,” Isis 77 (1986): 219–242.
Albert P. Mathews, “The Mechanistic Conception of Life,” Scientia 5 (1924): 242–252; Ralph S. Lillie, “The Organism as a Whole, From a Physicochemical Viewpoint,” (review) J. Am. Chem. Soc. 39 (1917): 524; idem, General Biology and Philosophy of the Organism (Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1945); Lewis V. Heilbrunn, An Outline of General Physiology, 3d ed. ( Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 1952 ), p. 7.
Loeb to Svante Arrhenius, 8 January 1923, Loeb Papers.
Roger M. Herriott, “A Biographical Sketch of John Howard Northrop,” J. Gen. Physiol. 45 suppl. (1962): 1–15; Kohler, Medical Chemistry,p. 315.
Pauly’s interview with John Howard Northrop, 25 July 1977. Neither Blinks nor C. S. French, students in general physiology in the 1920s, recalled strong attachment to identification as general physiologists at that time; they considered the subject equivalent to biophysics, physicochemical biology, or cell physiology. Blinks to Pauly, 15 December 1985; French to Pauly, 15 May 1986.
The “loneliness” of general physiologists in the American Physiological Society resulted apparently from the organization of Society meetings around organ systems. See Heilbrunn to W. O. Fenn, 23 August 1945; Council Minutes, 12 March 1946; Meeting of the Committee on Training of Physiologists, 2 November 1946, all in APS Minute Books, vols. 12 and 13, American Physiological Society, Bethesda, MD. I am grateful to Toby Appel for these references.
On Mathews see S. S. Cohen, “Some Struggles of Jacques Loeb, Albert Mathews, and Ernest Just at the Marine Biological Laboratory,” Biol. Bull. Woods Hole 168, suppl. (1985): 127–136. On Northrop see Paul DeKruif, The Sweeping Wind (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1962), p. 32; Herriott, “Northrop”; Jacques Loeb to Leonard B. Loeb, 19 December 1921, 28 April 1922, Loeb Papers; “Report of the Committee on the Chair of Physiology” (typescript), 3 pp., June 1922, Dean’s Office Files, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY.
Gregory Pincus to Crozier, 12 November 1929, William John Crozier Papers, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, MA.
Hudson Hoagland and R. T. Mitchell, “William John Crozier: 1892–1955,” Am. J. Psychol. 69 (1956): 135–138; Microcosm (City College of New York Yearbook), 1913, p. 42; Crozier to Osterhout, Friday [June 1928], Parker to Osterhout, 6 June 1928, Osterhout Papers, American Philosophical Society; Pauly’s interview with B. F. Skinner, 16 July 1985, Cambridge, MA; Pauly, Controlling Life,pp. 183–200.
French, “Fifty Years of Photosynthesis,” Annu. Rev. Plant Physiol. 30 (1979): 1–2; Crozier to W. B. Cannon, 11 April 1940, Walter Bradford Cannon Papers, Harvard Medical Archives, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; Skinner, The Shaping of a Behaviorist (New York: Knopf, 1979); Hoagland, The Road to Yesterday (Worcester, MA: privately printed, 1974), pp. 60–62.
Pincus to Crozier, 12 February 1938, Crozier Papers; Ernest Wolf to Hecht, 27 October 1937, Hecht Papers; see James Reed, The Birth Control Movement and American Society: From Private Vice to Public Virtue ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1983 ), pp. 321–326.
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Pauly, P.J. (1987). General Physiology and the Discipline of Physiology, 1890–1935. 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_9
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