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The critic and the advocate: Contrasting British views on the state of endocrinology in the early 1920s

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References

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  5. E. A.Sharpey-Schafer, The Endocrine Organs: An Introduction to the Study of Internal Secretions, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans Green, 1924); Schafer defined endocrine organs as “the class of bodies which secrete special chemical substances into the blood for the purpose of influencing other organs” (I, 1). Merriley Borell has described in detail the evolution of the glandular and functional views of hormones in “Origins of the Hormone Concept: Internal Secretions and Physiological Research, 1889–1905,” Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1976. Swale Vincent, Internal Secretion and the Ductless Glands, 3rd ed. (London, 1925) points out that the glandular view, which he adopts, dates back to the mid-nineteenth century.

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  6. Swale Vincent, “The Present Position of Organotherapy,” p. 130; The Lancet, 2 (1922), 317.

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  11. The Lancet, 1 (1923), 207; cf. A. J. Clark, “Experimental Basis of Endocrine Therapy,” Brit. Med. J., 2 (1923), 50–53.

  12. Vincent, “The Arris and Gale Lecture”, p. 320; Ernest H. Starling, Principles of Human Physiology, 3rd ed. (London: Longmans Green, 1920).

  13. Addison's disease is associated with degeneration of the adrenal cortex, which produces steroid hormones; these were discovered in 1929.

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  22. C. L. Evans, quoted in Carleton Champman, “Ernest Henry Starling, Physiologist,” p. 1. Chapman's biography has provided me with information about Starling's activities as an educator and as a defender of physiology, as well as a good general account of his research.

  23. Starling, “The Harveian Oration,” p. 868.

  24. Ibid., pp. 869–870.

  25. Thomas Henry Huxley, “On Medical Education” (an address to the students of the Faculty of Medicine in University College, London, 1870), in Science and Education (New York, 1902), p. 263.

  26. Thomas Henry Huxley, “The Connection of the Biological Sciences with Medicine,” (an address to the International Medical Congress, 1881), in Science and Education, pp. 293–315.

  27. Ibid., p. 311.

  28. Starling, “Croonian Lectures,” p. 339.

  29. Richard M. Pearce complained to the President of Harvard University, Charles Eliot, “It will take a long time and much effort to overcome this attitude [the fundamental British idea that one should train the general practitioner and not the teacher or investigator] but I have hopes that the proper demonstration will do it.” Letter of May 18, 1920, University of London file, Rockefeller Archive Center.

  30. AbrahamFlexner, I Remember: The Autobiography of Abraham Flexner (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940), pp. 133–157. The actions of the Rockefeller Foundation at University College, London, in 1920 were those of Richard M. Pearce with the help in Britain of the endocrinologist T. R. Elliot, head of the medical “unit” at University College Hospital. See R. M. Pearce to T. R. Elliott in “History of the Rockefeller Foundation,” MS. in the Rockefeller Archive Center, XVI, 3996; quotations from this “History” and other material in the Archive are used by permission.

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  31. AbrahamFlexner, I Remember: The Autobiography of Abraham Flexner (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940), pp. 3930, 3936, 3937, 3939, 3940, 3944, 3945.

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  32. R. M. Pearce to Alan Gregg (Paris director of the Division of Medical Education, later Director of the Division of Medical Sciences), December 28, 1925, Rockefeller Center.

  33. See the comment on this by A. V. Hill to Richard M. Pearce, May 13, 1927, University College—Physiology File, Rockefeller Archive Center.

  34. “History of the Rockefeller Foundation,”, p. 3939. Starling in fact earned an M. B. at Guy's Hospital in 1889; Chapman, “Starling.”

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  36. Ibid. Louis N. Katz was another visitor in Starling's lab at this time who recalls his advice: “Analytic study tells what can happen; synthetic, what does happen; balance the two properly”; in “Some Cardiovascular Physiologists in the First Quarter of the Twentieth Century,” The Physiologist, 17 (1974), 102.

  37. Editors of the British Medical Journal, The Endocrines in Theory and Practice: Articles Republished from the “British Medical Journal” (London: H. K. Lewis, 1937).

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  1. Department of Biology, Boston University, USA

    Diana Long Hall

  2. Department of History, Boston University, USA

    Diana Long Hall

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Hall, D.L. The critic and the advocate: Contrasting British views on the state of endocrinology in the early 1920s. J Hist Biol 9, 269–285 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00209885

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