Blood clots: the nineteenth-century debate over the substance and means of transfusion in Britain

Historians have devoted little attention to blood transfusion in the nineteenth century. In part, this neglect reflects the presentist assumption that, before Karl Landsteiner's discovery of blood types, this practice would have failed too often to gain currency. Yet, transfusion was in fact the subject of much debate, and was actively practised, primarily by obstetricians on haemorrhaging women. Examining this practice through the conceptual lens of 'blood clots', both as noun and as observation, I follow transfusors' assumptions about the nature of the blood and the problem of its coagulation. Tracing the medicalization of ideas about blood by the century's end, I map this shift onto changing notions about why transfusion was performed, what substance was best employed, and what instrument best fitted that substance's movement into the circulation. In this way, 'Blood Clots' reconstructs the discourse surrounding transfusion, extending that discourse to material culture in order to illuminate the rationale that guided transfusion's practice in nineteenth-century Britain.     

'Science Fights Death': David Stark Murray,Science, and Socialism in Interwar Britain

The pathologist David Stark Murray (1900-77) was a founder and leading member of the Socialist Medical Association (SMA), an organization affiliated to the Labour Party and instrumental in shaping its health policy in the period up to 1945. Murray played a prominent role in the SMA as a member of its Executive Committee and as Editor of its journal MedicineToday and Tomorrow. This article examines Murray's popular writings about science during the interwar period, focusing on his emphasis on the relationship between, on the one hand, scientific knowledge and scientific method; and, on the other, a socialized health service and a socialist society.     

Benjamin Moore,Science, and Medical Planning in early Twentieth-Century Britain

Benjamin Moore (1867–1922), physiologist and biochemist, was an eminent member of the British scientific and medical community in the early twentieth century. As a founder and president of the State Medical Services Association (SMSA) from its establishment in 1912 until his untimely death in 1922, Moore was a prominent medical services activist and planner in a period of intense debate on health services reform. As a medical scientist, Moore was also a participant in the campaign by laboratory scientists to obtain a larger role in clinical education, research, and medicine in this period. This article examines the medical services activism and ideas of Benjamin Moore. In particular, it seeks to demonstrate how his health services proposals and those he influenced, including SMSA and Labour Party plans, sought to advance the interests of laboratory scientists.     

Testing testimony: toxicology and the law of evidence in early nineteenth-century England

Examines how, when confronted with a case of possible criminal poisoning, early-19th-century English toxicologists sought to generate and to represent their evidence in the courtroom. Contends that in both these activities, toxicologists were inextricably engaged in a complex communicative exercise. On the one hand, they distanced themselves from the instabilities of language, styling themselves as testifiers to fact alone. At the same time, they saw themselves as deeply implicated in the difficulties of forging a coherent signifying system out of a disparate collection of signs that in themselves bore no intrinsic meaning. The article suggests first, why criminal poisoning featured so prominently in the burgeoning legal literature on evidence, which provided the framework for expert testimony in English courts; next, that the scientific evidence offered by toxicologists in poisoning cases can be usefully understood as a form of (unstable) language; and finally, that this recourse to signs informed the toxicologist's encounter with another type of courtroom expert - the legal advocate - who was equally (though differently) interested in manipulating signs in order to construct (and deconstruct) legally sanctioned proof.     

Chemistry,microscopy and smell: bloodstains and nineteenth-century legal medicine

This paper analyses the development of three methods for detecting bloodstains during the first half of the nineteenth-century in France. After dealing with the main problems in detecting bloodstains, the paper describes the chemical tests introduced in the mid-1820s. Then the first uses of the microscope in the detection of bloodstains around 1827 are discussed. The most controversial method is then examined, the smell test introduced by Jean-Pierre Barruel in 1829, and the debates which took place in French academies and learned societies during ensuing years are surveyed. Moving to the courtrooms a review is conducted of how the different methods were employed in criminal trials. By reviewing these cases, the main arguments against Barruel's test during the 1830s are explored as well as the changes making possible the return of the microscope to legal medicine around 1840. By reconstructing the history of these three methods, the paper reveals how the senses of smell and vision (colours and microscopic images) were employed in order to produce convincing evidence in both academies and courts. The paper questions two linear master narratives that are organized in terms of progress and decline: the development of forensic science as a result of continued technological progress; and the supposed decline of smell in the history of the senses, particularly in the realm of chemistry and medicine.     

Before words: reading western astronomical texts in early nineteenth-century Japan

SUMMARY

In 1803, the most prominent Japanese astronomer of his time, Takahashi Yoshitoki, received a newly imported Dutch translation of J. J. Lalande's ‘Astronomie’. He could not read Dutch, yet he dedicated almost a year to a close examination of this massive work, taking notes and contemplating his own astronomical practices. How did he read a book he could not read? Following the clues Yoshitoki left in his notes, we discover that he found meanings not only in words, but also in what are often taken for granted or considered to be auxiliary tools for data manipulation, such as symbols, units, tables, and diagrams. His rendering of these non-verbal textual elements into a familiar format was crucial for Yoshitoki's reading, and constituted the initial step in the process of integrating Lalande's astronomy into Japanese astronomical practices, and the subsequent translation of the text into Japanese.     

In pursuit of precision: the calibration of minds and machines in late nineteenth-century psychology

A prominent feature of late nineteenth-century psychology was its intense preoccupation with precision. Precision was at once an ideal and an argument: the quest for precision helped psychology to establish its status as a mature science, sharing a characteristic concern with the natural sciences. We will analyse how psychologists set out to produce precision in 'mental chronometry', the measurement of the duration of psychological processes. In his Leipzig laboratory, Wundt inaugurated an elaborate research programme on mental chronometry. We will look at the problem of calibration of experimental apparatus and will describe the intricate material, literary, and social technologies involved in the manufacture of precision. First, we shall discuss some of the technical problems involved in the measurement of ever shorter time-spans. Next, the Cattell-Berger experiments will help us to argue against the received view that all the precision went into the hardware, and practically none into the social organization of experimentation. Experimenters made deliberate efforts to bring themselves and their subjects under a regime of control and calibration similar to that which reigned over the experimental machinery. In Leipzig psychology, the particular blend of material and social technology resulted in a specific object of study: the generalized mind. We will then show that the distribution of precision in experimental psychology outside Leipzig demanded a concerted effort of instruments, texts, and people. It will appear that the forceful attempts to produce precision and uniformity had some rather paradoxical consequences.     

How to put a black box in a showcase: History of science museums and recent heritage

Coping with recent heritage is troublesome for history of science museums, since modern scientific artefacts often suffer from a lack of esthetic and artistic qualities and expressiveness. The traditional object-oriented approach, in which museums collect and present objects as individual showpieces is inadequate to bring recent heritage to life. This paper argues that recent artefacts should be regarded as “key pieces.” In this approach the object derives its meaning not from its intrinsic qualities but from its place in an important historical event or development. The “key pieces” approach involves a more organic way of collecting and displaying, focussing less on the individual object and more on the context in which it functioned and its place in the storyline. Finally, I argue that the “key pieces” approach should not be limited to recent heritage. Using this method as a general guiding principle could be a way for history of science museums to appeal to today’s audiences.     

Between meaning culture and presence effects: contemporary biomedical objects as a challenge to museums

The acquisition and display of material artefacts is the raison d’être of museums. But what constitutes a museum artefact? Contemporary medicine (biomedicine) is increasingly producing artefacts that do not fit the traditional museological understanding of what constitutes a material, tangible artefact. Museums today are therefore caught in a paradox. On the one hand, medical science and technologies are having an increasing pervasive impact on the way contemporary life is lived and understood and is therefore a central part of the contemporary world. On the other hand, the objects involved in medical diagnostics and therapies are becoming increasingly invisible and intangible and therefore seem to have no role to play as artefacts in a museum context. Consequently, museums are at risk of becoming alienated from an increasingly important part of contemporary society. This essay elaborates the paradox by employing Gumbrecht’s (2004) distinction between ‘presence’ and ‘meaning’.     

Progress in phage display: evolution of the technique and its applications

Phage display, the presentation of (poly)peptides as fusions to capsid proteins on the surface of bacterial viruses, celebrates its 25th birthday in 2010. The technique, coupled with in vitro selection, enables rapid identification and optimization of proteins based on their structural or functional properties. In the last two decades, it has advanced tremendously and has become widely accepted by the scientific community. This by no means exhaustive review aims to inform the reader of the key modifications in phage display. Novel display formats, innovative library designs and screening strategies are discussed. I will also briefly review some recent uses of the technology to illustrate its incredible versatility.     

Publishing and the classics: Paley’s Natural theology and the nineteenth-century scientific canon

This article seeks a new way to conceptualise the ‘classic’ work in the history of science, and suggests that the use of publishing history might help avoid the antagonism which surrounded the literary canon wars. It concentrates on the widely acknowledged concept that the key to the classic work is the fact of its being read over a prolonged period of time. Continued reading implies that a work is able to remain relevant to later generations of readers, and, although some of this depends upon the openness of the original text, much more depends on the actions of subsequent publishers and editors in repackaging the work for later audiences.This is illustrated through an examination of the long publishing history of William Paley’s Natural theology (1802). Over the course of the century, Natural theology was read as a work of gentlemanly natural theology, as a work which could be used in a formal or informal education in science, and as a work of Christian apologetic. These transformations occurred because of the actions of the later publishers and editors who had to make the work suit the current interests of the literary marketplace. Comparisons are made to Constitution of man, Vestiges of the natural history of creation and Origin of species.