Gerald L. Geison

Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology: The Scientific Enterprise in Late Victorian Society

Despite great ferment and activity among historians of science in recent years, the history of physiology after 1850 has received little attention. Gerald Geison makes an important contribution to our knowledge of this neglected area by investigating the achievements of English physiologists at the Cambridge School from 1870 to 1900. He describes individual scientists, their research, the scientific issues affecting their work, and socio-institutional influences on the group. He pays special attention to the personality and contributions of Michael Foster, founding father of the Cambridge School. Fosters specific research interest was the origin of the rhythmic heartbeat, and the author contends that the school itself descended from and developed around this concern.Originally published in 1978.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Physiology in the American context, 1850-1940

A study of physiology in America, this places the development of American physiology in the cultural context of the period. Divided into three parts, the book covers social and institutional history; physiology in relation to other fields; and instruments, materials and techniques.

Research Schools and New Directions in the Historiography of Science

Conclusions, notamment terminologiques des differents articles parus dans ce numero de la revue consacre aux differentes ecoles de recherche a travers le monde

The experimental life sciences in the twentieth century.

Les sciences experimentales de la vie, particulierement la neurobiologie et la virologie, se sont considerablement developpees au XX e siecle, grâce a une meilleure connaissance des techniques et des methodes, et au progres technologiques des instruments

The varied lives of organisms: Variation in the historiography of the biological sciences

Abstract This paper emphasizes the crucial role of variation, at several different levels, for a detailed historical understanding of the development of the biomedical sciences. Going beyond valuable recent studies that focus on model organisms, experimental systems and instruments, we argue that all of these categories can be accommodated within our approach, which pays special attention to organismal and cultural variation. Our empirical examples are drawn in particular from recent historical studies of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century genetics and physiology. Based on the quasi-paradoxical conclusion that biological and cultural variation both constrains and enables innovation in the biomedical sciences, we argue that more attention should be paid to variation as an analytical category in the historiography of the life sciences.

Feature ReviewsLords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life. Robert E. Kohler

Forty years ago the American physiologist Wallace Fenn wrote that the whole history of physiology could be written in terms of new tools for research. In this superb book, Robert E. Kohler makes much the same point about the history of modem genetics-more specifically, Drosophila genetics in the United States from about 1900 to about 1945. Kohler is no stranger to readers of Isis. His many publications include two widely noticed books: From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry: The Making of a Biomedical Discipline (Cambridge, 1982) and Partners in Science: Foundations and Natural Scientists, 1900-1945 (Chicago, 1991). Those two books, like this new one, are richly informative and deeply researched; Kohler obviously loves digging in the archives. All three books are written in his lucid,

Did Conon of Samos Transmit Babylonian Observations

It is now well established that the astronomy of ancient Greece contains numerous elements of indisputably Babylonian origin the Babylonian eclipse records which appear in Ptolemys Almagest represent only one especially noteworthy example.1 But the exact pathway by which Babylonian astronomy was transmitted to the Hellenistic world has not yet been discovered. A number of attempts have been made to identify a transmitter, but Neugebauer has rejected as highly conjectural the seemingly promising candidates Callisthenes, Kidenas (or Kidinnu), Naburianos (or Naburianu), and Berossos.2 Indeed, it is Neugebauers position that the sources allow no answer to the question of transmission.3

Toward a History of American Physiology

The history of physiology in the United States is a vast and mostly uncharted domain. Even as the American Physiological Society (APS) enters its centennial year, we know much less about the history of physiology in this country than we do about such other disciplines as astronomy, chemistry, geology, and physics, or even such related fields as biology, biochemistry, and genetics.1 This volume seeks to fill part of that gap. It provides a sort of base camp from which further expeditions into the history of American physiology can be launched. As the first book-length study of the subject, it is bound to set part of the agenda for further research. It is therefore important to specify both what the volume tries to accomplish and what it leaves undone.