The Lure of Medical History: DR. E. B. KRUMBHAAR Exit Huebner's Tentamen: DR. W. J. HOLLAND.... George Bishop Sudworth: WILL C. BARNES...... Memorial of the Research Club of the University of Michigan; The National Arboretum; Mosquito Control; Award of the Langley Medal; Appoint- ments at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical University and Educational Notes... Discussion and Correspondence: Concerning "Species-grinding": DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN. Biology versus Mythology in a Criminal Court: PERCY VIOSCA, JR. Datum and Data: DR. Scientific Apparatus and Laboratory Methods: Directions for determining the Colloidal Material The Life History of Tapeworms of the Genus Meso- cestoides: DR. BENJAMIN SCHWARTZ. Acclimatiza- New York City: Grand Central Terminal. SCIENCE is the official organ of the American Associa- tion for the Advancement of Science. Information regard- ing membership in the Association may be secured from the office of the permanent secretary, in the Smithsonian Institution Building, Washington, D. C. THE advantages of a respectable acquaintance with the history of one's profession should be obvious to If this is so widely recognized, why is the average Fortunately, there are signs of a rift in the clouds, 1 From the laboratories of the Philadelphia General have made it produce valuable contributions to the subject. Who can estimate what pleasure and benefit Osler, for instance, got from medical history, and not the least of his contributions to the art in which he became world famous was in this domain. How can we best begin to acquire an interest in this topic, so fascinating if properly approached, so repelling as it is unfortunately often thrust at us? Certainly not by sitting down with ponderous dusty tomes, which dogmatically expound the general subject, determined to master them at the rate of so many pages a day or week. Here, above all, must we avoid what the French have so aptly termed "l'ennui de tout dire." Neither, except the teacher has the gift of tongues, can we get the spirit from systematic lectures on medical history. Such a prescribed course was given when I was an undergraduate by a lecturer on the subject who after about twenty lectures had not yet covered the Egyptian period! Small wonder that but few were found conscientious enough still to attend. Lectures on special topics, on the other hand, can be made most interesting as well as instructive. Dr. Charles Singer, one of the most eminent of English-speaking medical historians, gives such a course at the University College Hospital, London, covering different fields each year. When I was there three years ago, he was lecturing on the acute infectious diseases. The lecture that I heard, devoted to the history of syphilis, was attended by over one hundred students and physicians and was illustrated with numerous lantern slides and exhibits of interesting old books and prints on the subject. The elective course offered here by Dr. Packard last fall was along similar lines, but unfortunately his illness forced him to abandon it when he had only covered the subject of anatomy. If given next year, as I hope it will be, I should certainly recommend its selection as an elective by the senior students. Also it has no examinations! Now how can one best begin one's own acquaintance with a subject, from which, as in any other activity, one gets out about as much as one put into it? While each individual will work this out best according to his own temperament, most will find their interest most actively stimulated by selecting some topic, perhaps already suggested by an incident in their medical work and really learning a lot about that one subject or perhaps even contributing to the general knowledge of the topic. This of course requires that the topic selected be not too large. I have followed such a plan more than once to my own satisfaction. Having had to work with heart block as a second-year student, I chose the history of the subject when assigned a task for my undergraduate medical society (now alas defunct) and am confident that this was a potent factor in keeping me interested in this condition ever since. Your teachers are frequently dropping chance or purposeful remarks that will serve admirably as a catalyzer for any one on the alert to begin some reading of this kind. If still lacking a subject, an appendix to Garrison's "History of Medicine" suggests a number of such topics, sufficiently restricted to be mastered without exorbitant demands of time. For instance, with the inroads now being made on legitimate medicine by osteopathy, chiropraxy and the various isms, any one of us should be interested in learning about the quackery and superstitions of previous ages-yes, and having learned about them, be better able to cope with what later might become a very practical matter directly affecting the fatness of our own pocketbooks. He among you who has already picked out his own specialty-not always a wise thing to do at this stage of your career-is bound to have more satisfaction out of his life's work, as well as being a better hand at it, if he is well acquainted with its past. This research in itself will give him some of the pleasures of an investigator-for few of the specialties have had their history written up as such. Most of us at one time or another have wanted to be an obstetrician. What, for instance, is the history of this most ancient of specialties and how recently did it graduate from the midwife stage? We are all more or less hero-worshippers at bottom-a quality to be proud of rather than ashamed of—and our profession has had more than its share of heroes. Why not become more intimately acquainted with some of these giants? What can be more dramatic reading than the story of Walter Reed, yellow fever and the Panama Canal; Ronald Ross and the malarial mosquitoes or Bruce and the tsetse fly? Pasteur was recognized by French popular vote as a greater national hero than Napoleon and is now commemorated by a special set of French postage stamps in current issue, and yet the average medico knows much less of the life of this altruistic, constructive genius of a kindred profession, whose work influences practically every step he takes in his daily rounds, than of the egotistical, destructive general who crippled his country in acquiring personal fame. How many of us carry our acquaintance with Pasteur further than the pasteurization of milk or the treatment of rabies? Lister's epochmaking work was done during the youth of many still living and yet to how few of us is he anything more than the prefix to a mouth wash? Liebig, one of the discoverers of chloroform and a pioneer in many branches of physiological chemistry, exists to most of us as an "ad" for meat extract. 3 3 You, over there, who a few years ago were debating whether you would be a physician or a painter, why not find out how many men in the past have been both and what effect the combination had on them or, more broadly, what effect has art in general had on medicine? Such physician writers as S. Weir Mitchell, Oliver Wendell Holmes or poets such as Garth, Armstrong and Goldsmith should awaken our curiosity to know how many more have drunk of the Pierian spring as well as successfully followed some phase of medical art or science.2 If preventive medicine is to dominate the medicine of the next generation, surely he who is acquainted with its successes and failures in the past will be better equipped to adapt himself to and profit by the situation in the future. And so on through dozens of topics, too numerous even to hint at, that will suggest themselves as readily to you as I can. Break the ice, take the initial step and the rest will follow of its own impetus. As Emerson has said, "Take hold anywhere," and Garrison has suggested a number of such amusing lines along which medical students might break into medical history: The gold headed cane, St. Anthony's fire, the red and white stripes on the barber's pole, the duels of physicians, the blood suckers who attended duelists in the eighteenth century in order to suck their wounds, the wound drinks of the middle ages, the purgative inks of the Arabians, the anodyne necklaces, quassia and antimony cups of the past as compared with the medicated milks, iodated foods and diuretic wines of the moderns, cupping and leeching, the seton and the moxa, the sympathetic powder for healing wounds at a distance, the use of the bare foot as a thermometer in the middle ages, the introduction of Dover's powder by a buccaneer, the statues erected to the memory of great physicians and the streets named after them, the quacks of the eighteenth century, the medical graduation ceremony, the use of botanical gardens to teach materia medica, hex-doctoring in Pennsylvania, the medical superstitions and folk-ways of different races, any one of these subjects, taken at random as a starting point and e closely studied, will throw you into the full current of medical history. 2 Dr. Garrison furnishes the following additional names: (poets) Akenside, Beddoes, Blackmore, Bridges, Campion, Crabbe, Haller, Head, Kussmaul, Littré, Lodge, f McCrae, Record, Ronald Ross, Saint Beuve, Schiller, Sherrington, Thayer, Volkman, Werlhof; (artists) John Bell, Bright, Seymour, Hayden, Hodgkin, Leidy, Leonarde, Lister, Pasteur; (musicians) A. de Bary, Borodin, Sir Robert Christian, J. W. Farlow, A. G. Gerster, Hemmeter, Hermann, Jacobson, Kahlbaum, Duke Karl Theodor, J. Loeb, Naunyn, Max Schultze. f =t J. Am. Med. Assn., 1916, LXVI, 319-324. Soon the desire will come to piece together the fragments thus acquired, or to the methodical mind a preliminary survey of the whole field will perhaps be a first requisite. Then such readable and reasonably brief outlines as Osler's "Evolution of Modern Medicine," Seelig's "Lectures," Dana's "Peaks," Park's "Epitome" or Libbey, Withington, Baas or Dunglison-all one-volume works can be read with profit, even though it may not be possible to read any one from cover to cover. Garrison's history is. in a class by itself, comprehensive, accurate, concise, including all medical history in one volume, and yet, mirabile dictu, easy and pleasant reading. It is a model of what such things should be and is by all odds the first book on the subject for a student to buy. The larger more detailed histories, Neuburger, Pagel, Haeser, Hirsch, Daremberg, etc., all in foreign languages, can be considered "for reference only" by us amateurs (in both senses) of the subject. On the medical history of our own country, Packard's book is authoritative and I understand that there is soon to be another edition; and in the history of medical history, the seventeenth century works of Le Clerc and Freind (the two first on the subject) are quaint and interesting. Finally let me repeat that while I am suggesting nothing that will help pass your examinations or perhaps even attract patients when you first hang up your shingle, I can assure you that the development of a love for and an acquaintance with the history of your profession will bring you something much more profitable in the long run-a capacity to advance further in that profession and a greater personal satisfaction in your work and play, both while so doing and after the more active days are past. A SHORT READING LIST Shorter Works: Camac, C. N. B. Epoch-making Contributions to Medicine, Surgery and the Allied Sciences. Saunders, 1909. Seelig, M. G. Medicine-An Historical Outline. Williams & Wilkins, 1924. Osler, Wm., Sir. Evolution of Modern Medicine. Yale University Press, 1921. Withington. Medical History from the Earliest Times (Short and only to 19th century). London, "The Scientific Press,'' 1894. Libbey, W. The History of Medicine. Houghton Mifflin Co., 1922. Park, R. Epitome of the History of Medicine. F. A. Davis, 1901. Dunglison, R. History of Medicine. Philadelphia, 1872. Dana, C. L. The Peaks of Medical History. Hoeber, 1926. Cumston, C. G. The History of Medicine from the time of the Pharaohs to the end of the 18th century. 1926. Complete Histories: Garrison, F. H. History of Medicine, 3rd Ed. Saunders, 1924. Packard, F. A. History of Medicine in the U. S. Neuburger. History of Medicine (2 Vols. and incom- Meunier. Histoire de la Médecine. Paris, 1924. Haeser. Geschichte der Medizin, 3 Vol. 3rd Ed. Jena, 1875. Pagel. Geschichte der Medizin. Berlin, 1898 (revised, Sudhoff—1915). Freind, J. The History of Physick. London, 1725. Isis. The Journal of the History of Science Society. G. Sarton, Editor. Harvard. Power & Thompson. Chronologica Medica. London, Bale & Daniellson, 1923. EXIT HUEBNER'S TENTAMEN! ALL lepidopterists having a thorough knowledge of the nomenclature of their science will welcome Opinion No. 97, recently handed down by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. (See SCIENCE, LXV, p. 301.) This opinion should terminate for all time the contention concerning Hübner's "Tentamen," long ago thought to have been settled, but which recently has been revived in certain quarters. Hübner's "Tentamen" is a small quarto sheet issued by Jacob Hübner, of Augsburg. The title is: "Tentamen determinationis digestionis atque denominationis singularum stirpium Lepidopterorum, peritis ad inspiciendum et dijudicandum communicatum, a Jacobo Hübner." Literally translated, the title is "An attempt to fix, arrange, and name the individual races of Lepidoptera, submitted by Jacob Hübner to experts for examination and the expression of an opinion." At the end the author adds a warning, "Ne expectet quis, ordinem hunc nullam amplius correctionem esse desideraturum, verumtamen magis satisfaciet necessitati, quam prævius quivis. Familiis indicandis supersedere malui." This warning says: "Let no one expect that this arrangement makes further correction undesirable, but it will more nearly satisfy necessity than anything which has gone before. I have preferred to place [it, i.e., 'the order of Stirpes'] above the families, which are to be indicated." In order to understand what Hübner meant it is necessary to understand the system of classification which he employed. It was an advance upon that originally proposed by Linnæus. Linnæus in his "Systema Natura" established among the insects the order Lepidoptera to include the butterflies and moths. Linnæus set up only three genera: Papilio, Sphinx, and Phalana. Into these three genera he put five hundred and thirty-five species: one hundred and ninety-two species under Papilio; thirty-eight species under Sphinx, and three hundred and five species of moths under Phalana. Linnæus himself recognized the incongruities arising from thus throwing together a multitude of forms into but three categories, or genera, as he called them. He attempted to bring about a subdivision by resorting to quadrinomials, intercalating fanciful and grotesque subdivisions, which exact systematists with more time and material at their command later have discarded, or modified, adopting some of the names he employed as generic and reducing his quadrinomials to binomials. But this does not concern us at this point. The system adopted by Hübner involved a number of subdivisions. It is as follows: c. He subdivided the Tribus into Stirpes (Germanice Stämme; Anglice races, or clans) = FAMILIES, as now used. d. He subdivided the Stirpes or races, into Familia (Germanice Familien; Anglice families) = SUBFAMILIES, as now used. e. He subdivided the Families into Coitus (Germanice Vereine; Anglice unions) = GENERA in the Linnæan sense. f. He subdivided the Coitus into Genera (Germanice Arten; Anglice kinds, or species) = SPECIES in the Linnæan sense, and as now employed. he in The "Tentamen" was issued as a preliminary inquiry, bearing upon a work contemplated by the author to be issued in the future. This work is the "Verzeichniss bekannter Schmettlinge," published by Hübner in 1816. In its production he largely followed the arrangement of the "Stirpes" suggested by him in the "Tentamen," as he tells us in his introduction, adding: "I made known [the Tentamen] to the end that it might be examined and passed upon by experts before I adopted it." On examining the "Verzeichniss" we find that he employs the "Stirpes" names, many of which he had suggested in the "Tentamen." He adds a great many "family-names," as promised in the warning at the foot of the "Tentamen." The arrangement of the butterflies in the "Tentamen" is as follows: LEPIDOPTERA Phalanx I. Papiliones I. Nereides Nerëis Polymnia. V. Hamadryades-Hamadryas Jo. VI. Najades-Najas Populi. VII. Potomides-Potamis Iris. VIII. Oreades-Oreas Proserpina. Tribus II; gentiles I. Rustici-Rusticus Argus. II. Principes Princeps Machaon. III. Mancipia-Mancipium Brassica. IV. Consules-Consul Fabius. V. Urbani-Urbanus Malvæ. Turning from the "Tentamen" to the "Verzeichniss" we find under Stirps I, Nereides, which he cites as equivalent to Heliconii Linn., that the name Nerëis nowhere occurs! We find the names Hymenitis, Ithomia, Oleria, Eueides, Mechanitis, etc. The specific name polymnia Linnæus given in the "Tentamen," in the "Verzeichniss" appears under the genus (Coitus) Mechanitis, and there it has remained for one hundred and ten years since Hübner published the "Verzeichniss," as every systematist knows. Taking up Stirps II proposed in the "Tentamen," the Limnades, we find that the generic (coitus) name Limnas does not anywhere occur in the "Verzeichniss," but we find under the Limnades such wellknown generic names as Amauris, Hestia, Euploa, Anosia, etc. The species Chrysippus L. is found in the genus Euploa! Stirps III of the "Verzeichniss" is not mentioned in the "Tentamen," but includes such genera as Eurybia, Echenais, Mesosemia, Charis, Euselasia, etc. = Stirps III represents what we now know as the Erycinida, or, as some would have it, the Riodinida. Stirps IV of the "Verzeichniss," Stirps III of the "Tentamen," contains the so-called Lemoniades. The genus Lemonias is not given under the Lemoniades! We, however, find the genus Melitaea. The butterfly which in the "Tentamen" appears as Lemonias maturna in the "Verzeichniss" is Melitaea maturna Linnæus, and under this name has been familiar to every German schoolboy from the days of Hübner to the present time. Stirps V in the "Verzeichniss" is equivalent to Stirps IV of the "Tentamen" and bears the same name, Dryades. Under this heading we find the genera Phyciodes, Brenthis, Argynnis, Colanis, etc. Under the genus (coitus) Argyronome we find A. paphia Linn. as a species. Nowhere does the genus (coitus) Dryas appear! Stirps VI of the "Verzeichniss" is equivalent to Stirps V of the "Tentamen," bearing the same name, Hamadryades. No genus Hamadryas appears anywhere in the "Verzeichniss," but among the genera enumerated under the Hamadryades are Vanessa, Pyrameis, Precis, Junonia, etc. The species indicated in the "Tentamen" as Hamadryas Io is found as No. 22 under the genus Inachis. And so the student may go on throughout the entire list, discovering the fact that the apparently generic names prefixed to the species, which are cited in the "Tentamen," do not occur at all in the "Verzeichniss," of which, as Hübner tells us, the "Tentamen" was the foundation. Now what is the explanation of this fact? In order to understand it we must endeavor to put ourselves in Hübner's place and follow the workings of his mind at the time he was engaged in his studies. At the moment he sketched the "Tentamen" for submission to his learned friends and correspondents the matter immediately before him was not the setting up of genera, but the creation of what he calls Stirpes. He was seeking for a natural subdivision of the lepidoptera into Stirpes, or what we now call families. He was giving no thought whatever to the minor subdivision into genera or Coitus (Vereine) as he called them. In the "Tentamen" he proposes a series of Stirpes or family-names. In order to visualize to his correspondents what he had in mind he took the specific names of a number of well-known species and prefixed to these specific names the name of the Stirps (not of the genus) into which he proposed to put the insect. Any man who simply confines his attention to the "Tentamen" and fails at the same time to take into consideration the "Verzeichniss" is certain to go astray, as has unfortunately been the case with some recent writers. It is as unfortunate |