Making Medicine Scientific: John Burdon Sanderson and the Culture of Victorian Science (review)

Abstract

John Burdon Sanderson is usually remembered as one of the first generation of British experimental physiologists. He was professor of practical physiology and histology at University College, London, from 1870; the first Jodrell Professor of Physiology at the same institution from 1874; and the first Waynflete Professor of Physiology at the University of Oxford from 1882. He did much to introduce continental methods of laboratory teaching and research into Britain, not least as editor and one of the main contributors to the Handbook for the Physiological Laboratory, published in 1873. Three years later, prompted in part by his concern to promote the interests of physiologists against the agitation of antivivisectionists, he became a moving force in the establishment of the Physiological Society. These facts are routinely rehearsed in accounts of the establishment of physiology as a pure preclinical medical science in Britain, as is Burdon Sanderson's failure to establish a research school to rival that of his Cambridge counterpart, Michael Foster. But as Terrie Romano makes clear, this is to take a very partial view of Burdon Sanderson's work. Rather, his physiological work is better viewed as just one aspect of a life devoted to advancing the scientific basis of medical practice, which went well beyond any narrow disciplinary ambitions for physiology.