Scientific Imagination Research Articles

“I am not suffering any more…”: Tragic Potential in the Nineteenth-Century Consumptive Myth

Fall 2009 59 “I am not suffering any more…”1 : Tragic Potential in the Nineteenth-Century Consumptive Myth Meredith Conti It was impossible to realize that it was death that was approaching. The child felt no pain—only a tranquil, soft weakness, daily and almost insensibly increasing; and she was so beautiful, so loving, so trustful, so happy, that one could not resist the soothing influence of that air of innocence and peace which seemed to breathe around her. St. Clare in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)2 [T]he Bacillus tuberculosis of Koch must be admitted as perhaps the most powerful member of that dangerous class of microzymes which, in the form of spores, rods, and dots, more than decimate the “lords of the world.” Hugo Engel, “The Etiology of Tuberculosis” (1882)3 The paradoxical construction of consumption within overlapping social, literary, and medical spheres (particularly as manifested in the nineteenth century) has been the subject of numerous works in contemporary scholarship, most notably in Susan Sontag’s seminal text Illness as Metaphor (1977). As Sontag and other theorists and historians have convincingly argued, consumption was a seemingly kaleidoscopic phenomenon, a unique and shifting blend of fact and fiction within the collective cultural imaginations of several Western populaces (France, England, and the United States chief among them).4 The writings of poets, novelists, social commentators, and even physicians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries demonstrate that consumption was at once constructed as the disease of passionate lovers, the rich, the young, the white, the brilliant and poetic, the penitent sinner, and the chaste and innocent. Consumption’s conceptualized (and yet inseparable) bond with human sensibility and the self, as well as its mythologized capacity for bestowing painless demises upon its victims, made it an exceptionally popular Meredith Conti is a doctoral candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where she recently was named an Andrew Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellow. Her essay on the 2006 La Mama revival of Sam Shepard’s The Tooth of Crime was published in Journal of American Drama and Theatre (winter 2008). Conti’s book reviews have appeared in Theatre Journal, Theatre History Studies, and the New England Theatre Journal. A version of this article was presented at the Literature and Pathology Conference at the University of California, Irvine. 60 Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism literary device through the late nineteenth century. These same qualities, coupled with the iconic image of the delicate but expressive, pale but flushed consumptive body, made it an equally effective theatrical device in plays likeAlexandre Dumas fils’ adaptation of his own classic tale of love and consumption, La dame aux camélias (1852). The employment of consumption in mid-nineteenth century literature (including dramatic works) has frequently been labeled a melodramatic conceit. However, while the cultural construction of consumptive suffering undoubtedly can be read through the contextualizing lens of melodrama, such an appraisal disregards its equally, if not more prevalent, tragic tendencies. This study contends that the nineteenth-century romantic myth of consumption functioned within social, literary, and scientific imaginations as a generic bearer of tragedy.5 Indeed, as I will argue, the social standing and intellect of consumption’s mythologized victims, the reputed internality of the disease (as opposed to exterior, contagious threats like cholera), the distinctive patient/community relationship, and the dynamics of a consumptive death (including a tragic recognition) ably recommend the consumptive myth as tragic by design. The cultural linking of consumption with the ennobling genre of tragedy served a significant social purpose. In an era in which one English physician boldly calculated that one fourth of the European populace was consumptive, the disease’s tragic arch was employed to romanticize the deplorable, to rarify the commonplace, to validate the senseless, and to make legible the illogical.6 With Robert Koch’s landmark 1882 discovery of tuberculosis’s fundamental source, the airborne and contagious tubercle bacillus, the clinical tuberculosis began its prolonged supplanting of the mythologized consumption. Because of its tremendous social and aesthetic currency, the latter construction of tuberculosis resisted its ousting for decades; however, the tubercle bacillus impacted far more than the field of medicine before the most successful...

‘“The World-Renowned Ichthyosaurus”: A Nineteenth-Century Problematic and Its Representations’

I The first edition in English of Jules Verne’s Voyage au centre de la Terre (1864), published in 1871 as A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, like the original features an epic combat between two enormous marine reptiles but identifies one of them as “the world-renowned ichthyosaurus”. One of many alterations this British rendition imposes upon the second, expanded edition of Verne’s novel (1867), the spurious “world-renowned” was added not only to heighten interest, but also, quite likely, to appeal to nationalism since ichthyosaur fossils were first identified, described, and publicized in England. The story of early ichthyosaur discoveries has been told often enough, with recent stress upon the scientific acumen and potential, once downplayed because of gender and class, of fossil collector Mary Anning. At Lyme Regis, Dorset—the epicenter of paleontological shocks and excitement that radiated out to Britain and beyond—beginning in 1811 Anning discovered and excavated the first fossilized ichthyosaur skeletons recognizable as “an important new kind of animal”. Her once undervalued scientific credentials, however, represent but one of the ways in which the ichthyosaur of scientific and popular imagination swam in unsettled cultural waters. As the first large prehistoric reptile discovered and identified in England, the ichthyosaur (“fish-lizard”) built upon and furthered the British enthusiasm for natural history, geology, and fossil collecting that flourished especially in the first half of the nineteenth century. It also participated in the century’s contentious scientific-religious confusions about the earth’s age, the origins of species, the causes of extinctions, and how to comprehend ancient, gigantic animals unaccounted for by the Bible. This essay concerns how the nineteenth-century idea of the ichthyosaur “evolved”, changing as scientific discovery overlapped other cultural arenas. Fossilized ichthyosaur remains, initially almost inexplicable, haltingly but progressively took on the flesh of scientific knowledge about the form and behavior of the thing itself, while

The Rehabilitation of Common Sense: Social Representations, Science and Cognitive Polyphasia

ABSTRACTIn Psychoanalysis, its image and its public (PIP) Moscovici introduced the theory of social representations and took further the project of rehabilitating common sense. In this paper I examine this project through a consideration of the problem of cognitive polyphasia, and the continuity and discontinuity between different systems of knowing. Focusing on the relations between science and common sense. I ask why, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, the scientific imagination tends to deny its relation to common sense and believe that can displace it. I argue that the psychosocial dynamic between common sense and science is revealing of how heavily they are entangled in, and indeed indebted to each other. Even more, this dynamic allows for a full appreciation of what the theory of social representations calls states of cognitive polyphasia. Different systems of thinking and knowing do not displace each other but live side by side, co‐existing in a variety of ways, fulfilling different functions and answering different needs in social life.

Re‐visioning Science “Love and Passion in the Scientific Imagination”: Art and science

The often portrayed media image of the scientist is a rather strange one, grim‐looking scientists, usually male, poised beside incomprehensible instruments. It is little wonder that we encounter the stereotype of the bespectacled scientist; thick black rims, coke bottle lenses, roman sandals, dressed in lab coats, trousers up to their necks. A qualitative study designed to produce a series of visual and oral narratives based on the everyday lived realities of “the contemporary scientist” was undertaken. The study was a participative project in which a research team, including the project leaders Anne Noble and Michelle Lunn, together with research assistants and documentary photography students, worked alongside scientists to produce contemporary and deliberately challenging stories of “the scientist”1. In this paper, the most pervasive theme to emerge from the research, the link between art and science, is discussed.

Beyond the Bounds of Experience? John Tyndall and Scientific Imagination

Beyond the Bounds of Experience? John Tyndall and Scientific Imagination

Orang‐utans, Tribes, and Nations: Degeneracy, Primordialism, and the Chain of Being

This article explores how early anthropological writing (1830s and 1840s) on the nation faced the question: How natural was the nation? In exploring development of the nation from the tribe, colonial ethnological writers in Southeast Asia also explored the limits of primordialism. Debates on the humanity of the orang‐utan represented the search for these limits. The theme of degeneracy underpinned these connections. Degeneracy was a complex belief that connected the civilized nation to the savage tribe. Two methodologies underpinned this discourse: scientific rationality and imagination. Many contemporary studies focus on how scientific rationality created distance between the colonized and the colonizer. Imagination, however, also connected the civilized to the savage. These connections occurred amid the divisions caused by colonial rationality. This was a romantic view of identity, which connected identity to nature. In doing so, a question of primordialism emerged: What were the primordial limits of the nation?

Einstein: His Life and Universe

By the author of the acclaimed bestseller 'Benjamin Franklin', this is the first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available. How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson's biography shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom. Based on newly released personal letters of Einstein, this book explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk - a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate - became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe. His success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals. These traits are just as vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity, as they were for the beginning of the last century, when Einstein helped usher in the modern age.

The innovative medicines initiative (IMI): a shot in the arm for European diabetes research?

The academic community has been quite vocal in complaining about inadequate public funding for diabetes research in Europe [1], and rightly so! The intrinsic and relative lack of earmarked research funds (as compared with the USA) for this particular disease area is truly alarming [1], and our public authorities, both national and international, seem unwilling to rise to the challenge. But if we want our strident alarm calls to be seen as constructive criticism rather than complaints, we must be alert to new opportunities and support them if appropriate. While intended to address just a part of a greater problem, and with a relatively modest budget on the grand scale of things, the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI; for further information see: http://www.imi-europe.org/, last accessed in June 2007) may present us with just such an opportunity. There is growing concern that Europe is lagging behind its competitors in developing and launching new drugs. This is due in part to considerable under-funding within a fragmented environment characteristic of much European biomedical research [2]. To redress this imbalance, we need closer collaboration between the public (national governments and the European Commission) and private (pharmaceutical companies and small and medium enterprises) sectors, and much more money on the table. Certainly, any collaboration between academic and industry research groups must be part of a package that ensures academic independence and freedom from domination by the evil empire (‘Big Pharma’ in this particular context). If public funds are involved, as they will be for the IMI, a robust yet transparent competitive review process must be in place, and we should be on our guard to make sure the IMI gets this right. Equally important, any new initiative of this kind must be creative and dynamic in order to capture our imagination and—more important still— imaginative science, and this will involve breaking free from the stranglehold of Brussels and its cumbersome procedures. Let us review the plans in light of these expectations, if not requirements. To begin with, how did this all come about? The European Commission invited the Research Directors’ Group of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries (EFPIA) to develop a European Strategic Research Agenda. Its task was to identify bottlenecks in biomedical research and development (R&D) [2] and to come up with a plan, the IMI, in order to address them. The goal is to make Europe more competitive, and to benefit patients. The IMI has four major ‘pillars’:

Creating a Tradition of Biomedical Research: Contributions to the History of the Rockefeller University (review)

Reviewed by Matthieu Fintz Cedej, Cairo, Egypt Darwin H. Stapleton, ed. Creating a Tradition of Biomedical Research: Contributions to the History of the Rockefeller University. New York: Rockefeller University Press, 2004. 314 pp. Ill. $30.00 (0-87470-061-2). Why have so many outstanding scientists and discoveries been nurtured at Rockefeller University, and not elsewhere? This underlying question was addressed by a panel of researchers at the university's centennial observance of 2000–2001. Rockefeller University stems from the creation of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (RIMR) in 1901, which in turn was the fruit of a project launched in 1887 by Frederick T. Gates, a Baptist minister chosen by John D. Rockefeller Sr. to assist him in his philanthropic activities. The contributions of this volume shed light on the emergence of experimental medicine within the RIMR, the reshaping of biomedical practices that it induced, and its effect on the worldwide circulation of biomedical sciences. Although the ambition of the book is to encompass the whole of the twentieth century, its contributions particularly highlight the mandate of Simon Flexner, the first director of the RIMR (who served until 1935), and the period from 1935 to 1965, when the Rockefeller Institute was renamed Rockefeller University. Commenting on Flexner's stewardship, contributor J. Rogers Hollingsworth speaks of the Institute's structural "ambidexterity," which allowed it "to move in new directions at the same time that it was carrying on more established lines of research" (p. 23). With this in mind, it is easier to understand how the project of founding a scientific medicine, where "clinician-researcher" (p. 123) and "physician-scientist" (p. 133) pursued idiosyncratic, if not competing, paths, could have run up against challenges throughout the RIMR's history. Several contributors address the tension between the clinic and the laboratory. Olga Amsterdamska and Jules Hirsch explore this tension in the context of a variety of issues, from the hospital's architectural design to the indoctrination of its staff. Ton van Helvoort investigates the lengthy history of cancer induction by ultrafilterable agents and shows how Rockefeller researchers Peyton Rous and James B. Murphy had to persevere amid the negative attitudes of clinicians. Rous's and Murphy's different investigative styles are the subject of Carol L. Moberg's contribution. The scientific imagination encouraged by such ambidexterity is also evident in Alexis Carrel's gradual shift from experimental surgery to biology, according to Hannah Landecker, and in Paul Weiss's creation of a model of molecular ecology, as described by Sabine Brauckmann. The book highlights the Rockefeller Institute's organizational and material infrastructure, especially its laboratories, which became the cradles for "institutionalizing excellence" (p. 17). Chapters by Bert Hansen, Shelley McKellar, Hanna Landecker, and Aya Takahashi also reveal the context that fostered responses to social anxieties toward disease. Bert Hansen discusses the emergence of a "new journalism" in the late nineteenth century in the United States, which provided an infrastructure for disseminating the breakthroughs made at the RIMR—but he overlooks the phenomenon of the political messages conveyed in the cartoons of the time, a discussion of which could have helped readers to grasp their full [End Page 464] cultural meanings. Shelley McKellar's and Hannah Landecker's respective contributions on Alexis Carrel's work on blood-vessel repair and tissue culture also stress the media's role in generalizing Carrel's experimental work by shaping "patterns of public expectation, enthusiasm, and meaning" (p. 142), despite the numerous obstacles to transferring these innovations from the laboratory into clinical practice. Aya Takahashi revisits the biographical narratives of Hideyo Noguchi's death from yellow fever in Ghana in 1928 while he was investigating the disease, demonstrating the conflict between the popular hagiographic stories and the perceived scientific value of his work. Unfortunately, the book overlooks the importance of the RIMR and its partners' research in the tropics. Indeed, tropical areas often supplied (and still do supply) the...

Science Behind the Blinds: Scientist and Society in The Invisible Man1

This article examines The Invisible Man in the context of Wells’s educational and scientific writings of the early 1890s. The insular inhabitants of Iping village are unable to comprehend Griffin’s invisible persona—which reiterates the emphasis on the necessity of teaching scientific method in Wells’s educational journalism. The novel’s didactic purpose in highlighting the importance of broadening the public understanding of science is related to John Tyndall’s work on the scientific imagination. Wells’s position in The Invisible Man is also that scientists should endeavour to communicate their ideas as widely as possible. Griffin’s unwillingness to do so is understood in the context of ‘Popularising Science,’ an article in which Wells outlines the mistakes made by men of science who refuse to popularise their subject matter. Griffin’s eventual alienation from society is understood both as a consequence of the public inability to grasp scientific thinking and his own reticence to communicate.

What the Orthopaedic Doctor Needs to Know

The man of science in searching for the truth must ever be guided by the cold logic of facts, and be animated by scientific imagination. William J. Mayo1

‘Only connect’: the challenge of globalisation for the social sciences

This paper examines the challenge posed by globalisation to social scientific research and the curriculum. It does so primarily in the context of sociology and in reflection upon C. Wright Mills's argument for the ‘sociological imagination’. The latter has recently been taken up again in calls for a new public sociology and the present paper considers the new challenges that exist for the social scientific imagination in our current age. Arguing for a social science of connections, the paper suggests that a global social science is properly thought of as a series of local social sciences in dialogue with each other and open to transformation in the light of other perspectives and locations of knowledge. It concludes with a brief discussion of the implications for the curriculum.

The legacy of cultural landscapes in the Brazilian Amazon: implications for biodiversity

For centuries Amazonia has held the Western scientific and popular imagination as a primordial forest, only minimally impacted by small, simple and dispersed groups that inhabit the region. Studies in historical ecology refute this view. Rather than pristine tropical forest, some areas are better viewed as constructed or 'domesticated' landscapes, dramatically altered by indigenous groups in the past. This paper reviews recent archaeological research in several areas along the Amazon River with evidence of large pre-European (ca 400-500 calendar years before the present) occupations and large-scale transformations of forest and wetland environments. Research from the southern margins of closed tropical forest, in the headwaters of the Xingu River, are highlighted as an example of constructed nature in the Amazon. In all cases, human influences dramatically altered the distribution, frequency and configurations of biological communities and ecological settings. Findings of historical change and cultural variability, including diverse small to medium-sized complex societies, have clear implications for questions of conservation and sustainability and, specifically, what constitutes 'hotspots' of bio-historical diversity in the Amazon region.

Russian Physical Anthropology in Search of “Imperial Race”: Liberalism and Modern Scientific Imagination in the Imperial Situation

SUMMARY: Статья Марины Могильнер, основанная на малоизвестных архивных материалах и опубликованных антропологических исследованиях, опровергает представление об отсутствии развитой физической антропологии в дореволюционной России и предлагает свою версию истории этой дисциплины в российском контексте. Тезис автора заключается в том, что в Российской империи “раса” стала категорией оппозиционного либерального дискурса. Анализируя различные сложившиеся здесь антропологические школы, автор показывает, что лидирующее положение занимала ориентированная на Москву, имевшую антропологическую университетскую кафедру и Антропологическое общество, “школа” либеральной антропологии имперского разнообразия. Она ставила задачу описания “физических типов” в границах Российской империи и выявления их взаимосвязи и степени родства. Представители московской школы отвергали колониальную антропологию, настаивали на разведении понятий “расы” и “нации”, изучали как “великоруссов, малороссов и белоруссов” (не используя категорию “русские”), так и имперских инородцев, контролировали социализацию внутри российского полиэтничного антропологического сообщества таким образом, что маргинализировали, с одной стороны, национализирующие тенденции в антропологии, а с другой – социально-медицинские исследования. В статье рассматриваются научные взгляды и идеологическая деятельность лидера российской либеральной антропологии, Д. Н. Анучина, которого автор называет “русским Вирховым”. Также М. Могильнер подробно останавливается на антропологической классификации народов империи Ал. Ивановского и на целом ряде других антропологических проектов. Автор склоняется к выводу о том, что в российском случае либеральная антропологическая парадигма полностью исчерпала себя только в контексте советского эволюционистского проекта.

Life Extension Research: An Analysis of Contemporary Biological Theories and Ethical Issues

Many opinions and ideas about aging exist. Biological theories have taken hold of the popular and scientific imagination as potential answers to a "cure" for aging. However, it is not clear what exactly is being cured or whether aging could be classified as a disease. Some scientists are convinced that aging will be biologically alterable and that the human lifespan will be vastly extendable. Other investigators believe that aging is an elusive target that may only be "statistically" manipulatable through a better understanding of the operational principles of systems situated within complex environments. Not only is there confusion over definitions but also as to the safety of any potential intervention. Curing cell death, for example, may lead to cell cancer. The search for a cure for aging is not a clearly beneficial endeavour. This paper will first, describe contemporary ideas about aging processes and second, describe several current life extension technologies. Third, it analyses these theories and technologies, focusing on two representative and differing scientific points of view. The paper also considers the public health dilemma that arises from life extension research and examines two issues, risk/benefit ratio and informed consent, that are key to developing ethical guidelines for life extension technologies.

Ernest McCulloch: father of experimental haematology

Ernest McCulloch was attracted to medicine because of the independence the profession offered, and his colleagues say his independent nature—along with a flourishing scientific imagination—were key to his co-discovery of stem cells. “One of his characteristics is that he just doesn't accept dogma, he really actively resists it in fact”, said James Till, who shared the 2005 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research with McCulloch for their 1960 discovery. “He would ask awkward questions all the time and insist on getting an answer.”

Opening Access to Cell Biology

In October 2003, the inaugural issue of PLoS Biology hit desktops everywhere—demonstrating the power of open-access scientific publishing. Our hopes for our flagship journal were borne out with the publication of several articles (including [ 1, 2]) that captured the public and scientific imagination, triggering both widespread press coverage and impressive numbers of downloads and citations since their publication. We were obviously pleased by this response, but we were not surprised by it. Papers published by PLoS Biology are distributed under the Creative Commons Open Access license, which means they are immediately available online, free of charge, with no restriction on their use (as long as the original authors receive appropriate attribution). As a result, our papers are more accessible [ 3], more usable [ 4, 5], and, given initial evidence, more likely to be used than papers published under the conventional licensing schemes employed by subscription-only, pay-for-access journals. This initial success of PLoS Biology is a practical validation of our raison d'etre: to make primary research materials a public resource. The public (and public interests) pays for most of it, you do the work and write the papers, and everyone—you, your colleagues, your students, patients, and neighbors—should be able to use and benefit from the efforts they helped underwrite. The U.S. government and major funding agencies worldwide agree; since the launch of PLoS Biology, the NIH has started asking its funded researchers to deposit their work in public databases [ 6], while institutions such as the Wellcome Trust [ 7] and Howard Hughes [ 8] have enacted policies supporting open access to the scientific literature. In response, the scientific publishing industry is beginning to accommodate demands for open access. For example, The Journal of Cell Biology is complying with NIH requirements by making its articles freely available six months after publication [ 9]. Still others, such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, now offer a hybrid publication model, which allows authors to choose to have their work made available immediately upon publication [ 10]. We made a strategic decision that positioning PLoS Biology in direct competition with the most prestigious journals out there would improve public access to scientific material. This strategy is paying off. Although PLoS Biology is still in its infancy, we are now ranked as the leading general biology journal (with a preliminary ISI impact factor of 13.9), and we remain committed to publishing the best research in the biological sciences. Over the two years that we've been in business, we've accumulated a catalog of papers from across the spectrum of biological research: from molecular to whole organism, from empirical to theoretical, and from established fields such as cell biology and ecology to recently emerging disciplines such as systems biology, bioinformatics, and proteomics. In the PLoS Biology Cell Biology collection, available at http://www.plosbiology.org/cellbiology/, we highlight some of the seminal work we've published in cell biology and related fields, including primary research papers on stem cells, hair development, endocytosis and exocytosis, cohesins, and the cytoskeleton. Some of the authors of these papers chose to publish in PLoS Biology because they believe in open access; others decided to do it because they just wanted to publish in a great journal. You'll also find other types of articles in this supplement. Each research paper we publish is accompanied by a lay synopsis written by a science writer and approved by the paper's authors. Synopses add value to work published in PLoS Biology by making the research more accessible to students, scientists from other fields, and the public at large. Primers serve as an introduction to a complicated subject: the three primers in this supplement explore stem cell biology; for example, one accompanied the recent publication of Rendl et al.'s manuscript on hair follicle development. These primers are already being used in classrooms and lectures around the world. Finally, you'll find an essay written by one of our editorial board members—Dr. Tom Misteli—who describes his viewpoint on an important direction in aging research. We hope you find the research papers and other journal offerings in this collection interesting and useful. This collection is by no means the complete cell biology content of our journal, but we think these materials do a great job of demonstrating the value that PLoS Biology provides, which is a direct result of the efforts and commitment of our academic advisory board members and our authors. We hope that you will be inspired to read PLoS Biology regularly (you can sign up for regular eTOC alerts at http://admin.co.allenpress.com/admin/plosonline/webusers/public/form). We also hope that when it comes time to publish your best work, you'll consider PLoS. You'll be in good company!

Andrology: Pursuit of the Scientific Trinity

It is a great honor to accept the opportunity to serve the American Society of Andrology and the Journal of Andrology as the new Section Editor of the Journal of Andrology Lab Corner. Previous section editors have served the Journal extremely well, and I will strive to do so also. I would first like to thank the Co-Editors-in-Chief, Drs Matthew Hardy and Peter Schlegel, for this privilege. Within this brief editorial, I will take the occasion to 1) introduce myself, 2) provide a philosophical view of the Journal of Andrology Lab Corner focus during upcoming months, 3) provide a schematic vision for manuscript submission and review, and last, 4) implore you, the individuals of the Andrological Society, to share ideas and manuscripts that will serve our readers well. As a graduate student, I was fortunate to be mentored in Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology by Drs Fredrick Stormshak and Jerry Reeves at Oregon State and Washington State Universities, respectively. These individuals made great impressions on me in areas of scientific imagination, rigor, experimental design, and the use of statistical analytical tools. After my doctoral training, I found myself at a crossroad, desiring a quest for scientific knowledge and also the ability to translate these findings to practices that would impact patient care. Quite serendipitously, the opportunity arose to conduct a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr Donald P. Wolf at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center. This amazing experience profoundly molded my passion for basic science studies of gamete and embryo biology with an emphasis on assisted reproductive technologies (ART). At comple-

Imagining the sciences: expressions of new knowledge in the "long" eighteenth century

This work addresses the uncharted domain of science as literature, art and aesthetic expression. The volume looks at science as an artistic genre itself and contains essays on both the exploratory and reflective sides of imaginative science.

Spirometry, measurement, and race in the nineteenth century.

Race correction is a common practice in contemporary pulmonary medicine that involves mathematical adjustment of lung capacity measurements in populations designated as "black" using standards derived largely from populations designated as "white." This article traces the history of the racialization and gendering of spirometry through an examination of the ideas and practices related to lung capacity measurements that circulated between Britain and the United States in the nineteenth century. Lung capacity was first conceptualized as a discrete entity of potential use in the diagnosis of pulmonary disease and monitoring of the vitality of the armed forces and other public servants in spirometric studies conducted in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. The spirometer was then imported to the United States and used to measure the capacity of the lungs in a large study of black and white soldiers in the Union Army sponsored by the U.S. Sanitary Commission at the end of the Civil War. Despite contrary findings and contestation by leading black intellectuals, the notion of mean differences between racial groups in the capacity of the lungs became deeply entrenched in the popular and scientific imagination in the nineteenth century, leaving unexamined both the racial categories deployed to organize data and the conditions of life that shape lung function.