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Home , Edward Drinker Cope, Joseph Leidy, Wistar Institute

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Joseph Leidy

Joseph Leidy (1823-1891) Whenever a body of specialists is established, it seems inevitable for some Photograph by M. P. Simons worthy people to be unaccountably excluded. Although Bache endeavored Professor of (1853-1891) and director of the department of biology not to become embroiled in personal rivalries, he found himself on the (1884-1891). Studied medicine at the defensive and confessed: "I have been obliged to admit-that there are University of (M.D. some men too mean to bring into our Academy.'" The reverse problem 1844). Pioneer of vertebrate in America, he corresponded with Darwin seems to have occurred in the form of opposition in some quarters to the whose Origin of Species was cor­ election of Robert Empie Rogers, professor of chemistry and dean of the roborated by Leidy's own research which medical faculty, as one of the fifty founding members of the National ranged over a wide variety of subjects and resulted in over 600 publications. Academy of Sciences. He was one of four brothers associated with the Identified the parasite Trichina spiralis Academy and the University, another of whom was the founder of the in pork. Received the Lyell medal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yet another Pennsylvanian, GeologicalSociety of London (1884) and the Cllvier medal of the Institute de included through no effort of his own, was Joseph Leidy, professor of France (1888). anatomy for 38 years in the medical school. Nothing could have been more foreign to the of the man generally regarded as the founder of American vertebrate paleontology than the political maneuvering of the Lazzaroni group. With his dedication to research and the natural world, Leidy was indifferent to reputation and declared himself "too busy to theorize or to make money.'" On hearing of his pJection to the National Academy of Sciences, he commented that it was "an illiberal clique, based on Plymouth Rock." Perturbed by the'exclusion of Frederick Hayden, professor of geology at the University, he consoled his friend and collaborator with the observation: "I think it will turn out to be a grand humbug, and I intend to have nothing to do with it.'" Such political concerns lay outside the all-encompassing scientific interests of an investigator who wrote to friends on the question of priority for a geological observation: "I am too little ambitious to give myself any trouble about such a case as that you mention. Even should anyone pass unnoticed more important things I may have done, I shall feel no regret about the matter.'" The University of Pennsylvania provided this unassuming scientist with the setting in which he pursued his studies for almost half a century. His contentment appears in his unwillingness to move when, on the death of Louis Agassiz, he was offered the Hersey professorship at Harvard. '0 GLADLY LEARN AND GLADLY TEACH

Leidy was considered the most prominent naturalist at the time, and a special emissary was sent to on this occasion. Leidy gently persisted in declining the position and, soon afterwards, accompanied the disappointed Cambridge courier to the door of his house in Filbert Street. Stepping outside, he scraped a piece of moss from the wall and examined it closely, reportedly adding: "When I have exhausted al1 the possibilities found here at my own front door I may reconsider my refusal.'" Joseph Leidy's long association with the University of Pennsylvania began as a student. After receiving his medical degree in 1844, he became the assistant of his preceptor, Paul B. Goddard, and also worked in the laboratory of Robert Hare, the distinguished chemist. A few years later, he served as prosector to the professor of anatomy, William Edmonds Homer. Apart from one brief period as demonstrator of anatomy at Franklin Medical College, Leidy remained at the University of Pennsylvania for the rest of his life. As a result of strong support from students and faculty, he was elected chairman of anatomy on Horner's death in 1853. He was well qualified to succeed the distinguished anatomists Shippen, Wistar, and Physick in one of the two senior chairs of the medical school; at thirty-one, his youthfulness was another point in common with the earlier professors of anatomy. In one respect, however, Leidy was an exception. After a few years in private practice, he abandoned medicine altogether in order to devote himself entirely to his researches. William Hunt, who was his demonstrator for ten years, considered it a great tribute to Leidy's personal qualities and his teaching ability that "for thirty-eight years he filled without objection a practical chair in an essential1y practical' medical school for science and science alone.". In 1891, Provost William Pepper declared: "In the death of Joseph Leidy ... the medical profession in America lost its most loved and honored member, and American science its most illustrious representative.'" At the time, an amused observer commented that since Leidy had not practiced medicine for the past forty-five years "it was rather like telling an assembly of al1 the tanners of the that, in the death of General Grant, they had lost the most beloved member of the trade.'" In later years, Leidy recal1ed that Sir Charles Lyell, author of the influential Principles of Geology, had urged him to give up medicine and concentrate on research. In 1884, Leidy was awarded the Lyel1 Medal by the Geological Society of London, at which time he commented on the advice he had received from the award's namesake: "I feel as if Sir Charles himself was expressing satisfaction in consideration of my having complied with his wish, when thirty years ago in my Dwn horne here he said he hoped I would devote my time to palaeontology instead of to medicine."· Leidy was characterized at the time of the award as "careful in observing, accurate in recording, cautious in inferring." An enemy of speculation, he PIONEERS OF AMERICAN SCIENCE .1

favored scrupulous amalgamation of accurate data over conjectures based on inadequate evidence. For this reason, he was often called the Cuvier of America and, appropriately enough, he received the medal commemorating the great French zoologist from the Institute de France shortly before his death.'o The thoroughness and objectivity so typical of his life's work were already apparent in his childhood interests. As a boy, Leidy was fascinated by all aspects of nature and showed an unusual gift for depicting the minutest of observed details. While growing up in Philadelphia, he would often play truant from school where he was bored by study of the classics. He found more to interest him while wandering on the banks of the SchuylkUl and the Wissahickon, collecting specimens of stones, plants, and insects. At ten his beautiful freehand drawings of shells led his father, a Philadelphia hatter, to conclude that his second son might consider being a sign painter when he grew up. Joseph's stepmother, to whom he always recognized a debt of gratitude, had other ideas on the subject, and the young Leidy proceeded to study medicine instead. During his early years on the medical faculty, Leidy's skill as a draftsman proved advantageous for both him and the school. In 1851, he and George B. Wood went to William Wood Gerhard (1809-1872) Europe where Leidy assembled models and preparations and made Photograph by M. P. Simons drawings to illustrate Wood's lectures. As the newly elected professor of Medical alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania and lecturer in the insti­ theory and practice, Wood was responsible for bringing medicine at the tutes of medicine (physiology) where he University out of the eighteenth century. From the first, Leidy's own introduced his students to the study of scientific publications were illustrated by beautiful plates reproduced from disease based on clinical diagnosis and postmortem examinations (1838-1872) his detailed drawings. After receiving his MD. (1830), he spent Joseph Leidy's situation as a scientist with a faculty appointment-a two yenrs in Paris nnd collected material man trained as a physician, but whose financial support came entirely from on the pathology of smallpox, pneumonia his teaching position-pointed towards future developments in science and in children, cholera, and tuberculous meningitis. His most famous publication academic medicine. On the other hand, the encyclopedic range of his wns on typlJUs, which he distinguished scientific interests made him one of the last of that breed of nineteenth for the first time from typhoid fever century naturalists who regarded the whole of nature as their hunting (1837), and his papers on the diseases of the chest (1842) remained classics for ground. Leidy was in the first place a comparative anatomist: his medical many years. thesis of 1844 was on the of the eye of vertebrated animals. The following year, he read a paper on the anatomy of the winkle and one on mollusks before the Boston Society of Natural History and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. He was promptly elected to each at the age of twenty-two. In a textbook, An Elementary Treatise on Human Anatomy, first published in 1861, the anatomical nomenclature was simplified for the benefit of students by the substitution of English terms for the traditional Latin. As usual, the work was illustrated with Leidy's original drawings of his own dissections. Although he was neither a mineralogist nor a botanist and published nothing on these subjects, he nonetheless devoted considerable time to these aspects of natural history. Every Sunday found him spending a few 92 GLADLY LEARN AND GLADLY TEACH

hours in the mineral cabinet of the Philadelphia lawyer Richard Vaux, who claimed to be the only American to have danced with Queen Victoria. At the in Philadelphia, Leidy recognized that a mineral labeled as beryl was, in fact, an unusual topaz of considerably greater value. He later detected a bogus specimen of quartz in the University Museum.l1 Throughout his life, specimens of all kinds were sent to him for identification, and it was not uncommon for ladies of fashion to visit him to ask his opinion on their gems. A collection of precious stones which he brought back with him from Europe was sold during his lifetime, and the gems in his possession at the time of his death were purchased by the government for $2,800 and preserved in the National Museum in Washington. Another subject of great interest to Leidy was helminthology-the study of worms-and flukes and thread worms were often sent to him'by his fellow researchers.12 In 1847, Leidy made an observation in this area which proved to have considerable medical significance: he provided the earliest indication of the source of trichinosis in man. This parasitic organism had been discovered in humans the previous decade and named by in London. When Leidy identified some whitish specks in a piece of ham as the cysts of Trichina spiralis, he also had a short-lived effect on the exportation of American pork. 'Though the most ancient of lawgivers declared swine to be unclean," observes one of Leidy's memorialists, "it does not seem supposable that he anticipated Leidy and knew that the pigs of his time were infested by this microscopic parasyte."13 The medical implications of the observation were not Robert Hare (1781-1858) immediately so clear as they were later to become. Leidy terminates an by John Neagle, otherwise impersonal article on the subject in Pepper's System of Practical finished by I. L. Williams Medicine with the telling remark: "The writer may add that it was in a Professor of chemistry (1818-1847). Born in Philadelphia, he showed interest in slice of boiled ham, from which he had partly made his dinner, that he first chemistry at an early age. Invented the discovered trichina in the hog."B oxyhydrogen blowtorch (1801), as well Around the time he was appointed to the chair of anatomy, Leidy was as improving the voltaic pile and finding a process for denarcotizing laudanum. A beginning to be identified with ideas on . With his almost cannon made by him for demonstrating pathological distaste for controversy, and his inability to make enemies, the explosiveness of hydrogen and oxygen he was particularly hurt by the way his research was used against him for continued to be used for many years in chemistry classes at the University. Hare political ends. "All those things which you would think would recommend wrote moral essays under a nom de plume me to the trustees my opponent is using against me," he wrote to a friend and, in his last years, became interested on the subject of his proposed election. "1 am shamefully abused as being in scientific evidence on spiritualism, publishing his Experimental Investiga­ an atheist, an infidel. It has been positively asserted that I seek to make tion of the Spirit Manifestations in 1855. proselytes to infidelity, and that in my writings I have tried to prove that geology overthrows the Mosaic account of the creation. You may judge my feelings."15 In preparing The Origin of Species, was able to draw upon a body of information supplied to him by American investigators, notably his correspondent Asa Gray of Harvard. Fully expecting his book PIONEERS OF AMERICAN SCIENCE 93

to create an unprecedented furor, Darwin documented his theories to the fullest possible extent. Leidy avoided becoming embroiled in the dispute on this side of the Atlantic in which Gray defended Darwin against vehement opposition from Agassiz. Soon after The Origin of Species was published, however, Leidy wrote to Darwin enthusiastically and enclosed some of his own papers. Darwin thanked him graciously in a letter in which he went on to say: Your note has pleased me more than you could readily believe, for I have during a long time heard all good judges speak of your palaeontological labours in terms of the highest respect. Most palaeontologists (with some few good exceptions) entirely despise my work; consequently, approbation from you has gratified me much. All the older geologists (with the one exception of Lyell, whom I look on as a host in himself) are even more vehement against the introduction of species than are the palaeontologists.... Your sentence, that you have some interesting facts "in support of the doctrine of selection, which I shall report at a favorable opportunity," has delighted me even more than the rest of your note.!" One possible contribution to the theory of species was the material Leidy had published on the strange case of the American fossil horse. Without theorizing on the subject, he had described remains proving that there had, indeed, been such an animal, since become extinct. With the arrival of European settlers, horses were reintroduced, and these proceeded to flourish in the environment which had formerly ceased to support the American species. In view of his personal observations, Leidy was more than ready to accept Darwin's doctrine of selection and, on reading his work, he describes feeling "as though I had hitherto groped in the darkness and that all of a sudden a meteor flashed upon the skies."17 Leidy recommended Darwin's election to the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences which became one of the first institutions to honor him after The Origin of Species was published in 1859. The theory of evolution which Darwin was finally emboldened to print by the threat of being preempted by a rival did not come as a complete surprise to some of the men working in the field. Just such an explanation of life had been making headway in scientific circles, and Leidy himself had published remarks of a very similar kind in 1853, six years before the appearance of The Origin of Species and five years after meeting with Darwin in England. In the introduction to Leidy's article, "A Flora and Fauna within Living Animals," the author first dismisses the theory of spontaneous generation which was prevalent at the time. Before treating the microscopic organisms which are his subject, he speaks from his knowledge of geology and paleontology, describing the nature and conditions of life in general: GLADLY LEARN AND GLADLY TEACH

The study of the earth's crust teaches us that very many species of plant and animals became extinct at successive periods, while other races originated to occupy their places. This probably was the result, in many cases, of a change in exterior conditions incompatible with the life of certain species, and favorable to the production of others. But such a change does not always satisfactorily explain the extinction of species. At this point he refers in a footnote to the American fossil horse. He then goes on: Probably every species has a definite course to run in con­ sequence of a general law; an origin, an increase, a point of cumulation, a decline, and an extinction.... Of the life, present everywhere with its indispensable conditions, and coeval in its origin with them, what was the immediate cause? ... There appear to be but trifling steps from the oscillating particle of inorganic matter, to a Bacterium; from this to a Vibrio, thence to a Monas, and so gradually up to the highest order of life! Although provide evidence that the more complicated forms of life existed alongside the simpler organisms, Leidy hypothesizes that "life may have been ushered upon earth, through oceans of the lowest types, long previously to the deposit of the oldest palaeozoic rocks as known to US! !"18 With his aversion to speculation, Leidy attempted to modify his claim for evolution through the expedient of exclamation marks. It is nonetheless clear from this early statement, quoted from a work accepted for publication in 1851, that Darwin's theories were in accordance with conclusions which Leidy had drawn in the course of his own studies. In the field of paleontology, Leidy laid the foundation for investigations on a larger scale by ambitious younger men. Othniel Marsh was attached to Yale's Peabody Museum, an institution endowed by his uncle, while the Philadelphia Quaker was a student of Leidy and professor of geology and mineralogy at the University of Pennsylvania from 1889 to 1897. With new arrivals in the field, the father of American paleontology found himself squeezed out by these ruthless rivals in the "Battle of the Bones."" Leidy was unable to compete with two men of independent means for the specimens which had formerly been sent to him gratis. He sorrowfully withdrew from the scene of one of the grand scientific controversies of the century which, in the seventies and eighties, embroiled Congress as well as all the major scientific institutions. Concerns for priority and reputation, most often disregarded by Leidy, soon dispelled the courteous tone of the letters in which Cope at first addressed Marsh as "thee." Not long afterwards, he was writing "as a man of honor I request of you ... to correct all statements and innuendoes you have made to others here and elsewhere."2o Before Leidy bowed to necessity and removed himself from a field he described as no longer fit for a gentleman, he had added no fewer than 375 PIONEERS OF AMERICAN SCIENCE 95

genera and species to the 98 previously known." As a teacher of anatomy, Leidy eagerly pursued specimens of a rather different kind to which Cope's bon mot, "de mortuis nil nisi boneum," seems particularly applicable. In fact, William Hunt attributes the only dishonest action on Leidy's part that he ever witnessed to the anatomist's desire to supplement the collections now in the and the Mutter Museum of the College of Physicians in Philadelphia. In each collection there is an example of an adipocere body, that is, a body preserved because the degenerated fatty tissues have been transformed into a wax-like substance. Two petrified bodies from the epidemic of 1793 had been reportedly uncovered at an old burying-ground which was being cleared for improvements, and, in pursuit of these specimens, Leidy and Hunt went to call upon the caretaker. The superintendent mumbled something about "violated graves," but he added that he was able to release bodies to relatives. "The doctor immediately took the hint. He went home, hired a furniture wagon, and armed the driver with an order reading, 'Please deliver to bearer the bodies of my grandfather and grandmother: " Hunt caps this anecdote with an appropriate rhyme:

Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897) So the posters don't worry as to tuum or meum, by Clarence A. Worrall But take the specimens for the museum.'" Professor of geology and mineralogy and then professor of and compara­ It was not until after the Civil War that an anatomy act governing the tive anatomy at the University of use of unclaimed bodies was passed by the Pennsylvania legislature, and Pennsylvania (1889-1897). Born in Philadelphia, Cope entered the School only many years later were students at last able to do their own dissections of Medicine b"t dropped his medical or to study tissues under the microscope. At the time when Leidy had studies to pursue independent investiga­ received instruction from Goddard, ability to use a microscope was still tions at the Academy of Nat"ral Sciences. considered an uncommon accomplishment. The instrument with which He worked at the Smithsonian and with 70seph Leidy whom he joined in describ­ Leidy did his later work had only two lenses, and was purchased for the ing fossils from the Hayden Survey grand sum of $50. With the emphasis at medical school still on didactic collected by professor of geology demonstration, Leidy continued throughout his teaching career to describe Frederick Hayden in Wyoming. The results of his paleontological and geologi­ anatomical details from the "bull pit" to four hundred students perched on cal explorations were published in 600 benches above him. According to one of his most illustrious students, articles and books. George A. Piersol, Leidy nonetheless provided them with "the first glimpse of a most adequate conception of nature" and sent them forth "with the old fetters of thought shattered for ever."·3 When a department of biology was established at the University of Pennsylvania, Leidy was appointed professor of biology in the faculty of philosophy. A separate faculty of seven was appointed in 1884, and Leidy then became the first director of the biological department, agreeing to give up a professorship at with which he had supplemented his income for fourteen years. In addition to the many prizes and honors which he received during his life, Joseph Leidy was immortalized among the natural phenomena which had fascinated him from his earliest youth. On a trip to the Luray Caverns 9. GLADLY LEARN AND GLAOLY TEACH

Professor Koenig's Class in Mineralogy, 1886 Black-bearded George Augustus Koenig, professor of mineralogy and metallurgy, taught Towne School students in his "mineral cabinet" in College Hall. Koenig, who held a Heidelberg Ph.D., was brought to the University af Penn­ sylvania at a time when it was also attracting faculty trained at Gattingen, Marburg, Tabingen, and other German universities.

of Virginia in 1881, his adopted daughter was furnished with a bottle filled with clear water from one of the pools in the cave. At the appropriate moment, the torches of the assemblage were held aloft, William Hunt made a brief speech, the bottle was broken, and a column and a stalactite were named in Leidy's honor. As early as 1854, the University of Pennsylvania alumni, explorers Elisha Kent Kane and Isaac Hayes, discovered two polar capes on the east coast of Grinnell Land during their arctic expedition and named them: Cape Joseph Leidy and Cape John Frazer, the latter for the founder member of the National Academy of Sciences who became vice-provost of the University in 1855. In addition, Ferdinand Hayden called a peak in the Rockies after the scientist whom he had supplied with specimens in the early years of paleontological investigation. Hunt reports that "with the exception of the Tetons, Mount Leidy is the finest object in the neighborhood, snow-capped and rising in solitary grandeur above the plain."" At the University of Pennsylvania, where a chair was endowed in his memory in the department of anatomy, his name is inscribed on the biology building now known as the Leidy Laboratories. Furthermore, the great men of medicine whose names decorate the walls of the main reading room of the Philadelphia College of Physicians begin with Hippocrates and end with Leidy. When the bibliography of this prodigious investigator was assembled by his nephew, Joseph Leidy, Jr., it included some six hundred titles. Not listed among these serious works is a little book which was read to his daughter and nephews at a party in celebration of his fifty-ninth birthday. PIONEERS OF AMERICAN SCIENCE '7

It is simply called A Fairy Tale, and it gives an account of the birth of a blue-eyed baby fifty-nine years before and the gifts he received from the fairies. After the usual perfections have been bestowed, "a sweet but grave fairy said 'with these eyes he shall see what man never before has seen; floras and faunas within and without; wings of grasshoppers and how they can move them, worms of the earth, of man and of cattle, fossils whose years are numbered by millions, and to them jelly like drops shall grow to rare beauty:" The fairies come back, fifty-nine fairy days later, to look for evidence of their gifts. They are greeted by a spectacle which would have frightened anyone but fairies: First came the great Hadrosaurus, his years quite a million­ "J am his servant, and proud of my master." Next carne the Megalonides and Megatheria, huge creatures, in size like to elephants: then great troops of Wild Horses and herds of Wild Oxen. "We were long dead, and he gave us new being." Then, little White Ants, all their Parasites with them. Then beautiful banners with rare pictures on them; great groups of Polyps, the CoraIlium leading them. Then wonderful Sponges; and Floras and Faunas; delicate Rhizopods, once mere drops of jelly, and then great leaves of Book Lore, all having the baby's name on them!' Joseph Leidy was eminently modest, although he could be eloquent when speaking of his discoveries in the naive assurance that his enthusiasm must be shared. In the Fairy Tale, his virtue and scientific genius are ascribed to supernatural powers. Although he had no intention of subscribing to this view of Leidy's fairy-tale prowess, his memoralist William Hunt Elisha Kent Kane (1820-1857) proclaimed: "Dr. Leidy was a giant in intellect, a saint in disposition."'· Medal by G. H. Lovett Physician and explorer of the Arctic, he received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania (1842). As an assistant surgeon in the United States Navy, he served in China, West Africa, and Mexico, during which time he con­ tracted rheumatic fever and typhus which left him in poor health. The remainder of his short life was devoted to discovery: he went on two expeditions to the Arctic in search of the lost explorer Sir John Franklin, commanding the second in his brig Advance. He named two capes after professors at the University, and Kane Basin was named for him. At his death, he was regarded as a national hero, and his body lay in state at Independence Hall. A lunar crater near the moon's north pole was named after him, and a surveying ship, the Kane, was launched in November 1965.