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Joseph Leidy 8 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 anatomy (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 Pennsylvania (M.D. some men too mean to bring into our Academy.'" The reverse problem 1844). Pioneer of vertebrate paleontology 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 nature 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 Philadelphia 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 United States 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 comparative anatomy of the eye of vertebrated animals. The following year, he read a paper on the anatomy of the winkle and one on fossil 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.
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