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Refiguring Old Age: Shaping Scientific Research on Senescence, 1900-1960 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Hyung Wook Park Program in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine University of Minnesota IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Sally Gregory Kohlstedt and John M. Eyler July, 2009 © Hyung Wook Park, 2009 Acknowledgements In completing this project, I am indebted to many people. First of all, I am deeply grateful for my advisors, Professors Sally Gregory Kohlstedt and John M. Eyler. Their significance in my academic growth cannot be overstated. They have been great teachers and thoughtful mentors who showed me what is to become a historian of science and medicine. I also appreciate my dissertation committee chair and members, Professors Mark Borrello, Susan Jones, and Jennifer Gunn. Besides reading and commenting on my long dissertation, they have always been helpful whenever I sought their advice concerning my publications and presentations. I thank other scholars in our program, especially Professors Alan Shapiro, Robert Seidel, and Thomas Misa. Their classes, which I attended as a student or a teaching assistant, stimulated the growth of my scholarship. In addition, I should not omit my gratitude toward my fellow graduate student colleagues, including Sara Cammersi, Amy Fisher, Suzanne Fischer, Gina Rumore, Barbara Reiterer, Adrian Fischer, Nathan Crowe, Maggy Hofius, Don Opitz, and Nick Martin. They have been my encouraging and sincere friends. There are people outside of the University of Minnesota to whom I should express my thanks. I appreciate the archivists and librarians whom I met during my research travels from 2005 to 2007, including Willam Wallach at the University of Michigan, Clare Porter at the Nuffield Foundation, Nicholas Scheetz at Georgetown University, David Corson at Cornell University, Paul Anderson and Martha Riley at Washington University, and others whose name I do not remember. Their thorough knowledge of the archival sources substantially contributed to my dissertation. I also feel grateful for Jane Maienschein at Arizona State University, who read and commented upon my paper on E. V. Cowdry which became chapter 2 of my dissertation. Finally, I thank the financial supporters of my project, the National Science Foundation (Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, History and Philosophy of Science of SET #0620408), the Bentley Historical Library, the Rockefeller Archive Center, American Philosophical Society, and the University of Minnesota. i To Cassiel ii Abstract This dissertation traces the origin and the development of gerontology, the science of aging, in the United States and the United Kingdom. I argue that gerontology began to be formed as a multidisciplinary scientific field in the two countries from the 1900s to the 1950s. Unlike earlier scholars who had thought that the aging of the whole body was caused by the inevitable decline of an unknown critical factor, such as “vital heat,” gerontologists of the twentieth century conceived aging as a contigent phenomenon whose rate and mode differed in distinct portions of the body. They also introduced systematic experimental approaches in their investigation which had seldom been employed in the study of aging before the twentieth century. Furthermore, with these new ideas and methodologies, gerontologists established their research field in which scholars from diverse disciplines could work in a cooperative manner, including biologists, physicians, psychologists, and social scientists. Amid the Great Depression, which threatened the very survival of the elderly, these multidisciplinary scholars formed professional societies and research institutes for more organized study of aging. But gerontology followed different paths of development in America and Britain due to their distinctive political and cultural conditions, academic traditions, and leading scholars’ social and academic status. While British scientists of aging were struggling with various problems related to funding, professional recognition, and the recruitment of scholars interested in aging, American gerontologists came to have relatively ample and stable sources of financial support and an expanding network of national and local organizations. By analyzing this difference and tracing the beginnings of the new concepts and approaches, this dissertation aims at explaining the birth of a multidisciplinary scientific field within historical contexts. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………......................................................i Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………...iii List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………...v List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………….vi Abbreviations of Archival Sources………...…………………………………………….vii Introduction Science and Aging: The Making of a Research Field……….…………………………….1 Chapter One “Senility and Death of Tissues Are Not a Necessary Phenomenon”: Locality, Contingency, and Experimentalism in the Science of Aging…………………………....20 Chapter Two “The Thin Rats Bury the Fat Rats”: Clive Maine McCay and the Beginning of Research on Caloric Restriction, Longevity, and Aging…………………………………………...67 Chapter Three “The Shape of the Human Being as a Function of Time”: Peter Brian Medawar and the Evolutionary Conception of Senescence……………………………………………….128 Chapter Four “The Work Was Not, from Its Nature, Likely to Be Exciting”: Private Initiatives and Public Efforts for the Science of Aging in Great Britain……….………………………178 Chapter Five “Many Aged and Dead Cells Are Not Consigned to Oblivion”: Constructing Gerontology as a Multidisciplinary Scientific Field in the United States…………………………….235 Chapter Six “The Limitations on the Physiological Level of Older People Are More Apparent Than Real”: Institution, Funding, and the Development of the American Science of Aging...295 Epilogue The Place of Gerontology in Society………………………………………………...…366 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………373 iv List of Tables Table 6.1. Articles Published in the Journal of Gerontology from 1946 to 1953 by Research Fields (p. 317). Table 6.2. The Name and Discipline of the Applicants Recommended by the Gerontology Study Section (p. 341). v List of Figures Figure 1.1. Scientists and the Ages of Life (p. 22). Figure 1.2. A “Curve Showing the Daily Percentage Increments in Weight of Female Guinea-Pigs” (p. 35). Figure 1.3. A Comparison of Humans’ and Flies’ Mortality Curve (p. 55). Figure 1.4. A Comparison of “Longwinged” and “Shortwinged” Flies’ Mortality Curve (p. 56). Figure 2.1. Clive Maine McCay Weighing One of His Rats (p. 70). Figure 2.2. Nutrition Seminar at the Animal Husbandry Department, 1930-1931 (p. 75). Figure 2.3. “THESE TYPICAL RATS ARE BOTH 900 DAYS OLD” (p. 82). Figure 2.4. Two Rats of the Same Chronological Age (p. 108). Figure 3.1. Peter Brian Medawar (p. 132). Figure 3.2. The Growth of a Human (p. 139). Figure 3.3. Changing Proportions (p. 139). Figure 3.4. Changing Number of Surviving Grafts over Time (p. 143). Figure 3.5. Probit Mortality of Two Homografts (p. 144). Figure 4.1 Vladimir Korenchevsky (p. 182). Figure 5.1. Totalitarianism (p. 266). Figure 5.2. The Woos Hole Conference on Aging, 1937, Woods Hole, Massachusetts (p. 288). Figure 6.1. The Final Meeting of the Macy Conference on Problems of Aging (p. 311). Figure 6.2. Baltimore City Hospital Staff, Department of Medicine, 1941 (p. 350). Figure 6.3. Nathan W. Shock in 1954 (p. 353). vi Abbreviations for Archival Sources ABH Albert Baird Hastings Papers, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland AC Alexis Carrel Papers, Georgetown University Archive, Washington, D.C. ACF Alexander Comfort Papers, University College London Archive, London, England AEC Alfred E. Cohn Papers, RG 450C661, Rockefeller University Archive, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York AF Alexander Fleming Papers, British Library, London, England CMM Clive Maine McCay Papers, Cornell University Archive, Ithaca, New York ECD Edward Charles Dodds Papers, Royal College of Physicians Library, London, England EVC Edmund Vincent Cowdry Papers, Bernard Becker Medical Library, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri FB Frederic Bartlett Papers, University of Cambridge Archive, Cambridge, England GBS George Bernard Shaw Papers, British Library, London, England GS Gladys Sperling Papers, Cornell University Archive, Ithaca, New York HHD Henry Hallett Dale Papers, Royal Society Archive, London, England LBM Lafayette B. Mendel Papers, Yale University Archive, New Haven, Connecticut LID Louis I. Dublin Papers, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland LKF Lawrence K. Frank Papers, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland MLN Manuscripts of Lord Nuffield, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford, England NARA National Archives and Record Administration, College Park, Maryland NAUK National Archives of the United Kingdom, London, England NF Nuffield Foundation Archive, London, England NWS Nathan W. Shock Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan vii PBM Peter Brian Medawar Papers, Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, London, England RAF Ronald A. Fisher Papers, University of Adelaide Archive, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia RF Rockefeller Foundation Archive, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York RP Raymond Pearl Papers, BP 312, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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