A curious appendage to the Oxford Museum of Natural History has an interesting history. Although, in its original form, its architecture may have suggested a chapel, it was built as a chemical laboratory in the 1850s. Was its Gothic style an idle fancy, or was it intended to contribute to some grand design? The choice of architectural style may suggest a purely aesthetic interpretation. Alternatively the high roof and ventilation of the laboratory points to a purely utilitarian purpose. Yet neither (...) of these views can be accepted as more than a partial explanation. Overriding these is the dominant religious context of a university imbued with the values of the mid‐Victorian Church of England. It would be a mistake to discount the university politics of the time. There is often a strong ideological basis to architecture. Oxford's classical curriculum was challenged by the claims of science and, among the sciences, chemistry suffered from particularly strong prejudices. Indeed its image represented a gross caricature. Yet, if chemistry was to be fully accepted, as an essentially experimental science, its pursuit demanded special facilities. The paper provides a study of the gradual acceptance of an experimental science in one particular social context. (shrink)

By 1910 the Cambridge University physiology department had become the kernel of British physiology. Between 1909 and 1914 an astonishing number of young and talented scientists passed through the laboratory. The University College department was also a stimulating place of study under the dynamic leadership of Ernest Starling.I have argued that the reasons for this metropolitan axis within British physiology lie with the social structure of late-Victorian and Edwardian higher education. Cambridge, Oxford, and University College London were national institutions attracting (...) students from all over England and Wales. In contrast, the provincial colleges drew their clientele from relatively narrow geographic radii. Generally, also, these institutions were regarded as socially inferior to the longer-established universities.A brief survey of the biographies of some British physiologists demonstrates how physiology, as an occupation, became, over the later decades of the century, socially elite. The scientists who achieved full-time posts in the 1870s generally came from somewhat marginal backgrounds. Foster, like his mentors T. H. Huxley and William Sharpey, came from a non-conformist family. Edward Schäfer was also a dissenter and, like Foster, began his professional career as a general practitioner.Physiologists of the succeeding generation, however, came from wealthy families with established intellectual traditions. John Scott Haldane, nephew of John Burdon Sanderson, was the brother of the politician R. B. Haldane and uncle of the historian A. R. B. Haldane.71 Joseph Barcroft was one of the most affluent of all physiologists.72 His family's wealth derived from linen manufacturing. He attended the Ley's School Cambridge, where his schoolmates included Henry Dale, later Director of the National Institute for Medical Research; F. A. Bainbridge, who eventually became Professor of Physiology at St. Bartholomew's Hospital; and the Cambridge historian J. H. Clapham. A. V. Hill, Professor of Physiology at Manchester and, subsequently, London, married Margaret Keynes, sister of John Maynard Keynes and niece of Sir Walter Langdon Brown, Professor of Physic at Cambridge. Margaret Keynes's younger brother, the surgeon Sir Geoffrey Keynes, married a granddaughter of Charles Darwin; their son Richard Keynes also became a physiologist at Cambridge.These families were part of a new class emerging during the late Victorian period, descendants of the great reforming radicals of the 1830s, who had begun to achieve power through positions in the universities, the professions, and the civil service. Their social prestige rested upon their intellectual expertise. Physiology was an appealing research discipline to these groups because of its clear dissociation from industry and commerce. And because physiology's “practical” face was medicine, its acceptability was reinforced by professional ties.The nature of the Physiological Society confirms this image of physiology as an elite science. By the turn of the century the Society had taken on some of the characteristics of a dining club. The scientific meetings were generally followed by dinner: if the Society met at Oxford, they were entertained at Burdon Sanderson's college, Magdalen.73 Through a “black ball” system, unwanted candidates could be excluded. In 1912, when the question of admitting foreigners was discussed, E. H. Starling wrote to Edward Schäfer: “the Society has very much in it the nature of a club, and a certain amount of personal knowledge of the candidate is always desirable.”74.The developing institutional structure of physiology in late Victorian Britain indicates, therefore, that we must look beyond the achievements of individuals and departments to understand why physiology flourished. The discipline became part of a new social order in which the professional middle classes assumed increasing power. These groups valued intellectual skill, especially in the pure scienes, as forces both for self-advancement and for progress within society. (shrink)

The reputation of the Christian tradition has fared poorly in the literature on the history of attitudes to nonhuman animals. This is more a consequence of secularist prejudice than objective scholarship. The idea of "dominion" and the understanding of animal souls are almost universally misrepresented. There has been no firmer conclusion than that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution had a profoundly beneficial impact on the recognition of our similarities to, kinship with, and consequent moral obligations to, other species. In reality, (...) Darwinism had no such effect. That there was an essential kinship with, and homologies between, humans and other species had been attested to for centuries. In the first major ethical issue that arose after the publication of Darwin's The Descent of Man -- legislation to restrict vivisection -- Darwin and Huxley stood on the side of more or less unrestricted vivisection while many major explicitly Christian voices -- from Cardinal Manning to Lord Chief Justice Coleridge to the Earl of Shaftesbury -- demanded the most severe restrictions, in many cases abolition. The customary tale of how Christianity hindered the development of sensibilities to animals and how Darwinism occasioned a revolution in animal ethics needs to be rethought and retold. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay presents an alternative to interpretations of laboratories as institutions for controlled investigation of nature that are either placeless or “set apart.” It historicizes the claim by showing how the meaning of “laboratory” has both changed and diversified over the last two centuries. Originally a laboratory could be a site of organic growth or material manufacture, but it can now be a specialized domain for technological development, educational training, or quality testing. The essay then introduces some contingencies of (...) geography and gender by showing how boundaries between laboratories and other spaces—especially domestic kitchens—could be permeable or nonexistent; importantly, some spaces served as experimental laboratories without ever being designated as such. A key corollary, however, is that there were limits to this permeability: not all social spaces could be turned consensually into laboratories, and laboratory users could be intolerant of certain imported technical cultures. (shrink)