Endocrinology and expectations in 1930s America: Louis Berman's ideas on new creations in human beings

British Journal for the History of Science

Volumn 40, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 83-104

  Nordlund, Christer ^a  

^a UMEÅ UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; ENDOCRINOLOGY; HISTORY; HORMONE SUBSTITUTION; HUMAN; MEDICAL GENETICS; PHILOSOPHY; UNITED STATES;

ENDOCRINOLOGY; EUGENICS; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY; HUMANS; PHILOSOPHY; UNITED STATES;

EID: 33847121419     PISSN: 00070874     EISSN: 1474001X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007087406009113     Document Type: Article

References (126)

1. L. M. Silver, Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family, New York, 2002.
2. Compare J. Maienschein, Whose View of Life? Embryos, Cloning, and Stem Cells, Cambridge, MA, 2005.
3. P. Martin, 'Great expectations: the construction of markets, products and user needs during the early development of gene therapy in the USA', in Technology and the Market: Demand, Users and Innovation (ed. R. Coombs et al.), Cheltenham, 2001, 38-67;
4. S. Lundin and L. Åkesson (eds.), Gene Technology and Economy, Lund, 2002;
5. I. Hellsten, 'Selling the life sciences: promises of a better future in biotechnology advertisements', Science as Culture (2002), 11, 459-79;
6. A. Hedgecoe and P. Martin, 'The drugs don't work: expectations and the shaping of pharmacogenetics', Social Studies of Science (2003), 33, 327-64.
7. See also E. Russo and D. Cove, Genetic Engineering: Dreams and Nightmares, New York, 1995;
8. J. Turney, Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture, Cambridge, 1998;
9. T. Richards, 'Three views of genetics: the enthusiast, the visionary and the sceptic', British Medical Journal (2001), 322, 1016-17.
10. N. Brown, B. Rappert and A. Webster (eds.), Contested Futures: A Sociology of Prospective Technoscience, Aldershot, 2000.
11. Platon, Staten (Swedish translation), Nora, 1993, 198.
12. Turney, op. cit. (3). Compare A. Kerr and T. Shakespeare, Genetic Politics: From Eugenics to Genome, Cheltenham, 2002.
13. This topic has recently been explored in S. M. Rothman and D. J. Rothman, The Pursuit of Perfection: The Promise and Perils of Medical Enhancement, New York, 2003.
14. M. Borell, 'Setting the standards for a new science: Edward Schäfer and endocrinology', Medical History (1978), 22, 282-90.
15. N. Rasmussen, 'Steroids in arms: science, government, industry, and the hormones of the adrenal cortex in the United States, 1930-1950', Medical History (2002), 46, 299-324, 299.
16. Rothman and Rothman, op. cit. (7), is an important exception.
17. The literature on this topic is vast; see the bibliographies in N. Oudshoorn, Beyond the Natural Body: An Archaeology of Sex Hormones, London, 1994:
18. and A. E. Clarke, Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity, American Life Sciences, and the 'Problems of Sex', Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1998.
19. J. E. Rechter, '"The glands of destiny": a history of popular, medical and scientific views of the sex hormones in 1920s America', unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1997. In this thesis only Berman's first book of 1921 is discussed.
20. L. Berman, New Creations in Human Beings, New York, 1938.
21. P. J. Pauly, Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990;
22. and Andrew Cunningham and Perry Williams (eds.), The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine, Cambridge, 1992.
23. Bernard's example was the liver. He differentiated between the discharge of the bile (sécretion externe) and the giving-off of glucose into the blood (sécretion interne).
24. Oudshoorn, op. cit. (11), 16; and Rechter, op. cit. (12), p. xxviii.
25. L. G. Wilson, 'Internal secretions in disease: the historical relations of clinical medicine and scientific physiology', Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (1984), 39, 263-302;
26. and C. Sengoopta, 'The modern ovary: constructions, meanings, uses', History of Science (2000), 38, 425-88.
27. N. Oudshoorn, 'On the making of sex hormones: research materials and the production of knowledge', Social Studies of Science (1990), 20, 5-33.
28. N. Oudshoorn, 'United we stand: the pharmaceutical industry, laboratory, and clinic in the development of sex hormones into scientific drugs, 1920-1940', Science, Technology and Human Values (1993), 18, 5-24.
29. See, for example, M. Borell, 'Brown-Séquard's organotherapy and its appearance in America at the end of the nineteenth century', Bulletin of the History of Medicine (1976), 50, 309-20.
30. E. Steinach, Hormonerna som forma livet, Swedish tr., Stockholm, 1940.
31. Concerning the history of glandular transplantations see D. Hamilton, The Monkey Gland Affair, London, 1986.
32. C. Sengoopta, 'Glandular politics: experimental biology, clinical medicine, and homosexual emancipation in fin-de-siècle central Europe', Isis (1998), 89, 445-73.
33. M. Borell, 'Organotherapy, British physiology, and discovery of the internal secretions', Journal of the History of Biology (1976), 9, 235-68.
34. E. M. Tansey, 'What's in a name? Henry Dale and adrenaline, 1906', Medical History (1995), 39, 459-76.
35. V. C. Medvei, The History of Clinical Endocrinology: A Comprehensive Account of Endocrinology from Earliest Times to the Present Day, Carnforth, Lancs and New York, 1993, 3-6.
36. Rechter, op. cit. (12), 178.
37. The standard work on the history of insulin is M. Bliss, The Discovery of Insulin, Toronto, 1983.
38. For a network analysis of the development process see C. Sinding, 'Making the unit of insulin: standards, clinic work, and industry, 1920-1925', Bulletin of the History of Medicine (2002), 76, 231-70.
39. F. M. Pottenger, 'The Association for the Study of Internal Secretions : its past, its future', Endocrinology (1942), 30, 846-52;
40. H. Lisser, 'The first forty years (1917-1957)', Endocrinology (1967), 80, 5-28;
41. and A. E. Wilhelmi, 'The Endocrine Society: origin, organization, and institutions', Endocrinology (1988), 123, 2-43.
42. L. F. Barker, 'The study of the internal secretions: an introduction', Endocrinology (1917), 1, 2.
43. Wilhelmi, op. cit. (28), 13.
44. The Swedish Society for Endocrinology was established in 1945 and the British Society for Endocrinology in 1946. A Scandinavian Society for Endocrinology was then established in 1948. It later became a society for north Europe.
45. Medvei, op. cit. (25), 275-9.
46. D. Long Hall, 'The critic and the advocate: contrasting British views on the state of endocrinology in the early 1920s';
47. and T. F. Glick, 'On the diffusion of a new speciality: Marañón and the "crisis" of endocrinology in Spain', Journal of the History of Biology (1976), 9, 269-85; 287-300.
48. A. C. Clarke, 'Controversy and the development of reproductive sciences', Social Problems (1990), 37, 18-37.
49. Pottenger, op. cit. (28), 846. See also T. B. Schwartz, 'Henry Harrower and the turbulent beginnings of endocrinology', Annals of Internal Medicine (1999), 131, 702-6.
50. A theory of sex chromosomes had been launched, but was still controversial. S. G. Brush, 'Nettie M. Stevens and the discovery of sex determination by chromosomes', Isis (1978), 69, 163-72.
51. For a survey of the early results from CRPS see E. Allen, C. H. Danforth and E. A. Doisy (eds.), Sex and Internal Secretions: A Survey of Recent Research, Baltimore, MD, 1939.
52. Oudshoorn, op. cit. (18);
53. and J. P. Gaudillière, 'The invisible industrialist: the technological dynamics of 20th-century biological research', in The Science-Industry Nexus: History, Policy, Implications (ed. K. Grandin, N. Wormbs and S. Widmalm), Sagamore Beach, MA, 2004, 172-6.
54. R. Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present, London, 1997, 566;
55. and A. Westman, Hormoner, Stockholm, 1940, 19.
56. E. E. Slosson, 'From complexes to glands', Scientific Monthly (1922), 15.
57. Quoted from Rechter, op. cit. (12), 5.
58. Slosson, op. cit. (40).
59. B. Harrow, Glands in Health and Disease, New York, 1922.
60. Rechter, op. cit. (12), p. vi.
61. For biographical information on Berman see The National Cyclopædia of American Biography, Vol. 39, New York, 1954;
62. and Who Was Who in America: A Component Volume of Who's Who in American History, Vol. 2, Chicago, 1966.
63. P. L. Munson, 'Parathyroid hormone and calcitonin', in Endocrinology: People and Ideas (ed. S. M. McCann), New York, 1988, 239-84.
64. L. Berman, 'Psycho-endocrinology', Science (1928), 67, 195.
65. L. E. Kay, The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology, New York, 1996, 39-50. As far as I know, Berman was not linked to that programme. It is, however, possible that the director, Warren Weaver, was influenced by Berman's texts.
66. L. Berman, The Glands Regulating Personality: A Study of the Glands of Internal Secretion in Relation to the Types of Human Nature, London, 1921.
67. This book received many positive reviews, but some critical as well. In the journal Endocrinology (1922), 6, 272-4, it is described both as 'one of the most engaging ever written in the field of endocrinology' and as 'an unfortunate piece of futility'.
68. Berman, op. cit. (48), 109-12, 202-30.
69. Berman's ideas may be compared with Ernst Kretschemer's contemporary approach in Körperbau und Charakter : Untersuchungen zum Konstitutionsproblem und zur Lehre von den Temperamenten, Berlin, 1922.
70. Berman, op. cit. (48), 288-9. According to Berman, it was Arthur Keith at the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England who first used endocrinology for research on race differences.
71. Berman, op. cit. (48), 255-91.
72. Berman, op. cit. (48), 275.
73. Turney, op. cit. (3), 99-102.
74. L. Berman, The Personal Equation, New York, 1925.
75. Berman, op. cit. (54), 214-17.
76. L. Berman, Crime and the Endocrine Glands, New York, 1932.
77. Berman's conclusion was that criminals should not be punished but treated with hormone replacement therapy, a suggestion that received some attention. See, for example, 'Survey lays crime to gland disorder', New York Times, 10 November 1931, 2.
78. L. Berman, Study of Relation of Ductless Glands to Homosexuality, New York, 1933.
79. In this time Berman also completed a book on the relation between nutrition and personality, entitled Food and Character, Boston and New York, 1932. However, this book also deals with hormones to a high degree.
80. Rechter, op. cit. (12), 10.
81. The National Cyclopædia of American Biography, op. cit. (44), 19.
82. According to the Internet site www.newswithviews.com/Erica/Carle2.htm, Berman published an article on 'A declaration of human independence' in a theosophist magazine in 1945. I have, however, not been able to find that article.
83. L. Berman, Behind the Universe: A Doctor's Religion, New York and London, 1943.
84. In biology it is common to distinguish between 'primary' texts, which present new knowledge, and 'secondary' texts, which present a synthesis of (selected) primary texts. In practice such a sharp division between texts is not as simple. See, for example, the discussion in Ludwik Fleck, Uppkomsten och utvecklingen av ett vetenskapligt faktum: Inledning till läran om tankestil och tankekollektiv, Swedish tr., Stockholm and Stehag, 1997, 110-22.
85. As C. Sinding points out in 'Literary genres and the construction of knowledge in biology: semantic shifts and scientific change', Social Studies of Science (1996), 26, 43-70, a synthesis can also be a method for constructing new knowledge.
86. P. J. Kuznick, Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists as Political Activists in 1930s America, Chicago and London, 1987.
87. For a similar analysis, but in the British context, see G. Werskey, The Visible College: A Collective Biography of British Scientific Socialists of the 1930s, New York, 1978.
88. On Burbank see E. Y. Slusser, M. B. Williams and E. Burbank Beeson, Stories of Luther Burbank and his Plant School, Honolulu, 2002.
89. Berman, op. cit. (13), 7.
90. Berman, op. cit. (13), 15.
91. C. Skoglund, 'Saklighet, mytkultur och funktionalism', in Framtidens arvtagare: Europas idéhistoria 1900-talet (ed. N. Runeby), Stockholm, 1998, 73-104, 78.
92. Kuznick, op. cit. (62), 38, 56.
93. W. B. Cannon, Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage: An Account of Researches into the Function of Emotional Excitement, New York, 1915.
94. W. B. Cannon, The Wisdom of the Body, New York, 1932.
95. On Cannon and the development of holistic materialism in physiology see, for example, G. E. Allen, Life Science in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge, 1979, 95-106.
96. See further D. Fleming, 'Walter B. Cannon and Homeostasis', Social Research (1984), 51, 609-40;
97. S. J. Cross and W. R. Albury, 'Walter B. Cannon, L. J. Henderson, and the organic analogy', Osiris, Second Series (1987), 3, 165-92;
98. and S. Benison, 'Walter B. Cannon and the politics of medical science, 1920-1940', Bulletin of the History of Medicine (1991), 65, 234-51.
99. Berman, op. cit. (13), 21.
100. Some of these treatment areas were singled out as important already in The Glands Regulating Personality.
101. In order to avoid possible misunderstanding, I wish to note that the social categorizations (typical for their times) which are mentioned below, such as 'feeble-minded', 'perverse' and 'morbid', are Berman's and not my own.
102. Berman, op. cit. (13), 193.
103. On this question see N. Oudshoorn, 'Endocrinologists and the conceptualization of sex, 1920-1940', Journal of the History of Biology (1990), 23, 163-86;
104. and idem, 'On measuring sex hormones: the role of biological assays in sexualizing chemical substances', Bulletin of the History of Medicine (1990), 64, 243-61.
105. For Berman a homosexual was a 'mix' of male and female due to a disturbance of the hormonal balance. That idea was not uncommon among endocrinologists of the time. Cf. S. H. Kenen, 'Who counts when you're counting homosexuals? Hormones and homosexuality in mid-twentieth-century America', in Science and Homosexualities (ed. V. A. Rosario), New York and London, 1997, 197-218.
106. Another of Berman's sources of inspiration in this area was the Russian microbiologist Ilja Metchnikoff. On the step from surgery to hormone therapy, in order to prolong the life (of men), see L. Davidow Hirshbein, 'The glandular solution: sex, masculinity, and aging in the 1920s', Journal of the History of Sexuality (2000), 9, 277-304.
107. Berman, op. cit. (13), 217.
108. Berman, op. cit. (13), 247.
109. M. Borell, 'Biologists and the promotion of birth control research, 1918-1938', Journal of the History of Biology (1987), 20, 51-87.
110. Cf. D. J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Use of Human Heredity, New York, 1985.
111. D. Paul, 'Eugenics and the left', Journal of the History of Ideas (1984), 45, 567-90.
112. Berman, op. cit. (13), 37. Cf. 294.
113. Berman, op. cit. (13), 37-8.
114. On internationalism in New York City see J. E. Harr and P. J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Century, New York, 1988, 155.
115. Berman never refers to theosophy in New Creations in Human Beings.
116. The idea of 'liberal eugenics' is today very much connected to future possibilities in gene therapy. The question of whether gene therapy is or can be a liberal eugenics, given the central values within liberalism, is discussed in Jürgen Habermas, Die Zukunft der menschlichen Natur: Auf dem Weg zu einer liberalen Eugenik?, Frankfurt am Main, 2001.
117. Berman, op. cit. (13), 38.
118. Berman, op. cit. (13), 302.
119. On the many practical problems concerning the production of commercial hormone preparations in the US in the beginning of the 1940s see E. L. Severinghaus, 'Commercial endocrine preparations', Endocrinology (1942), 30, 912-21.
120. L. B. Slater, 'Industry and academy: the synthesis of steroids', Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences (2000), 30, 443-80, 450.
121. Berman, op. cit. (13), 298.
122. Berman, op. cit. (13), 73. Cf. 152-3.
123. T. Lindner, 'Bokanmälan', Svenska Läkartidningen (1943), 40, 3081-2, 3081.
124. M. Mulkay, 'Frankenstein and the debate over embryo research', Science, Technology and Human Values (1996), 21, 157-76, 158.
125. On the reception of Berman's ideas in the US see Rechter, op. cit. (12). Exactly how influential Berman was outside the US is difficult to say, since a reception analysis of his ideas has not yet been conducted.
126. Porter, op. cit. (39), 12.