Between the clinic and the laboratory: Ethology and pharmacology in the work of Michael Robin Alexander chance, c.1946-1964

Medical History

Volumn 53, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 513-536

  Kirk, Robert G W ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANIMAL; ANIMAL BEHAVIOR; ANIMAL WELFARE; ARTICLE; DRUG EFFECT; ECOLOGY; ETHICS; ETHOLOGY; EXPERIMENTAL ANIMAL; FAMILY HEALTH; HISTORY; HUMAN; LABORATORY; MOUSE; PHARMACOLOGY; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; RAT; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR;

ANIMAL WELFARE; ANIMALS; ANIMALS, LABORATORY; BEHAVIOR, ANIMAL; ECOLOGY; ETHOLOGY; FAMILY HEALTH; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; LABORATORY ANIMAL SCIENCE; MICE; PHARMACOLOGY; RATS; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR;

EID: 77950610228     PISSN: 00257273     EISSN: 09505571     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0025727300000533     Document Type: Article

References (148)

1. P Marler and D R Griffin, 'The 1973 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine', Science, 1973, 182: 464-6.
2. The most comprehensive historical account of ethology to date remains R W Burkhardt, Patterns of behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the founding of ethology, University of Chicago Press, 2005.
3. Burkhardt adopts a largely biographical frame focused on Tinbergen and Lorenz.
4. D A Dewsbury, 'The 1973 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine: recognition for behavioral science?', Am. Psychol., 2003, 58: 747-52.
5. L T Benjamin Jr., 'Behavioral science and the Nobel Prize: a history', Am. Psychol., 2003, 58: 731-41.
6. The award was also controversial due to Lorenz's association with Nazi ideology, see Theodora J Kalikow, 'Konrad Lorenz's ethological theory: explanation and ideology, 1938-1943', J. Hist. Biol., 1983, 16: 39-73.
7. cf. Robert J Richards, Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior, University of Chicago Press, 1987, p. 536.
8. Karolinska Institutet, 'Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine', 1973, http://nobelprize.org/nobelprizes/medicine/laureates/1973/press.html (accessed 31 March 2009).
9. The term is Burkhardt's, see Burkhardt, op. cit., note 1 above, esp. pp. 447-84.
10. There is a growing literature on the standardization of laboratory organisms, see, for example, Adele E Clarke and Joan H Fujimura, The right tools for the job: at work in twentieth-century life sciences, Princeton University Press, 1992.
11. Bonnie Tocher Clause, 'The Wistar rat as a right choice: establishing mammalian standards and the ideal of a standardized mammal', J. Hist. Biol., 1993, 26: 329-49.
12. Robert E Kohler, Lords of the fly: Drosophila genetics and the experimental life, University of Chicago Press, 1994.
13. Angela N H Creager, The life of a virus: tobacco mosaic virus as an experimental model, 1930-1965, University of Chicago Press, 2002.
14. Karen A Rader, Making mice: standardizing animals for American biomedical research, 1900-1955, Princeton University Press, 2004.
15. On Little and genetic standardization, see Rader, ibid.
16. For example, the history of ethical aspects of animal experimentation focus entirely upon the "antivivisectionist controversy", see Richard D French, Making mice in Victorian Society, Princeton University Press, 1975.
17. Nicolaas A Rupke (ed.), Vivisection in historical perspective, London, Routledge, 1990.
18. A-H Maehle, 'The ethical discourse on animal experimentation 1650-1900', in Andrew Wear, Johanna Geyer-Kordesch and Roger French (eds), Doctors and ethics: the earlier historical setting of professional ethics, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1993, pp. 203-51.
19. The result of this is to reify the presumption that the laboratory is devoid of emotion or moral thought, a presumption that has been shown to be false in a number of ways, see the literature in note 6 above, and note 13 below, for examples. Nevertheless, social histories of antivivisection and scientific histories of the laboratory rarely interact. Consequently there has been no historical analysis of the role of animal welfare in the material practice of animal dependent laboratory science. This article forms an initial foray into such a study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, grant number 084988, and titled 'Managing morals: animal experiment and animal welfare in Britain c.1947-1986'.
20. R C Browne, 'Amphetamine in the Air Force', Br. J. Addiction, 1947, 44: 64-70.
21. M R A Chance, 'Population size and variation in small populations', Proc. R. Soc. Med., 1964, 57: 174.
22. B Günther, 'Toxicity of benzedrine sulfate in the white mouse and in the frog', J. Pharmacol. Exp. Ther., 1942, 76: 375-7.
23. J H Burn, 'The errors of biological assay', Physiol. Rev., 1930, 10: 146-69, p. 146.
24. For a history of biological standardization as a discipline, see A F Bristow, T Barrowcliffe and D R Bangham, 'Standardization of biological medicines: the first hundred years, 1900-2000', Notes Rec. R. Soc., 2006, 60: 271-89.
25. O E Dror, 'The affect of experiment. The turn to emotions in Anglo-American physiology, 1900-1940', Isis, 1999, 90: 205-37.
26. For variation as a productive force, see Daniel P Todes, 'Pavlov's physiology factory', Isis, 1997, 88: 205-46.
27. Chance began work with laboratory animals on 11 October 1937, being granted a Home Office licence for the "administration of hormonal substances to normal animals and to those from which various glands have been removed".
28. See National Archives, Kew (hereafter NA) HO 45/23629.
29. A L Bacharach, 'The albino rat in biochemical investigation', Pharmaceutical J. and Pharmacist, 1926, 62: 629-30.
30. For example, J W Trevan, 'The error of determination of toxicity', Proc. R. Soc., 1927, 101B: 483-514.
31. See R G W Kirk, '"Wanted-standard guinea pigs": standardization and the experimental animal market in Britain ca.1919-1947', Stud. Hist. Philos. Biol. Biomed. Sci., 2008, 39: 280-91.
32. In contrast, the American demand for standardized organisms has been related to genetic and cancer research.
33. See, for example, Kohler, and Rader, both op. cit., note 6 above.
34. At Glaxo, Chance became the first person to be licensed to conduct "severe and novel" experiments on animals in a commercial laboratory, see NA HO45/23629, 'Advisory Committee on the administration of the Cruelty to Animals Act'.
35. J A Gunn and M R Gurd, 'The action of some amines related to adrenaline. Cyclohexylalkylamines', J. Physiol., 1940, 97: 453-70, p. 457.
36. M R A Chance, 'Aggregation as a factor influencing the toxicity of sympathomimetic amines in mice', J. Pharmacol. Exptl. Therap., 1946, 87: 214-19, p. 217.
37. For Chance's contribution to psychopharmacology, see C R B Joyce (ed.), Psychopharmacology: dimensions and perspectives, London, Tavistock Publications, 1968, esp. pp. 283-318.
38. L L Iversen, Susan D Iversen and Solomon H Snyder (eds), Handbook of psychopharmacology, 16 vols, New York, Plenum Press, 1977, vol. 7, esp. pp. 3-35.
39. For psychopharmacogentics, see P L Broadhurst, Drugs and the inheritance of behavior, New York, Plenum Press, 1978.
40. For the history of psychopharmacology, see David Healy, The creation of psychopharmacology, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2002.
41. Tinbergen began publicizing Behaviour in 1946, the first issue was not published until 1948.
42. M R A Chance, 'A peculiar form of social behaviour induced in mice by amphetamine', Behaviour, 1948, 1: 64-70.
43. See Faculty handbooks 1965/66 and 1966, Archives of the University of Birmingham, University of Birmingham, UK.
44. See, for example, M R A Chance and C J Jolly, Social groups of monkeys, apes and men, London, Cape, 1970.
45. In the 1960s Chance was a member of the Centre for Research in Collective Psychopathology at the University of Sussex, an interdisciplinary group that sought to explain Fascism as a masspsychosis.
46. See, for example, M R A Chance, 'What makes monkeys sociable', New Scientist, 5 March 1959, pp. 520-3, where Chance suggests that Germany's decision to "line up behind an intimidating leader" had a "strong instinctive component" (p. 523).
47. For the Left and science, see Gary Werskey, The visible college: a collective biography of British scientists and socialists of the 1930s, London, Free Association Books, 1988.
48. Letter from M R A Chance to the Editor of Radio Times, 11 Nov. 1995. M R A Chance Papers, in the care of Dave Stevens, London (hereafter MRAC).
49. See J Lewis and B Brookes, 'The Peckham health Centre, "PEP", and the concept of general practice during the 1930s and 1940s', Med. Hist., 1983, 27: 151-61.
50. J Lewis and B Brookes, 'A reassessment of the work of the Peckham Health Centre, 1926-1951', Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly-Health and Society, 1983, 61: 307-50.
51. I H Pearse and G Scott Williamson, The case for action: a survey of everyday life under modern industrial conditions, with special reference to the question of health, London, Faber and Faber, 1931, p. 5.
52. I H Pearse and G Scott Williamson, Biologists in search of material, London, Faber and Faber, 1938, pp. 18-19.
53. G Scott Williamson, 'Peckham, the first health centre', Lancet, 1946, i: 393-5, pp. 393-4.
54. The Pioneer Health Centre should be viewed as a component part of a wider holistic movement that existed in the inter-war period which consciously identified itself in contrast to more reductive, biomedical sciences, see C Lawrence and G Weisz, Greater than the parts: holism in biomedicine 1920-1950, Oxford University Press, 1998.
55. J S Mill, A system of logic, London, Longmans, 1879 [1843], bk 6, ch. 5, Section 4, p. 457.
56. I H Pearse and L H Crocker, The Peckham experiment: a study in the living structure of society, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1943, p. 20.
57. G Scott Williamson, 'The biological significance of the family', Social Service Review, July 1932.
58. Pioneer Health Centre, Peckham, with papers of George Scott Williamson MD (1884-1953) and Innes Hope Pearse (1889-1978) Archives and Manuscripts Collection, Wellcome Library, London, item SA/PHC/D2/3/2.
59. J M Richards, 'The Pioneer Health Centre: the idea behind the idea', Archit. Rev., 1935, 77: 203-16, p. 208.
60. Pearse and Scott Williamson, op. cit., note 33 above, p. 48.
61. G Scott Williamson, 'Health centres: a lecture given to the Town and Country Planning Association', Nursing Times, 1946, 39: 64-5, p. 64.
62. I H Pearse, The quality of life: the Peckham approach to human ethology, Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press, 1979, pp. 151-2.
63. Oxford English Dictionary.
64. Anon., 'Bionomics' Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1948, vol. 3, p. 621.
65. M R A Chance, 'Factors influencing the toxicity of sympathomimetic amines to solitary mice', J. Pharmacol., 1947, 89: 289-96.
66. M R A Chance, 'Environmental factors influencing gonadotrophin in the rat', Nature, 1956, 177: 228-9.
67. Letter from M R A Chance to S Zuckerman, 13 June 1955, file SZ/BU/9/5, Zuckerman Archive, University of East Anglia, UK (hereafter ZA). Chance never attributed his use of bionomic nor his thinking to his experience at Peckham.
68. For Zuckerman, see P L Krohn, 'Solly Zuckerman Baron Zuckerman, of Burnham Thorpe, OM, KCB', Biog. Mem. Fellows R. Soc., 1995, 41: 577-98.
69. J Burt, 'Solly Zuckerman: the making of a primatalogical career', Stud. Hist. Philos. Biolog. Biomed. Sci., 2006, 37: 295-310.
70. M R A Chance, 'Bionomics laboratory in the department of pharmacology, Medical School, Birmingham', 13 May 1955, ZA SZ/BU/9/5.
71. See J R Durant, 'Innate character in animal and man: a perspective on the origins of ethology', in C Webster, Biology, medicine and society, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 157-92.
72. R W Burkhardt, 'Ethology, natural history, the life sciences, and the problem of place', J. Hist. Biol., 1999, 32: 489-508.
73. For example, K Lorenz, 'The comparative method in studying innate behaviour patterns', in Physiological mechanisms in animal behaviour (symposia of the Society for Experimental Biology), Cambridge University Press, 1950, pp. 221-68.
74. See Burkhardt, op. cit., note 1 above, esp. pp. 249-54. On Lorenz's association with Nazi ideology, see Kalikow, op. cit., note 3 above.
75. S Zuckerman, The social life of monkeys and apes, London, Kegan Paul, 1932.
76. Letter from S Zuckerman to M R A Chance, 7 June 1955, ZA SU/BU/9/5.
77. 'Comments on Chance's proposals', dated 19 May 1955, ZA SZ/BU/9/5.
78. 'The present status of environmental control in bioassay', pp. 2-4, ZA SU/BU/9/5.
79. Letter from S Zuckerman to M R A Chance, 20 June 1955, ZA SU/BU/9/5.
80. For Zuckerman's antipathy to ethology, see the postscripts to the second edition of The social life of monkeys and apes, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.
81. E Crist, Images of animals: anthropomorphism and animal mind, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1999.
82. H Kruuk, Niko's nature, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 321.
83. See also p. 300 for Lorenz's propensity towards making authoritative statements based on "suggestive hints in his observations" as opposed to "proven facts".
84. N Tinbergen, 'On aims and methods of ethology', Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 1963, 20: 410-33.
85. See, for example, C G Beer, 'Was Professor Lehrman an ethologist?', Animal Behaviour, 1975, 23: 957-64.
86. W S Verplanck, 'A glossary of some terms used in the objective science of behaviour', Psychol. Rev., 1957, 64: 1-42, p. 14.
87. See Konrad Lorenz, Studies in animal and human behaviour, 2 vols, London, Methuen, 1970, vol. 1, p. xvi.
88. Lou Fourcher, personal communication, 15 March 2004.
89. Anon., 'Is ethology respectable?', Nature, 1967, 216: 10.
90. Zuckerman, op. cit., note 56 above, p. 11.
91. For example, S Zuckerman, 'On aggression, Konrad Lorenz', Nature, 1966, 212: 563.
92. Zuckerman, op. cit., note 56 above, p. 17.
93. M R A Chance and A P Mead, 'Social behaviour and primate evolution', in Evolution (symposia of the Society for Experimental Biology VII), Cambridge University Press, 1953, pp. 395-439.
94. letter from M R A Chance to S Zuckerman, 27 July 1953, ZA SZ/BU/9/5.
95. M R A Chance, 'Social structure of a colony of Macaca mulatta', Br. J. Animal Behav., 1956, 4: 1-13.
96. H R Hewer and N D Riley, XVth International Congress on Zoology: proceedings, London, XVth International Congress on Zoology, 1959, p. 860. Zuckerman interjected to ask whether the observations Chance mentioned were made by him directly or by others.
97. C W Hume, The status of animals in the Christian religion, London, UFAW, 1957. For the British Science Guild, which served as a model for UFAW.
98. see R MacLeod, 'Science for imperial efficiency and social change, reflections on the British Science Guild, 1905-1936', Public Understanding of Science, 1994, 3: 155-93.
99. A N Worden, The UFAW handbook on the care and management of laboratory animals, London, Bailliére, Tindall and Cox, 1947.
100. A L Bacharach, 'Laboratory animals: the UFAW handbook on the care and management of laboratory animals', Br. Med. J., 1949, ii: 20-1.
101. Bacharach served on UFAW's Scientific Advisory Committee from 1956 to 1962 but may have been associated with it earlier, meeting Hume through their involvement with the AScW. See Bound Annual Reports, 1955, 29: 3, UFAW Archive, Wheathampstead (hereafter UFAW).
102. Bound Annual Reports, 1955, 29: 5, UFAW.
103. Anon., 'UFAW', Lancet, 1958, ii: 631-2, p. 632.
104. R H J Watson, 'Psychology of laboratory animals', Lancet, 1958, ii: 747.
105. C W Hume, 'Psychology of laboratory animals', Lancet, 1958, ii: 802.
106. Norman L Munn was a psychologist known for his textbooks which compiled the results of comparative psychologists' studies of animal behaviour.
107. See, for example, N L Munn, Handbook of psychological research on the rat: an introduction to animal psychology, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1950.
108. Comparative psychology famously used rat choice in the maze as its model for the majority of its studies, see, for example, E C Tolman, 'The determiners of behavior at a choice point', Psychol. Rev., 1938, 45: 1-41, p. 34.
109. O L Zangwill, 'Psychology of laboratoryanimals', Lancet, 1958, ii: 851.
110. In 1953, Zangwill, along with W H Thorpe, initiated a research group at Cambridge to encourage communication between the diverse approaches to animal behaviour, see W H Thorpe and O L Zangwill, Current problems in animal behaviour, Cambridge University Press, 1961.
111. Bound Annual Reports, 1964, 38: 21, UFAW.
112. W M S Russell and R Burch, The principles of humane experimental technique, London, UFAW, 1959.
113. Chance's influence on this work is made evident in the references, see particularly pp. 123-33.
114. Emphasis on the design of environment to meet the needs of the animal is now termed "environmental enrichment".
115. M R A Chance, 'The contribution of environment to uniformity', in Collected Papers - Laboratory Animals Bureau, 1957, 6: 59-73.
116. Bound Annual Reports, 1958, 32: 8, UFAW.
117. Bound Annual Reports, 1957, 31: 4, UFAW.
118. Chance, op. cit., note 91 above, p. 71.
119. This was achieved by providing white light at night and low level red light during the day to simulate night.
120. P B Medawar, 'Foreword', in Collected Papers - Laboratory Animals Bureau, 1957, 6: 5-7, p. 5.
121. E D Adrian, 'Experiments in the nervous system', Stephen Paget Memorial Lecture, 22 November 1950', Conquest, 1951, 39: 2-14.
122. W Lane-Petter, 'Humane vivisection', The Practitioner, 1963, 190: 81-4, p. 81.
123. M R A Chance, 'Ethological discoveries on spacing and their relevance to psychiatry', University of Birmingham Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry Bulletin, 1970, 27: 21-3.
124. R H Polsky and M R A Chance, 'An ethological perspective on social behaviour in long stay hospitalized psychiatric patients', J. Nerv. Mental Dis., 1979, 167: 658-68.
125. R H Polsky and M R A Chance, 'An ethological analysis of long stay hospitalized psychiatric patients. Senders and receivers in social interaction', J. Nerv. Mental Dis., 1979, 167: 669-74.
126. R H Polsky and M R A Chance, 'Social interaction and the use of space on a ward of long term psychiatric patients', J. Nerv. Mental Dis., 1980, 168: 550-5.
127. M R A Chance, 'How behaviour analysis became possible', MRAC.
128. Desmond Morris, The naked ape, London, Jonathan Cape, 1967.
129. N Tinbergen, 'On war and peace in animals and man', Science, 1968, 160: 1411-18. Russell, too, believed this to be the case and had anticipated Morris's work.
130. see C Russell and W M S Russell, Human behaviour, London, André Deutsch, 1961.
131. For Tinbergen's invitation to discuss "human bird watching" with the MRC's Clinical Psychiatry Committee on 5 February 1962, see file FD 22 66 in the MRC Archive, National Archives, Kew, UK.
132. M R A Chance and D A Humphries, 'Medical student's powers of observation', Br. J. Med. Ed., 1967, 1: 141-34.
133. M R A Chance, 'A class in the observation of behaviour', MRAC.
134. C Lawrence, 'Incommunicable knowledge: science, technology and the clinical art in Britain 1850-1914', J. Contemp. Hist., 1985, 20: 503-20.
135. C Lawrence, 'Still incommunicable: clinical holists and medical knowledge in inter-war Britain', in C Lawrence and G Weisz, Greater than the parts: holism in biomedicine 1920-1950, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 94-111.
136. I Löwy and J P Gaudillière 'Disciplining cancer: mice and the practice of genetic purity', in J P Gaudillie're and I Löwy, The invisible industrialist: manufacturers and the production of scientific knowledge, London, Macmillan, 1998, pp. 209-49.
137. Burkhardt, op. cit, note 1 above, p. 13.
138. K Marx, Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844, New York, International Publishers, 1964, p. 72.
139. quoted in Bertell Ollman, Alienation: Marx's conception of man in capitalist society, Cambridge University Press, 1971, p. 137.
140. The prevalence of alienation in post-Second World War thought is attributed to the translation of Marx's so-called Economic and philosophical manuscripts of 1844, see 'Alienation', in C D Kernig, Marxism, Communism and western society, New York, Herder and Herder, 1972, pp. 88-93, p. 90.
141. This is not to say that Marx's thinking would have suggested animals could suffer alienation-on the contrary Marx denied animal consciousness arguing that the "animal is one with its vital activity". Whilst it remains unclear to what extent Chance attributed consciousness to animals, in proposing laboratory animals were no longer one with their vital activity Chance may have considered them "alienated" in some sense.
142. See, for example, Olman, op. cit., note 110 above.
143. J Sterner, 'Determining margin of safetycriteria for defining a "harmful" substance', J. Indus. Med., 1943, 12: 514-18.
144. F A Patty, Industrial hygiene and toxicology, 2nd ed., New York, Wiley, 1962, vol. 2, pp. 1303-4.
145. See, for example, G Clough and M R Gamble, Laboratory animal houses: a guide to the design and planning of animal facilities, [Carshalton], MRC, 1976.
146. Vinciane Despret, 'The body we care for: figures of Anthro-zoo-genesis', Body and Society, 2004, 10: 11-134, p. 130.
147. For elaboration on this point, see R G W Kirk, 'Reliable animals, responsible scientists: constructing standard laboratory animals in Britain c.1919-1976', PhD thesis, University College London, 2005.
148. For the notion of "responsible/response-able", see Donna J Haraway, When species meet, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2008, esp. pp. 70-3.