Mesothelioma and asbestos, fifty years of evidence: Chris Wagner and the contribution of the Italian occupational medicine community

BACKGROUND

One of the first studies that "convincingly" described the relationship between pleural mesothelioma and asbestos was made by Wagner, Sleggs and Marchard in 1960. This article, published fifty years ago, contains much of what we still know to-day about malignant mesothelioma.

OBJECTIVES

The aims of this article were to analyze the historical and scientific developments that led to the publication of Wagner's paper, to critically examine its contents and to consider the contribution to the initernational debate on the carcinogenesis of asbestos fibres made by occupational medicine in Italy in that period.

METHODS

A thorough analysis ofscientific and historical literature on the relationship between asbestos exposure and tumours was conducted, with special regard to the articles by Italian authors in the 1960's.

RESULTS

The decisive role of Wagner's paper in understanding the aetiopathogenetic mechanisms of asbestos-related tumours is inconfutable. In particular, his article clearly demonstrated the existence of a typical cancer of the mesothelium, expressing three fundamental principles of the epidemiology of occupational cancer: association with the carcinogen, latency and individual susceptibility. Enrico Vigliani, then director of the "Clinica del Lavoro" in Milan, made important contributions to this debate, also through the collection of data regarding mortality among Italian asbestos workers.

CONCLUSIONS

Wagner's 1960 paper can be considered as a milestone not only in the history of occupational and environmental health, but also in the evolution of other medical disciplines such as epidemiology, pathology and oncology. A re-appraisal of the Italian contributions to the international debate on this subject should be considered.

Biological atomism and cell theory

Biological atomism postulates that all life is composed of elementary and indivisible vital units. The activity of a living organism is thus conceived as the result of the activities and interactions of its elementary constituents, each of which individually already exhibits all the attributes proper to life. This paper surveys some of the key episodes in the history of biological atomism, and situates cell theory within this tradition. The atomistic foundations of cell theory are subsequently dissected and discussed, together with the theory's conceptual development and eventual consolidation. This paper then examines the major criticisms that have been waged against cell theory, and argues that these too can be interpreted through the prism of biological atomism as attempts to relocate the true biological atom away from the cell to a level of organization above or below it. Overall, biological atomism provides a useful perspective through which to examine the history and philosophy of cell theory, and it also opens up a new way of thinking about the epistemic decomposition of living organisms that significantly departs from the physicochemical reductionism of mechanistic biology.

The first eukaryote cell: an unfinished history of contestation

The eukaryote cell is one of the most radical innovations in the history of life, and the circumstances of its emergence are still deeply contested. This paper will outline the recent history of attempts to reveal these origins, with special attention to the argumentative strategies used to support claims about the first eukaryote cell. I will focus on two general models of eukaryogenesis: the phagotrophy model and the syntrophy model. As their labels indicate, they are based on claims about metabolic relationships. The first foregrounds the ability to consume other organisms; the second the ability to enter into symbiotic metabolic arrangements. More importantly, however, the first model argues for the autogenous or self-generated origins of the eukaryote cell, and the second for its exogenous or externally generated origins. Framing cell evolution this way leads each model to assert different priorities in regard to cell-biological versus molecular evidence, cellular versus environmental influences, plausibility versus evolutionary probability, and irreducibility versus the continuity of cell types. My examination of these issues will conclude with broader reflections on the implications of eukaryogenesis studies for a philosophical understanding of scientific contestation.

Gandhi and the 'struck-off' doctor, Thomas Richard Allinson (1858-1918)

Gandhi visited London on several occasions. During two of these visits, when he was a law student from 1888 and again in 1914, he met Thomas Richard Allinson, a controversial doctor whose name was erased from the Medical Register in 1892. While in London studying for the bar, Gandhi was influenced in his search for a suitable vegetarian diet by the writings and personal support of Allinson. Although disagreeing profoundly with Allinson's views on birth control, he spoke up in defence of his right to hold them--probably the first time Gandhi challenged authority and an occasion which shows him as a tongue-tied young man but even then having a personal moral code that gives insight into the character of the future Mahatma. On Gandhi's further visit to England in 1914 Allinson, although no longer on the Medical Register, treated Gandhi for pleurisy, apparently partially successfully when orthodox medicine had failed.

1885 Cholera Controversy: Klein versus Koch

This paper will try to give new insight into the Cholera Controversy, which occurred 125 years ago. The majority of papers already written on the topic have emphasised the role of Robert Koch who described the comma bacillus as the cause of cholera epidemics. At the same time they have marginalised the role of Emanuel Edward Klein by stating that he was wrong when he objected to Robert Koch's statement, because as an employee of the British government he was politically motivated. Moreover, they have paid barely any attention to Klein's writings on the subject. In this paper I will try to approach his attitudes from the scientific, not political, perspective and try to explain the reasons why he challenged Koch.

[The controversy Cajal-Golgi: Stockholm, 1906]

Stockholm, December 11th, 1906. The Nobel committee has just crowned the respective works of the Spaniard Cajal and the Italian Golgi on the nervous system. But the ceremony turns into a drama: during its conference, Golgi violently attacks his colleague, creating a controversy with deep repercussions between "reticulists" and "neuronists".

Change of type as an explanation for the decline of therapeutic bloodletting

In clinical lectures given between 1850 and 1852, William Pultney Alison, a senior Edinburgh physician, reflected on whether therapeutic bloodletting could be useful in some cases of pneumonia but harmful in others. If so, Alison reasoned, a change in the form of the disease-a change of type-could explain why therapeutic bloodletting had been nearly abandoned in treating a disease for which, only a few years earlier, it had been the standard therapy. In response, a young pathologist, John Hughes Bennett, denied that anything like a change of type had occurred and insisted that bloodletting had never been an effective therapy. Over the next two decades, more than forty physicians debated the usefulness of bloodletting and the reasons for its decline. This debate, known as the Edinburgh Bloodletting Controversy, has attracted the attention of contemporary historians. Those who have discussed the debate side with Bennett and give Alison little serious attention. I argue that by examining the texts to determine what the issues really were, we can see that Alison may actually have been right. Moreover, this examination illuminates the practice of bloodletting and reveals one hitherto unrecognized factor that contributed to its decline.

Darwin, artificial selection, and poverty

This paper argues that the processes of evolutionary selection are becoming increasingly artificial, a trend that goes against the belief in a purely natural selection process claimed by Darwin's natural selection theory. Artificial selection is mentioned by Darwin, but it was ignored by Social Darwinists, and it is all but absent in neo-Darwinian thinking. This omission results in an underestimation of probable impacts of artificial selection upon assumed evolutionary processes, and has implications for the ideological uses of Darwin's language, particularly in relation to poverty and other social inequalities. The influence of artificial selection on genotypic and phenotypic adaptations arguably represents a substantial shift in the presumed path of evolution, a shift laden with both biological and political implications.

Endowed molecules and emergent organization: the Maupertuis-Diderot debate

In his Systeme de la nature ou Essai sur les corps organists (originally published in Latin in 1751 as Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali naturae systemate, under the pseudonym Dr Baumann), Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and a natural philosopher with a strong interest in the modes of transmission of 'genetic' information, described living minima which he termed molecules, "endowed with desire, memory and intelligence." Now, Maupertuis was Leibnizian of sorts; his molecules possessed higher-level, 'mental' properties, recalling La Mettrie's statement in L'Homme-Machine, that Leibnizians have "rather spiritualized matter than materialized the soul." But Maupertuis also debated this issue with Diderot, who critiqued this theory in the additions to his 1753 Pensées sur l'interpritation de la nature. Where Maupertuis attributes higher-level properties to his living minima, Diderot argues that these can only be 'organizational', i.e., properties of the whole. At issue here is the degree of commitment to a form of materialism.

Enemies or allies? The organ transplant medical community, the federal government, and the public in the United States, 1967-2000

The transplant medical community in the United States has frequently been divided over the appropriate role of the federal government and of the public in matters related to organ transplantation. Using public statements in government hearings, newspapers, and press releases, this article traces the thinking of the transplant medical community in particular during three especially politicized periods: the heart transplant and brain death controversies in the late 1960s, consideration of the National Organ Transplant Act and other legislation during the mid-1980s, and the controversy over organ allocation regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services in the late 1990s. Even while sometimes denouncing "politicization," over time surgeons, physicians, representatives of the United Network for Organ Sharing, and other leaders in the field became increasingly politically active and more accustomed to the notion that because of the unique nature of organ transplantation, both the public and the federal government have a legitimate and potentially beneficial oversight role.

Political abuse of psychiatry--an historical overview

The use of psychiatry for political purposes has been a major subject of debate within the world psychiatric community during the second half of the 20th century. The issue became prominent in the 1970s and 1980s due to the systematic political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union, where approximately one-third of the political prisoners were locked up in psychiatric hospitals. The issue caused a major rift within the World Psychiatric Association, from which the Soviets were forced to withdraw in 1983. They returned conditionally in 1989. Political abuse of psychiatry took also place in other socialist countries and on a systematic scale in Romania, and during the first decade of the 21st century, it became clear that systematic political abuse of psychiatry is also happening in the People's Republic of China. The article discusses the historical background to these abuses and concludes that the issue had a major impact on the development of concepts regarding medical ethics and the professional responsibility of physicians.

Epistemic values in the Burgess Shale debate

Focusing primarily on papers and books discussing the evolutionary and systematic interpretation of the Cambrian animal fossils from the Burgess Shale fauna, this paper explores the role of epistemic values in the context of a discipline (paleontology) striving to establish scientific authority within a larger domain of epistemic problems and issues (evolutionary biology). The focal point of this analysis is the repeated claims by paleontologists that the study of fossils gives their discipline a unique 'historical dimension' that makes it possible for them to unravel important aspects of evolution invisible to scientists who study the extant biosphere. The first part of the paper explores the shifting of emphasis in the writings of paleontologists between two strategies that employ opposing views on the classical positivist and physicalist ideal of science. The second part analyzes paleontologists' claims of privileged access to life's historical dimension in a situation where a theoretical upheaval occurring independent of the epistemical problem at hand completely shifts the standards for evaluating the legitimacy of various knowledge claims. Though the various strategies employed in defending the privileged historical perspective of paleontology have been disparate and, to an extent contradictory, each impinges on the acceptance of a specific epistemic ideal or set of values and success or failure of each depends on the compatibility of this ideal with the surrounding community of scientists.

Fisher-Mendel controversy in genetics: scientific argument, intellectual integrity, a fair society, Western falls and bioethical evaluation

This review article aims to discuss and analyze the background and findings regarding Fisher-Mendel Controversy in Genetics and to elucidate the scientific argument and intellectual integrity involved, as well as their importance in a fair society, and the lesson of Western falls as learned. At the onset of this review, the kernel of Mendel-Fisher Controversy is dissected and then identified. The fact of an organizational restructuring that had never gone towards a happy synchronization for the ensuing years since 1933 is demonstrated. It was at that time after Fisher succeeded Karl Pearson not only as the Francis Galton Professor of Eugenics but also as the chief of the Galton Laboratory at University College, London. The academic style of eugenics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the UK is then introduced. Fisher's ideology at that time, with its effects on the human value system and policy-making at that juncture are portrayed. Bioethical assessment is provided. Lessons in history, the emergence of the Eastern phenomenon and the decline of the Western power are outlined.

Dr Thomas Beddoes: chemistry, medicine, and the perils of democracy

Beddoes lectured on chemistry at Oxford in the years that included the French Revolution, the Terror, and the outbreak of war with France, as well as the success in France of the chemical revolution. The very public dispute between Edmund Burke and Joseph Priestley meant that the latter's study of different kinds of air was politically tainted. Beddoes's democratic beliefs and his support for the new chemistry of Lavoisier meant that as chemist and physician he had to deal with complaints that he was potentially seditious and pro-French. His medical theories, allied to pneumatic chemistry and building on the work of Priestley, were accordingly suspect. In spite of that, he became the physician and friend to several members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham and to members of their family, and they in return became his patrons. His collaboration with James Watt was crucial for his development of pneumatic medicine. The full extent of Lunar patronage, and especially that of James Keir and Thomas Wedgwood, has hitherto not been recognized, but it was the concealed scale of that patronage that made possible the execution of Beddoes's ambitious programme of treatment and research.

[Interpreting Brazil as afflicted by disease and by the spirit of routine: the repercussion of Arthur Neiva and Belisário Penna's medical report (1917-1935)]

The release of a report on the Oswaldo Cruz Institute's 1912 scientific voyage to North and Northeast Brazil, led by physicians Arthur Neiva and Belisário Penna, debate that found its way to the pages of magazines of the letters and sciences. The report used the images of disease, geographic and cultural isolation, illiteracy, poverty, and a vocation for backwardness to portray the people living in interior Brazil. These images of the sertão were extensively criticized in the periodical A Informação Goiana, published by local doctors who refused to see the interior defined as 'sickly' and 'backwards'. The article analyzes the ways in which the Neiva-Penna report distinguished itself becoming a reference for intellectual controversies surrounding the national question in Brazil.

[Carlos Chagas and the debates and controversies surrounding the disease of Brazil (1909-1923)]

The article explores the relation between the debate on Chagas' disease, discovered in 1909, and Brazil's 1916-1920 rural sanitation campaign. It argues that the political planks of the sanitary movement were intimately bound up with the definition and legitimization of this illness as a scientific fact and social issue. Presented as emblematic of rural endemic disease, this 'new tropical ailment' was characterized as 'the disease of Brazil', symbol of a 'sickly country'. The sanitary campaign was in turn a decisive element of the 1919-1923 polemic surrounding the disease. This is an exemplary case of how Brazilian scientists used theories from European tropical medicine to produce original knowledge in the field, basing themselves on meanings specific to the national context of their day.

The abolition of capital punishment: contributions from two nineteenth-century Italian psychiatrists

Capital punishment was the source of lively debate in Italy, from unification in 1861 until 1888. The precedent for abolishing the death penalty had been set in Tuscany in 1786. This paper presents the arguments put forward by two eminent psychiatrists who opposed the death penalty, Carlo Livi and Andrea Verga. Livi set out his scientific case for abolition in two addresses given to the Accademia dei Fisiocritici in Siena in 1862. In 1889 Verga wrote a commentary on the Senate sitting and argued in favour of approving the Italian Penal Code. Verga agreed with Livi's arguments and disagreed with the School of Criminal Anthropology, led by Cesare Lombroso and Raffaele Garofalo, who were both in favour of capital punishment.

A strange and surprising debate: mountains, original sin and 'science' in seventeenth-century England

It could come as a shock to learn that some seventeenth-century men of science and learning thought that mountains were bad. Even more alarmingly, some thought that God had imposed them on the earth to punish man for his sins. By the end of the seventeenth century, surprisingly many English natural philosophers and theologians were engaged in a debate about whether mountains were 'good' or 'bad', useful or useless. At stake in this debate were not just the careers of its participants, but arguments about the best ways of looking at and reckoning with 'nature' itself.

[Influence of anesthesia and antisepsis on the earliest gynecologic laparotomies: historical notes on the bicentennial of the introduction of ovariectomy]

On the occasion of the bicentennial of the first ovariectomy, we reviewed the beginnings of abdominal gynecologic surgery in Spain in order to shed light on aspects that are still unclear in medical historiography and that are often wrongly presented. We consulted a large number of sources that allowed us to follow events in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, discovering information we consider definitive and that confirmed our initial hypotheses. The work of Dr Federico Rubio, the first to perform an ovariectomy in Spain, is highlighted among the early experiences of our Spanish surgeons. Emphasis is placed on the high mortality rate associated with this operation at the beginning. We also analyze the problems of anesthesia and antisepsis and the influence of each on the surgical procedure. The events uncovered were the work of a group of forward-thinking surgeons who made considerable progress against opposing groups with more conservative views and whose contributions to Spanish surgery were far less brilliant.

The role of symbolic capital in stakeholder disputes: decision-making concerning intractable wastes

This paper examines almost 30 years of disputation concerning the disposal of the world's largest stockpile of the toxic organochlorine, hexachlorbenzene. It describes the study of a chemicals company in its attempt to manage the disposal of the toxic waste in a collaborative fashion with government, environmentalists and the local community. The study describes the new processes and structures specifically designed to address the decision-making and the issues of stakeholder perception and identity construction which have influenced the outcomes. Decision-making in such disputes is often theorized from the perspective of the emergence of highly individualized and reflexive risk communities and changing modes and expectations of corporate responsibility as a result of detraditionalization. We argue that the stakeholder interaction in this study reflects competing discourses in which corporate actors prioritize the building and maintaining of identity and symbolic capital rather than an active collaboration to solve the ongoing issue of the waste. As well, issues of access to expert knowledge highlight the relationship between conditions of uncertainty, technoscientific expertise and identity. The events of the study highlight the challenges faced by contemporary technoscientific corporations such as chemicals companies as they must deliver on requirements of transparency and openness, while maintaining technoscientific capacity and strong internal identity. We conclude that the study demonstrates the co-existence of social processes of individualization and detraditionalization with quasi-traditions which maintain authority, thus challenging the radical distinctions made in the literature between modernity and late or reflexive modernity.

From War on Drugs to War against Terrorism: modeling the evolution of Colombia's counter-insurgency

Strategic and tactical planning for military intervention needs revision as the causes, methods, and means of conflict have evolved. Counter-insurgent engagement is one such intervention that governments, militaries, and non-governmental organizations seek to better understand. Modeling insurgencies is an acceptable means to gain insight into the various characteristics of asymmetric warfare to proffer prescriptive resolutions for mitigating their effects. Colombia's insurgency poses the challenge of assessing population behavior in a non-traditional revolutionary climate. Factors prevalent in traditional insurgency are not applicable in Colombia, specifically between the years 1993 and 2001 with the democratization of the drug cartels. The catastrophic events of September 11th reverberated in Colombia resulting in a new policy and strategy to the waging the counter-insurgency there. This research introduces a structured methodology to modeling the Colombian counter-insurgency incorporating qualitative assessment, mathematical representation, and a System Dynamics approach to represent the effects of the policy change.

[Stephane Leduc (1853-1939), from medicine to synthetic biology]

At the beginning of the XXth century, Stéphane Leduc (1853-1939), physician and biologist in Nantes (France), believed that he created a new discipline: the synthetic biology. Using his own works on diffusion and osmotic growths, he considered that the structures obtained by him were very closed to living beings. In 1907, his conclusions were strongly criticized and his papers were refused by the Académie des Sciences de Paris, because they questioned spontaneous generations. This paper relates Leduc's experimental works and conclusions and as well analyses his analogical method.

A tale of two psychologies: The Høffding-Lehmann controversy and the establishment of experimental psychology at the University of Copenhagen

Alfred Lehmann (1858-1921) was the pioneer of experimental psychology in Denmark. He established a laboratory of psychophysics in Copenhagen in 1886 after spending a winter in Wundt's laboratory. Philosophical psychology had been taught for the better part of the nineteenth century at the University of Copenhagen and had enjoyed a positivistic turn with the philosophers Harald Høffding (1843-1931) and Kristian Kroman (1846-1925). Shortly after establishing his laboratory, Lehmann criticized Høffding's theory of "unmediated recognition," which led to a sharp dispute between them on the nature of recognition. It has been claimed that this was a direct cause of Lehmann's slow advance at the University of Copenhagen. Archival sources show that Høffding, though having a very different conception of psychology from Lehmann, was on most occasions supportive of Lehmann and thus played an important role in establishing experimental psychology at the University of Copenhagen. (c) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

[Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829). A dispute on the mechanism of evolution. On the bicentenary of the publication of Philosophie Zoologique (1809)]

The author of the paper has made an attempt to prove that a teleological interpretation of Lamarck's theory is false. It is unwarranted to attribute to Lamarck the idea that a living organism has an internal tendency to complicate its organization and to improve its mode of functioning; such a concept is not confirmed by existing textual evidence, and it is also in direct conflict with Lamarck's undisputed mechanicism. The proof presented in the paper begins with an outline of the history of this false interpretation, including the opinions of Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin. As the tendency is ascribed also to nature itself, the next phase of the proof has involved reconstructing the fully ateleological notion of nature to which Lamarck subscribed. Supposed evidence for the tendency is said to be provided by the existence of a series in which the organization of a living body grows from the simplest to the most complex. That is why the author of the current paper has analysed the concept of série animale used by Lamarck in some detail, in order to demonstrate that it is typological in character, and has nothing to do with the tendency that is allegedly inherent in the nature of an organism. Also presented in the paper, in connection with the construction of the series, is the problem of spontaneous generation, which was made complicated by Lamarck. Finally, the very notion of tendency is analysed and confronted with Lamarck's text; the latter in fact does not contain any explanations that would be teleological in the strict sense of the word. The analysis has enabled the author of the current paper to conduct an exegesis of the fragment of Lamarck's text which might give grounds to it being construed in terms of an explanation resorting to the notion of tendency, and possible interpretations of that fragment have been presented. The paper ends with a description of the mechanism which, according to Lamarck, is responsible for the rise in complexity of an organism that has the nature of a machine; such a mechanism leaves no place for any tendency to be in operation.

Separation and divergence: the untold story of James Robertson's and John Bowlby's theoretical dispute on mother-child separation

The work of Robertson and Bowlby is generally seen as complementary, Robertson being the practically oriented observer and Bowlby focusing on theoretical explanations for Robertson's observations. The authors add to this picture an "untold story" of the collaboration between Robertson and Bowlby: the dispute between the two men that arose in the 1960s about the corollaries of separation and the ensuing personal animosity. On the basis of unique archival materials, this until now little known aspect of the history of attachment theory is extensively documented. The deteriorating relationship between Robertson and Bowlby is described against the background of different currents in psychoanalysis in Britain in the interbellum.

Entering dubious realms: Grover Krantz, science, and Sasquatch

Physical anthropologist Grover Krantz (1931-2002) spent his career arguing that the anomalous North American primate called Sasquatch was a living animal. He attempted to prove the creature's existence by applying to the problem the techniques of physical anthropology: methodologies and theoretical models that were outside the experience of the amateur enthusiasts who dominated the field of anomalous primate studies. For his efforts, he was dismissed or ignored by academics who viewed the Sasquatch, also commonly called Bigfoot, as at best a relic of folklore and at worst a hoax, and Krantz's project as having dubious value. Krantz also received a negative reaction from amateur Sasquatch researchers, some of whom threatened and abused him. His career is best situated therefore as part of the discussion about the historical relationship between amateur naturalists and professional scientists. The literature on this relationship articulates a combining/displacement process: when a knowledge domain that has potential for contributions to science is created by amateurs, it will eventually combine with and then be taken over by professionals, with the result that amateur leadership is displaced. This paper contributes to that discussion by showing the process at work in Krantz's failed attempt to legitimize Bigfoot research by removing it from the amateur sphere and repositioning it in the professional world of anthropology.

[Noblemen injured in fights and jousts in the field of tension between honour and ability]

Oliver Auge shows in this article that, in the late Middle Ages, the consequences of invalidity due to fighting and jousts ranged between exclusion and appreciation--a similar pattern to what can be observed in the ancient Roman Republic. As the majority of medieval sources do not provide any information concerning this topic, Auge concludes that affected nobles were either seen as disturbing elements within the society or they even regarded themselves as such. But they met with social approval as soon as they explicitly identified themselves as former participants of wars or jousts that had caused their invalidity or if their performance was above the norm. A remarkable amount of evidence for this phenomenon appeared around the year 1500 leading the author to conclude that the view of disability gradually changed with the transition from Middle Ages to Modernity. Examples like that of Götz of Berlichingen's iron hand or the striking profile of the often portrayed Federico da Montefeltro, on the other hand, show that physical integrity was still the standard.

Theories of genetics and evolution and the development of medical entomology in France (1900-1939)

The development of entomology and medical entomology in France is discussed in the context of the prevalence of Lamarckian ideas concerning heredity and evolution. Lamarckian ideas have greatly influenced research carried out at the Institut Pasteur by Emile Roubaud and more generally in Felix Mesnil's laboratory, as well as research in general entomology at the Museum national d'histoire naturelle. By contrast, it did not influence research and teaching at the Faculté de médecine of Paris or that of physicians more generally including those in overseas Instituts Pasteur, which clearly kept away from theoretical discussion concerning the origin of variations and adaptation in insects of medical interest.

[Differentiation and synthesis. Forms of reception of acoustical research in the musical literature of the nineteenth century]

In the nineteenth century, both musical scholars and natural scientists discussed the relevance of acoustical research for the theory and practice of music. Whereas some musical theorists and acousticians plead together for an acoustical foundation of musical theory, other scholars questioned the significance of physical and physiological knowledge for a deeper understanding of music. Based on an analysis of musical journals, popular scientific writings, theoretical treatises and musical dictionaries this article demonstrates how musical scholars and natural scientists argued about the question which discipline should have the final say about musical concepts and terminologies. To merge both heterogeneous spheres--music and acoustics--or to carefully distinguish between them--these two positions shaped the dispute over the relationship between music and natural sciences in the nineteenth century.

Building on ruins: Copernicus' defense of ancient astronomers against modern critics

Nicholas Copernicus'De revolutionibus (1543) is a frequent starting point for histories of the Scientific Revolution on account of his dramatic reversal of the cosmic order handed down from antiquity. Nevertheless, Copernicus also mounted a surprisingly sharp attack on one of his contemporaries who tried to correct ancient astronomers. This uneasy balance between respecting and criticizing ancient works was part of broader contemporaneous attempts to grapple with the fragmentary legacies of past generations. Debates over stone ruins as well as manuscript texts shaped the evolution of early printed books, and artists, printers and instrument makers joined natural philosophers in pursuing novelties even while emulating tradition.

Transgenes and transgressions: scientific dissent as heterogeneous practice

Although scholars in science and technology studies have explored many dynamics and consequences of scientific controversy, no coherent theory of scientific dissent has emerged. This paper proposes the elements of such a framework, based on understanding scientific dissent as a set of heterogeneous practices. I use the controversy over the presence of transgenic DNA in Mexican maize in the early 2000s to point to a processual model of scientific dissent. 'Contrarian science' includes knowledge claims that challenge the dominant scientific trajectory, but need not necessarily lead to dissent. 'Impedance' represents efforts to undermine the credibility of contrarian science (or contrarian scientists) and may originate within or outside of the scientific community. In the face of impedance, contrarian scientists may become dissenters. The actions of the scientist at the center of the case study, Professor Ignacio Chapela of the University of California, Berkeley, demonstrate particular practices of scientific dissent, ranging from 'agonistic engagement' to 'dissident science'. These practices speak not only to functional strategies of winning scientific debate, but also to attempts to reconfigure relations among scientists, publics, institutions, and politics that order knowledge production.

Spirited dispute: the secret split between Wallace and Romanes

Alfred Russel Wallace's role in prompting the original publication of "On the Origin of Species" is now generally acknowledged. Wallace is now widely recognised as 'Darwin's co-discoverer', but the role that he played in the development and promotion of Darwinism is more often overlooked. From the very beginning of their collaboration in 1858, there were important differences between the works of Wallace and Darwin. Within Darwin's lifetime, the two men also disagreed over several significant evolutionary debates, most notably the role that Natural Selection might play in evolution. Following Darwin's death in 1882, Wallace set about promoting his own version of 'Darwinism', but not without opposition. A rather ungentlemanly debate between Wallace and Darwin's chief disciple George John Romanes throws light on the contested nature of what it meant to be a Darwinian in the late nineteenth century.

A perfectly staged 'concerted action' against psychoanalysis: the 1913 congress of German psychiatrists

An eyewitness account provides evidence of a significant clandestine effort to neutralize the legitimacy and authority of psychoanalysis. In a letter, the witness confirms the existence of a perfectly staged concerted action among German psychiatrists against Freud's influence in 1913. Their congress in Breslau was meant to present the united front of German psychiatrists, who were going on record as being against psychoanalysis and, in that context, to give Eugen Bleuler, a leading psychiatrist, whose (however half-hearted) support for psychoanalysis had alarmed his colleagues, a public opportunity for back-pedalling. The letter shows that Freud and his allies were not the only ones who tried to manage an intellectual movement by using informal networks and 'behind the scenes' manoeuvring.

[A tale of 2 cities. The dispute over the true origins of the Royal Society]

When the Royal Society was founded in November 1660 it took scientific societies already existing in other European countries as its model. However, at a time when the new mathematical and experimental sciences were still generally without a secure institutional foundation there was also great interest in the new society on the part of scientists and scholars abroad. Soon visitors such as Christiaan Huygens and Balthazar de Monconys were able to report positively on its practical orientation, while among others Johannes Hevelius and Philipp Jacob Sachs von Lewenhaimb in letters to the founder member John Wallis and to the secretary Henry Oldenburg requested more information on its origins and statutes. Meanwhile, in England the Royal Society found itself the object of vociferous criticism, especially from the universities, which saw their own role as centres of learning increasingly compromised by the existence of an institution dedicated to the promotion of modern science. The Royal Society responded to this interest from abroad and criticism at home by commissioning an official history written by Thomas Sprat, a man with a university as well as a literary background. However, despite the author's good credentials, the History of the Royal Society presents a one-sided account of the institution, mainly from the perspective of the circle around John Wilkins to which Sprat had belonged. According to their point of view the Royal Society arose from meetings which Wilkins had organized at Wadham College in Oxford in the early 1650s. For members of the old guard, such as Wallis and William Brouncker, the origins of the Royal Society were, however, not in Oxford but rather in London, where meetings involving a significant number of members of the future institution had taken place already in the mid-1640s. This was not simply a question of historical accuracy, but also of the way in which the Royal Society conceived itself: while the circle around Wilkins was in decisive respects experimentally orientated, Wallis, Brouncker and their friends stood for a more mathematical approach to physics as well as for the promotion of mathematics itself. By taking into account a number of sources not previously considered in context, the paper seeks to shed new light on a problem which has remained largely unresolved since the debate began in the late Seventeenth Century.

Fleck, anatomical drawings and early modern history

In 2003, the historian of medicine Michael Stolberg, contested the argument--developed by Thomas Laqueur and Londa Schiebinger--that in the XVIII century, anatomists shifted from a one-sex to a two-sexes model. Laqueur and Schiebinger linked the new focus on anatomical differences between the sexes to the rise of egalitarian aspirations during the Enlightenment, and a consecutive need to ground male domination in invariable "laws of nature". Stolberg claimed that the shift to the two sexes model occurred in the early modern period, and was mainly motivated by developments within medicine. This article examines the 2003 debate on the origin of "two sexes" model in the light of a 1939 controversy that opposed the historian of medicine Tadeusz Bilikiewicz, who advocated a focus on a "spirit" of an earlier epoch, and the pioneer of sociology of science Ludwik Fleck, who promoted the study of the "thought styles" of specific scientific communities.

William Bateson from Balanoglossus to Materials for the study of variation: the transatlantic roots of discontinuity and the (un)naturalness of selection

William Bateson (1861-1926) has long occupied a controversial role in the history of biology at the turn of the twentieth century. For the most part, Bateson has been situated as the British translator of Mendel or as the outspoken antagonist of W. F. R. Weldon and Karl Pearson's biometrics program. Less has been made of Bateson's transition from embryologist to advocate for discontinuous variation, and the precise role of British and American influences in that transition, in the years leading up to the publication of his massive Materials for the Study of Variation (1894). In this paper, I first attempt to trace Bateson's development in his early career before turning to search for the development of the moniker "anti-Darwinist" that has been attached to Bateson in well-known histories of the neo-Darwinian Synthesis.

Against UNESCO: Gedda, Gini and American scientific racism

The aim of this article is to shed light on the ideological, institutional and intellectual connections between Italian eugenics and American scientific racism, from 1953 to 1967. The paper pays special attention to the scientific links between fascist demographer Corrado Gini (the first president of the Italian Central Statistical Institute - Istat), and geneticist Luigi Gedda (the president of the Gregor Mendel Institute in Rome and head of the Catholic political association Azione Cattolica) on the one hand, and on the other, the members of the IAAEE (International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics) and their journal, "The Mankind Quarterly". Corrado Gini and Luigi Gedda were both members of the honorary advisory board of "The Mankind Quarterly", and Gini was also assistant editor in 1962. Despite the theoretical differences between the "neo-Lamarckians" Gini and Gedda, and the "Mendelians" Robert Gayre and Reginald Ruggles Gates--editor and associate editor of "The Mankind Quarterly"--the relationship grew stronger because of a sort of strategic alliance in the ideological fight against UNESCO's Statements on Race. The main source of the paper is Corrado Gini's personal archive, deposited in Rome at the National State Archive (ACS).

Animal electricity at the end of the eighteenth century: the many facets of a great scientific controversy

In the 1790s, Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta were the main protagonists of a lively debate on the role of electricity in animal organisms. Significant developments originated from this debate, leading to the foundation of two new disciplines, electrodynamics and electrophysiology, that were to play a crucial role in the scientific and technological progress of the last two centuries. The Galvani-Volta controversy has been repeatedly reconstructed, sometimes in an attempt to identify the merits and the errors of one or the other of the two protagonists, sometimes with the aim of demonstrating that the theories elaborated by the two Italian scholars were irreconcilable, reflecting completely different ways of looking at phenomena and conceiving of scientific research. In this article a different interpretation is offered, based on a discussion of the scientific issues that were central to Galvani's and Volta's research, and with reference to the context of science and society of the eighteenth century.

[Critical notions about Paracelsus [corrected] or "Antiparacelsianism"?, 1570-1630]

Historians of early modern medicine have frequently portrayed Paracelsians and Antiparacelsians around 1600 as two largely separate, hostile factions locked in a fierce battle. As I will argue in my paper, this account attributes too much weight to the public self-fashioning of both groups: From the mid-16th century onwards, some physicians chose the deceased Theophrastus of Hohenheim, or Paracelsus, as their new medical hero and tried to attract affluent patients with new, supposedly more powerful "spagyric" medicaments. Other physicians showed intense interest without thereby accepting Paracelsus as the "Luther of medicine". Based on my analysis of large collections of early modern physicians' letters, I argue for a more nuanced and cautious account of this conflict. Well-known physicians like Konrad Gesner, Johann Crato von Krafftheim, or Joachim Camerarius did indeed condemn the arrogance and rudeness of Paracelsus and his belittling of the ancient medical authors. Yet, at the same time, they also showed a keen interest in the new chemical drugs which the "Paracelsians" promoted. None of these supposed "Antiparacelsians" supported or welcomed the vehement attacks by Thomas Erastus in his Disputationum de Medicina nova Paracelsi without reservations--although Erastus suggested this for tactical reasons.

Solar activity, revolutions and cultural prime in the history of mankind

BACKGROUND

Russian astronomer A.L. Tchijevsky published in the twenties of 20th century a study comparing the approximately 11-year cycling of "sunspot activity" and "historical process", analyzed globally since the 5th century B.C. to the 19th century A.D. According to him, phenomena of societal "excitation", as revolutions, occurred synchronously with the solar maxima, and, oppositely, those of peaceful activities of masses, as science and arts, with the solar minima. Recently, Slovak philosopher E. Páles describes periodic fluctuation of historical events in mutually distant geographic areas during more than three millennia. The period lengths, however, are longer, one of the most pronounced being around 500 years. THE QUESTION was therefore posed: does a similar correlation with sunspot activity, as found for 11-year cycles, exist also in the 500-year cycling?

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The historical data consisted of two time series concerning revolutions in Europe and China, and of eight time series from activities in science and arts registered from five geographic areas. For the comparison, parallel time series of sunspot (Wolf) numbers, available since IInd century B.C., were constructed. Using periodic regression function, the times of peaking were estimated for each data set.

RESULTS

In agreement with Tchijevsky's hypothesis, revolutions culminated near to solar maxima while cultural flourishing usually distinctly near to solar minima. This conclusion is based on the level of statistical significance alpha=0.05.

CONCLUSION

Solar impact on geomagnetic field could be one of elucidating mechanisms. Recently, electromagnetic influencing of brain function has been realized artificially.

[Physicians and pharmacists in Uberabinha (1890-1920): conflicts and disputes]

Some results are presented of a study into the medical and pharmacological practices in São Pedro de Uberabinha, Minas Gerais state, (today Uberlândia), between the 1890s and the 1920s. The basic hypothesis is that during the period in question, there existed a health service market that was marked and to some extent constituted by conflicts and disputes headed by physicians and pharmacists. Based on this hypothesis, I attempt to identify the reasons and resources used by these subjects to demarcate their spaces and healing practices.