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A Microscopic Incident in a Monumental Struggle: Huxley and Antibiosis in 1875

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

James Friday
James Friday
Affiliation:
The Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London, W1X 4BS.
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Extract

In 1875 T. H. Huxley discovered that a secretion from the mould penicillium glaucum had an ability, unconnected with oxygen deprivation, to inhibit bacterial growth. He recorded his observations in his notebooks and in a single letter to John Tyndall, who at that time was a friend of Lister and a correspondent of Pasteur. Neither Huxley nor Tyndall looked for an explanation of this phenomenon, and neither told anyone else about it.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , March 1974 , pp. 61 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1974

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References

* The Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London, WiX 4BS. I am grateful to Margaret Gray, Margaret Friday, and Judith Lloyd Thomas of the Royal Institution; Mrs J. Pingree of Imperial College; Miss E. Dahl of the Bibliotheque Nationale; Dr J. Burchfield of Northern Illinois University; and Dr Roy MacLeod and Susan Wolff of the University of Sussex for their kind assistance with, and criticism of, this paper.

1 Tyndall, J., ‘On the optical deportment of the atmosphere with reference to the phenomena of putrefaction and infection’, Proceedings of the Royal Society, xxiv (1875–1876), 171–83Google Scholar. This paper was read before the Royal Society on 14 January 1876. See Eve, A. S. and Creasey, C. H., Life and work of John Tyndall (London, 1945), pp. 318–24Google Scholar. Tyndall continued to hammer away at Bastian until 1878; see Clarke, E., ‘Henry Charlton Bastian’, Dictionary of scientific biography (New York, 1970), i. 495–8.Google Scholar

2 Pasteur, wrote to Tyndall, on 15 02 1877Google Scholar (Royal Institution, Tyndall MSS. 27/C3.24) stating that Bastian had admitted defeat. Subsequently a commission of the French Académie des Sciences was set up to examine Bastian's evidence, but by the end of 1877 Bastian had failed to convince them. In 1878 he ceased to support spontaneous generation publicly. He reverted to it later in life.

3 SirRoberts, William, ‘A word on the origin of bacteria and on abiogenesis’, British medical journal, i (1876), 282–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as quoted in Doetsch, R. N., ‘Studies on biogenesis by Sir William Roberts’, Medical history, vii (1963), 237.Google Scholar

4 Hein, Hilde, ‘The endurance of the mechanism-vitalism controversy’, Journal of the history of biology, v (1972), 159–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Farley, John, ‘The spontaneous generation controversy (1859–1880): British and German reactions to the problem of abiogenesis’, Journal of the history of biology, v (1972), 285–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Tyndall, J., Address delivered before the British Association assembled at Belfast, with additions (London, 1874), p. 45:Google Scholar ‘In our day grand generalizations have been reached. The theory of the origin of species is but one of them. Another, of still wider grasp and more radical significance, is the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy, the ultimate philosophical issues of which are as yet but dimly seen—that doctrine which “binds nature fast in fate” to an extent not hitherto recognized, exacting from every antecedent its equivalent consequent, from every consequent its equivalent antecedent, and bringing vital as well as physical phenomena under the dominion of that law of causal connexion which, so far as the human understanding has yet pierced, asserts itself everywhere in nature.’ Tyndall went on to discuss the problems of ‘origin’, continually tying in evolution with the conservation of energy principle. See also Tyndall, J., ‘Vitality’, in Fragments of science … (4th edn., London, 1872), pp. 478–86Google Scholar. The ‘problems later on’ began around 1904 and culminated with Erwin Schrödinger's What is life? The physical aspects of the living cell (Cambridge, 1944)Google Scholar. This work is carefully examined in Olby, R. C., ‘Schrödinger's problem: what is life?’, Journal of the history of biology, iv (1971), 119–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Crellin, J. K., ‘The problem of heat resistance of micro-organisms in the British spontaneous generation controversy of 1860–1880’, Medical history, x (1960), 50–9Google Scholar. Crellin's interest stemmed from his M.Sc. work at the University of London on F. Crace Calvert. Doetsch, op. cit. (3), was similarly focussed on an individual—Sir William Roberts. Farley's work (op. cit. [5]) takes a much wider view. See also Vandervliet, Glyn, Microbiology and the spontaneous generation debate during the 1870s (Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1971)Google Scholar; this work is unavailable to me at the time of writing.

8 Clarke, , op. cit. (1), bibliography, pp. 497–8.Google Scholar

9 Tyndall, J., On the scientific use of the imagination: a discourse delivered before the British Association at Liverpool on Friday evening, 16th September 1870 (London, 1870), pp. 40–41, and passimGoogle Scholar; this work appears also in Tyndall, , Fragments of science, op. cit. (6), pp. 125–62Google Scholar. There is a good deal of confusion over the nebular evolutionary hypothesis, confusion that will not be settled until someone proposes an acceptable explanation of Kelvin's thoughts and influence in the context of Tait's and Stewart's religious idealism and Stokes's and Maxwell's mathematical idealism, as well as the materialist tradition of Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall. Heimann, P. M., “The Unseen Universe: physics and the philosophy of nature in Victorian Britain”. The British journal for the history of science, vi (1972), 73–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has made a useful start. Dr J. Burchfield of Northern Illinois University is also currently working on the subject.

10 Acland, H. W., Address to the British Medical Association delivered at the Hall of Christ Church, August 4, 1868 (Oxford, 1868), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

11 Tyndall, J., Crystalline and molecular forces, No. 1 of the 6th series of Science lectures for the people (Manchester, 1874), p. 12.Google Scholar

12 Howard, J. E., An examination of the Belfast Address of the British Association, 1874, from a scientific point of view (London, 1875), p. 4.Google Scholar

13 In 1971 the American Council of Learned Societies awarded a grant to the Royal Institution for the indexing and cataloguing of the large Tyndall archive, under the direction of Dr Roy M. MacLeod of the University of Sussex. The papers were in seeming order, but as work progressed it became clear that Mrs Tyndall's and the biographers' organization of the manuscripts had been incomplete. Almost two thousand letters had not been examined or listed by them, and the three or four thousand which had been handled were very imperfectly arranged. A new arrangement, based on a very simple citation system, has now been imposed. See Friday, J. R., MacLeod, R. M., and Shepherd, P., John Tyndall—natural philosopher: a catalogue of the manuscripts and correspondence of John Tyndall held at the Royal Institution, and a bibliography of his published works (London: Mansell Information Publishing, Ltd.—in press).Google Scholar

14 Imperial College Huxley Papers: e.g. the letter from F. Currey, F.R.S., ref. 12.369, discussing the literature of penicillium. The species Huxley used in his experiments was the common glaucum, which produces penicillin, albeit in a lesser concentration than Fleming's and Florey's notatum; see Sokoloff, B., Penicillin (London, 1946), pp. 127–9Google Scholar, et passim.

15 Bibby, C., Scientist extraordinary: the life and scientific work of Thomas Henry Huxley (London, 1972), p. 18.Google Scholar

16 Royal Institution, Tyndall Manuscripts (cited hereafter as R. I. Tyndall MSS.) 14/C9.80.

17 The annual register for 1872, p. 368.Google Scholar

18 R. I. Tyndall MSS. 14/C9.82. Pasteur's work on yeast (recalled by Tyndall in his introduction to Lady Claud Hamilton's translation of the Life of Pasteur in 1883Google Scholar) had been exceptional, in that yeast's fermentation produces carbon dioxide, creating a barrier between the surface of the liquid and free oxygen of the air. In the experiment that Huxley was to relate to Tyndall, no such barrier was erected, but Tyndall ignored this.

19 Tyndall, J., ‘Louis Pasteur: his life and labours’, in New fragments (London, 1892), pp. 194–5Google Scholar, and passim, and Tyndall, J., ‘Fermentation and its bearing on the phenomena of disease’, Fortnightly review, cxix (1876), 547–72, especially pp. 552–3Google Scholar. Some of Pasteur's own earlier work on the subject is discussed in Conant, J. B. (ed.), Pasteur's study of fermentation, case 6 of ‘Harvard case histories in experimental science’ (Cambridge, Mass., 1952)Google Scholar, and in Conant's case 7 in the same series: Pasteur's and Tyndall's study of spontaneous generation (Cambridge, Mass., 1953)Google Scholar. See also Mr and MrsFrankland, P., Pasteur (London, 1898), pp. 58–64.Google Scholar

20 There were, of course, quite a number of isolated experiments that pointed to the possibility of antibiotics before Erlich, some in the 1870s. See Brunel, J., ‘Antibiotics from Pasteur to Fleming’, Journal of the history of medicine, vi (1951), 287–301Google Scholar, and Florey, H. W.et al. (eds.), Antibiotics (London, 1949), vol. iGoogle Scholar. But Huxley's experiment was one of the most clear-cut, and Huxley even showed signs of asking the ‘right’ questions about the phenomena he saw. But events, and Tyndall, sidetracked him.

21 The document itself, which is free from biographers' or archivists' marks, was wrongly filed and is moderately illegible. There is no mention of it in Huxley's Life and letters or in Cyril Bibby's works on Huxley. Nor is there any reference to it in the standard works on Fleming (Maurois, Ludovici), penicillin (Sokoloff, Hare), or penicillium. It did not figure in Tyndall's biography, or in subsequent works on him. The experiments themselves are, however, recorded in Huxley's experimental notebooks at Imperial College (Volumes 4 and 5). Biographers have not, apparently, seen them in context hitherto.

22 R. I. Tyndall MSS. 14/B5.63. The copy of this letter now at Imperial College was donated by the Royal Institution. The mention of Sanderson (Sir John Scott Burdon-Sanderson) in this letter is also important. Tyndall was, at the time, not on the best of terms with him, as Sanderson had done experiments in support of Bastian. Tyndall wrote to Du Bois Reymond on 6 June 1877 that ‘Sanderson is clever and industrious, but he possesses a vague and wandering mind’. (R. I. Tyndall MSS. 24/B8.16). See also Eve, and Creasey, , op. cit. (1), p. 199.Google Scholar

23 The ‘kiss (kick)’ is Tyndall's own punnery. The ‘Yankee Iscariot’ was none other than Joseph Henry, supported by Professor A. M. Mayer of Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken. Their dispute with Tyndall was over Henry's report to the Lighthouse Board of Washington concerning some sound experiments. See R. I. Tyndall MSS. 28/F4.40.

24 R. I. Tyndall MSS. 14/C9.83. Mrs Tyndall had wrongly ascribed this letter to the year 1872; the biographers to 1873.

25 A late letter from Tyndall to Huxley complained of Huxley's poor handwriting. Dawson, Warren in compiling the catalogue of The Huxley papers (London, 1946)Google Scholar also found the manuscripts almost illegible in many cases.

26 39 letters from Pasteur to Tyndall are held in the Royal Institution Tyndall MSS. (27/C1–C5) and one letter from Tyndall to Pasteur (27/C7). 23 letters from Tyndall to Pasteur are held in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. In none of these did Huxley's experiments receive a mention. Tyndall ceased to correspond with Pasteur in 1888. In 1889 he wrote that he was ‘sick of … Pasteur's love of adulation’ (R. I. Tyndall MSS. 10/E3.3).

27 Hodgkinson, R., Science and public health (London: Open University Press, 1973), p. 57Google Scholar; see also Maurois, A., The Life of Alexander Fleming (London, 1959), p. 128.Google Scholar

28 See Tyndall, R. I. MSS. Tyndall-Huxley correspondence subsequent to 15 11 1875.Google Scholar

29 Kuhn, T. S., The structure of scientific revolutions, vol. 2, no. 2 of International encyclopedia of unified science (London, 1962)Google Scholar. The work on penicillium was certainly not at the centre of any great changes in scientific paradigms. The implications ofthat work might have been, but I think the more important question here is the nature of the scientific group involved.

30 MacLeod, R. M., ‘The support of Victorian science: the endowment of research movement in Great Britain, 1868–1900’, Minerva, ix (1971), 197–230CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacLeod, R. M., ‘The Royal Society and the government grant: notes on the administration of scientific research, 1849–1914’, The historical journal, xiv (1971), 323–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacLeod, R. M., ‘Of medals and men: a reward system in Victoria science 1826–1914’, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, xxvi (1971), 81–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also MacLeod, R. M., ‘The history of science in the [19] seventies’, Spectrum, no. 80 (1971), 7–9Google Scholar. MacLeod's approach is unique, and has often been criticized for its obvious avoidance of speculation and refusal to deal with nebulous philosophical issues. But I believe that in the long term it is likely that more will emerge from this type of study than from all of the social-philosophical constructions taken together; see Times literary supplement (15 09 1972), p. 1057Google Scholar. Cf. also, of course, Cardwell, D. S. L., The organisation of science in England (2nd edn., London, 1972).Google Scholar

31 Rowlinson, J. S., ‘The theory of glaciers’, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, xxvi (1971), 189–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is a classic paper showing the impact of one controversy on the conduct of another.

32 MacLeod, R. M., ‘The Ayrton-Hooker affair’, in Mendelsohn, E. and Thackray, A. W., Science and values (New York—in press)Google Scholar. See also Tyndall, R. I. MSS., correspondence vol. viii.Google Scholar

33 Semmel, B., The Eyre controversy (London, 1962)Google Scholar. See also Tyndall, R. I. MSS., Tyndall-Huxley correspondence for 1866.Google Scholar

34 R. I. Tyndall MSS. 19/F3.25.

35 Huxley, T. H., ‘Presidential address’, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1870 (London, 1871), p. lxxxix.Google Scholar