The Investigative Enterprise: Experimental Physiology in Nineteenth-Century Medicine

The seven distinguished contributors to this volume illuminate not only the history of the biological and medical sciences but also the relationship between institutes and ideas which characterized the explosion of scientific investigation, especially in Germany. Besides William Coleman and Frederic L. Holmes, they include Robert G. Frank, Jr., Timothy Lenoir, John E. Lesch, Kathryn M. Olesko, and Arlene M. Tuchman. Scientific investigation was not new to the nineteenth century, but it was during that period that it began to be carried out on a scale large enough to become crucial to the welfare of nations. Much remains to be learned about how the forms of organization characteristic of the modern investigative enterprise originated. This book explores such questions in relation to one of the dominant experimental sciences of the century, physiology. Each author shows, through the examination of a specific institute or a specific subject, that the interplay between research, pedagogy, personal vision, and state or public interests can be studied to particular advantage in localized settings.