Creating a Tradition of Biomedical Research: Contributions to the History of the Rockefeller University (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUPWhy have so many outstanding scientists and discoveries been nurtured at Rockefeller University, and not elsewhere? This underlying question was addressed by a panel of researchers at the university's centennial observance of 2000–2001. Rockefeller University stems from the creation of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (RIMR) in 1901, which in turn was the fruit of a project launched in 1887 by Frederick T. Gates, a Baptist minister chosen by John D. Rockefeller Sr. to assist him in his philanthropic activities. The contributions of this volume shed light on the emergence of experimental medicine within the RIMR, the reshaping of biomedical practices that it induced, and its effect on the worldwide circulation of biomedical sciences.
Although the ambition of the book is to encompass the whole of the twentieth century, its contributions particularly highlight the mandate of Simon Flexner, the first director of the RIMR (who served until 1935), and the period from 1935 to 1965, when the Rockefeller Institute was renamed Rockefeller University. Commenting on Flexner's stewardship, contributor J. Rogers Hollingsworth speaks of the Institute's structural "ambidexterity," which allowed it "to move in new directions at the same time that it was carrying on more established lines of research" (p. 23). With this in mind, it is easier to understand how the project of founding a scientific medicine, where "clinician-researcher" (p. 123) and "physician-scientist" (p. 133) pursued idiosyncratic, if not competing, paths, could have run up against challenges throughout the RIMR's history.
Several contributors address the tension between the clinic and the laboratory. Olga Amsterdamska and Jules Hirsch explore this tension in the context of a variety of issues, from the hospital's architectural design to the indoctrination of its staff. Ton van Helvoort investigates the lengthy history of cancer induction by ultrafilterable agents and shows how Rockefeller researchers Peyton Rous and James B. Murphy had to persevere amid the negative attitudes of clinicians. Rous's and Murphy's different investigative styles are the subject of Carol L. Moberg's contribution. The scientific imagination encouraged by such ambidexterity is also evident in Alexis Carrel's gradual shift from experimental surgery to biology, according to Hannah Landecker, and in Paul Weiss's creation of a model of molecular ecology, as described by Sabine Brauckmann.
The book highlights the Rockefeller Institute's organizational and material infrastructure, especially its laboratories, which became the cradles for "institutionalizing excellence" (p. 17). Chapters by Bert Hansen, Shelley McKellar, Hanna Landecker, and Aya Takahashi also reveal the context that fostered responses to social anxieties toward disease. Bert Hansen discusses the emergence of a "new journalism" in the late nineteenth century in the United States, which provided an infrastructure for disseminating the breakthroughs made at the RIMR—but he overlooks the phenomenon of the political messages conveyed in the cartoons of the time, a discussion of which could have helped readers to grasp their full [End Page 464] cultural meanings. Shelley McKellar's and Hannah Landecker's respective contributions on Alexis Carrel's work on blood-vessel repair and tissue culture also stress the media's role in generalizing Carrel's experimental work by shaping "patterns of public expectation, enthusiasm, and meaning" (p. 142), despite the numerous obstacles to transferring these innovations from the laboratory into clinical practice. Aya Takahashi revisits the biographical narratives of Hideyo Noguchi's death from yellow fever in Ghana in 1928 while he was investigating the disease, demonstrating the conflict between the popular hagiographic stories and the perceived scientific value of his work.
Unfortunately, the book overlooks the importance of the RIMR and its partners' research in the tropics. Indeed, tropical areas often supplied (and still do supply) the...
