Reward vs Reputation

Something occurred to me in class while we were discussing anesthesia and how it initially met with resistance from the medical community. We had gone over basic reasons why certain surgeons didn’t want to use anesthesia: anesthesia isn’t completely safe, we can’t risk people’s lives just to lessen their pain in surgery, it puts our women in too submissive a state to be deemed appropriate, god wanted eve to suffer in childbirth, etc. But I suspect that a big reason the prospect of using drugs such as nitrous oxide, ether, and chloroform to alleviate pain in surgery wasn’t immediately adopted or accepted by the conservative medical community (and this explanation came up later in our class, and many people made the same comparison that I am soon to make) was because those drugs had been used recreationally before their potential as anesthetics was ever proposed.

We hadn’t discussed, in depth, the extent to which nitrous oxide, ether, and chloroform were used recreationally in the Victorian era. We read that Humphrey Davey, once he stumbled upon the mind-altering properties of nitrous oxide, used to inhale it and sit in the dark to “ponder existence” and “become one with the universe.” We heard briefly about ether frolics, and that James Young Simpson, the early pioneer of chloroform as an anesthetic, used to offer chloroform on handkerchiefs to his guests at dinner parties. Taking a closer look (which in this case means browsing the internet to learn a little more about the histories of these drugs), we see that the drugs extended a little further into the Victorian culture, into places other than just Davey’s laboratory and Simpson’s dinner parties. Nitrous oxide was used recreationally by the British upper class for four decades after Davey made a case for it as an anesthetic before it was finally used in surgery. It was served in the place of wine at social gatherings of the British upper class, its state-heightening properties were showcased at street fairs and festivals, and it was soon given the nickname, “laughing gas.” Before ether’s entry into the surgical world, it was used, especially in the United States, in “frolics” in which groups would gather, inhale various amounts of ether, become exhilarated, and dance around like madmen. Ether was also sometimes drunk, especially in Ireland. Chloroform, although not used recreationally for a long period of time, was certainly known for its intoxicating effects before it was observed that it eliminated pain for the user. Again, chloroform was mostly experimented with by members of the upper class.

Though these drugs were overshadowed by the recreational use of drugs such as opium and laudanum, opium mixed with alcohol, they were still known to society as state-altering substances. From the medical community’s point of view, these drugs did not seem like a breakthrough to be used to eliminate pain from the operating room. These were drugs that they already known, drugs that had no history of medical application, but a rich history in frivolity. And now for the comparison. The Victorian surgeons and physicians were faced with the same sort of situation that we, today, are faced with in considering letting a drug like marijuana into the medical realm. I think marijuana has a stronger reputation than was “enjoyed” by the anesthetic gasses of the nineteenth century, but the principle is the same. People use marijuana to get high. Is that enough of a reason to ban it for medical use?

One difference in the way that we, today, consider something like marijuana for medical use, versus how surgeons in the nineteenth century would have considered ether or chloroform, is that we know a lot more about substances today than did the Victorians. For example, the Victorians didn’t know that chloroform could deal serious damage to the liver, but they used it anyway. Today, we need to know everything about a substance before it’s cleared for medical use, though there is still a debate over exactly how much marijuana can help or harm the body. Studies show that marijuana can help patients that need to increase their appetites, such as patients with eating disorders or patients that are undergoing various cancer treatments. Marijuana is also a mild pain reliever, a reducer of nausea, and a muscle relaxant. However, other studies report that marijuana, when smoked, can cause lung cancer and bronchial damage. However the medical community weighs the risks versus the potential rewards of using marijuana in medical treatments, we as a society, who ultimately end up deciding if marijuana will or will not be used by doctors when we vote for or against it, judge it primarily on its reputation as a recreational drug. I’m not quite sure where I stand on today’s medical marijuana debate, but I know that many painful years passed for patients that could have had anesthesia in surgery if not for conservative surgeons basing their condemnation of pain-alleviating drugs on their recreational reputations. So I think we should try our best today to separate marijuana’s reputation from the debate over whether or not doctors should be able to prescribe it to their patients. We should consider marijuana on the basis of risk vs reward, not reward vs reputation.

Edinburgh and the Royal Colleges

Earlier, as I may have mentioned before, I took a trip to Paris to meet up with a good friend from high school. Paris blew me away, and I was pretty sure that no other place in the world could be as awe-inspiring or have such a profound effect on me. And then our class took a trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, and once again I was blown away. The city was so beautiful. I loved the brick walkways, the dark buildings, the hilly terrain that brought you to wonderful castles perched upon picturesque cliffs. And just outside the city, the gorgeous fields and miles of green, rolling hills convinced me that Scotland might even be on par with Paris. To say that I loved Edinburgh would be a vast understatement. But I can’t just go on and on about the beauty of the city, right? Our class obviously chose to visit Edinburgh for a reason.

We have been studying advances in Victorian surgery, and also in medicine in general. Edinburgh, especially in the 19th century, was a world leader in many facets of academia, medicine being one of the disciplines that flourished above all. Among the influential names that we have been studying are James Young Simpson, the pioneer of chloroform as an anesthetic, and Joseph Lister, the surgeon that first used carbolic acid as an antiseptic. Both of these men worked in Edinburgh during important stages of their lives, and while we were there we learned a great deal about both of them.

Our class visited both the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians while we were in Edinburgh. We had guided tours of both colleges, and at both, jokes were made about rivalries between the two. Traditionally, surgeons were definitely lower on the medicinal totem pole than physicians. For a long time, as anyone who listened to my rap would know, physicians and not surgeons had to go to college to learn about medicine. But as advances in surgery were made, such as the introductions of anesthetics and antisepsis, the power balance (to make it sound more epic) between surgeons and physicians started to equalize. For this reason, and because physicians wanted to retain their superior status as surgeons were making a name for themselves, there used to be a bit of tension between the two professions, and between the two colleges. Now, however, it’s referenced as more of a joke.

There was an interesting comparison to be made between the two colleges. At the Royal College of Surgeons, the observables were all objects, be them surgical instruments, skeletal components, or jars containing various internal organs. At the Royal College of Physicians, the observables were massive collections of books written by influential characters at different times throughout history. While the Royal College of Surgeons had a collection of twisted spinal columns that illustrated a certain medical condition, the Royal College of Physicians had fist edition copies of some of Isaac Newton’s first works. This sort of illustrated the difference between surgeons and physicians in the 18th and 19th centuries: Surgeons were doers, physicians were thinkers. It seemed like surgery was more about practice, while being a physician was more about academia. Though surgeons eventually put a greater stress on education, straying away from mere apprenticeship and entering the classroom, physicians still retained their tradition of superior academic endeavor. I do, however, believe that surgeons in the 19th century started to gain an edge on the other medical professionals in practical application. They slowly increased their repertoires to include more than just amputation, broke with the barbers, and started fighting infection and fixing ailments. Surgeons were able to actually do something for their patients, while physicians, though they were beginning to concern themselves more with what was going on inside the body and not just what came out of it, still lagged behind. Perhaps, when we venture more into germ theory, we will see whether surgeons ever surpassed physicians as the dominant medical professional.

I especially liked touring the Royal College of Physicians, partly because the building was beautiful, and partly because our guide was extremely interesting. I think the college made such an impression on me, I might devote a separate blog just to talking about what I learned there, and some of the corky things that were either found or brought up by our guide. So I’ll sign off now and follow up with that later. Later.

Sewers, Standards, and a little Venting

First thought when we arrived at the Crossness pumping station: Gross.
Second thought: Isn’t this supposed to be an inactive sewage center?
Third thought: Irrelevant, smell’s still there either way.

Once we crossed the barrier into “discontinued sewage center territory,” we were all hit by the “historical aroma” that inspired the above impressions. It got better though, especially once we entered the actual buildings of the pumping station and the smell subsided. Overall the excursion was informative; we were shown a brief slideshow about the station’s history, and the history surrounding the decision to construct it. We covered the great stink, which occurred during a period when the smell emanating from the muddy, sewage-covered banks of the River Thames became so intense that Parliament had to hang lime-soaked curtains in the House of Commons to try to block out the smell. They quickly decided on a sanitation initiative, though it took 7 years to get Crossness up and running after the start of that initiative; must have been an unfortunate waiting period. But it was eventually constructed, and a sewer system was erected thanks to one Joseph Bazalgette. Bazalgette, the chief engineer behind the construction of London’s sewer system, was a focus throughout our tour of Crossness. However, out of all the things we heard about him, I was the most surprised by and impressed with the following realization: After Bazalgette had come up with estimates for how large the sewer tunnels and pipes would have to be in order to deal with London’s sewage output, based on an already conservative estimate of London’s population at the time and of how much sewage that population would create, he decided to construct the pipes with twice the diameter that his estimations had deemed necessary.

Why did this surprise me so much? Well it strikes me as something that would most likely not occur today I guess. The Victorians seemed to uphold a philosophy of “better safe than sorry,” when it came to construction, a philosophy that I completely endorse. They didn’t want to do things half-assed and then have to waste more time and money fixing them later. Our tour guide mentioned that, since the Victorians had a limited knowledge of the different materials that were used in construction, they would often make structures 10 times as strong as they needed to be, just to be on the safe side. So what can we say about Bazalgette’s decision to double his estimates? He made the right call. He made something that worked, something that didn’t require a bunch of costly maintenance and burdensome repairs later on, and something that, well over 100 years later, still works and has been able to accommodate for an increased population and an increased demand on sewage relocation. He figured, as long as he had a job to do, he’d do it right the first time so he wouldn’t have to go back and pay for his mistakes later. What a concept.

Again, why is this impressive? Well it seems to me that we don’t really follow the Victorian philosophy, “better safe than sorry,” these days. It seems like our motto would be something more along the lines of, “better cheap and quick than costly and thorough.” We try to cut every corner, save every dime, and strive for the minimum standard in our projects today. Maybe we’re too competitive, and any little financial edge we can get over our competitors has become super important. Or maybe we’re lazy and have come to expect and accept a crappy job over one that’s well done but might take some planning and resources.

When does our infatuation with minimal standards get us into trouble? Well what kind of trouble would you like to hear about first? The kind that compromises human rights or the kind that upsets your investors? I remember watching a documentary on sweat shops set up by Wall-Mart in China in economy class in high school. Basically, what made them sweat shops was the lack of air circulation in the massive warehouses where the workers worked. The workers would suffer in mock green-houses thick with sweat-based humidity, toiling away for hours and hours in discomfort just because Wall-Mart was too cheap to install fans in their buildings. I remember asking my teacher, “as successful and lucrative as Wall-Mart is, why wouldn’t they cough up the little bit of money that would enable their already exploited workers to work in better comfort?” I mean, for Wall-Mart, it’d cost next to nothing to install a few fans right? You know what my teacher said to me? “Wall-Mart isn’t responsible for that sort of thing. They’re not obligated to provide their workers with better working conditions. And if they don’t need to, why should they? It’d be money spent that wasn’t “necessary.” That’s why Wall-Mart can afford to sell people things at such low prices, because they minimize expenses.”

I don’t shop at Wall-Mart. I also think my teacher’s an ass. He could have said all those things and qualified it with a, “but although Wall-Mart avoids unnecessary spending, I can see where you’re coming from, it seems like the right thing to do to install a few fans in a few buildings when you’re one of the most successful companies in the world and your workers are uncomfortable.” But he didn’t. And more and more, I’m not surprised he didn’t. But sometimes meeting minimum standards and making little savings here or there cause problems that are more conspicuous to the public, and get you into financial trouble to boot. You think BP could have built a better oil line? You think they could have developed a blowout prevention system for their oil well that… you know… worked? If you look up the causes of the now infamous deepwater horizon oil leak, you can find a whole mess of accusations: this wasn’t connected quite right, this control panel was unplugged, the cement casing wasn’t done properly, the proposed design for the well blowout preventer didn’t correspond to the actual prevention system that had been implemented, yada-yada-yada. The technical reasons behind why the most devastating oil leak in history occurred is not as important as the core reason: we have grown too accustomed to half-assery. I’m sure the job that BP did developing its oil well was cheap. I’m sure it was quick. Well guess what? Now it needs to be completely redone, and hundreds of miles of coastline and marine ecosystems have been destroyed. Plus the public and the investors are pissed. Yeah, that one stung a bit, huh? But BP was shooting for minimum standards right? How could this have happened? Well accidents happen, but sometimes we need to draw a distinction between accident and negligence. Sometimes we need to try to do the best job we can, not just the easiest. So when Bazalgette opted to do a good job, maybe even better than was necessary by anyone else’s standards, I say, “Wow, what a concept.”

Rap Continued I Guess

Got the video up. Thanks to Jocelyn for letting me use her mac. There's a fairly conspicuous transition in the middle, since I didn't have the beat looped, so I had to do it in 2 takes. Other than that, yeah, enjoy, and always remember protective eye-wear.

Rap to be continued...

So I wrote a rap about victorian medicine. Won't look like much; I've spent a bit of time practicing reciting it, I've picked out a beat to go behind it, and I've tried recording myself rapping it, but due to technical difficulties, mostly PC related, my efforts to post a video of my rap in action failed. However, fear not! I will soon solve this problem and find a way to embarrass myself on the net! But in the meantime, here are the lyrics. It won't be easy to follow from a rhythmic standpoint. Only I know the secrets of the flow... But anyway, yeah, this is it. Enjoy, or enjoy it later once I post my video anyway.

Told to mind the gap,
Thought I’d write a rap,
Starting on the train, knowledge in the brain,
Drawing from the lessons of this place that we came
London’s the name
Victoria’s era’s worth studyin’, world’ll never be the same
-that’s right, Changes in medicine, treatments getting’ better and better and
But you’d better listen, you know you
Gotta start somewhere gotta analyze the places we’ve been,
Let’s step back and begin.

Pondering the professions of men,
Surgeons, Physicians, Apothecaries all of them, getting by in
Different ways, their levels of praise unequal for the
Different ways they’re spending their days
In training

Physicians get to walk around and rep a gold cane, surgeons
Settle for silver, chemists get iron, so lame,
Apothecaries mixing medicine physicians prescribe
Never allowed to mix their own stuff, request denied surgeons have tried,
To gain legitimacy perfecting their craft
Not so easy though till Hunter put them on the map
Advanced anatomy,
Dissecting she and he, Resurrection men
Make sure he’s never without a body.

Perfected new techniques,
Brought surgery to new peaks,
But what was surgery like before Hunter plugged up the leaks?
We know it wasn’t great but let’s go ahead and investigate, it may make us
Irate but let’s travel back to a later date.

Surgeons learning from apprenticeship, here’s a helpful tip, get on
The ground; hold the bucket while the blood drips.
That cut looks deep and raw, so I’ll pull out my saw, don’t worry
I’ll put this leather in your mouth, feel free to gnaw. Sorry
I don’t have a way to help you deal with pain but
I assure you once that leg’s gone it won’t ever hurt again
So I’ll lay out your options, I’m quite good at blood letting,
I’ve got leeches too but that’s it so bite down, the sun’s setting.

Yeah, so that’s what it was like to be a cutter
But wait one minute, haven’t said enough about the other pro-
fessional healer if it can be so called
If you’re well-to-do then bet you pence I’ll be on call
Talking bout the Physician, higher in society, said he could
Figure out your ailment if you paid his fee, but
Whatever it is don’t fret,
Bed-rest could help you yet
Drink lots of fluids vacation may be your best bet

Physicians got a buffer
Less bloody than the other
They go to university they aint no common sucker
But what they doing once they’re done with university?
They drinking pee, came from me, sip it down pretend it’s tea
But then get right back to me, I’m paying for your degree,
I’m wealthy, what’s the matter with me, what did my taste concede?
Here’s my fee, go ahead and make me healthy,
Hopefully your expertise’ll find a way to cure me.

But back then things like germs weren’t even understood,
Treatments were limited; they often did no good, took a
While to realize wasn’t smell at all, that was
Causing your diseases, culprit was too small,
So I’ll stop things here but listen,
Follow the medicinal road signs,
Start looking into organ systems,
Do that and you should be just fine- Done

Miscellaneous Notes, a Compolition

So I thought I’d post a bit of a miscellaneous collection of notes that I’ve scribbled down in my notebook while we’ve been in class or out and about. Now I’m not including my “academic” notes; these are just a few of the things that I had written down to look back at later as possible topics of investigation or at least consideration. And I’m writing them now the way I wrote them in my notebook the first time. These do not have to do with any one topic, buy any means, and they span at least a week and a half, but I thought it’d be interesting to get them out in the open:

Also, *disclaimer*, these might not all be totally coherent; they were mostly quickly scrawled out just to trigger a memory of something interesting. Just adds to the fun J

-18th century, lack of professionalism in science meant that implications that arose from scientific discovery were shared and debated in an overarching and collective elitist culture. “Science camp” not against or offending “Church camp.”

-Think about elitism amongst scientific community then and now, and the social importance of the clergy then and now. Changes how science is considered?

-Huxley vs. Bishop of Oxford: look up for development of “science camp.” Huxley’s a baller.

-Galen anatomy challenged by Vesalius, Galen made mistakes from dissecting apes and extending findings to people. What does this say about how Galen, and society at that time, viewed the relationship between humans and apes?

-Humphrey Davy: “Davey would later relate his love of science to his fascination with story-telling. What he always wanted to do was to hold an audience spellbound with wonders.”

Studies of air and various gasses, Davy inhales hydrocarbon, CO2, CO, etc. BALLER, scares the crap out of me.

Inhaled 3 quarts of hydrocarbon, almost died, then “next week he was trying to inhale carbonic acid.” Yeah, this is a genius…

-Davey vs. Stevenson- look up
Davey vs. Faraday- mentor vs. mentee

Murderer act of 1752: murderers’ bodies go to the surgeons/anatomists
Anatomy act of 1832: very poor who lived in work-houses became state property and went to anatomists after death if not claimed by family within 48 hours.

Two ideas: Davey being generally disagreeable and murderer and anatomy acts. Delve farther into Davey’s personality and Faraday’s rise to success, discuss the huge time gap between the murderer and anatomy acts, must have been a HUGE need for bodies in between.

-Modesty doll: at our tour to the college of physicians, our guide showed us a modesty doll from the Symons collection. She told us it was used in the 17th or 18th centuries in Europe so that patients could point to where their problems were so they would not have to speak the names of their body parts, quite an embarrassing experience. Later found out guide was wrong, modesty dolls actually used in 19th century in China, not Europe… Chinese women not permitted to mention body parts.
Origin’s of modesty? Why are people so reluctant to speak about the human body?

-Status between doctors (physicians), surgeons, and apothecaries, physicians get gold canes, surgeons silver, apothecaries iron.

-1830 Ivory pregnancy test: test to determine gender. Ivory pendant held over belly, orientation of pendant determines gender. “Quack treatment.”

-idea: Jenner experimentation on children vs. Davey self-experimentation

-Look into public health story centered around vaccination, everyone must be vaccinated to help the population eradicate disease as a whole, vs. vaccination now, peeps that don’t want vaccinations (Kim), how do peeps today get into school that haven’t been immunized?

-“Ohh” moment- Jenner’s publication on vaccination met w/ skepticism. “Some physicians were skeptical; others had financial interests in virulation.” Any time it’s not in a person’s best financial interest to back something, they probably won’t. Oil companies today vs. alternative energy.

-Poor law, like welfare, incentivized poor to stay on relief.

Chadwick central to creation of workhouses, purposely horrible to incentives poor to “get out” of poverty. This reform was meant to lessen burden on taxpayers by making less poor claim relief because workhouses were undesirable.
Chadwick also realized that disease, when it strikes a laboring bread-winner, creates more poverty and thus costs taxpayers more money. Does research that shows sanitation associated with disease. Public Health Act 1848- proposed cleaning up=less disease=less poverty=less $ spent.

Great stink: Parliament disgusted, evacuated parliament building from smell, sanitation initiatives adopted 1858. Took 7 years to get sewer up and running after great stink. Compare to waiting period waiting for permit before driver’s license.

idea: We look back at the urban poor in filth and wonder, why did it take so long for people to be horrified and help clean them up? Answer: they never did. Chadwick only helped them because it would help taxpayers, and Parliament helped them to help themselves it seems. More research necessary.

-idea: Bazalgette doubles estimate for how big sewers need to be. Victorians made containers even 10 times overstrong for safety cuz didn’t understand materials.
Then: better safe than sorry, we only want to build things once.
Now: Better cheap and fast than good, gets us into problems (BP oil spill)

-Today’s excursion: Surgeons had to amputate a leg in under 1 minute? Nuts! Immediate thought: wouldn’t patient die of pain? Surgeons were aware, had to be quick. And with screaming and all!

American surgery more painful, point of pride. Comforting for patients?
Medical nihilism: physician responsible for damage inflicted by medicine, damage from disease (passive) not doctor’s fault=cop out…

-Microsoft vs. Apple, Brunell vs. 4’ 8.5’’ track. Dad’s comp issues, new laptop is a PC, can’t use apple because “business is done on PCs.” Barrier to entry/change: hard to overcome preexisting infrastructure.

I thought some of these ideas were worth pondering anyway. This is probably a skippable blog, but if nothing else, it helped me go over some of my notes. Now I can elaborate on some of the ideas I find especially interesting.

Out.

The Importance of Environment, and a Mad Scientist

So during our second week in London, our class took the time to closely examine a few key figures that made major contributions to various scientific fields during the Victorian era. There was a lot going on between the mid 18th and 19th centuries that helped to expedite the progress of the period; two things in particular seemed especially influential.

First, we learned that regional scientific societies, composed of gentlemen, philosophers, what we would now consider entrepreneurs, and any other reasonably upstanding members of society with an interest in science or invention, were meeting to share ideas, explore new fields, and develop new technologies and theories. There seemed to be, at least amongst certain social circles, a lot of curiosity, a lot of creativity, and a lot of initiative during this time period, which must have had a lot to do with why so much was invented, improved, or discovered in such a short amount of time and across such a wide range of fields.

Second, we learned about the innovation of the patent system. Now this was an eye-opener. It seems so obvious to us now that if somebody invents something he should be able to profit from his invention. But I guess I never stopped to think that there might have been a time when a person was not always entitled to the rights over his own invention, when his ideas were not always his property, when nothing could stop a person from stealing and selling Foreman grills when that person’s name wasn’t George Foreman. What an exciting time it must have been when people were first able to claim ownership over their ideas. For so long, so many people must have had great ideas independently, but were too afraid to tell anyone or divulge their findings for fear of getting their work stolen or exploited without any credit or benefit for the inventor.

It’s a funny thing. Bizarre as it may sound, sometimes, since different people have different strengths, and since two minds are more, and often even better than one, and more minds still are often better than less, until of course there are so many minds attached to so many mouths that people start stepping on each other’s feet and yelling and screaming to be heard and things sort of turn into a cacophony of unintelligible noise and nonsense and nobody knows what anybody else is saying so everyone gets fed up and abandons whatever project they had all met to discuss in the first place (pause for breath), working in conjunction with others often yields positive results. People can work off of one another; someone might have a great idea of how to get a project on its feet, but another person might come up with a great way to develop it, or improve it, or find another use for it, and so on and so forth. What the patent system did was encourage the sharing of ideas, and incentivize creation and invention. Inventing became a potentially lucrative enterprise for the first time, as long as someone had an idea worth perusing. It must have been exciting, a breath of fresh air for those with a passion for invention, for those longing to take part in intellectual discussion, for those searching for a practical application for science, or for those just excited about the science itself.

Anyway, I’d like to quickly comment on the individual that we studied this week that I found the most interesting, Humphrey Davey. So, disclaimer, this guy was totally insane. Walking a seriously fine line between brilliant and actually retarded. The sort of things he was doing to himself were just… well we’ll get to that. Maybe some background first would be nice.

Humphrey Davey was a kid that loved to read. He also loved to be told stories and to tell stories himself, a feature of his personality that has a large impact on his persona later on. His parents died while he was still young, both of fever, but he was adopted by some guy and put in a good school when it was realized that he had a passion for learning. He was apprenticed to a surgeon, but eventually developed a strong interest in chemistry, the field for which is most remembered. He ended up holding various impressive positions, became director of the Royal society, all that god stuff for which I have little interest. What I am more interested in is his personality and experimental methods.

First, let’s look at his personality. Davey became a professor of chemistry, and is remembered for being a brilliant lecturer. People used to love to hear him speak, not only for his content, but also for his charisma and masterful employment of the English language. If I do recall, it was also mentioned in class that Davey was a bit of a poet, and that other poets used to come to his chemistry lectures in order to add to their list of usable metaphors, which I found pretty funny. As much as I liked our readings’ description of Davey’s popularity as a lecturer, I guess he could also be quite disagreeable. Just to gloss over a couple examples of this, a sort of contest between Davey and a man named Stevenson over who had the best anti-explosive mining lamp revealed Davey’s pugnacious nature. He also demonstrated that he could be quite jealous and spiteful through his later interactions with his rising protégé, Michael Faraday. Though Davey may not be an ideal person, I still have a pleasant impression of him, just because I like when brilliant men of science end up being brilliant and charismatic public speakers as well. Sort of shatters the stereotype of the antisocial, awkward scientist that I hate so much. I guess I’d just love to be a personable, captivating scientist one day, so I like learning about people I can look up to (I’ll try to be a little nicer than him, though).

Oh, and the shocking thing about Davey that makes him a fun person to learn about is his self-experimentation. Davey is remembered for discovering several elements, especially several alkali earth metals, but his most humorous experiments involve his studies with gasses. Another of his most memorable contributions to science is his discovery of the effects of gaseous nitrous oxide, but he “studied” a wide range of gasses. And how did he go about doing this? Well he’d cook up some interesting concoctions, collect the gasses released, and “test “ them himself, by which I mean, he would inhale them and see what happened. Now this worked out all right when what he was inhaling was laughing gas (nitrous oxide). He had plenty of fun over that discovery. But you can imagine what happened with his experiments with stuff like carbon dioxide and monoxide. He was the sort of guy that would inhale three liters of pure hydrocarbon, convulse, pass out, wake up 30 hours later, acknowledge that if he had inhaled any more he would have died, and then the very next week start inhaling gaseous carbonic acid. Maniac! (Oh, and it’s deceptive to say that he’s this “type of guy,” because he actually is this guy) He must have done soooo much damage to his body over the course of his studies it hurts my lungs just to think about it. But anyway, in retrospect, his methods are just hilarious. Nobody these days would be so reckless, though it’s arguable that his approach, being so proactive and hands on, had a lot to do with his success and productivity in a reasonably short amount of time.

Anyway, I think I’ll leave it there. Peace.

Reasons for being here, Reasons for writing, and Reasons for rambling

So when I applied to study abroad in London for the summer, I did it for several reasons. My first thought was that it’d be awesome to travel to Europe. I mean, as much as I couldn’t wait to jump back into school as soon as I finished my spring semester (sarcasm?), traveling was obviously a considerable allure of the program. My second thought was, “hey, they speak my language in London, that’d sure be smart of me to go there.” I’ve always wanted to go to Paris, but I’ve studied French for many years and have come to the following conclusion: I am not linguistically gifted. And I really don’t want to study French anymore. While I’m sure being in France for an extended period of time and immersing myself into the language and culture would improve my conversational French tremendously, I just don’t have any interest in studying it anymore, and that seems to be what summer school in France is all about: studying French. Then I looked at the subject matter for the London study abroad program. Science, technology, and medicine in Victorian London, eh? Well I like science, I’m studying science, and I want to go into medicine in a sense. I’ve also found my knowledge of history to be a bit lacking, so I’ve been meaning to bone up on that a bit. I don’t know much about technology, or Victorian London for that matter, but all in all the course descriptions made them seem tailor made to my interests. I thought, “wow, what were the odds of my finding such interesting sounding courses offered in a program abroad in a place where they speak my language and have a train that can get me to Paris in 2 hours flat? This is going to be great! Now I know I could not have been more wrong…

Just kidding, it’s great. I’d say the first week of class was interesting-ish for me; it dealt mostly with broad themes of Victorian England, and we looked into the Great Exhibition, which was cool and all, what with the internationalism and the building a giant glass building over trees, but for me, I was still waiting for the sciencey, mediciney aspects of the course. We’re supposed to keep a blog while we’re here (oh hey, this is it now!), so I’ve been keeping my ears open in class and my eyes open while reading (which really helps by the way), listening and looking for things that really make me think, or things that I can relate in some way to my life today. The first week of class I wasn’t super inspired, which was to be expected given the first week is usually the orientation week. However, the second week of class had the light bulbs going off a mile a minute, which is kind of an incompatible combination of expressions, but you get the idea.

So that’s that, now I’ll be picking random tid-bits to jaw about. Since my last blog entry ended sort of abruptly, I thought I’d quickly clarify what the actual point of that blog post was, or at least what it was supposed to be originally. I ended up sort of rambling towards the end of it; I was actually inspired by the whole, “Darwin on the dollar,” observation a couple days before I actually had time to write about it (yes I know, he’s on a pound note, not a dollar, but I wanted the alliteration), and when I did finally write about it I was at a café in Paris (yes, I did make it down to Paris and it was AWESOME) that happened to have wifi, and I was sleep deprived and tired from having such an awesome time in Paris that I’m not totally surprised I sort of lost my point and started to ramble just like I am now, sooooo now on to the point.

What I originally wanted to say was that I was impressed when I learned that Darwin was on the ten pound note. Since then, I’ve learned that such figures as Shakespeare and Faraday have also been immortalized on English currency, which I think is just fantastic. The presidents (featuring Franklin and Hamilton) on American currency were influential and all, and I understand celebrating our founding fathers, but it really sends a different kind of message putting a Darwin or a Faraday on a bill than a Hamilton or a Washington. It celebrates the importance of progress, of invention, of intelligent men using their intelligence not only for the good of mankind, but also because it was what they loved to do. And I would bet that the majority of people in America do not know who Michael Faraday is, despite his giant impact on the world we live in, just sayin’.

But in any case, there is an interesting point that I wanted to ponder last time that I don’t think I ever got around to (writing it anyway, I’m sure I’ve pondered it at some point). I think the fact that science was explored and shared in Britain in the times of Darwin amongst an elite that encompassed gentlemen, clergymen, potentially any well-to-do citizen, meant that Darwin’s findings were weighed fairly by those elite. I’m sure he was given the opportunity to plead his case and display his observations and conclusions to an audience that was not unwilling to hear him, and that was why his theory of evolution was accepted. The clergymen of the time, as a part of the elite, would have also considered Darwin’s findings with an open mind, because their role in society was not confined to just preaching and adhering to traditional religious views. Sure, they did those things, but back then to be a member of the clergy meant that you were probably well educated. More than that, it meant that you probably wanted to be well educated. I think this is a distinction between a member of the clergy today and a member of the clergy in Victorian England. Now it’s all adhering and no learning (a vastly unfair overgeneralization, but I fear it may apply to the majority of cases). And this may have a lot to do with the fact that the church plays a considerably smaller role in society than it used to. Anyway, that was the point I wanted to ponder.

And as for why the US has such a big problem with evolution compared to the UK, I guess I don’t have a simple idea of how to answer that.

Like I said, from now on I’ll be commenting on interesting tid-bits of what I’m learning in my classes while I’m here in London. For now, I’m signing out.

Darwin, England, and Rambling

On our first night here in London, our troop, made up of eight Harvard undergraduates and one from Princeton, went out to dinner at an English pub/restaurant, Angel Sea Arms. There we met our course heads, Anne Harrington, who's history of psychiatry class I had taken previously, and John Durant, her husband and a professor at MIT. The dinner was meant to be a welcoming for us, the students, and to give us a chance to meet one another and also to acquaint ourselves with our professors. Our table was long, so we broke into conversations with those closest to us. I was on the end opposite the professors, but from across the table, Professor Durant held up a ten pound note and asked if we recognized the gentleman depicted on it. I was too far away to really see the man's face written on the bill, but Seth, another student in the program, immediately identified the face as belonging to Charles Darwin, the 19th century English naturalist who is known as the father of the theory of Evolution. Now although I have not explicitly asked each individual in our group where they stand on the whole "Evolution vs. Creationism" debate, I feel fairly safe in assuming that as Ivy League students studying science or its history, all of us are comfortable with the legitimacy of evolution, and recognize Darwin as an extremely positive and influential force in both science and history. However, soon after Darwin's mug had been identified, Professor Durant added, "You wouldn't see the likes of him on American Currency!" with a laugh. Those may not have been his exact words, but you get the idea (I may remember Professor Durant saying it like this just because he's an Englishman, and the phrase "the likes of" just sounds British to me). Though the professor's quick poke at American “culture” was just meant to be a joke part of the light dinner table conversation, it certainly made me think. I had had no idea that somebody like Charles Darwin was on English currency. And it's true, if such a thing as putting Charles Darwin on the ten dollar bill was proposed in the United States (dismissing any sentiment associated with the slighting of our dear Mr. Hamilton), there would be an uproar; people would be swift and merciless in quashing the proposal before the idea had time to get off the ground. But why? What makes the UK and the US so different on this matter?

The next day we had our first day of class. We were informed that our first week would be an introductory period; we would be studying science, technology, and medicine in Victorian England, so logically the first thing we did was learn a bit about the Victorian period, what it was, and what questions we could ask to better understand the time period. In discussing the ancient universities, Oxford and Cambridge, it came up that, to be eligible to study at either university during the Victorian age, one had to have been a registered member of the national church of Britain. Then, as now, and unlike the U.S., England was a Christian state. Not only that, but many influential men of science in the Victorian age were also members of the clergy. But wait, I thought the United States had a problem with evolution because Christians feel it contradicts creationism? Americans get riled up that evolution, an investigative science, and not creationism, a set of religious assumptions, is taught in science classes in the U.S., despite the fact that we have an explicit separation of church and state. Britain, however, not only does not have as big an “Evolution vs Creationism” problem, it celebrates Darwin for his achievements to science and the world. So what is the difference between the US and the UK in this regard? I think it might be pride.

The English are proud of their achievements, and proud of their notable heroes that brought about those achievements. Just walking around London for a day or two you see Darwin’s name everywhere. "To your left we’re coming up on the Darwin museum, on your right you’ll see the Darwin center of this or that, and straight ahead folks, that sidewalk is where Darwin once helped an old lady across the street." Seriously, he’s everywhere. And it’s fantastic! Why is it that Britain doesn’t seem to have an underlying hatred of this narrow-minded anti-religion theory we Americans call evolution? Because England had time to weigh the issue. The theory was brought up in England by an Englishman with good standing amongst other Englishmen as a member of the middle upper class. I’m sure plenty of people had problems with Darwin at first; the creationism debate undoubtedly permeated the conversation. But England in the mid 19th century was in an age of discovery. They were hungry for invention and exploration. And who were making the discoveries? Gentlemen. Clergymen. The occasional scholar. Who was Darwin originally? Certainly not a naturalist. He had gone to medical school and was hired on the Beagle as the captain’s companion. Not to say that keeping a ship captain company isn’t a big responsibility, but it’s not what you’d expect of one of biology’s forefathers. The point is, scientists, by this name, didn’t really exist in Victorian England until much later. Professors at universities weren’t lecturing on the side and doing their own specific research primarily. For example, we learned in class that John Herschel (1792-1871), a mathematician, physicist, and astronomer, actually turned down a professorship at Cambridge because it was easier to do his research simply as a well-to-do gentleman than as a professor at a leading university. So science as a profession didn’t really exist. And so when theories, such as evolution, were proposed, it wasn’t like there were distinct science and religion camps that were constantly in conflict with one another. Scientific discoveries were weighed and debated in an overarching culture amongst an elite free of engrained prejudices. Today in the US, it seems like there are religion and science “teams,” and no matter what one team says, the other team doesn’t like it. I’ve been rambling for a while now, and may have lost my point. I think I’ll separate myself from this post for a while, and possibly come back later and point out my… point. Oh, and Seth found a two pound coin minted in 2009 commemorating Darwin’s 200th anniversary and the 150th anniversary of the publishing of Darwin’s “On The Origin of Species.” He’s everywhere.

For now, signing out.