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Walter B. Cannon: The Life and Times of a Young Scientist
xiv 520p large format hardback, grey cloth, light markings from a Cambridge library, very good, never used
536 pages, Hardcover
First published December 12, 1987
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July 23, 2022
How can one push a boundary of any discipline without seeking guidance from those that themselves had a hand in expanding such limits? Reflecting only briefly on the state of current knowledge it comes to no surprise that the facts we know to be certain were at one point not so. Those that came before were themselves blind and ignorant to what we now clearly see and understand. Yet there is much that we do share with our predecessors and there are many reasons that we should learn and study from them. Though the landscape of knowledge may be vastly different between them and us, the way we operate and navigate the practical challenges of investigation is what unites any researcher operating at any point in history.
This book provides an intimate and satisfyingly in-depth illustration of the scientific and personal life of Walter Cannon as he established himself as a leading physiologist of his day at the turn of the 20th century. I have read two books by Cannon so far: The Way of the Investigator and The Wisdom of the Body (check out my GR review of the latter!). These are works that Cannon wrote to summarize the achievements of his career. What is missing from these works is more of the raw origin story, the narrative of which can help us navigate a path into the unknown. In this biography, we learn much more about the context and the foundations of Cannon's career. By learning about his origins, we can more easily - I think - see a method and approach that can help us identify and carry out our own research programs we are working on today.
The book is extensively researched from archival primary sources - mainly letters, journal entries, and other records of the main players and their colleagues and family members. I agree with the other reviewer that this offers a nice glimpse into the ways that academics and likely all people regularly and frequently communicated via letters. The authors of this book do a wonderful job condensing all of this material into a roughly linear narrative, depicting not only the personal and professional life of Cannon but also the ways that the vanguard of medical education in America (Harvard, Yale, Hopkins, etc.) was rapidly changing as medicine became increasingly rooted in the physiological sciences.
I was surprised by how interesting the latter part of the story was to me, particularly the beginning when Harvard Medical School went through a series of very large transformations around the turn of the 20th century. If one is at all familiar with the gargantuan size of Harvard's medical program today, it is enthralling to read about how the school prior to the construction of Longwood's quad and how they struggled to fill the new facilities at the time. I also found it very interesting how Harvard was working at the time to develop its physiology research approach to use the techniques and approaches advanced by German scientists in the 19th century. It is important to remember how dominant the Europeans were in the sciences before the world wars.
It was in this particular context that Cannon was raised and educated as an undergraduate and medical student. I loved reading about his struggles to develop a firm footing in Boston, coming as a poor student from the midwest, a son of an eccentric railroad manager. His challenges navigating the social conventions of the unstated New England caste system was particularly illustrative of the scene in Cambridge in the 1890's. The scrappy nature of the country boy making his way in the big city was charming and very easy to romanticize. And I greatly appreciated the portrait we receive of a young man wanting to help people directly by going into medicine, while simultaneously uncovering his talents at research.
The book is brilliant and unique in the way it bounces back and forth between a biography of our hero and also a description of the administrative and political intrigues that were happening at the institutions he was an integral part of. The parallel evolution of the man and the institution is very satisfying, particularly in the early crescendo we receive as the American Physiological Society decides to start its own academic publication, the American Journal of Physiology. Here we see the Americans establishing themselves on the world stage as they became a player in international physiology. How thrilling to read that the first issue contained two seminal works on the digestive system imaged by x-rays by a young medical student named Walter Cannon!
It is in this way that we are catapulted into Cannon's career and the book spends many pages putting us in the room with the experimenters as they toiled and labored. Thankfully we have a record of the daily efforts because Cannon kept a diary of the experiments, their failures, their successes, and the emotional rollercoaster that every researcher is very well familiar with. I think it is very important for young investigators to see the secret ground floor action of the experience of a worker from a different time - and knowing the struggle and challenges that are faced regardless of the maturity of the science. It was so uplifting, encouraging for me to read these accounts.
One example in particular comes to mind and requires a brief background. Cannon's first paradigm was to use x-rays to observe the movements of the digestive system in the intact animal. Prior research into this question required invasive interventions such as fistulas or surgery which lead to many contradictory observations. It was Cannon's medical school supervisor, Henry Bowditch, that suggested Cannon use x-rays to observe the processes of digestion. At first, it seems simple to image the stomach contents by mixing a meal mash with a dense material such as bismuth salts. But I think it is really important to read the account of the experience because of the vast amount of challenges Cannon faced before arriving at the right method for studying the movements of the digestive system. The book lists at least 4 species of animals that was used (frog, goose, cat, and horse) and references over 130 different experiments that were attempted.
This should be enough to inform one interested in research about the challenges and obstacles involved in developing a new type of experiment. But the depth of this development and innovation documented and catalogued by the book continues. Since it was not right away that the heavy salt mixture was implemented. At first they used small objects to observe the organs' movements, but of course this was only giving the movement of the object and not the system itself. At some point they began to use capsules filled with the heavy bismuth salts and realized that once the capsule dissolved, the salts filled the stomach, resulting in a shadow of the organ projected to view with the x-rays. This was fortuitous and led Cannon down the right path. I thought the careful documentation and recreation of the way that these events unfolded was fantastic, using diary entries and other primary sources - the revelation of the amount of work required to arrive at the proper method is incredibly inspiring and helps to educate students (of all ages) about the importance of perseverance and focus on solving the problem at hand.
One flaw of the book is that about half-way through the authors seem to have lost the ability to make the developments as exciting, though they were still very interesting and informative about the way the experiments were developed and performed. I also felt that the descriptions of the political and bureaucratic intrigues at the medical school became less interesting and more tedious over time. I eventually started skipping over these parts, though I can imagine they could be very valuable for some people, as they are thoroughly researched.
It was sad to end the book with Cannon leaving to help with the effort around World War 1. I would definitely read a biography of the older scientist, but I think for my stage in my career, this was very good.
This book provides an intimate and satisfyingly in-depth illustration of the scientific and personal life of Walter Cannon as he established himself as a leading physiologist of his day at the turn of the 20th century. I have read two books by Cannon so far: The Way of the Investigator and The Wisdom of the Body (check out my GR review of the latter!). These are works that Cannon wrote to summarize the achievements of his career. What is missing from these works is more of the raw origin story, the narrative of which can help us navigate a path into the unknown. In this biography, we learn much more about the context and the foundations of Cannon's career. By learning about his origins, we can more easily - I think - see a method and approach that can help us identify and carry out our own research programs we are working on today.
The book is extensively researched from archival primary sources - mainly letters, journal entries, and other records of the main players and their colleagues and family members. I agree with the other reviewer that this offers a nice glimpse into the ways that academics and likely all people regularly and frequently communicated via letters. The authors of this book do a wonderful job condensing all of this material into a roughly linear narrative, depicting not only the personal and professional life of Cannon but also the ways that the vanguard of medical education in America (Harvard, Yale, Hopkins, etc.) was rapidly changing as medicine became increasingly rooted in the physiological sciences.
I was surprised by how interesting the latter part of the story was to me, particularly the beginning when Harvard Medical School went through a series of very large transformations around the turn of the 20th century. If one is at all familiar with the gargantuan size of Harvard's medical program today, it is enthralling to read about how the school prior to the construction of Longwood's quad and how they struggled to fill the new facilities at the time. I also found it very interesting how Harvard was working at the time to develop its physiology research approach to use the techniques and approaches advanced by German scientists in the 19th century. It is important to remember how dominant the Europeans were in the sciences before the world wars.
It was in this particular context that Cannon was raised and educated as an undergraduate and medical student. I loved reading about his struggles to develop a firm footing in Boston, coming as a poor student from the midwest, a son of an eccentric railroad manager. His challenges navigating the social conventions of the unstated New England caste system was particularly illustrative of the scene in Cambridge in the 1890's. The scrappy nature of the country boy making his way in the big city was charming and very easy to romanticize. And I greatly appreciated the portrait we receive of a young man wanting to help people directly by going into medicine, while simultaneously uncovering his talents at research.
The book is brilliant and unique in the way it bounces back and forth between a biography of our hero and also a description of the administrative and political intrigues that were happening at the institutions he was an integral part of. The parallel evolution of the man and the institution is very satisfying, particularly in the early crescendo we receive as the American Physiological Society decides to start its own academic publication, the American Journal of Physiology. Here we see the Americans establishing themselves on the world stage as they became a player in international physiology. How thrilling to read that the first issue contained two seminal works on the digestive system imaged by x-rays by a young medical student named Walter Cannon!
It is in this way that we are catapulted into Cannon's career and the book spends many pages putting us in the room with the experimenters as they toiled and labored. Thankfully we have a record of the daily efforts because Cannon kept a diary of the experiments, their failures, their successes, and the emotional rollercoaster that every researcher is very well familiar with. I think it is very important for young investigators to see the secret ground floor action of the experience of a worker from a different time - and knowing the struggle and challenges that are faced regardless of the maturity of the science. It was so uplifting, encouraging for me to read these accounts.
One example in particular comes to mind and requires a brief background. Cannon's first paradigm was to use x-rays to observe the movements of the digestive system in the intact animal. Prior research into this question required invasive interventions such as fistulas or surgery which lead to many contradictory observations. It was Cannon's medical school supervisor, Henry Bowditch, that suggested Cannon use x-rays to observe the processes of digestion. At first, it seems simple to image the stomach contents by mixing a meal mash with a dense material such as bismuth salts. But I think it is really important to read the account of the experience because of the vast amount of challenges Cannon faced before arriving at the right method for studying the movements of the digestive system. The book lists at least 4 species of animals that was used (frog, goose, cat, and horse) and references over 130 different experiments that were attempted.
This should be enough to inform one interested in research about the challenges and obstacles involved in developing a new type of experiment. But the depth of this development and innovation documented and catalogued by the book continues. Since it was not right away that the heavy salt mixture was implemented. At first they used small objects to observe the organs' movements, but of course this was only giving the movement of the object and not the system itself. At some point they began to use capsules filled with the heavy bismuth salts and realized that once the capsule dissolved, the salts filled the stomach, resulting in a shadow of the organ projected to view with the x-rays. This was fortuitous and led Cannon down the right path. I thought the careful documentation and recreation of the way that these events unfolded was fantastic, using diary entries and other primary sources - the revelation of the amount of work required to arrive at the proper method is incredibly inspiring and helps to educate students (of all ages) about the importance of perseverance and focus on solving the problem at hand.
One flaw of the book is that about half-way through the authors seem to have lost the ability to make the developments as exciting, though they were still very interesting and informative about the way the experiments were developed and performed. I also felt that the descriptions of the political and bureaucratic intrigues at the medical school became less interesting and more tedious over time. I eventually started skipping over these parts, though I can imagine they could be very valuable for some people, as they are thoroughly researched.
It was sad to end the book with Cannon leaving to help with the effort around World War 1. I would definitely read a biography of the older scientist, but I think for my stage in my career, this was very good.
August 25, 2014
Details the career of a Harvard scientist during the early 1900's, including insights into the work ethic and scientific hustle required of a great researcher. Set to the backdrop of the ongoing feud between scientists and animal rights activists, and Dr. Cannon's solidification of the "fight or flight" theory of the sympathetic nervous system. I loved this book mostly for the exerpts of Cannon's letters to friends and family included in the text, which highlighted a time when cordiality was the norm, and when language was more ornate. It took me 15 minutes and 3 visits to the thesaurus/dictionary to write this paragraph. ;-) At that time, emoticons had not yet been invented yet.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews