Lesson 7: The Laboratory Revolution
Today we assume that science is done by people who call themselves scientists, and devote themselves exclusively to research (or sometimes to research and teaching). We also assume that most scientists work in laboratories, usually in universities, but also in private industry and federally funded research institutes (like the National Institutes of Health, for example). When asked to “draw a scientist,” most people draw a person (usually a man) in a lab coat with laboratory equipment (like flasks or beakers). A couple years ago, when the Lego company produced a wildly popular mini-figure called “the scientist,” she was a chemist in a lab coat with two Ehrlenmeyer flasks. However, neither of these assumptions was true before the nineteenth century. Before the nineteenth century, no one made a living just doing science. The word “scientist” was coined in the nineteenth century (by William Whewell). Of course, investigations of the natural world did go on – think of Isaac Newton, Laura Bassi, and Charles Darwin. But these men and women did not make a living from scientific research. They made a living teaching or practicing medicine, or they lived off of family money. Universities paid professors to teach; they had no mission to support research. Researchers paid for their own equipment and supplies, and did research in their “spare time.” Only in the nineteenth century did scientific research become a full-time career for some people (nearly exclusively men). Laboratories became crucial to scientific research, training, and practice in the nineteenth century. By 1900, there was a wide range of scientific laboratories and the laboratory became the most important place for new discoveries. Science – and specifically laboratory science – attracted support from governments and philanthropists. This lesson explores these dramatic changes in science in the nineteenth century.
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Readings:
1) Kathleen Crowther, Louis Pasteur
2) Kathleen Crowther, Robert Koch
3) Bert Hansen, “America's First Medical Breakthrough: How Popular Excitement about a French Rabies Cure in 1885 Raised New Expectations for Medical Progress” American Historical Review 103.2 (1998): 373-418
4) Nancy Tomes, The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life (Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 1-87, and pictures.
Learning Activities:
1) Video: Pasteur's Experiments on Spontaneous Generation
Assignments:
1) Quiz
2) Small group discussion - Germ Theory in the Popular Press
3) Class forum - Germ Theory at Home