The American Style in Physiology: Case Studies of Four Research Schools

盖森博士正在芝加哥大学、哈佛大学、约翰霍普金斯大学和圣路易斯华盛顿大学这四所二战前美国该学科的主要研究学院研究生理学的历史。尽管美国生物医学科学史上的文献数量迅速增长，但生理学的技术和概念内容却很少引起人们的注意。在他所研究的四所学校中，只有哈佛大学之前被详细研究过，即使在这种情况下，仍有许多工作要做。这项研究代表了对美国生理学的社会、概念和技术历史进行更广泛研究的初步阶段。这项规模更大的研究试图验证这样一种假设，即人们可以识别出一种独特的“美国”（或至少是“英美”）生理学风格，其特征是生物控制激素的分散模型。最初的重点是芝加哥的生理学，部分原因是a·j·卡尔森在那里进行的研究似乎与这种所谓的“美国风格”背道而驰，还因为随着芝加哥大学1992年建校一百周年庆典的临近，该校科学史上的一项活动正在加速——从而使生理学与该校正在研究的生物学历史的其他分支得以进行比较研究。如果这项探索性研究取得成功，将进行更广泛的研究计划。

Dr. Geison is examining the history of physiology at four leading research schools in the discipline in the United States before World War II: Chicago, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Washington University, St. Louis. Despite a rapidly growing body of literature on the history of the biomedical sciences in the United States, the technical and conceptual content of physiology has attracted little attention. Of the four schools he is studying, only Harvard has been examined previously in any detail, and even in that case much remains to be done. This study represents a preliminary phase in a broader study of the social, conceptual, and technical history of American physiology. That larger study seeks to test the hypothesis that one can identify a distinctively "American" (or at least "Anglo- American") style of physiology, characterized by decentralized models of biological control hormones. The initial focus here is physiology at Chicago, partly because the research there carried out by A. J. Carlson seems to run against the grain of this alleged "American style" but also because of an accelerating activity in the history of science at Chicago as that university approaches its centennial celebration in 1992--thus allowing a comparative study of physiology with the other branches of the history of biology being studied there. If this exploratory study works out, a broader research program will be pursued.