| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
© The Society for the Social History of Medicine 2005, all right reserved
The Early History of Tissue Culture in Britain: The Interwar Years
Centre for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, 2nd Floor, Simon Building, University of Manchester, Brunswick Street, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. E-mail: duncwils{at}hotmail.com
The technique of tissue culture has, throughout the twentieth century, become a mainstay of biomedical research, and exists today as a celebrated scientific tool. However, an examination of its early history demonstrates that it was once contested, with professional opinion differing as to its value to science and medicine, and, crucially for the purposes of this article, considerable public awareness of its potential and perceived pitfalls. Here, the hitherto neglected situation in the early British history of tissue culture will be studied, with the focus being the work performed at the Strangeways Research Laboratory in Cambridge during the interwar years of the last century. Examination of the early life of this institution shows that scientists eager to stress the technique's viability tapped into popular sentiment to overstress its potential, in a fashion reminiscent of earlier experimental biologists and their contemporary American counterparts. This ultimately backfired on British culturists as the press coverage of their work became incredibly sensationalist, and increasingly sinister in tone, and scientific fact and fantastical speculation became inseparable.
Keywords: tissue culture; experimental biologists; popularization; test-tube babies; secrecy; ‘Brave New World’
1 H. B. Fell to H. Dale, 4 February 1935, held at the Wellcome Trust Library for History of Medicine, Contemporary Medical Archives Centre: Strangeways Research Laboratory Files (hereafter CMAC: SA/SRL) C.4.
3 H. Dale to H. B. Fell, 5 February 1935, CMAC: SA/SRL C.4.
4 D. Nelkin and L. Andrews, ‘Whose Body is it Anyway? Disputes Over Body Tissue in a Biotechnology Age’, Lancet, 351 (3 January 1998), 53–7.
5 A. Kimbrell, The Human Body Shop: The Cloning, Engineering and Marketing of Life (Washington, DC, 1997); R. Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute (London, 2001), especially ‘Afterword’, pp. 409–35; idem, ‘Fearful Symmetry: Corpses for Anatomy, Organs for Transplantation?’, in S. J. Younger, R. Fox, and L. J. O'Connell (eds), Organ Transplantation: Meanings and Realities (Wisconsin, 1996), 66–100.
6 Nelkin and Andrews, ‘Whose Body is it Anyway?’
8 See, for example, L. Morgan, ‘"Properly Disposed of": A History of Embryo Disposal and the Changing Claims on Fetal Remains’, Medical Anthropology, 21 (2002), 247–74; N. Pfeffer, ‘Pioneers of Infertility Treatment’, in L. Conrad and A. Hardy (eds), Pioneers of Infertility Treatment (Amsterdam, 2001), 245–61; H. Landecker, ‘Immortality, In Vitro: A History of the HeLa Cell Line’, in P. Brodwin (ed.), Biotechnology and Culture: Bodies, Anxieties and Ethics (Indiana, 2000), 53–72.
9 This is a point also made by Susan Squier in Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine (Durham and London, 2004), which was published after this article was written. Both Squier and I share the above broad argument and, indeed, our object and location of study. She, however, looks at how the rhetoric of figures such as Honor Fell affected popular notions of life-span and ageing, how the influence of women scientists at the SRL affected the traditional gender dynamic of interwar science, and how the unpublished poetry of SRL researchers betrays the influence of popular culture on professional thought.
10 N. Burke, ‘Could You Love a Chemical Baby? For That's What Science Looks Like Producing Next’, Tit-Bits, 16 April 1938.
11 D. Cantor, ‘Cortisone and the Politics of Drama, 1945–55’, in J. Pickstone (ed.), Medical Innovation in Historical Perspective (Basingstoke, 1992), 165–84; T. Pieters, ‘Hailing a Miracle Drug: The Interferon’, in W. de Blécourt and C. Usborne (eds), Cultural Approaches to the History of Medicine: Mediating Medicine in Early Modern and Modern Europe (Basingstoke, 2003), 212–32.
12 M. Weatherhall, Gentlemen, Scientists and Doctors: Medicine at Cambridge 1800–1920 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 142–74.
14 D. E. Strangeways, ‘1905–1926’, in The History of the Strangeways Research Laboratory: 1912–1962 (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 7–12, CMAC: SA/SRL J.2.
15 Weatherall, Gentlemen, Scientists and Doctors, p. 171.
17 D. E. Strangeways, ‘1905–1926’, p. 7.
19 The Strangeways Research Laboratory: Formerly Cambridge Research Hospital (Cambridge, 1929), p. 4, CMAC: SA/SRL J.1.
20 T. S. P. Strangeways, ‘Observations on the Changes Seen in Living Cells During Growth and Division’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character, 94 (1922), 137–41.
21 T. S. P. Strangeways, ‘Observations on the Formation of Bi-Nuclear Cells’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Nature, 96 (1924), 291–3.
22 The Strangeways Research Laboratory (Cambridge, 1929), p. 4.
23 D. Cantor, ‘The Definition of Radiobiology’ (unpublished D. Phil. thesis, University of Lancaster, 1987), pp. 275–6.
24 G. L. Geison, Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology: The Scientific Enterprise in Late Victorian Society (Princeton, 1978).
25 J. Maienschein, Transforming Traditions in American Biology, 1880–1915 (Baltimore, 1991).
26 J. A. Witkowski, ‘Ross Harrison and the Experimental Analysis of Nerve Growth: The Origins of Tissue Culture’, in T. J. Horder, J. A. Witkowski, and C. C. Wylie (eds), A History of Embryology: The Eighth Symposium of The British Society for Developmental Biology (Cambridge, 1985), 149–79.
27 Cantor, ‘The Definition of Radiobiology’, pp. 276–9; idem, ‘The MRC's Support for Experimental Radiology during the Inter-war Years’, in J. Austoker and L. Bryder (eds), Historical Perspectives on the Role of the MRC (Oxford, 1989), 181–204.
28 T. S. P. Strangeways and F. L. Hopwood, ‘The Effect of X-rays upon Mitotic Cell Division in Tissue Cultures in vitro’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character, 100 (1926), 283–93.
29 C. Lansbury, The Old Brown Dog (London, 1985), p. 162.
30 Quoted in Cantor, ‘The MRC's Support for Experimental Biology during the Interwar Years’, p. 192.
31 F. G. Spear, Unpublished Lecture (1928), CMAC: PP/FGS/E.6/4.
32 F. G. Spear, ‘Tissue Culture and its Application to Radiological Research’, British Journal of Radiology, 8 (1935), 68–86, p. 86.
33 Spear, Unpublished Lecture (1928).
35 T. S. P. Strangeways and H. B. Fell, ‘Experimental Studies on the Differentiation of Embryonic Tissues Growing in vivo and in vitro’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series, Containing Papers of a Biological Character, 99 (1926), 340–66; H. B. Fell, ‘The Development in vitro of the Isolated Otocyst of the Embryonic Fowl’, Archiv für Experimentelle Zellforschung, 7 (1928), 69–81.
36 Obituary: ‘T. S. P. Strangeways’, The Times, 30 December 1926.
37 Spear, ‘Tissue Culture and its Application to Radiological Research’, p. 68.
38 See J. A. Witkowski, ‘Alexis Carrel and the Mysticism of Tissue Culture’, Medical History, 24 (1980), 129–42. For the full editorial, see ‘Tissue Culture’, Lancet, 201 (28 April 1923), p. 858.
39 ‘Tissue Culture’, Lancet, 201 (28 April 1928), p. 858.
40 A. Carrel and M. Burrows, ‘The Cultivation of Adult Tissues’, Journal of the American Medical Association, 55 (1910), p. 1381.
41 J. Turney, Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture (London, 1998), p. 73; J. A. Witkowski, ‘Dr. Carrel's Immortal Cells’, Medical History, 40 (1980), 129–40.
42 Later scientific work and critical historical research has somewhat demeaned the authenticity of this ‘immortal’ culture. See L. Hayflick, ‘The Limited in vitro Lifespan of Human Diploid Cell Strains’, Experimental Cell Research, 37 (1963), 614–36; Witkowski, ‘Dr. Carrel's Immortal Cells’.
43 Ebeling (1922), quoted in Witkowski, ‘Dr. Carrel's Immortal Cells’, p. 132.
44 Quoted in Witkowski, ‘Alexis Carrel and the Mysticism of Tissue Culture’, p. 287.
45 ‘The Immortal Cell: Dr. Carrel on Tissue Culture’, The Times, 24 July 1924.
46 Quoted in Witkowski, ‘Alexis Carrel and the Mysticism of Tissue Culture’, p. 288.
47 T. S. P. Strangeways, ‘Tissue Culture’ (1926): Lecture 1: ‘Introduction’, CMAC: SA/SRL A.27. [My emphasis].
49 See Turney, Frankenstein's Footsteps, pp. 64–91.
50 Strangeways, ‘Introduction’.
51 J. B. S. Haldane, Daedalus, or Science and the Future (London, 1924), p. 65.
52 S. M. Squier, Babies in Bottles: Twentieth-Century Visions of Reproductive Technology (New Brunswick, 1994).
54 Anon., ‘Review of Daedalus, Or Science and the Future’, Nature, 113 (1924), p. 70; reprinted in K. R. Dronamraju (ed.), Haldane's Daedalus Revisited (Oxford, 1995), pp. 50–1.
55 R. Clark, J. B. S.: The Life and Work of J. B. S. Haldane (London, 1968), p. 70.
56 Headline to a press report on the SRL from the Daily Express, 16 March 1936.
57 F. G. Spear, ‘1927–1962’, in The History of the Strangeways Research Laboratory: 1912–1962 (1962), pp. 12–18, CMAC: SA/SRL J.2.
58 Cantor ‘The Definition of Radiobiology’, pp. 282–3.
59 G. E. H. Foxon, ‘T. S. P. Strangeways and Tissue Culture in Cambridge: An Historical Sketch’ (unpublished manuscript, 1980), CMAC: SA/SRL J.6.
60 Anon., ‘The Progress of Science: Films of Living Cells’, The Times, 6 July 1931; Anon., ‘The Progress of Science: Study of Living Cells’, The Times, 4 January 1932.
62 Turney, Frankenstein's Footsteps, p. 93.
64 D. Masters, ‘Science Gets Its Biggest Thrill From the Spark of Life’, Tit-Bits, 3 December 1932. [My emphasis].
69 Turney, Frankenstein's Footsteps, pp. 91–121.
70 H. B. Fell to Dr M. Donaldson, 23 November 1934, CMAC: SA/SRL C.3.
71 H. B. Fell, ‘Tissue Culture’: Lecture, Postgraduate School of Medicine, 8 January 1936, CMAC: PP/HBF E.12.
72 Nelkin and Andrews, ‘Whose Body is it Anyway?’, p. 55.
73 H. B. Fell, ‘Tissue Culture. The Advantages and Limitations as Research Method’, British Journal of Radiology, 8 (1935), 27–31, p. 27. [My emphasis].
75 N. Murray, Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual (London, 2002), pp. 256–7.
77 Ibid., p. 2; Turney, Frankenstein's Footsteps, p. 102.
78 J. Huxley, ‘The Tissue Culture King’, Amazing Stories, August 1927, 451–68.
79 A. Huxley, Brave New World (London, 1932), p. 3.
80 J. Needham, ‘Biology and Mr. Huxley’, Scrutiny (May 1932), quoted in Squier, Babies in Bottles, p. 147; Turney, Frankenstein's Footsteps, p. 116.
81 H. Fell to H. Dale, 4 February 1935.
82 S. M. Squier, ‘Life and Death at Strangeways: The Tissue Culture Point of View’, in P. Brodwin (ed.), Biotechnology and Culture: Bodies, Anxieties, Ethics (Indiana, 2000), 37–51, p. 48, fn 26.
83 Special Correspondent, ‘Woman Scientist Cultivates Life in Bottles’, Daily Express (16 March 1936). [Italics in original].
87 H. Hardy, ‘Any Tin in the Sun?’, Daily Mirror, 20 March 1937, CMAC: PP/FGS C.18.
89 Paris Daily Mail, 27 April 1937, CMAC: PP/FGS C.18.
90 Burke, ‘Could You Love A Chemical Baby?’.
94 P. Rabinow, French DNA: Trouble in Purgatory (Chicago, 1997), p. 180.
95 K. Jackson, George Newnes and the New Journalism (Aldershot, 2001), p. 43.