“Natural History is the handmaid to the study of medicine and surgery”

Frank Buckland had a passion for Natural History. It developed from his earliest years and he was encouraged in his interest by both his mother and his father, the famous Dean of Westminster, Dr William Buckland. Frank was always inquisitive and enthusiastic and he was a gifted communicator on many topics in Natural History, both in articles and lectures. He is probably best known for being a member of the Acclimation Society, a group formed with the aim of importing, and farming, wild animals to provide food for humans. He had a highly developed taste for zoophagy, ¹ having eaten portions of several different animals at his father’s dinner parties. ²

After leaving Winchester College, Frank became a student at Christ Church, Oxford and, after studying Classics and Sciences, graduated with a BA in 1848, at the second attempt. Frank was not suited to formal study and examinations and, while at Christ Church, was more famed for his menagerie than for his diligence. The most famous of his pets was a bear named Tiglath Pileser (“Tig”) that was dressed in a cap and gown ² and eventually ended up in London Zoo ³ (without academic costume). On leaving Oxford, Frank decided to study medicine and entered St George’s Hospital in London, writing in July 1848: “My object in studying medicine (and may God prosper it!) is not to gain a name, money, and high practice, but to do good to my fellow-creatures and assist them in the hour of need”. ² After training, he became a surgeon in the Life Guards, but, after failing to gain a promotion, resigned to become a full-time writer and lecturer (he had kept up both activities while in the army), and then Fisheries Inspector.

Frank Buckland wrote these interesting paragraphs in The Preface of the First Series of his Curiosities of Natural History:

Without the knowledge of the structure and physiology of the lower members of the animal kingdom, it would be difficult rightly to understand many functions of the human economy; and much light has been thrown upon the art of healing by the study of the lower links in the chain of animal life.

I would wish it, therefore, to be understood, that the following pages have not been written to the neglect of purely professional subjects of investigation. It has been acknowledged by many of our greatest medical men, that Natural History is the handmaid to the study of medicine and surgery.. ⁴

It should be stressed that Frank Buckland was a Creationist and his ideas on training in medicine and surgery were not influenced by thoughts that structure and function had evolved (and, although there was discussion of evolution at the time, the lines were written two years before Darwin published his hugely influential ..The Origin of Species..).

Many medical discoveries have been made, and continue to be made, after investigations in Natural History. The development of drugs from chemicals extracted from microorganisms (e.g. penicillin, discovered in 1928) and plants (e.g. aspirin, first prepared in the 1850s, but with the effects of willow bark known for millennia) are well known, and ethnobotany has been a rich source of information. In addition, many types of animals provide analogues for the study of systems in humans (e.g. research during the mid-Twentieth Century on the optic nerves of the squid has provided information on the functioning of nerve-muscle systems). Animals are also used widely as test beds for assessing treatments and in studies of the expression of genes that are also found in humans. However, this is moving rather far forward from the time when Frank Buckland wrote the second paragraph quoted above and he was also referring to research in Zoology, Anatomy and Physiology. Frank tended not to be precise in the use of language.

Natural History covers organisms of all kinds and, in the mid-Nineteenth Century, involved observations using microscopes and the human eye - in situ, in cages, in aquarium tanks, and in other forms of enclosure. This is quite different to contemporary medical research, which seems to focus on internal mechanisms during an era when anthropocentricity and determinism dominate our thinking. Yet the wider environment also has an essential role to play in health and welfare.

Social and physical surroundings are important in the incidence of diseases of many kinds. This applies not only to developing countries, but also to the developed World, with cities like London having some districts with large adverse effects of environment on health. ⁵ On an individual scale, there are many examples of surroundings affecting health. It is accepted that being able to pet animals has a beneficial effect on the recovery of patients and the same is true of peaceful and beautiful natural locations. Pharmaceutical, surgical and other investigative approaches are essential in modern medicine, but a love of Nature may also aid healing, as it leads us away from introspection. Appreciating the huge diversity of plants and animals, and their inter-relationships with each other and with the environment, can also be an aid in meditative therapies, such as mindfulness. ⁶

If Natural History (in its widest context) really is the handmaid to the study of medicine and surgery, how much time is given to these aspects of the care of patients when training today’s doctors and surgeons?

¹ Lynn Barber (1980) The Heyday of Natural History 1820-1870. London, Jonathan Cape.

² George C. Bompas (1885) Life of Frank Buckland. London, Smith, Elder & Co.

³ G. H. O. Burgess (1967) The Curious World of Frank Buckland. London, John Baker.

⁴ Francis T. Buckland (1857) Curiosities of Natural History. London, Richard Bentley.

⁵ Michael Marmot and Mai Stafford (2005) Places, People and Socio-Economc Differences in Health. In:  London’s Environment: Prospects for a Sustainable World City (ed. Julian Hunt). London, Imperial College Press.

⁶ Shamish Alidina (2010) Mindfulness for Dummies. Chichester, John Wiley.

Torquay, Philip Henry Gosse, and Creation

Last week, I spent a few days staying at the Livermead Cliff Hotel in Torquay. I used to pass it every day on my way to, and from, school ¹ and it is situated a few metres from the rocky shore where Philip Henry Gosse, the great Natural Historian, collected sea anemones and other marine creatures. Having been sufficiently fascinated by Gosse to write a book about him and his son Edmund (later Sir Edmund), I find it easy to imagine the two of them at Livermead. 

Henry Gosse came to live in Torquay after the death of his wife, Emily, in 1857, the same year in which his book Omphalos ² was published. This was Gosse’s attempt to reconcile the literal Biblical account of Creation with the growing awareness among scientists, and others, of geological time scales. In the book, he presents the case for geological time, rock strata and fossils and, after presenting his theory of prochronic existence - where organisms appear to have existed before Creation - then goes on to justify his beliefs by repetition of the single point that Creation was as described in Genesis. It is interesting that the book is presented as though the case for, and against, was made in a Court of Law, with Henry providing both sides. He certainly had an excellent knowledge of developments in Geology and Palaeontology in the mid-1800s, as evident in the first part of Omphalos. The book pleased very few, and the hostile, and indifferent, responses – especially those from friends and fellow Creationists – disappointed Henry. Fortunately, time, together with his collecting work in South Devon, brought a change of spirits.

Like many evangelical Christians, Henry Gosse felt most comfortable in the company of those with similar beliefs and, in Henry’s case, this was made more so by his having his own congregation of Brethren, to whom he preached each Sunday. His single-minded religious approach alienated the growing Edmund and relations between them became strained, as described in Edmund’s Father and Son. ³ 

I sometimes wonder what would happen if I had been able to meet Henry at Livermead. I suspect I would have admired his knowledge of shore animals and plants, and also his energy and enthusiasm. No doubt, I would stop myself from discussing views on evolution, or anything that he might interpret as anti-Christian (although why should I be so cautious?). Yet, many Christians today accept evolution and have a less rigid adherence to the literal truth of The Bible, while others retain the Gosse-like position of belief in Creation over six days. I continue to find it baffling that believers in the same religion have such disparate views and that the debate that Omphalos set out to resolve (very unsuccessfully) continues today among Christians. Why is that?

¹ Roger S. Wotton (2012) Walking with Gosse: Natural History, Creation and Religious Conflicts. Southampton, Clio Publishing.

² Philip Henry Gosse (1857) Omphalos: an attempt to untie the geological knot. London, John van Voorst.

³ Edmund Gosse (1907) Father and Son. London, William Heinemann.

Mermen and mermaids

Creatures with a human torso and a fish tail have appeared in the folklore and mythology of many cultures. ¹ We know them as mermen and mermaids and examples became a popular feature of travelling shows and museums, Henry Gosse describing his great disappointment, as a boy, to discover the advertised mermaid was “a shrivelled and blackened little thing which might have been moulded in mud for aught I could see”. ¹ It must have looked a little like the specimen shown below.

Frank Buckland, like Gosse an eminent writer and lecturer on Natural History, describes the body of merman he saw exhibited in London: ²

In the back parlour of the White Hart, Vine-court, Spitalfields, high and dry upon a deal board, lay this wonderful object - hideous enough to excite the wonder of the credulous, and curious enough to afford a treat to the naturalist. Such a thing as a merman or mermaid of course never really existed; I was therefore most anxious to examine its composition, which, by the kindness of the landlady (a remarkably civil woman), who removed the glass that covered her treasure, I was enabled to do. The creature (a gentleman, not a lady specimen of the tribe) was from three to four feet long. The upper part of its body was composed of the head, arms and trunk of a monkey, and the lower part of a fish, which appeared to me to be a common hake; and the head was really a wonderful composition: the parchment-like hideous ears stood well forward, the skin of the nose when soft had been moulded into a decided specimen of “the snub,” the forehead was wrinkled into a frown, and the mouth “grinned a ghastly grin;” the curled lips partly concealed a row of teeth, which in the upper jaw were of conical form and sharp-pointed, taken probably from the head of a hake, whose body formed the lower part of our specimen. the lower jaw contained these fish’s teeth, but conspicuously in front was inserted a human incisor or front tooth, and a vacant cavity showed that there once had been a pair of them. These were probably placed there to show the “real human nature” of the monster. The head had once been covered with hair; but visitors, anxious to obtain a lock of a merman’s hair, had so plucked his unfortunate wig that only a few scattered hairs remained: the relic-seekers are now, therefore, ignorantly treasuring in their cabinets [of curiosities] hairs from the pate of an old red monkey.

Buckland also examined a mermaid, about “half the size of her partner”. It, too, was formed from a monkey and a fish, but this time with glass doll’s eyes rather than the leather ones of the merman, that had pupils marked in black ink.

The popularity of such exhibits waned in the mid-Nineteenth Century and Buckland comments “The good folks of England are getting every year more and more educated, and mermaids do not take so well now as formerly..”. ² The legendary P. T. Barnum advertised the mermaid in his museum with a highly imaginative painting to attract in customers. Of course, he knew the exhibit was not a mermaid and “Mr Barnum confessed that he did not pursue his studies in Natural History too far, or he might learn too much.” ² Barnum justified the confidence trick by making no extra charge and there were many other things for visitors to see. He was a showman after all.

Any Natural Historian would see immediately that these exhibited mermen and mermaids were manufactured, yet reports of these creatures in their natural environment have been made by generations of sailors. These may have been sightings of sea mammals, especially manatees (left, below) and dugongs (right, below). One can only conclude that they were distant sightings to merit the belief that they were mermen or mermaids, or perhaps the sailors had been too long at sea and their imaginations had become overdeveloped?

Although no-one can believe in their existence in the real world, mermaids have had a lasting appeal in fiction, film and other media. After all, they come from another world and thus fit into the niche also occupied by angels, fairies and dragons. The best known story is The Little Mermaid by H C Andersen ³ and this formed the basis for the Disney film of the same name. Andersen describes how mermaids lived at the bottom of the ocean and had a class system, with at least one Royal Family that had six Princesses:

The whole day long they used to play in the palace, down in the great halls where live flowers grew on the walls. Whenever the high amber windows were thrown open the fish would swim in, just as swallows dart into our rooms when we open the windows. But these fish, now, would swim right up to the little princesses to eat out of their hands and let themselves be petted.. .. Each little princess had her own small garden plot, where she could dig and plant whatever she liked..

The story continues by describing how the princesses were allowed to swim to the surface of the ocean for the first time on their fifteenth birthday, reporting back on what each had seen. The youngest princess heard all the amazing descriptions, but had to wait and wait for her turn. When the day came and she arrived at the surface, she saw a handsome prince and rescued him from drowning after he became unconscious. The mermaid princess wanted to marry the prince, not only for love, but also to acquire immortality of the soul, as this was a feature of humans that mermaids lacked, but which could be acquired through marriage. The transformation from fish tail into “props” (legs) required a special potion prepared by an underwater witch - who improbably boiled the ingredients in “a caldron over the flames”. ³ The famous statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen celebrates the transition to props from the fish tail and that explains why it appears like a nude of the period, with the outline of the tail barely visible. In the Disney film, which uses only superficial features of the complex story told by Andersen, the youngest princess appears as a mermaid Barbie Doll, with what appears to be a pull-on lower fish section and discretion maintained by having a bikini top.

One’s rational side finds all this a bit much, but the mermaids and mermen in museums, side shows and literature are very obviously fantasy creatures and we can all enjoy that. In a wider context, there must be other imaginary things that we take to be real, but it is not always easy to see that this is so. Hopefully, Natural Historians are better able to differentiate the two, just as Barnum intimated.

¹ Philip Henry Gosse (1861) The Romance of Natural History, Second Series. London, James Nisbet and Co..

² Francis T Buckland (1860) Curiosities of Natural History Second Series. New York, Rudd & Carlton.

³ Hans Christian Andersen (1837) Eventyr, fortalte for Børn. http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/forskning/bib/bfn/vis.html?p=303&show=1

Why Drosophila is so interesting

We had to choose four topics to study in the final year of my Zoology degree. I took classes in Entomology, Crop Protection, Limnology and Genetics and the first three represented my main interests at the time. Genetics was added because I thought it would be useful to know something of this developing branch of Biology. It was 1967, and a current student of Genetics would barely recognise the subject matter of our course. There was little on genomes and nothing on the techniques that are now commonplace in Molecular Genetics. Our practical classes involved, among other things, making crosses between fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) and then counting each of the resulting categories of eye colour etc. in the following week. Although this was fun, I found myself being as intrigued by the larvae and pupae that were in the growth medium as I was in the adult flies.

Fruit flies emerge from a puparium (see below), the hardened skin of the last larval stage, in which pupation and metamorphosis occur. This re-organisation always amazes me, in the way it allows such different life styles for the flying adult and the crawling larva. Indeed, the evolution of a pupal stage allowed for the selection of these quite different body types and the use of the last larval skin shows economy of materials, as no other outer covering is required. Interestingly, the puparium splits at the same place in all individuals to allow the adult fly to escape and that adds to my sense of amazement. 

Fruit fly larvae are maggots (in colloquial language), and are remarkably similar in form to those of other, related, flies. We are all familiar with the maggots produced by house flies and blow flies and some will have come across the larvae of flesh flies (see below). Maggots crawl using muscle contractions along the body, aided by raised ridges that run transversely, and the contractions allow them to burrow through substrata. They are aided in their burrowing by being “pointed”, as this allows pressure to be exerted at the forward end of the animal, and they feed as they go, loosening the material in front. The larval head is much reduced and maggots tear at fruit or flesh using two mouth hooks that are extended and contracted, rasping away at whatever medium they are moving through. Food is broken up into a semi-liquid form that can be easily ingested, with saliva helping in this process.

Although those enjoying coarse fishing have a fondness for maggots as bait, most people (even Creationists!) find them unpleasant. This aversion stems both from their movement and the locations favoured by egg-laying adults - we have all encountered blow fly maggots in our dustbins or seen them moving over the rotting flesh of dead animals. The latter are of value to Forensic Entomologists, who can provide accurate estimates of the time of death by looking at the age of maggots, and the succession of various species, but, even these larvae are not looked upon with much pleasure. However, they are excellent examples of a highly successful natural design and their resistant cuticle makes them difficult to kill, as anyone pouring pest-control chemicals on to a domestic infestation will agree. Perhaps more people will appreciate maggots when they realise just how effective they are in wound cleaning? All the life stages are excellent examples of the wondrous powers of evolution in the selection of genetic mutations.

That brings us back to Genetics and the use of Drosophila in research. The fruit fly has become a very popular “model organism” and it has been used to investigate many facets of gene expression, one of the most recent being in the genetics of intelligence. ¹ Modern Biology is characterised by a deterministic approach based on knowing the genome of a small number of organisms, and trying to find out which gene, or combinations of genes, control which processes. Underlying this is the idea that humans share genes with other organisms so that we can gain insights into the working of humans as a result. Many Biologists have become so obsessed with the anthropocentric approach that they ignore the Natural History of organisms and that is a pity. We know that Drosophila larvae and pupae are fascinating in their design and evolution, but who would have thought that there are Drosophila larvae living as predators on other invertebrates in African streams? ² One presumes that the ancient ancestors of these flies were living in fruit that fell into water and the resistant cuticle of the larvae, their rasping mouth hooks, and their crawling and burrowing ability were excellent pre-adaptations for becoming an aquatic predator. Now that’s really interesting, isn’t it?

¹ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/researchers-find-that-fruit-flies-show-intelligence-by-thinking-before-they-act-9426740.html

² L.Tsacas and R.H.L.Disney (1974) Two new African species of Drosophila (Diptera, Drosophilidae) whose larvae feed on Simulium larvae (Dipt., Simuliidae). Tropenmedizin und Parasitologie 25: 360-377.