science newsletter: Newsletter for Thursday 21 February

Newsletter - February 21 - Today in Science History

TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER - 21 FEBRUARY

Feature for Today

On 21 Feb 1887, a institutional medical laboratory was incorporated, which would be built from private funds provided by one man, Dr. Cornelius N. Hoagland. When opened in 1889, it was the first American institutional bacteriological laboratory for original medical research. He provided over $100,000 to build and equip the laboratory.

The Hoagland Laboratory was described as it was being built in an article in a doctor's journal. (You'll probably raise an eyebrow at how the animals in the basement are described!)

Although Hoagland also provided a $50,000 endowment, after 25 years the facility met with financial difficulties, and closed. Not even the building now survives - it was later gutted by fire and demolished.

This was a generous effort that did not carry on into our times as a household name, but some good research was accomplished during the time it existed. It's worth reading this article to see the nature of a charitable gift to the community in the nineteenth century.

Book of the Day

On 21 Feb 1895, Henrik Dam was born, Danish biochemist who shared the 1943 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for research into antihemorrhagic substances and the discovery of a vitamin (which arose from some studies on the cholesterol metabolism of chicks in 1928-1930). Today's Science Store pick is Vitamin Discoveries and Disasters: History, Science, and Controversies, by Frances R. Frankenburg. This book gives the background for the major vitamins: A, B1, B3, B9, C, and D. Each chapter focuses at length on a specific vitamin, describing the researchers, their work, and the historic and scientific contexts for its discovery. The medical detectives include men and women, many of whom were little known in their lifetimes. The book also charts the ongoing conflict between physicians who saw illness as caused by organisms and those who saw illness as a result of dietary deficiency. New: $35.95. Available Used from $29.95 (as of time of writing).

Yesterday's pick: Rene Dubos, Friend of the Good Earth: Microbiologist, Medical Scientist, Environmentalist, by Carol L. Moberg
For picks from earlier newsletters, see the Today in Science Science Store home page.

Quotations for Today
	"There is no fun in psychiatry. If you try to get fun out of it, you pay a considerable price for your unjustifiable optimism." - Harry Stack Sullivan, American psychiatrist (born 21 Feb 1892)
	"I had no specific bent toward science until my grandfather died of stomach cancer. I decided that nobody should suffer that much." - Gertrude Elion, American pharmacologist (died 21 Feb 1999)
	" mechanical progress there is apparently no end: for as in the past so in the future, each step in any direction will remove limits and bring in past barriers which have till then blocked the way in other directions; and so what for the time may appear to be a visible or practical limit will turn out to be but a bend in the road." - Osborne Reynolds, British engineer (died 21 Feb 1912)

QUIZ
Before you look at today's web page, see if you can answer some of these questions about the events that happened on this day. Some of the names are very familiar. Others will likely stump you. Tickle your curiosity with these questions, then check your answers on today's web page.
Births
	Henrik Dam, born 21 Feb 1895, was a Danish biochemist who, with Edward A. Doisy, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1943 for research into antihemorrhagic substances and the discovery of a certain vitamin (1939). *Which vitamin was discovered in 1939?*
Deaths
	Howard Walter Florey (1898-1968) was an Australian pathologist who, with Ernst Boris Chain, isolated and purified the substance discovered in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming for general clinical use. For this research Florey, Chain, and Fleming shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1945. What substance did their research share?
	Sir Frederick Grant Banting (1891-1941) was a Canadian physician who, with Charles H. Best, was the first to extract (1921) the hormone insulin. Injections of insulin proved to be the first effective treatment for diabetes, a disease in which glucose accumulates in abnormally high quantities in the blood. Banting was awarded a share of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for this achievement. From which body organ did Best first extract insulin?
Events
	On 21 Feb of a certain year, Francis Crick and J. Watson discovered the structure of the DNA molecule. *In which decade was this discovery made??*
	On 21 Feb 1811, Humphry Davy read a paper to the Royal Society, he introduced a new name for the gas chemists then knew as oxymuriatic gas. In his paper, On a Combination of Oxymuriatic Gas and Oxygene Gas, Davy reported on his numerous experiments with oxymuratic gas, which appeared to have many of the reactive properties of oxygen, though it was not oxygen. This gas was obtained from muriatic acid. *What was the name Davy gave to this gas, by which it is now known?*

Answers

When you have your answers ready to all the questions above, you'll find all the information to check them, and more, on the February 21 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers.

Fast answers for the previous newsletter for February 20: Think Globally, Act Locally; Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev; fluorine; the decade including the year 1986; three orbits; Charles Darwin.

Feedback