The 11th annual meeting of the Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science (SAHMS) will be held in Birmingham, Alabama, March 6-7, 2009.  The meeting is being hosted by the Historical Collections unit at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  UAB was the host site for the organization’s second meeting in 1999.

SAHMS meetings continue the group’s original mission “to promote awareness at colleges and universities in the South of the importance and usefulness of the history of medicine and science.”  The annual conference is aimed at providing a means for exchange and sharing of research, ideas, and interest related to the history of medicine, science, and technology.  Faculty, students, scholars and independent researchers have all presented papers at SAHMS.

While SAHMS meets exclusively in the South, its membership and conference speakers are not limited to Southerners!  Recent conferences have included speakers from across the country and from Canada, the United Kingdom and Denmark.  Papers are not limited to topics with a Southern focus either, and papers recently presented include topics on ancient medicine, medicine of the early Republic, Latin American medicine, and human experimentation in the 20th century.

A call for papers is currently posted on the SAHMS website, http://www.sahms.net/ . Proposals are being accepted until September 30th.

Refer to this website for hotel, travel and other conference information from the local arrangements committee, all of which will be posted later in the year as those details are finalized.

See you in Birmingham in March 2009!

New Website:  A History of UCSF

Lisa A. Mix
University of California, SanFrancisco

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June 2008

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The University of California, Davis Department of Special Collections is pleased to announce the availability of the Saratoga Horticultural Research Foundation (SHRF) Collection. This collection documents the work of an association of California horticulturalists active from 1952 to 2006 whose goal was to improve and enrich western ornamental horticulture through the promotion of shade trees, California native plants, and drought-tolerant plants.

The Saratoga Horticultural Research Foundation was founded in 1952 by a group of visionary horticulturalists and nurserymen committed to improving western horticulture. From a small initial group, the Foundation grew to about 400 members engaged in research, educational outreach, and promotion of selected cultivars. During its fifty-four years, the Foundation not only met but exceeded its original vision. The SHRF introduced many favorites such as Magnolia grandiflora “Samuel Sommer” and Ginkgo biloba “Autumn Gold”, but the Foundation was also in the vanguard of environmentally responsible planting. In response to several years of drought in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Foundation actively researched and encouraged the use of drought-tolerant California native plants and trees, shade trees to cool hot streets and sidewalks, and non-thirsty plants to be used in place of lawns and other heavily-watered areas. This emphasis on low-water and shady ornamental landscapes made the Foundation one of the early promoters of home water and energy conservation.

In 2006, the board of the SHRF felt that the Foundation had succeeded in its mission and opted to disband. At this time, the Foundation donated its archives to UC Davis’ Department of Special Collections along with a generous donation for processing and promoting the materials. The board also created the Saratoga Horticultural Research Foundation Endowment at UC Davis’ College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; this endowment supports research and educational programs to continue fostering the introduction of new and improved plants.

The Saratoga Horticultural Research Foundation Collection spans the years 1938-2008 (bulk 1950-1998) and includes minutes, correspondence, financial records, research notes and data, project plans, and photographs relating to the Foundation's operation and horticultural research. The finding aid to the Saratoga Horticultural Research Foundation Collection is available at the Online Archive of California at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt3m3nd10c .

The UC Davis Department of Special Collections is located at 100 North West Quad, Davis, California, 95616. Reading room hours are Monday – Friday, 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM. Inquiries about the Saratoga Horticultural Research Foundation Collection may be directed to Liz Phillips at ecphillips@ucdavis.edu.

June 2008

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AIP Processing Grants

Joseph R. Anderson
American Institute of Physics

The deadline for applying for American Institute of Physics, Center for History of Physics' grants to process archival collections in physics, astronomy, geophysics and related fields (e.g., optics, acoustics, rheology) has been extended from 8/1 to 9/15/08.   Grant amounts may be up to $10,000, and AIP usually awards three grants annually.  For the announcement, guidelines, and a list of previous recipients, see our Website at  http://www.aip.org/history/grants_archives.html.  And for additional information, please email janderso@aip.org.

August 2008

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Message from the Co-Chairs  |  Announcements  |   Conferences, Meetings, and Workshops
SAA 2008 Annual Meeting--San Francisco, CA  |  STHC Roundtable Steering Committee Members |  Articles

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The Science, Technology, and Healthcare Roundtable will be meeting on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.  STHC will host a presentation by Will Snow, manager of the SALT project at Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Services.  For the full agenda see "Message from the Co-Chairs".

Pre-Conference Tours/Open House:

For information on pre-conference tours see:
http://www.archivists.org/conference/sanfrancisco2008/AM2008RepositoryTours.asp

Tour of Computer History Museum
401 N. Shoreline Boulevard
Mountain View, CA 94043
August 26, 2008
Capacity 20

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) Archives
Archives and History Office
M/S 82, Sand Hill Road
Menlo Park, CA 94025
Contact Laura O'Hara at 650-926-8584

For the full SAA program, please see the following:
http://saa.archivists.org/Scripts/4Disapi.dll/4DCGI/events/82.html?Action=Conference_Detail&ConfID_W=82#schedule

STHC-Themed Programs:
Please be sure to read the abstracts for other sessions, because we might have missed some

STHC Roundtable Meeting - SALT: Self-Archiving Legacy Toolkit
5:30 - 7:30 pm, Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Yosemite A

206.  Using Local and International Anniversaries for Outreach Opportunities
10:30 - 12:00 pm, Thursday, August 28, 2008
Continental Parlor 3

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Message from the Co-Chairs  |  Announcements  |   Conferences, Meetings, and Workshops
SAA 2008 Annual Meeting--San Francisco, CA  |  STHC Roundtable Steering Committee Members |  Articles

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SAA Science, Technology Health Care Roundtable: Steering Committee Members (2007-2008)
R. Joseph Anderson American Institute of Physics College Park, MD	Ewa M. Basinska - Newsletter Editor Institute Archives Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA	Jean M. Deken Stanford Linear Accelerator Center Menlo Park, CA
Janice F. Goldblum - Immediate Past Chair The National Academies Washington, DC	Russell A. Johnson - ListServ Moderator Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library University Of Califronia, Los Angeles	Joan Echtenkamp Klein - Past Chair Health Sciences Library University of Virginia Health System Charlottesville, VA
Jodi Koste Tompkins-McCaw Library Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA	Suzanna Long, PhD Assistant Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering 215 EMGT Missouri University of Science and Technology Rolla, Missouri	Nancy McCall The John Hopkins Medical Institutions Baltimore, MD
Lisa Mix Library and Center for Knowledge Management University of California, San Francisco	Tim L. Pennycuff Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham, AL	Rose Roberto - Web Liaison Brotherton Library University of Leeds, UK
Paige L. Smith South Research Institute Birmingham, AL	Paul Theerman - Co-Chair National Library of Medicine Bethesda, MD	Judith Wiener Medical Heritage Center Prior Health Sciences Library The Ohio State University Columbus, OH
John Zwicky American Academy of Pediatrics Elk Grove Village, IL

 

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Message from the Co-Chairs  |  Announcements  |   Conferences, Meetings, and Workshops
SAA 2008 Annual Meeting--San Francisco, CA  |  STHC Roundtable Steering Committee Members |  Articles

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At the main entrance of the Brotherton Library is a display case with 12 items from Special Collections. This exhibit was put up at the end of 2007, because like many institutions in Britain, the University of Leeds Libraries (of which the Brotherton is a part) chose to commemorate the 200 year bicentenary of the British Slave Trade Act, which legally ended the capture, kidnapping and transportation of Africans to British territory.  While the 1807 Parliament Act was not the end of slavery itself, it was a legal step in that direction.  It also signaled a sea-change in the general British public’s perception and acceptance of the institution of slavery.  Many ordinary people joined the abolitionists in the first national (and then international) consciousness-raising campaign (Wood, p. 205). While many of the items chosen for display are not surprising, such as rare books and letters by abolitionists like Thomas Clarkson, Ottobah Cugoano, and Olaudah Equiano, a certain pharmacopoeia book also in the display case may at first be surprising given this topic. However, A Compleat History of Druggs by Pierre Pomets was selected for the exhibition because it contains illustrations of slaves laboring on a sugar plantation. Indeed, many records and archives of the history of science—given greater publicity due to the bicentenary—also contain information related to history of the slave trade, clearly demonstrating what Theodore R. Schellenberg distinguishes as a record's primary and secondary values. The primary value is evidence of its origin, development, and originator conduct; the secondary value is its role in providing information which contributes substantially to research in any other field of knowledge (Cook, p. 86). In this essay, by very briefly looking at a just few British scientists and physicians who lived during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries -- Robert Boyle, Hans Sloane, Joseph Banks, Charles Darwin, David Livingston and John Kirk --  I will present a general overview of official British policy and general attitudes toward slavery as well as the evolution of the British abolition movements at the time.  A quick look at the second Charter of the Royal Society, the world's oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, also reveals that it was established not purely as a venue for fundamental research, but that there were imperialist economic interests, which made it inevitably involved with Great Britain’s biggest commerce: the traffic of human beings on a massive scale. The British played no part in the origins or early development of the Atlantic slave trade (Walvin, p. 50). Their participation began in 1562 when John Hawkins shipped some 300 people from Africa to Hispaniola. This “modest traffic” continued in a “restrained” fashion through the next 100 years as a part of the more general trade with West Africa because these early ventures were overshadowed by profits made from government supported privateers — pirates — looting Spanish ships (Govier, p. 204). It was not until the British seized St. Kitts and Barbados in the mid 1620s, when Spanish and Portuguese global supremacy was declining, that the British established long-term commercial interests linking the slave trade and their New World settlement (Walvin, p.51).  During this time, Mark Govier argues that the “Royal Society was part of the British imperial complex and thus shared and partook in whatever that complex created and destroyed.”  (Govier, p. 204). He finds that not only was the Royal Society given official recognition by the crown in the same year as the Royal Adventurers, the merchant company that would initially control the monopoly on the slave trade, but that many Royal Society Fellows also had overlapping memberships with first the Royal Adventurers and later the Royal African Company (Govier, p. 204). Essentially this means that both early scientific research and slaving commerce had government support and both relied on each other: early science in Britain was funded directly and indirectly with slave trade profits; slave trade relied on scientific knowledge and leadership to expand and manage the system's growth; and the slave trade provided scientific specimen collectors with a global network of contacts and resources.

“Slavery touched all forms of life in the UK and the Royal Society was no exception as can be seen in our archives” states a website created in 2007 by library and archive staff. (Royal Society, Ref.10) Another website created as part of bicentenary notes that some of the implications of slavery were a cause for concern for the deeply religious Robert Boyle. Boyle, a mathematician who lived from 1627-1691, is best remembered for Boyle’s Law on gas. The Boyle Papers (Vol. 4 f. 118), kept in the Royal Society archives reveal that Boyle questioned the idea of keeping an enslaved person indefinitely, especially if that slave had converted to Christianity. (Royal Society, Ref.11)

A copy in the Boyle Papers (Vol. 4 f. 118) of a draft Act of Parliament proposed in 1670 notes that the principle that a Christian should not be enslaved by another men of the faith has led to planters and owners of slaves actively discouraging the conversion of slaves for fear of losing their property and investment. The proposed solution was not the abolition of slavery, however, but the provision that the baptism of slaves would not affect the ’service’ due from them to their ‘former masters’. Proposals (f. 127-8) that seem to have been drafted by Boyle himself the same year list two (alternative) proposals...The first allows for the freeing of a Christian slave but not the offspring of this slave while the second proposes rights for a Christian slave, including the ownership of goods and the right to seek legal redress against mistreatment by a master. (ibid.)

The Royal Society archivist further comments on the passage above that there is no “evidence that this command, remarkably enlightened for its time, was followed.”  This is not surprising given that slavery was becoming a mainstay of Britain's income.  James Delbourgo notes around this time the shift from identifying Jamaican colonizers as “Christians” to “whites” and the use of the nouns “blacks” or “negroes” (from the Spanish word for black) to denote enslaved Africans (Delbourgo, p. 8).

By the 1680s, other major shifts in the Caribbean besides semantics begin to occur : French and British start fiercely competing with each other for more territory; indentured white labor starts to decline; the enslaved African population has risen from a few hundred into the thousands – 38,000 on Barbados alone; and a class of large plantation owners had emerged. (Walvin, p. 52) As a steady labor force is becoming necessary to cope with the demanding nature of crops like sugar and tobacco, factors institutionalizing and justifying slavery for life start to emerge. Although Barbados sets the pace for this new economy, Jamaica, with its larger area of land and climate more suitable for a range of crops, soon outstrips Barbados as the main agriculture producer.  When the British first seized Jamaica from Spain, the enslaved population consists of 42,000 people; fifty years later the enslaved population is 118,000. (Walvin, p. 53)  And it is still growing.  By 1698, when the Royal African Company monopoly ends with the rise of private traders, an average number of 20,000 people per year are forcibly being transported.

In 1707, Hans Sloane published A Natural History of Jamaica. His trip to Jamaica in 1687, on which his book was based, coincides with this dramatic period of transition. The account includes a catalogue of the flora and fauna of the island, a description of its climate, food, and inhabitants, and information about slaves.  In fact much of the scientific information he collected about the island was from interviewing island natives and enslaved Africans (Delbourgo, p.3-4).

Sloan was Ulster-Scot by birth, and lived from 1660 to 1753.  Sloan, after whom Sloan Square in London is named, was president of the both the Royal Society and of the Royal College of Physicians. His visit to Jamaica and the specimens that he collected were so significant that he greatly influenced others to become collectors. Pierre Pommet, among others, dedicates his Natural History of Druggs to Sloan.  The Jamaica trip was significant for Sloan for personal reasons as well as professional.  He met his wife, the daughter of a planter, in Jamaica and for the rest of his life his income came from those estates. The contacts he made in Jamaica sent him specimens from their travels to the rest of the world to add to his collections of botanical specimens. After his death, he bequeathed these to the British nation and they became the foundation of the British Museum and later the Natural History Museum in London. 

Many today have forgotten about Sloan’s voyage because of later voyages, first by Joseph Banks on the Endeavour, then by Charles Darwin on the Beagle.  We will first look at the scientific work and times of Banks.

Banks lived from 1743 to1820, was a naturalist and a botanist who also bequeathed a significant collection to the Natural History Museum.  His short biography listed in Records of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew states he was the longest serving president of the Royal Society and was appointed by King George as adviser to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.  His London home was a scientific base which housed his natural history collections that were made freely available to bona fide scientists and researchers. Until his death, this house was a centre for the wider scientific community. He did not discriminate between British and foreign scientists. He was, in fact, influential in maintaining scientific relations with France during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. (Papers of Sir Joseph Banks, Botanist, in RM 3, National Archives Catalogue)

The late 18th century is characterized by its series of revolutions: the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution. Britain’s loss in a foreign war (the American Revolution) was a symptom to many that something was wrong with the British state. John Gascoigne writes that a revolution in government was also occurring, essentially replacing administration by aristocrats who managed their areas like little fiefdoms with administration by experts in their field organized into government departments. An indication of the increasing size and complexity of the British State was that informal methods of advancing empire became less significant. (Gascoigne, p. 85) Banks and the Royal Society were becoming the de facto advisors on science, technology, and ways that commerce within the empire could be run more efficiently.  Banks' expertise was called upon because he had visited places around the empire.

During Banks’ famed trip with Captain Cook in late 1770 and early 1771, while he was collecting botanic specimens from Queensland, his mother, Sarah Bate Banks (O'Brian, p.16), was in London working with abolitionist Granville Sharp to have Thomas Lewis, her free black servant, recently kidnapped by his former employer, released (Schama, p. 53). This was just six months before Sharp worked on the famed James Somerset case. In both cases, Judge Mansfield presided and because of the positive outcomes for both of Sharp's clients, Mansfield seemed to have inadvertently set the legal precedent that people, even slaves, could not be transported from England against their will. Colonial residents stopped bringing their slaves to Britain for fear of losing them. This effectively ended the holding of slaves within England itself, though not within her colonies.

As one of the de facto government advisors on science and utilizing British empire resources, Banks had direct dealings with other abolitionists, most notably through membership in the Africa Association, in which William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, and Josiah Wedgewood were also members (Gascoigne, p.179). The aims of the association included missionary work, checking other European political influence in Africa, promoting general geographic exploration and expansion of trade with West Africa, establishing a market for the growing volume of goods the industrial revolution made possible, and eventually replacing the slave-based commerce which was legally abolished in 1807 (Gascoigne, p. 179-180). Between 1808 and 1830, the total slave population of the British Caribbean territories declined from 800,000 to 650,000 (Ferguson, p.118) as the commercial power of the Empire shifted away from this area.
  
Slavery did of course continue in the southern United States, and on a far larger scale in Brazil, where it was not abolished until 1888. Charles Darwin (1809-1882), famous for his theory of evolution by natural selection, was born after the Slave Trade Act was passed and during his early life slavery itself was abolished throughout the empire. However, like Hans Sloan disembarking in Jamaica, Darwin also encountered enslaved people while on the voyage that would make him famous. He writes upon returning to the Beagle:

On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate.  (Darwin, p. 500)

After 1838 ended slavery in the British Empire, British abolition movements continued but evolved to focus on the slavery in the United States and eastern slave markets in Africa run by Arab and Portuguese slave traders.  Another Royal Society library and archives website states that these later scientists and physician-missionaries spent years trying to end international slavery with varying degrees of success. 

From 1858 to 1864 the British Government funded David Livingstone's (1813-1873) expedition up the Zambezi River.  Livingstone's desire to bring "Christianity and Commerce" to Africa married well with the Government's wish to examine the natural resources of this part of East Africa and assess their economic potential. In order to achieve the aims of the expedition Livingstone included in his team an economic botanist (and physician), John Kirk...[who] accompanied Livingstone on long journeys to investigate Lake Nyasa and explore the Victoria Falls. In doing so he made his name as a botanist. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1887, Kirk's certificate mentions his having been "Chief Officer and Naturalist of Dr Livingstone's Government Expedition to the Zambezi, Nyassa Country, during which he made large Collections, Observations, and Drawings of great scientific value." Some of the plants Kirk collected can still be found...at Kew Gardens where botanical specimens, some now endangered, are preserved. (Royal Society, (Ref.9)

After Livingston's death, Kirk (1832 – 1922), who later became the British administrator in Zanzibar, then pledged to continue Livingston's work to end East African slave trade.  For years he negotiated with the ruler of Zanzibar, Sultan Bargash, gaining his confidence and promising to help enrich the East African domain through legitimate commerce. The Sultan banned slave trading in 1873, and by 1885 the region was larger and more profitable (Ferguson, p. 119). Had the "Scramble for Africa" not occurred, where European powers divided vast areas of territory among themselves, disregarding local leadership (and in the case of Zanzibar, Britain completely abandoning it to German interests), Kirk's diplomatic work may have been considered one of the great success stories of the anti-slavery movement.

In 2007, the bicentenary of the UK Parliament Slave Trade Act was remembered by many in different ways.  A wide range of heritage institutions looked at their collections in creative ways to find links with this anniversary, including institutions where on the surface there are no obvious ties. Many archives and special collections documenting scientific work of the period have some strong links to the slave trade, and deeper research into the lives of a few key figures in science and medicine show that they were personally affected by their contemporary issues the way we are affected by major events that happen in our own time.

This short essay has given examples of how the slave trade was a vehicle of exchange and provided a global network of contacts and resources for those who undertook scientific investigations across the vast British Empire, whatever their initial motivation. Early science in Britain was funded directly and indirectly with slave trade profits; and the slave trade relied on scientific knowledge and leadership to develop the system's growth and then later the better leadership from the next generation to eventually replace this horrible system.     


References:
   
1. Cook, M. (1999). The Management of Information from Archives. Aldershot, Hampshire, England Gower Publishing.
   
   
4. Ferguson, N. (2007). Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World. London, Penguin.
   

   
7. O'Brian, P. (1987). Joseph Banks: A Life. London, Collins Harvill.

   
   
10. Royal Society Website. (2007). "Remembering Slavery." Retrieved 2 June 2008 from http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=5678.
   
11. Royal Society Website. (2007). "Slaves, slavery and religion", Retrieved 2 June 2008 from http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=5687.

12. Schama, S. (2006). Rough Crossings. BBC Books.
   
13. Walvin, J. (2004). A Short History of Slavery. London, Penguin Books Ltd.
   
   

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