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"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who
are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
-- Albert Einstein
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In 1875 infantile scurvy was described by Cheadle. (82)
In 1875 is passed the Public Health Act of 1875 (England). (6)
In 1875 Daniel Coit Gilman, (S&B 1852) became president of John Hopkins University. He held this post until 1901. (130)
In 1875, according to official government statistics, 120,000 Americans are estimated to be addicted to opium. (6)
In 1875 United States immigration excludes "coolies, convicts and prostitutes" as undesirable aliens. (6), (116)
In 1875 Pflueger contributes to prior studies, (see von Liebig, 1842) that show the important relationship between the essential fatty acids, present in unrefined linseed oil, and the amino acids. (42) He helped to show a clear connection between oil and protein nutrition on one hand, and oxygen uptake and biological oxidation in tissues on the other hand. (13) [See 1872, (EFAs Previous, Next)]
In 1875 the first State Agricultural Experiment Stations established as a result of the Morrill Land-Grant College Act of 1862 were established in California and Connecticut. (87) The Connecticut station is organized at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. (266) [See (Morrill Previous, Next)]
In 1875 a municipal ordinance was passed in San Francisco which prohibited the smoking of opium in opium dens. (93)
In 1875, in a letter to John M. Glidden, treasurer of the Pacific Guano Works Company, Spencer F. Baird—who considered utilizing menhaden and other fishes for the production of guano fertilizer a worthwhile project—urged him "to make a display of your wares at the centennial (in Philadelphia), as this is one of the most important interests in the United States." He writes further that "there is no species (of fish) worked up elsewhere comparable for a moment with the menhaden, or pogy, as to numbers and the percentage of oil. The combination, too, of the pogy scrap with the South Carolina phosphates and the guanos of the West Indies and of the PacificA are also quite novel, and as being especially an American industry, are eminently worthy of full appreciation." (68) [See 1871, 1892, note 122]
In 1875 William James starts the first psychological laboratory at Harvard. (116)
In 1875 is the first meeting of the American Neurological Association. They vote to bar membership to superintendents of mental hospitals. They begin publishing the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. (116)
In 1875 the American Forestry Association is founded. (142), [See note 175]
In 1875 John Wesley Powell published his report, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and its Tributaries. (142) [See 1869]
In 1875, John William Draper publishes History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science which argues for science over creationism. The publisher is D. Appleton and Co. which also published the monthly, Popular Science. (310) [See 1876]
In February of 1875 a report is entered into the Congressional record on behalf of the Anti-Monopoly Association of the Pacific Coast entitled A History of the Wrongs of Alaska—An Appeal to the People and Press of America. The report is entered as part of a military report originating from the Army's Pacific headquarters. (390) The report is a petition to the federal government for redress of grievances over the conditions that had developed as a result of the government's having recently awarded a 20-year lease to the Alaskan Commercial Company to conduct fur sealing on the Pribilof Islands. These conditions included that said company had acquired a monopoly in the Alaskan fur trade, that the people of the Pribilof island group were being held as slaves and forced to work for inadequate wages for said company while enduring other tremendous hardships that Americans in general were not subjected to as free citizens of the U.S. (390)
In 1876 the Appalachian Mountain Club is founded in Boston. (142) "The Club was initiated by Edward C. Pickering who was a member of one of Boston's most elite families. Pickering's great-grandfather was a New England federalist who promoted the breakup of the union through the creation of a northern confederacy. Many of the early members of the Mountain Club were part of the faculty of Harvard University and many were members of Boston's most elite social circles, sometimes referred to as Boston Brahmins. Among the better known names associated with the club were Cabot, Lowell, Peabody, Lawrence, Eliot and Higginson." A notable member of the Appalachian Mountain Club was Thomas Wentworth Higginson who served as the club's President. (262) Higginson, who's family was part of the American opium syndicate "was a radical abolitionist and friend of John Brown... Higginson also became a prominent Mugwump. The Mugwumps were an elitist, anti-industrial movement of the 1870s and 1880s..." (261) In addition, Higginson was also a member of the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research which was founded in 1884. Some notable students of natural history who were members of the Appalachian Mountain Club include: Alpheus Hyatt, Nathaniel S. Shaler, Edward S. Morse and Samuel H. Scudder—all students of Louis Agassiz at Harvard. (263), (162) [See Higginson, 1859]
In 1876 after Congress allocates $2,000 in a Department of Agriculture appropriations bill for "some man of approved attainments" to report to Congress on forestry matters, Franklin B. Hough is appointed first federal forestry agent, with the task of gathering statistics about the state of the nation's forests. (142)
In 1876 Emil Kraepelin studies under Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig. (116)
In 1876 Alphonso Taft, (S&B 1832) became Secretary of War in the Grant Administration. (26)
In 1876 Virginia City, Nevada enacted a similar law to the San Francisco ordinance in 1875 which prohibited the smoking of opium in opium dens. (106)
In 1876 Hoppe-Seyler contributes to prior studies, (see von Liebig, 1842, Pflueger 1875) that show the important relationship between the essential fatty acids, present in unrefined linseed oil, and the amino acids. (42) He helped to show a clear connection between oil and protein nutrition on one hand, and oxygen uptake and biological oxidation in tissues on the other hand. (13) [See (EFAs Previous, Next)]
In 1876 the first prohibition amendment to the Constitution was introduced into Congress. (86)
In 1876 the American Gynecological Society was formed. (1)
In 1876 the Association of American Medical Colleges was founded. (1)
In 1876 the Physiological Society was founded in Great Britain. (1), (82)
In 1876 the American Chemical Society was founded in Washington, D.C. (82)
In 1876 the concept of essential amino acids was introduced by Th. Escher. (82)
In 1876 the name "enzyme" was given by Kuhne to the unorganized ferments of the diastase or pepsin type. (82)
In 1876 Samuel Wilmot became the Superintendent of Fish Breeding in Canada. (66)
In 1876 Hashish is served at the American Centennial Exposition. (89), (124) During the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, some pharmacists carried ten pounds or more of hashish. (123)
In 1876 the Posse Comitatus Act was passed. It banned military involvement in law enforcement. (93)
In 1876 Darwin's book Cross and Self Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom explained the concept of hybrid vigor, stimulating experiments and studies by other scientists. Though the basic concept of hybrid vigor had been discussed by various researchers during the earlier decades of this century, this was the first complete analysis and description. (87)
In 1876 Robert Koch, while practicing as a physician in Silesia, isolated the anthrax bacillus from the blood of animals that had died in an epidemic of anthrax; he then grew the bacillus in pure culture and found that it would infect other animals. (1)
In 1876 Alexander Bain (considered to be one of the "last philosophical psychologists") founds the first journal of psychology, Mind. His books The Senses and the Intellect and The Emotions and the Will are fundamental textbooks in the English language for the next 50 years. (116)
In 1876, Andrew Dickson White (S&B 1853) publishes The Warfare of Science. which argues for science over creationism. The publisher is D. Appleton and Co. which also published the monthly, Popular Science. (311) [See 1875, 1896]
In 1876 the American Association for Study of the Feebleminded is organized. Its name will change in 1933 to the American Association on Mental Deficiency. Though its initial headquarters isn't provided in the reference, in 1961 it appears to have been headquartered in the state of Connecticut. (352)
In 1877 the first major monograph on the menhaden, a prolific and widely useful species, is published by G. Brown Goode, Assistant Fish Commissioner. (20), (308) The name of this "major monograph" written by George Brown Goode was A History of the Menhaden. According to authors H. Bruce Franklin and John Frye, the work was published in 1880. (215), (216) In his monograph, Goode, who earlier had authored, The Game Fishes of North America (according to the monograph's title page) writes of the menhaden's place in nature: "It is not hard to surmise the menhaden's place in nature; swarming our waters in countless myriads, swimming in closely-packed, unwieldy masses, helpless as flocks of sheep, close to the surface and at the mercy of any enemy, destitute of means of defense or offense, their mission is unmistakably to be eaten." (216) Also according to the title page, W.O. Atwater, professor of chemistry at Wesleyan University contributed to this work. (216) L'Hommedieu's 1792 paper discussing the value of menhaden used as manure, (reprinted in 1801), was cited by Goode in his monograph. (215:230) According to Goode, most of the work on this report was done during the winter of 1874,75. (308:4) [See 1804, 1879, 1888, note 166]
In 1877 the Sultan of Turkey makes cannabis illegal, to little effect. (89) The sultan of Turkey (who still ruled over Egypt) ordered a nationwide campaign to confiscate and destroy the drug [in Egypt]. (106) [See 1874, 1879, (Cannabis Prohibition Previous, Next)]
In 1877 the secretary of the interior, Carl Schurz, aroused congressional interest in retaining permanent forests in public ownership and in improving administration of the federal real estate. This led to the beginning of a system of forest reserves authorized in 1891; 30 were created by Presidents Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. (1)
In 1877 state laws requiring identification of margarine were passed in New York and Maryland. (9)
In 1877 Pavlov began his classic studies on digestion in dogs. (82)
In 1877 Richard Dugdale publishes The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity. (117), (140)
In 1877 Phenylalanine was discovered and its empirical formula was determined. (82)
In 1877 W.J. Beal, working at Michigan State University, (then Michigan Agricultural College) made the first controlled crosses of corn in an effort to increase yield. Later, workers would experiment with inbred varieties, devising a system of "double crossing" to produce large quantities of hybrid seed. (87) [See (Morrill Previous, Next), 1876]
On June 26, 1877, Clarence King stood before the brand-new graduates of Yale's Sheffield Scientific School and delivered a lecture entitled Catastrophism and the Evolution of Environment. It was intended simply as a distillation of the argument he would make in Systematic Geology; but, thus concentrated, it became, in King's own words, "nothing less than an ignited bomb-shell thrown into the camp of the biologists." From the moment King started talking, the professors in the audience knew just how radical the repercussions would turn out to be, how drastically currents would shift. (197) [See note 153, note 154]
In July of 1877 the Scientific American magazine published a response to Clarence King's paper, Catastrophism and the Evolution of Environment which he had just delivered the prior month before an audience at the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University. (198)
In 1878 Unilever began manufacturing margarine in Europe. (9) [See note 58]
In 1878 American Neurologists attack psychiatry as unscientific, having a custodial approach to the inmates of mental institutions and "deficient in anatomical and pathological training…untrustworthy as to their reported results." Psychiatry responds by accusing the neurologists of wanting to take over mental institutions for their own profit and research. Some call for the joining of neurology and psychiatry in college courses. (116)
In 1878 the U.S. Fish Commission occupies a permanent station in Gloucester, Massachusetts to supplement fish propagation studies ongoing at the Woods Hole Station. This would eventually become the first seafood technology lab in the United States. (20)
In 1878 Franklin B. Hough begins to issue a landmark four-volume Report upon Forestry to Congress, the first fruit of the Federal government's nascent forestry activities and a wide-ranging survey of information and issues pertinent to the management of the nation's forests. (142) The remaining volumes of the Report upon Forestry are issued until 1884 under Hough and his successor, Nathaniel H. Egleston. (142)
In 1878 the breeding of cod and haddock is accomplished at Gloucester, Massachusetts. (20)
In 1878 Louis Pasteur tells his family never to show anyone his lab notebooks. His last surviving grandson donated the documents to the Bibiotheque Nationale in Paris in 1964. Later, historians would begin to examine Pasteur's notes and would find evidence of potential scientific misconduct and a large degree of dubious human experimentation. (6)
In 1878 Spencer Baird became Secretary of the Smithsonian. (49) [See note 79]
In 1878 John A. Haynie and his younger brother Thomas set up a primitive fish processing operation on the Haynie family property in Reedville, Virginia—today the site of Omega Protein's largest plant. The company was known at the time as the John A. Haynie Company. It would later be renamed in 1903 to the Haynie, Snow & Company, in 1913 to Reedville Oil & Guano and then to Haynie Products, Inc. in 1968. (31) [See note 86]
On April 29 1878 the first Federal Quarantine Act was passed. (80)
In 1878 Congress appropriated funds "for investigating the origin and causes of epidemic diseases, especially yellow fever and cholera." (80)
In 1878, based on a new Hungarian mechanical process, the Washburn experimental flour mill in Minneapolis marked the beginning of modern milling in the U.S. (87)
In 1878 John Wesley Powell publishes his report, Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States. (191)
On November 16, 1878 the Cosmos Club is founded whose purpose, as stated in Harvard's biography of Henry Adams, is "to bind the scientific men of Washington by a social tie and thus promote that solidarity which is important to their proper work and influence." (49) The club's founders included Henry Adams; Spencer F. Baird, the new Secretary of the Smithsonian (49), (211); Theodore N. Gill (209), (211); Daniel Coit Gilman (S&B 1852) (211); John Wesley Powell (193), (211) and Francis Amasa Walker, Superintendent of the Census (49); Year by year the roster came to include many other distinguished friends and acquaintances of Henry Adams: Francis Walker, Superintendent of the Census, Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel Pierpont Langley, and Simon Newcomb; Horace Gray of the Supreme Court, Levi Leiter, the Chicago capitalist, James Lowndes, Adam's personal lawyer, Richard Hovey, Thomas Nelson Page, Raphael Pumpelly, the noted explorer of Mongolia, and Ward Thron, the investment banker and scholar. (214) Another member of the club was Louis Agassiz . Theodore Roosevelt was elected to membership in the club as well. (49:484) The two men who sponsored him (and thus were themselves members) were C. Hart Merriam and Charles D. Walcott. (200) Presidents William Howard Taft (S&B 1878), Woodrow Wilson, and Herbert Hoover were also members. (200) More recent members of the Cosmos Club include Richard Holbrooke, Henry Kissinger and Carl Sagan. (193) The club originally met in the Corcoran Building on the corner of 15th and F Streets, but moved to Lafayette Square in 1882. Eventually, the club occupied the Tayloe and Dolley Madison Houses on the eastern side of the Square. Prompted to relocate by the federal government, the club moved to the Townsend House (at 2121 Massachusetts Avenue) in 1952. (193) Since 1887, the regular meeting place of the Philosophical Society of Washington has been the assembly hall of the Cosmos Club, now called the John Wesley Powell auditorium. The National Geographic Society was founded in the Cosmos Club in 1888 and The Wilderness Society was founded there in 1935. (193) Recipients of the prestigious Cosmos Club Award include such names as McGeorge Bundy (S&B 1940), C. Everett Koop, Jim Lehrer, Archibald Macleish (S&B 1915), Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Sandra Day O'Connor, James Van Allen, Paul Volcker and Chuck Yeager. (220) Clarence King was also a founder. (303) Spencer F. Baird was the Cosmos Club's first President. (341) [See note 170]
In 1879 a series of editorials in the New York Times reflect neurology and psychiatry's heated debate over whether to deal with mental illness as organic (brain and nerve-based) or ideational, (psychological). (116) [See 1878, note 96]
In 1879 the Association of Medical Women (Great Britain) was founded. (1)
In 1879 the U.S. Geological Survey was formed with the support of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (66) Congress passes a sub-section of an appropriations bill officially establishing the U.S. Geological Survey as a bureau of the Interior Department, with responsibility for "the classification of the public lands." (142) Clarence King was appointed the first USGS director. (49) The U.S. Geological Survey, a bureau of the U.S. department of the interior, was established by act of congress on March 3, 1879, following recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences, to classify the public lands and to examine the geologic structure, mineral resources and products of the national domain. (1:10:160d) Prior to this time, the functions of the U.S. Geological Survey were effectively carried out by the Smithsonian Institution and prior to 1856, Robert Owen's New Harmony, Indiana—established in 1824— served this function. (247), (248), (249)
In 1879 Commissioner Spencer Baird initiates a landmark study on the composition of fish to determine their food and nutritive values. The research was conducted by W.O. Atwater and Charles Woods. (20) [See also 1888]
In 1879, Spencer F. Baird arranged for his staff to work with the Census Office on the first comprehensive statistical survey of the U.S. fishing industry. (63) The report, Fisheries and Fishing Industry of the United States was prepared and edited by [George Brown] Goode (1884 - 1887) for the 1880 Census. (68)
On Apr. 3, 1879 Dr. John B. Hamilton was appointed Surgeon General of the Marine Hospital Service, (later the U.S. Public Health Service). (80)
In 1879 the National Board of Health was created by law. It represented the first organized, comprehensive, national medical research effort of the Federal Government. (80)
In 1879 importation of cannabis into Egypt was once again made illegal. (106) [See 1877, 1884, (Cannabis Prohibition Previous, Next)]
In 1879, Alpheus Hyatt of the Boston Society of Natural History established a smaller, more informal copy of the Penikese summer school at the Cape Ann artists' colony of Annisquam. Supported by the Woman's Education Association, it catered largely to women teachers involved in natural history. (163)
In 1879, Eugene G. Blackford became Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries for the State of New York (the New York State Fishery Commission). He held this position from 1879 to 1892. (253) [See 1890]
From 1880 to 1904 the second wave of state prohibition laws occurs. (86)
From 1880 to 1900 elite American students of Wundt in Germany return and become heads of psychology departments at Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell and all major universities and colleges. Wundt trains James Cattell, who returns to the U.S. and trains over 300 in the Wundtian system which, with help from the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations, eventually assume control of psychological testing in the United States for all the soldiers of the First World War. (6)
By 1880, after much work, Adolf von Baeyer and his laboratory successfully synthesized indigo. For decades, German importers gained growing control of markets in natural dye sources. BASF, (the Baden Dye and Soda Company) had achieved control of indigo, a dye produced principally in India. The strength of this industry quickly galvanized, and in 1890 German exports of dyes accounted for 90% of the world's supply. In 1914 German companies formed a color cartel, known as I.G. Farben (Interessen Gemeinschaft Farben) that soon expanded into the production of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals. (87)
During the 1880s 5,246,613 immigrants arrived in America. In 1882 alone, 788,992 were admitted. Two hundred twenty thousand Chinese came from 1854 to 1882. (38)
In 1880 Spencer Baird receives the first-honor prize at the Berlin Exposition from the Emperor of Germany, not only for the excellence of the Commission's fisheries display, but also owing to the international regard of Baird who was widely seen as the preeminent fish culturist for his successful promotion of fish culture and fish acclimatization—exchanging fish and fish ova throughout the world. (20)
In 1880 Denmark citizens consume 29 pounds each of sugar annually. The recorded death rate from diabetes is 1.8 per 100,000. (6)
In 1880 Lunin in Bunge's laboratory showed that mice failed to survive on a purified diet (synthetic milk diet). (82)
In 1880 Great Britain exports 105,508 chests of opium into China. (6)
In 1880 smallpox vaccinations start in the United States. (6)
In 1880 the U.S. Congress passes a law regulating Chinese immigration. (160)
In 1880, following Clarence King's resignation, John Wesley Powell became the director of the U.S. Geological Survey, a position he held until 1894. (191)
In 1880, the Institute of Heredity is founded in Boston by Loring Moody. (203)
In 1881 Improvements to Mège-Mouriès' formulation were made; U.S. Dairy created a subsidiary, the Commercial Manufacturing Company to produce margarine. (9)
In 1881 the U.S outlaws participation in the China opium traffic. (1)
In 1881 Frederick Wines publishes the report, The Defective, Dependent and Delinquent Classes of the Population of the U.S. (117)
In 1881 Massachusetts passes the first law allowing voluntary admission to state hospitals. (116)
In 1881 Henry P. Crowell of Ravenna, Ohio buys a bankrupt mill and starts the production and advertising of "Quaker Oats". (96)
In 1881 Wilhelm Preyer wrotes a book, The Mind of the Child, considered the first published work on child psychology. (116)
In 1881 the Division of Forestry is provisionally established in the Department of Agriculture, with Franklin B. Hough as its first chief. (142)
In 1881 the Smithsonian's National Museum is opened. (163)
On November 1, 1881 a meeting of the New York Fish Commission was held to decide on a location "as might be best adapted for the establishing of a hatchery for fresh and salt water fish adjacent to New York." (329) Present at the meeting were Messrs Robert B. Roosevelt, R. U. Sherman, and Eugene G. Blackford. (329) "Mr. Frederick Mather recommended Cold Spring, on the north side of Long Island, as suitable for the purpose. This gentleman stated that ponds could be most conveniently made, and that they would be fed by natural springs of a proper temperature. On the grounds was a dismantled building, which could be converted at a trifling expense into a hatchery. The ground was only 300 yards from the waters of the Sound, so that preserves for sea fish could be constructed. The property belonged to Mr. John D. Jones, President of the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company who would not sell the ground, but offered it free of expense to the commission for five or more years. On motion of Mr. E. G. Blackford, it was resolved to take immediate steps for the leasing of the property for the purposes of fish-culture." (329) Both Roosevelt and Blackford were New York state fish Commissioners and Mather will be made first Director of the fish hatchery upon its completion in 1883. This and other fish hatcheries in the state of New York were apparently the culmination of efforts which included previous newspaper articles such as that which appeared in the N.Y. Times earlier this year (see (332)). [See CSHL 1890]
In 1882 Robert Koch discovered the tubercle bacillus. (1)
In 1882 Élie Metchnikoff studied the role of phagocytosis in the immune systems of starfish and Daphnia. (105)
In 1882 the death rate from tuberculosis in New York was 370 per 100,000. (48)
In 1882 the National Wholesale Druggists' Association was formed. (91)
In 1882 Takaki reduced the incidence of beriberi in the Japanese navy by dietary improvements. (105)
In 1882 the Albatross, under the direction of the U.S. Fish Commission, further extended knowledge of the extent and variety of marine life. (105)
In 1882 the United States immigration adds "lunatics and idiots" to the exclusion list. (6), (78), (116)
In 1882 George Romanes writes the first textbook on comparative psychology, Animal Intelligence. He studies animal behavior and compares it to man's. (116)
In 1882 the U.S. passes the Undesirables Act. (117)
In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act which prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the U.S. for the next ten years. (106), (160)
In April 1882 vessels report countless dead tilefish floating in an area from Georges Banks to Cape May. A conservative estimate made by Capt. J.W.Collins of the RV Grampus placed the number of dead fish at upwards of 1,438,720,000 (That's 1.43 billion fish!). Allowing 10 pounds for each fish he estimated this amounted to 288 pounds for every man, woman and child in the U.S. at the time. The mystery was never explained, but a plausible explanation for the deaths seemed to be a sudden chilling of the deeper waters along this stretch of ocean. No catch of tilefish was reported again for 15 years. (20)
In 1882 the John F. Slater Fund was established with similar goals as the Peabody Fund. (1), (130) The three original trustees were President Rutherford B. Hayes, Daniel Coit Gilman (S&B 1852) and Morris K. Jesup, treasurer. (130)
In 1882 Henry W. Elliott publishes his monograph of the seals on the Pribilof Islands of Alaska. (379)
In 1882, 1883 the American politician and amateur scientist Ignatius Loyola Donnelly published two books (titles unknown) that put forth the hypothesis of a comet's near-collision with the earth, provoking mayhem in the form of floods, fires, mass extinction and tectonic changes on a global scale. Donnelly specifically appealed to the comet's interruption of the earth's rotation as a potential explanation for the prolonged day of Joshua: "Were the heat, the conflagrations, and the tearing up of the earth's surface caused by such an arrestment or partial slowing-up of the earth's revolution on its axis?" (425) [See White 1885]
From 1883 to 1919 the synthesis and determination of the structure for many sugars was accomplished by Emil Fischer. (82)
By 1883 Hashish smoking parlors have opened in every major American city, including an estimated 500 such establishments in New York City alone. (28)
In 1883 Julius Wagner-Jauregg notices the state of a mental patient improves after his recovery from a high fever. He proceeds to infect patients with various diseases, (tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid) to try to induce high fevers in them. The only psychiatrist to receive a Nobel prize, he uses hot baths, hot air, infrared light bulbs and electric "mummy" bags to raise body temperature. (116)
In 1883 scurvy in infants was distinguished from rickets and treated by fruit juice, potato and fresh meat juice by Barlow. (82)
In 1883 Edouard van Beneden announced the principles of genetic continuity of chromosomes and reported the occurrence of chromosome reduction at germ cell formation. The sperm and egg are haploid and fertilization restores the diploid chromosome number. (105)
In 1883 the Society of Medical Jurisprudence [law] was formed. (1)
In 1883, when the American Medical Association founded its Journal, Dr. Nathan Smith Davis became its first editor, serving until 1889. (48)
In 1883 Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, published Inquiries into Human Faculty, in which he coined the word eugenics. (1) He proposes practices of racial superiority and sterilization. (6) Francis Galton was a Psychologist. (116) The word eugenics was taken from the Greek, eugenes, which means "to be well born." Galton characterized eugenics as a civic religion based on science. He hoped it would replace Christianity, which he blamed for destroying the Roman Empire because of its teaching that the meek shall inherit the earth. (153)
In 1883 Thomas H. Huxley, the British social Darwinist, was elected as president of the Royal Society. (102)
In 1883 the state of New York creates its fish hatchery at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, NY. Its mission was to breed fish used to stock ponds, lakes and streams. (207) The hatchery's first director was Frederick Mather, a naturalist who specialized in fishes. Mather was a civil war veteran serving in the 113th New York Volunteers, starting as a private and rising to sergeant. He later became a commissioned captain of the 7th New York Artillery. (207) [See hatchery 1881]
In 1883, the Society of Naturalists of the Eastern United States (renamed the American Society of Naturalists in 1886), was founded as an offshoot of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (163) The ASN was an umbrella organization loosely linking various specialist societies, accommodating for example, geological as well as the biological sciences. (163) The society was founded by Alpheus Hyatt (who was also curator of the Boston Society of Natural History) and Samuel F. Clarke. (163)
On June 25, 1883 the International Fisheries Exhibition is held in London. As Commissioner representing the U.S., George Brown Goode presented A Review of the Fishery Industries of the United States and the Work of the U.S. Fish Commission. (334) Robert F. Walsh presented his paper, On Improved Facilities for the Capture, Economic Transmission and Distribution of Sea Fishes and How These Matters Affect Irish Fisheries. (333) A topic of interest during the exhibition was the question of whether fisheries were exhaustible or inexhaustible. "In his inaugural address, Thomas Huxley espoused the traditional view of laissez-faire and emphasized the injustice of regulations which were inflicted [on fishermen] without proven need or benefit. Other British contributors concurred with Huxley's position, as did G. B. Goode, head of the U.S. Fish Commission." (451) In 1894, Walsh will write an article published in Popular Science Monthly arguing for the elimination of state fishery regulations in Maine, New York, Massachusetts and Virginia on the basis that such regulations were limiting the economic potential of the menhaden industry. (309) [See Huxley 1863, Lapham 1892, Walsh 1894]
From 1884 to 1888 identification of the cell nucleus as the basis for inheritance was independently reported by Oscar Hertwig, Eduard Strasburger, Albrecht von Kölliker and August Weismann. (105)
Between 1884 and 1887 Sigmund Freud, inspired by his American colleagues, conducted a series of experiments with cocaine and published three enthusiastic articles ascribing beneficial, if not miraculous, effects to the new drug. (44) In 1884 an assistant to Sigmund Freud touched purified cocaine to his tongue and discovered a numbing sensation that led to its use as a local anesthetic. Later, a similar chemical compound was produced synthetically, procaine, (commonly called by its trade name Novocain), which has replaced cocaine medicinally. (87)
In 1884, in England, Dr. Charles Creighton is asked to write an article for the Encyclopedia Britannica on vaccination. After much research internationally, he concludes that vaccination constituted "a gross superstition." (6)
In 1884 the Fabian Society is founded in London by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. (6)
In 1884 Francis Galton states that "The Jews are specialized for parasitical existence upon other nations." (78)
In 1884 Dr. Sobatta of the German Army reports on the results of vaccination to the German Vaccination Commission, which subsequently publishes data proving that re-vaccination does not work. Deaths from vaccination are routinely covered up by physicians. (6)
In 1884 Élie Metchnikoff proposed the cellular theory of immunity. (105)
In 1884 the American physician Edward Livingston Trudeau established the Trudeau Laboratory in Saranac Lake, New York. It became a model sanitarium, the kind that for many years was the mainstay of tuberculosis treatment. (109) [See note 121]
In 1884 cultivation of cannabis became a criminal offense [in Egypt] but customs officers were allowed to sell the drug abroad. Profits were divided among informers and customs officers. The laws had very little effect on hashish use in Egypt, but "were reissued in 1891 and 1894. (106), (118) [See 1879, 1898, (Cannabis Prohibition Previous, Next)]
In 1884 Max Rubner extended the work of Justus von Liebig by making quantitative determinations of the energy values of certain foods. His work made possible a scientific explanation for metabolism and a basis for the study of comparative nutrition. (105)
In 1884 the New York Cancer Hospital opened from the old Women's Hospital. Backing came from the Astor family, whose fortune was founded on old John Jacob Astor's ties with the East India Company, the British Secret Intelligence Service, and the international opium trade. The hospital will undergo a renaming to Memorial Hospital in the 1890s after receiving gifts from other benefactors. (48)
In 1884 Dr. George H. Simmons, future head of the American Medical Association begins practicing in Nebraska as an abortion doctor until 1899. (48)
In 1884 histones were discovered and named by Albert Kossel at the University of Strassburg. (82) According to Websters Dictionary, histones are any of a group of five small basic proteins, occurring in the nucleus of eukaryotic cells, that organize DNA strands into nucleosomes by forming molecular complexes around which the DNA winds.
In 1884 the superintendent of a home for the "feebleminded" in Kansas castrates 58 children before public revulsion forces him to stop. (6) [See note 126]
In 1884 the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists was founded. (82)
In 1884 William James founds the American Society for Psychical Research. (116), (49:455) The organization was financed (at least partly) by the Higginson family. Thomas Wentworth Higginson--the prime organizer of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry--was a sponsor of the society. (49:131i) Its members included: Simon Newcomb, Canadian immigrant astronomer, Harvard professor of "British School" economics, a president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the first president of the American branch of the Society for Psychic Research; William J. McGee, Simon Newcomb's son-in-law, assistant to John Wesley Powell, who took over from Powell as Smithsonian Ethnologist-in-Charge in the 1890s; founder and first president of the American Anthropological Association; founder of the 20th century conservation movement; Grove K. Gilbert, geologist, Powell's right-hand man on his Western surveys, president of the Cosmos Club in 1894; Samuel F. Emmons, geologist, practical leader of Clarence King's Western survey team, Massachusetts neighbor of Henry Adams; Raphael Pumpelly, Powell's assistant; James Kidder, Smithsonian official, a Cosmos Club founder; R. W. Shufeldt, Smithsonian official; Henry Holt, publisher of Henry Adams; Samuel Pierpont Langley, astronomer, aviation experimenter in competition with the Wright brothers, secretary (director) of the Smithsonian Institution from 1887 to 1906, simultaneously the second president of the American branch of the Society of Psychic Research; Frederick W. Putnam, director of Harvard's Peabody Museum and professor of anthropology, co-sponsor with Smithsonian of Lewis Henry Morgan's work, the curator of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, created the anthropology program at University of California; Asa Gray, Harvard botanist, champion of Darwinian evolution; Thomas Wentworth Higginson, financier for Clarence King, organizer of the Massacusetts Disunion [sic] Convention in 1857; Frederick A.P. Barnard, president of Columbia University (1864-89), president and chancellor of Mississippi University during secession; David Starr Jordan, founding president of Stanford University, founder of the Sierra Club; Andrew Dickson White (S&B 1853), founder and first president of Cornell University, intimate of the Russian aristocracy, Venetian-trained theological expert, historian of the supposed war between "science" and "theology," a founder and the first president of the American Historical Association, the founder of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, regent of the Smithsonian Institution; Gardiner G. Hubbard, regent of the Smithsonian Institution, founder and first president of the National Geographic Society, the founder of the magazine Science, which became the organ of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, creator of the American Bell Telephone system, father-in-law and patron of Alexander G. Bell; Gifford Pinchot (S&B 1889), founder of the U.S. Forest Service; John Dewey, Pestalozzian reformer of the U.S. educational system; Clarence Darrow, attorney in Scopes trial regarding Darwinian evolution; and Theodore Roosevelt, president of the United States (1901-09). (49:452) In his address given during the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) dedication ceremony in 1925 at Woods Hole, Charles R. Crane, president of the board of trustees for the MBL stated that he "was associated with a Society for Psychical Research." (456)
On September 10, 1884 the American Historical Association was founded by Andrew Dickson White (S&B 1853) who also served as the association's first president. (26:94) Moses Coit Tyler (S&B 1857) was also a founder. (1) George Brown Goode of the Smithsonian was a founding member as well (at least, according to some sources). (204), (466), (467) Undoubtedly, Goode served on the AHA's executive council from a very early date (1889 to 1896). (469) "Among the national societies, a dominant position is occupied by the American Historical Association—the principle organization for scholars in all branches of history." (1:11:544) As indicated by David Van Tassel, the American Historical Association was a spin-off of the Social Science Association. (463) "The Honorable John Eaton, United States Commissioner of Education, was presiding over the Social Science Association and sponsoring the formation of a new section, soon to become the American Historical Association." (463) It was Professor Moses Coit Tyler (S&B 1857) of Cornell University who called the meeting to order. (463) Dr. Herbert Baxter Adams of the Johns Hopkins University was nominated as secretary. Adams, according to Tassel, was the "moving spirit behind the organization." (463) "In his position as organizer, prime mover, and secretary of the Association, Adams managed to set the policy and the tone of the organization from its inception. The policy was, as the constitution states, to promote the interests of history, but history as defined by a small group of academically trained historians." (463) Daniel Coit Gilman (S&B 1852)—one of the original incorporators of Skull & Bones in 1856—is credited with having first proposed that the AHA be created. (470) [See also note 190, 1889]
From 1885 to 1889 Norman Jay Colman of Missouri , is Commissioner of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (94)
In 1885 the German eugenicist Dr. Alfred Ploetz publishes The Excellence of Our Race and the Protection of the Weak in which he states that humanitarianism which fosters the protection of weaker members threatens the quality of the race. (6)
In 1885 the Woods Hole Laboratory conducting fisheries research for the U.S. Fish Commission is established at Woods Hole. (136) Early directors of the lab include: James L. Kellogg, J. Percy Moore, James L. Peck, Hermon C. Bumpus, Hugh M. Smith, Francis B. Sumner, R. E. Coker, P. H. Mitchell, Willis H. Rich, J. O. Snyder, Elmer Higgins, O. E. Sette and H. V. Wilson. (340)
In 1885 the U.S. Biological Survey of the Department of Agriculture was formed with the support of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (66) At the time it was actually known as the branch of economic ornithology established in the division of entomology, U.S. Department of Agriculture; it became the Bureau of Biological Survey in 1905 under the direction of C. Hart Merriam. (1) The Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy is established in the Department of Agriculture. With Clinton Hart Merriam appointed as its first Chief, much of the Division's early work focuses on studying the positive effects of birds in controlling agricultural pests and defining the geographical distribution of animals and plants throughout the country. The Division later expands and is renamed the Bureau of Biological Survey. (139) In 1896 it is renamed to the Division of Biological Survey. (142) In 1940 the U.S. Biological Survey will combine with the Bureau of Fisheries to form the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (259), (139)
In 1885 Congress grants the Division of Forestry permanent status within the Department of Agriculture. Bernhard E. Fernow is chief of the division. (142)
In 1885 congress passes the Oleomargarine Act of 1886 imposing a prohibitive tax on yellow margarine, levying high license fees on all manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers of the product, and in other respects subjected the manufacture and sale of this food to numerous restrictions. (1) The tax levied was 2 cents per pound. President Grover Cleveland, from the dairy state of New York, signed the law, describing it as a revenue measure. However, the 1886 law failed to slow the sale of margarine principally because it did not require identification of margarine at the point of sale and margarine adversaries turned their attention back to the states. (9)
In 1885 the Glasgow Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society was founded in Great Britain. (1)
In 1885 large scale, controlled dietary experiments conducted on sailors of the Japanese Navy by K. Takaki prevented beriberi. (82)
In 1885 William M. King, chief of the Seed Division of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, reported that "hybridization was the chief means to seed improvement…" and that "cross-fertilization was generally beneficial and self-fertilization injurious. (180)
In 1885 Robert Koch served as professor at the University of Berlin and director of the Institute of Hygiene. (109)
In 1885, Fish Commissioner for the state of New York, Eugene G. Blackford, presented his report entitled, Report of the Commissioner of Fisheries of the State of New York which detailed the oyster fishing industry in the state of New York. (237) A few years after Blackford's report was released, "many of the waters [previously open to oyster fishing in New York] were closed after outbreaks of Typhoid." (237) [See 1867]
On September 10, 1885, Andrew Dickson White (S&B 1853) read his paper, A History of the Doctrine of Comets before the second annual meeting of the American Historical Association. (199) [See Donnelly 1882]
In 1886 arginine was discovered by Schulze and Steiger. (82)
In 1886 John S. Pemberton created Coca-Cola, a beverage using water, (later carbonated water), caramel, kola nut, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, lime and coca leaf extractions. By 1903 the makers began purging the coca leaf extract of its cocaine component before adding it to the syrup. (87)
In 1886 Francis Galton devised a new useful statistical tool, the correlation table. (105)
In 1886 Timothy Dwight (S&B 1849) became President of Yale. (26)
In 1886 the Dutch government began a study of beri-beri, which was devastating the native Indonesian population. Christian Eijkman was assigned the task of studying the "germ" thought responsible. When his laboratory chickens developed symptoms, Eijkman observed that a temporary diet of pure white rice coincided with the disease. Studies led to the culprit—the truncated cone rice mill—which so thoroughly polished the bran from rice as to remove some vital quality, later determined by R. Williams to be thiamine, vitamin B1. (87)
In 1886 a seven year period begins in Japan where 25,474,370 vaccinations and re-vaccinations are performed, representing 66% of the entire population of Japan. During that period, there are 165,774 cases of smallpox with 28,979 deaths. (6)
In 1886 more than 30 manufacturing facilities were reported to be engaged in the production of margarine. Among them were Armour and Company of Chicago and Lever Brothers of New York. Seventeen states required the product to be specifically identified as margarine. Various state laws to control margarine were passed in a number of states, but were not enforced. Later that year, New York and New Jersey prohibited the manufacture and sale of yellow-colored margarine. (9)
In 1886 George Bird Grinnell founds the Audubon Society. (236)
In 1887 the American Physiological Society was formed. (1), (82)
In 1887 physician H.A. Hare prescribed marijuana to subdue restlessness and anxiety and distract terminally ill patients. He stated, "The patient, whose most painful symptom has been mental trepidation, may become more happy or even hilarious." (88), (123) He believed cannabis to be as effective a pain reliever as opium.…Hare also noted that hemp is an excellent topical anesthetic, especially for the mucous membranes of the mouth and tongue - a property well known to dentists in the nineteenth century. (123)
In 1887 the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland was founded. (1)
In 1887 Nellie Bly commits herself to a New York asylum for 10 days and writes and expose. (116)
In 1887 Sege Korsakov speaks in Moscow "On the Non-Restraint Treatment of Patients". (116)
In 1887, in England, Dr. Edgar M. Crookshank, professor of pathology and bacteriology at Kings College, is asked by the British government to investigate the cowpox outbreak in Wiltshire. The result of the investigation was contained in two volumes of The History and Pathology of Vaccination, in which he states that "the credit given to vaccination belongs to sanitation." (6)
In 1887 Dr. M.W. Barr, president of the American Association for the Study of Feebleness strongly advocates sterilization. (6)
In 1887 the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), private research facility, is established at Woods Hole, and staff are given free access to Commission (government funded) facilities (20) The lab is incorporated in March of 1888. The following officers of the corporation were chosen to serve on its initial board of trustees: William G. Farlow, Edward G. Gardiner, Alpheus Hyatt, Susan Minns, Charles S. Minot, William T. Sedgwick and Samuel Wells. Alpheus Hyatt was elected the first president, the treasurer was William Stanford Stevens and the secretary was Anna D. Philips. (279) Much of the work at the MBL is focused on Embryology which is interesting in light of the fact that a significant number of persons associated with the MBL will later become members of the American Eugenics Society which was founded in 1922. Persons who were directly associated with the MBL at Woods Hole who were also AES members include: Frank R. Lillie, Sewall Wright, E. G. Conklin, H. C. Bumpus, W. M. Wheeler and George Howard Parker. Then there was Ross Granville Harrison who was a trustee of the MBL from 1908 to 1940. (280) Yet another AES member associated with the MBL was Francis B. Sumner who worked at Woods Hole from 1904-1910 and in 1912 joined the staff at Scripps Institution of Biological Research (as it was then called) at La Jolla, California. Last but not least, even Charles B. Davenport—founder of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, spent his summers at the MBL. [See note 32, note 172]
In 1887 Joseph James Kinyoun is appointed director of the Marine Hospital Service. (81)
On March 2, 1887 in the Hatch Bill, U.S. Congress, provided for the establishment of agricultural experiment stations. The Hatch Experiment Station Act was signed, which provided Federal grants for agricultural experimentation and a cooperative bond between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the nation's land grant colleges. (94) [See (Morrill Previous, Next)]
In 1887 measures are taken again to prohibit cannabis in South Africa [details unknown]. (106) [See (Cannabis Prohibition Previous, Next]
In 1887 a ban on smoking opium imports is instituted. (86), (93) This act prohibited the importation of non-medical opium. (55)
In 1887 Emil Fischer elaborated the structural patterns of proteins. (105)
In 1887 Ernst Haeckel, after studying the radiolarians brought back from the Challenger expedition elaborated the concept of organic form and symmetry. (105)
In 1887 the Interstate Commerce Act was passed. (1)
In 1887 a bacteriological laboratory, known as the Laboratory of Hygiene, was established under Dr. Joseph James Kinyoun at the Marine Hospital, Staten Island, (renamed Hygienic Laboratory in 1891). (80)
In 1887 Stanley Hall founds the American Journal of Psychology. (116)
In 1887 James McKeen Cattell is the first American to receive a Ph.D. in psychology in 1886 under Wundt at Leipzig and also occupies the world's first chair of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in this year. (116)
In 1887 amphetamine is created in Germany. (116)
In 1887, exemplifying the significance of sportsmen as conservationists, George Bird Grinnell and Theodore Roosevelt found the Boone and Crockett Club, which plays a major role in associating big-game hunters with the conservation movement. The club eventually publishes several volumes of writings on hunting and conservation, including American Big Game In Its Haunts: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club in 1904. (142), (382) Madison Grant is also a founding member and serves as secretary and later as president. (38) The first three presidents of the club were Theodore Roosevelt, Benjamin H. Bristow and W. Austin Wadsworth. Its respective secretaries/treasurers during this period were Archibald Rogers, George Bird Grinnell, C. Grant La Farge, Alden Sampson and Madison Grant. Executive Committee members to about 1904 included W. Austin Wadsworth, George Bird Grinnell, Winthrop Chanler, Owen Wister, Charles F. Deering, Archibald Rogers, Lewis Rutherford Morris, Henry L. Stimson (S&B 1888), Madison Grant, Gifford Pinchot (S&B 1889), Caspar Whitney, John Rogers Jr., Alden Sampson and Arnold Hague. (382) [see 1895, 1905]
In 1887 as a result of the Hatch Bill ( 1887), the Office of Experiment Stations (OES) in Washington, D.C. was organized by W.O. Atwater. (82) Alfred C. True will become director in 1893. (180) However, he worked in a lesser capacity pretty much from the time the office was created. (265) The Office of Experiment Stations (OES) was created by the commissioner of agriculture, under the authority of the Hatch Act, to oversee the work of the stations and provide a central clearinghouse for station research. (180) Following on the heels of the passage of the Hatch Act is the creation of the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations (known today as the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities or APLU). George W. Atherton—who was the prime mover in the campaign to enact the legislation—played a key role in establishing the new association as well. Atherton was President of Pennsylvania's land grant college, Pennsylvania State University. (264) [See Morrill, Previous]
In 1887 Alexander Graham Bell created the Volta Bureau, dedicated to research into the hereditary nature of deafness. Bell went on to become an enthusiastic supporter of the eugenics movement. He was on the consulting committee to the First International Congress on Eugenics in 1912 and served as the honorary president of the Second International Congress on Eugenics in 1921. His photograph was used as the frontispiece for the second volume of published papers from that conference. (203)
In 1888 the American Association of Anatomists was formed. (1)
In 1888 the American Pediatric Society was formed. (1)
In 1888, an Albany New York physician, Ephraim Cutter, M.D. wrote a book called Diet in Cancer, in which he stated, "Cancer is a disease of nutrition." (48) [See note 57]
In 1888 the Bacteriological Institute opens in Paris for experimentation with animals and production of vaccines and sera. Other institutes open around the world modeled after the Paris institute. (6)
In 1888 the Bacteriological Institute in Odessa, Russia tries its hand at a vaccine for anthrax. Over 4500 sheep are vaccinated; 3700 of them die from the vaccination. (6)
On January 20th 1888 Congress establishes the U.S. Fish Commission as an independent agency of the Federal government and terminates its administrative relationship with the Smithsonian Institution. Marshall McDonald is appointed Commissioner at a salary of $5,000 per year. (20) [See note 79]
In 1888 W.O. Atwater publishes the 200-page report on the nutritive values of various fishes in the Report of the Commissioner of Fisheries for 1888-1889. It provides a basic reference on proximate composition of fish and shellfish and remains valuable today for comparison of composition ranges in relation to species size and distribution. (20)
In 1888 Lebedow showed that if starving dogs are given either protein or fat alone, they die even faster than if they receive no food at all (that is, continue to be starved). However, if they receive good protein and good fat together, they recover quickly from starvation. Good protein was protein rich in sulfur-containing amino acids (methionine and cysteine), which includes all animal proteins: dairy, beef, chicken, fish, shellfish and egg as well as soybean (especially soft tofu). (13) [See (EFAs Previous, Next)]
In 1888, the National Geographic Society was founded. Gardiner G. Hubbard, regent of the Smithsonian Institution, was a founder and he served as first president of the society. (49:452) Another founding member was Alexander Graham Bell. (222) The founding of the society took place at the Cosmos Club. (193)
In 1889, Hermon C. Bumpus launched a summer training school at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory for the benefit of young researchers in biology and due to its popularity, he is appointed assistant director of the laboratory itself. (345)
From 1889 to 1890 the surgical removal of the pancreas of a dog by von Mering and Minkowski produced a condition resembling human diabetes mellitus. (82)
In 1889 Michael Chevreul's treatise on lipids, Recherches chimiques sur les corps gras d'origine animale, originally published in 1823, is reprinted. (1)
In 1889 children at the Pennsylvania Training School for Feebleminded Children are castrated. (6)
In 1889 lysine was discovered by Drechsel. (82)
On March 6, 1889 Jeremiah McLain Rusk of Wisconsin became Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (94)
In 1889, in England a royal commission is appointed to inquire into certain aspects of the vaccination question. The committee would be in session for 7 years and would issue 6 reports, with the final report in 1896. The result of the final report was the Vaccination Act of 1898. (6)
In 1889 milk was found to be deficient in iron by von Bunge. (82)
In 1889 Birch reported success in treating opiate and chloral addiction with cannabis. (104)
In 1889 Francis Galton formulated the law of ancestral inheritance, a statistical description of the relative contributions to heredity made by one's ancestors. (105)
On February 15, 1889 the Commissioner of Agriculture was elevated to a cabinet-level Secretary position. Norman Jay Colman of Missouri, who had been Commissioner from April 3, 1885 to February 15, 1889, served as the Secretary for less than one month, until March 6, 1889, when he was replaced by Jeremiah McLain Rusk of Wisconsin. (94)
On March 23, 1889 an assistant secretary was appointed and assigned responsibility for coordinating the scientific work of the Department [of Agriculture]. (94)
In 1889 the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had the responsibility for regulating all foods. USDA Chief Chemist, Harvey Washington Wiley, first publishes assessment of chemical preservatives. (85)
In 1889 E.A. Birch reported the use of cannabis in treating drug addiction. He treated a chloral hydrate addict and an opiate addict with pills containing Cannabis indica and found a prompt response in both cases, with improved appetite and sound sleep. (123)
In 1889 the American Historical Association, which was founded in 1884 is incorporated. "Be it enacted by the Senate, and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That Andrew D. White (S&B 1853), of Ithaca, in the State of New York; George Bancroft, of Washington, in the District of Columbia; Justin Winsor, of Cambridge, in the State of Massachusetts; William F. Poole (S&B 1891), of Chicago, in the State of Illinois; Herbert B. Adams, of Baltimore, in the State of Maryland; Clarence W. Bowen, of Brooklyn, in the State of New York, their associates and successors, are hereby created in the District of Columbia, a body corporate and politic, by the name of the American Historical Association, for the promotion of historical studies, the collection and preservation of historical manuscripts, and for kindred purposes in the interest of American history and of history in America…" (241) One condition of incorporation instructed that the newly incorporated entity "…shall report annually to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution concerning its proceedings and the condition of historical study in America." (241), (282) [See also 1884]
During the 1890's popular American "marriage guides" recommend cannabis extracts for heightened marital pleasures. Women's temperance groups, lobbying for alcohol prohibition, suggest cannabis as a suitable substitute for the "demon drink". (28)
In the 1890s the average American's annual consumption of opium had risen fourfold from the 1840s to 52 grains. … In an era of poor sanitation in crowded cities, dehydrating diseases such as cholera were epidemic and opium was a genuinely effective remedy. (44)
In the 1890s, chemists Wood, Spivey, and Easterfield, at Cambridge University, "succeeded in obtaining a relatively pure extraction of cannabis which they called "cannabinol." (106)
As late as 1890, thirty-three million dollars' worth of cordage was manufactured in the United States. (106)
After 1890 progressively higher taxation is applied to suppress domestic manufacture of smoking opium in the U.S. (1)
About 1890, Theodore Roosevelt married his second wife, Edith Kermit Carow and built a home at Sagamore Hill, near Oyster Bay, Long Island, where he was to live for the rest of his life. (1) [See note 120]
In 1890 Henry L. Stimson (S&B 1888) joins Elihu Root's law firm. (26) [See note 112]
In 1890 the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was passed. (1)
In 1890 a rapid test for butterfat content of milk was developed by Babcock at the University of Wisconsin. (82)
In 1890 the geographic distribution of rickets was found by Palm to be related to the amount of sunlight. (82)
In 1890 Robert Koch announced the preparation of tuberculin which raised hopes that he had discovered a cure for tuberculosis. Although these hopes were never realized, tuberculin proved to be a valuable aid in the diagnosis of tuberculosis. (1)
In 1890 a St. Louis physician formulated peanut butter as a food for invalids. (87)
In 1890 cultivation, importation and use [of cannabis] was outlawed [in Greece] but the law was not strictly enforced. Up to that point its use was confined primarily to the poor, and was nicknamed the "weed of the poor". "Middle-class Greeks … saw the drug as a social danger and they regarded hashish users as degenerate and criminals." (106) [See (Cannabis Prohibition Previous, Next)]
In 1890 there is a U.S. economic depression created by international bankers. (6)
In 1890 Queen Victoria's personal physician, Sir Russell Reynolds, prescribes cannabis for menstrual cramps. He claims in the first issue of The Lancet, that cannabis, "When pure and administered carefully, is one of the most valuable medicines we possess". (124)
In 1890 Congress gave the Marine Hospital Service interstate quarantine authority on March 27. (80)
In 1890, J.R. Reynolds, a British physician, summarized thirty years of experience with Cannabis Indica, recommending it for patients with "senile insomnia" and suggesting that "in this class of cases I have found nothing comparable in utility to a moderate dose of Indian hemp." According to Reynolds, hemp remained effective for months and even years without an increase in the dose. He also found it valuable in the treatment of various forms of neuralgia, including tic douloureux (a painful facial neurological disorder), and added that it was useful in preventing migraine attacks: "Every many victims of this malady have for years kept their suffering in abeyance by taking hemp at the moment of threatening or onset of the attack." He also found it useful for certain kinds of epilepsy, for depression, and sometimes for asthma and dysmenorrhea. (123)
In 1890 the 2nd Morrill Act is passed. It primarily establishes black colleges of agriculture. (180)
In 1890, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences is reorganized under its recently (1889) appointed general director, Franklin William Hooper and planning is begun for the Brooklyn Museum which will be founded in 1895. (330) Hooper will be instrumental this same year ( 1890) in helping to found the seaside marine biological summer school and related laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. (331) In 1898 the Institute will appoint as director of its Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) eugenicist Charles B. Davenport. [See Hooper, 1905, 1912]
In 1890, the Senate Committee on Fisheries held a hearing regarding Senate bill S.227 which was introduced in 1885, during the 49th Congress, first session. This bill, A bill for the protection of fisheries on the Atlantic coast, was read before the committee and then statements were made both in support of and against the proposed legislation. Among those who gave a statement before the committee was Commissioner of Fisheries of the State of New York, E.G. Blackford who began by qualifying his "neutrality" in the matter at hand announcing that, "I do not appear here as a menhaden fisherman, or in the interest of menhaden fishermen at all, nor in the interest of any of the parties affected..." Soon afterwards, he informs the committee of how he started out in favor of legislation to protect the sea fisheries but then later came of the belief that such was not necessary. "At one time I became strongly imbued in favor of the necessity of legislation for the protection of the sea fisheries... I thought that this enormous catch of fish that was taken every year by menhaden steamers and mackerel vessels would certainly tend to deplete the ocean of valuable food fishes; and some two years ago I as a member of the American Fisheries Society, meeting here in Washington annually, was asked to prepare a paper, and I started to prepare a paper in favor of legislation for the protection of sea fisheries. Not being much of a writer or speaker, it was a matter of considerable labor for me, and I went to work to get together my facts from my own diaries that I kept of the daily supplies of the markets, and of the prices and notes that I take of the large catches, in order to prepare this paper to be read; but when I got my material all together I found the facts were entirely opposite to the views which I had entertained, and the more I looked into the subject the more I became impressed that there was no necessity for legislation for the protection of any of the free-swimming ocean sea fishes." [See "Cold Spring Harbor" 1890]
On March 12, 1890 the U.S. government awarded the next 20 year fur sealing lease on the Pribilof Islands to the North American Commercial Company. (387)
In 1890 the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is founded by the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. (184) Founders include John D. Jones, who contributed money plus the initial parcel of land, Eugene Blackford, Fish Commissioner for the state of New York and Franklin W. Hooper, Director of the Brooklyn Institute. (238), (331) Hooper is trained as a biologist as well as a geologist. He studied at Harvard under both Asa Gray and Louis Agassiz and was a participant at the first summer session of the short-lived Anderson School of Natural History which Agassiz founded in 1873 on Penikese Island. Upon graduation from Harvard, Hooper had worked for the Smithsonian Institution in the study of algae and corraline formations in the Florida Keys. (331) [See 1879, 1881, 1890, "Senate Committee" 1890]
In 1891 doctor J.B. Mattison, urging physicians to continue using hemp, called it "a drug that has a special value in some morbid conditions and the intrinsic merit and safety of which entitles it to a place it once held in therapeutics". He reviewed its uses as an analgesic and hypnotic, with special reference to dysmenorrhea, chronic rheumatism, asthma, and gastric ulcer, and added that "it has proved an efficient substitute for the poppy" in morphine addicts. One of his cases was a "naval surgeon, nine years a ten grains daily subcutaneous morphia taker…[who] recovered with less than a dozen doses".…For Mattison the most important use of cannabis was in treating "that opprobrium of the healing art - migraine." Reviewing his own and earlier physician's experiences, he concluded that cannabis not only blocks the pain of migraine but prevents migraine attacks. Years later William Osler expressed his agreement, saying that cannabis was "probably the most satisfactory remedy" for migraine. (123)
In 1891 the Hygienic Laboratory moved from Staten Island, N.Y., to the Butler Building, Service Headquarters, Washington, D.C. (80)
On June 1, 1891 Dr. Walter Wyman was appointed Surgeon General of the Marine Hospital Service, (later the U.S. Public Health Service). (80)
In 1891 the Lister Institute for Preventative Medicine opened in London. (82)
In 1891 the cannabis prohibition laws in Egypt, are reissued. (106) [See 1884, (Cannabis Prohibition Previous, Next)]
In 1891 Robert Koch was made director of the new Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin, a position he held until 1904. (1)
In 1891 Congress passed the Forest Reserve Act, creating the legislative foundation for what will become the National Forest system. (95) President Benjamin Harrison issues a Presidential Proclamation setting aside a tract of land in Wyoming as the nation's first forest reservation, the first unit in what eventually will become the National Forest System. (142)
In 1891, in culmination of the effort to establish a privately-funded tax-exempt association to protect Massachusetts's natural and historical treasures which was spearheaded by Charles Eliot, by act of the Massachusetts legislature the trustees of public reservations is incorporated. This organization is the nation's first land trust, and the immediate inspiration for Great Britain's National Trust. (142)
In 1891 the U.S. Congress creates the office of Superintendent of Immigration. (117)
On June 15, 1891, a modus vivendi (or temporary arrangement) was entered into by the United States and Great Britain to close the Eastern part of the Bering Sea to pelagic sealing and to limit the killings of fur seals on the Pribilof islands as well. (387)
On July 16, 1891 Clinton Hart Merriam and Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, members of the Bering Sea Commission charged with preparing the case to take before the Tribunal of Arbitration at Paris, left San Francisco aboard the Albatross headed for the Pribilof Islands. On the islands, they studied the fur seals. (386)
In 1892 the University of Chicago, financed by John D. Rockefeller under Baptist auspices, opened. (49)
In 1892 Ellis Island (New York) opens. (117)
In 1892 Isaac Kerlin gives his presidential address to the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons advocates "asexualization" to control "epileptic tendency" and for the removal of inordinate desires. (117)
In 1892 there were 165,774 cases of smallpox in Japan, which resulted in 29,979 deaths, 20 years after smallpox vaccinations were started in Japan. (48)
In 1892 John D. Rockefeller appointed Frederick T. Gates as his agent, conferring upon him the title of "head of all his philanthropic endeavors." (48)
In 1892 there is a Cholera epidemic in Hamburg, Germany. It's threat of importation into the U.S. forces the establishment of the New York City Health Department division of Pathology, Bacteriology and Disinfection. (6)
In 1892 America takes the lead in world wide sugar consumption, surpassing the British. (6)
In 1892 Andrew Dickson White (S&B 1853) is U.S. Ambassador to Russia. (6), (130)
On June 4, 1892 the Sierra Club is founded with John Muir as the organization's first president. (95) David Starr Jordan is a founder and it's publication editor. (49) The Sierra Club is modeled on the Appalachian Mountain Club. (142) Others who attended the 1889 meeting(s) that led to the creation of the organization are: Muir's artist friend William Keith, lawyer Warren Olney and a group of professors from the University of California and Stanford, which included Joseph LeConte, J. Henry Senger, William D. Armes, Cornelius B. Bradley and Stanford president, David Starr Jordan. (260)
In 1892 Stanley Hall co-founds the American Psychological Association with James Baldwin. (116), (352)
In 1892 Dean C. Worcester had been informed of a seemingly mythical highland in Luzon by Domingo Sanchez of the Spanish Forestry Bureau. (150)
In 1892 Charles Davenport graduates with a Ph.D. from Harvard University. (223) "A superior and disciplined [zoology] student, he spent his summers at the Marine Biological station (MBL) at Woods Hole and at Agassiz's Laboratory at Newport, R.I., continuing directly from study for his bachelor's degree onto his doctorate." (184)
In 1892, Democratic congressman, Oscar Lapham of Rhode Island introduced the "Lapham Bill" (H.R. 5030) on behalf of menhaden oil and guano interests (the United States Menhaden Oil and Guano Association). It was, in the words of Edwin W. Gould, Fish Commissioner for the state of Maine "a bill designed and adapted to transfer to the national fish commission [the U.S. Fish Commission] the control which the legislature of Maine had always exercised over fishing in the tidal waters of the State." (304:31) "The oil and guano interests assumed, rightly, that it would be infinitely easier to influence Congress to throw open coastal waters to industrial fishing than to lobby state legislatures one by one. Claiming superior knowledge, and insisting that science and progress were on their side, advocates of the Lapham Bill marshalled an imposing array of witnesses to testify in Washington, including principles from the U.S. Fish Commission, editors of prominent newspapers, representatives from wholesale fish associations of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, spokesmen from the boards of trade of Gloucester and other cities, and delegations from the oil business, the fertilizer interests, the shoe and cotton trades, and the net and twine associations." (307) [See Glidden 1875, Exhibition 1883, Walsh 1894; For the Maine Fish Commission's response in opposition to the Lapham Bill, see (371); For a response by counsel of the Maine Fish Commission in opposition, see (399); For another major example in which the U.S. Fish Commission was found to be in clear violation of its mandate to preserve marine resources, see 1914]
On May 7, 1892 as an expected outcome of the earlier "modus vivendi", a treaty between the U.S. and Great Britain is ratified. The treaty's essential provisions were the investigation of fur seal habits, pelagic sealing, herd management and the referring of all matters of dispute between the two countries to a "tribunal of arbitration". (387)
In 1893 - 1897 Christiaan Eijkman, working in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), where a disease known as beriberi was widespread, was able to produce a similar malady in chickens simply by restricting their diet to polished rice, the staple food of the human population. Extracts of the usually discarded rice polishings were found to cure the deficiency disease, and later work showed that the vitamin involved was thiamine (vitamin B1). Following the demonstration that beriberi is caused by a dietary deficiency, other diseases that resembled certain naturally occurring disorders of mankind and of animals were produced experimentally by feeding various deficient diets. (1)
In 1893 there is a U.S. banking panic. (6)
In 1893 the German, Dr. Julius Hensel states that processed flour is devoid of nutrients. (6)
In 1893 a new Quarantine Act was passed which strengthened the Quarantine Act of 1878 and repealed the act establishing the National Board of Health. (80)
In 1893 President Benjamin Harrison sets aside 13 million acres of forest reserves. (95)
In 1893 privately supported health research in the U.S. began with the founding of the Johns Hopkins medical school, for which support was provided through private endowment, inaugurating an important trend. (1) It becomes the headquarters of German Allopathic medicine. (6)
In 1893 British governor of India commissions a report on the effects of smoking "bhang" (hemp buds and leaves) on heavy users in the subcontinent. The Report of the Indian Hemp Drug Commission 1893-1894 concludes that use is not a problem and that no criminal penalties should apply to recreational indulgence. (28) "The ganja menace" caught the attention of the Temperance League, and a commission, on March 16, 1893 was ordered to determine whether cannabis should be prohibited in India. The commission met on August 3, 1893 and remained in session until August 6, 1894. (106) [See 1894, (Cannabis Prohibition Previous, Next)]
In 1893 the Prohibition Party's efforts at partisan politics fails and in its place the Anti-Saloon League takes over leadership of the prohibition movement. The movement's appeal spreads among middle class, nativist Protestants threatened by changes rooted in industrialization, urbanization, and massive immigration, and who seek to uphold their position and the values of industry, frugality, sobriety, and religiosity. (86)
In 1893 Alfred C. True became director of the Office of Experiment Stations. (180)
On February 23, 1893 the "tribunal of arbitration" formed as a result of the treaty that was ratified on May 7 of the prior year between the U.S. and Great Britain, begins meeting in Paris (until August 15 of that year). The purpose of the tribunal is "essentially, to judge whether pelagic sealing or land sealing was the cause of the decline of the [fur seal] herd." (387)
In 1894 the cannabis prohibition laws in Egypt, once again are reissued. (106) [See 1884, (Cannabis Prohibition Previous, Next)]
In 1894 the world chemical firm, Unilever is founded. (48) [See note 58]
In 1894 the Smith-Lever Act was signed, providing for cooperative administration of extension work by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the state agricultural colleges. The major goal was to assist individual farmers in increasing productivity. This work resulted in the establishment of the Cooperative Extension Service, one of the most widely copied abroad of all United States government organizations. (94)
In 1894 the law of conservation of energy was demonstrated by Rubner to be true in nutrition. (82)
In 1894 the U.S. Congress appropriated $10,000 for investigation of nutritive value of human foods by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (82)
In 1894 the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission produced a seven-volume investigative report of 3,281 pages. In India, millions of people for centuries have used marijuana, rather than alcohol, for religious purposes, meditation, and medicine and to produce euphoria. The Indian government was interested in the long-term effects of marijuana. It obtained testimony on every aspect of marijuana use from nearly 15,000 individuals. The conclusion was that marijuana has minimal harmful effects. Suppression would cause people to turn to more harmful drugs. (88) [See (Cannabis Prohibition Previous, Next)]
In 1894 William Bateson's Materials for the Study of Variation emphasized the importance of discontinuous variations, foreshadowing the rediscovery of Mendel's work. (105)
In 1894 the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane changes its name to the American Medio-Psychological Association. In a spirit of compromise, one of the leading American neurologists is invited to give keynote speech at the 1894 meeting. He states "… you never came back into line. Your hospitals are not our hospitals. Your ways are not our ways…I think asylum life is deadly to the insane." (116)
In 1894 the Immigration Restriction League, which seeks to limit immigration along eugenic lines, is formed. (116), (117) It was the first organized anti-immigrant group. It was founded in Boston by a small group of Harvard-educated lawyers and academics; Prescott Hall and Robert DeCourcey Ward were the driving forces behind the League. The Immigration Restriction League was based on a belief in the superiority of the white races. (140) The league was partly financed by opium syndicate members such as John M. Forbes, Stephen Higginson. (49:131i)
In 1894 F. Hoyt Pilcher, superintendent of the Kansas State Asylum for Idiotic and Imbecile youth begins castrations which causes a scandal after newspapers print reports. (117)
In May 1894, Popular Science magazine published an article, Economic Uses of Non-edible Fish by Robert F. Walsh in which it was argued that regulations limiting the industrial fishing of menhaden in such states as Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia is unnecessary, is hindering development of the menhaden industry and should be overturned. (309) According to Walsh, "The question of the menhaden being used as food for the food fishes is practically disposed of by Dr. [Tarleton] Bean, the ichthyologist of the United States Fish Commission, who testified that, having examined the stomachs of numbers of bluefish and other food fishes, he failed to find any evidence of the menhaden except in the form in which it is used as a bait for 'chumming,' and only in a very few cases was it present at all." (309) [See Exhibition 1883, Lapham 1892]
In 1895 Theobald Smith produced a hemorrhagic deficiency disease in guinea pigs deprived of leafy foods. (105)
In 1895 the National Medical Association was founded with 50 state and bout 75 local groups. (1)
In 1895 Madison Grant, along with Theodore Roosevelt and a handful of others co-founded the New York Zoological Society (now the Wildlife Conservation Society), and he served as its secretary until 1924. (38) The society was in fact founded by the Boone and Crockett Club. (381) Among the founders were Andrew H. Green, Henry Fairfield Osborn, Columbia University professor and curator of the American Museum of Natural History, and George Bird Grinnell, founder of the Audubon Society and editor of Forest and Stream magazine. (383) [See 1887]
In 1895 the Rothschilds control 95% of United States military railways. (6) The Who's Who mentions J.P. Morgan as owning 50,000 miles of U.S. railways. (6)
In 1895 the German eugenicist, Dr. Alfred Ploetz published The Excellence of Our Race and the Protection of the Weak, in which he attempted to show "that a misdirected humanitarianism was threatening the quality of the race by, fostering the protection of its weaker numbers." (???), (116)
In 1895 Jacob Reighard and Dean C. Worcester were appointed Director and Curator respectively of the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History, (renamed in 1913 by university regents to the Museum of Zoology). (145)
In 1895 Adolf Jost publishes The Right to Death wherein he states that the decision of life or death of an individual must ultimately belong to the social organism—the state. (116)
In 1896 Histidine was discovered. (82)
In 1896 narcotics addiction followed the rising curve of opium consumption and peaked at 313,000 addicts. (44)
In 1896 the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh was created in 1896 with original grants of $11,700,000. It served the Pittsburgh, Pa., area as a general educational agency, including libraries, museums of fine arts and natural history, a music hall and the Carnegie Institute of Technology of Carnegie-Mellon University. (1)
In 1896 Carlo Ruta, a professor at the University of Perugia in Italy states that "vaccination is a world-wide delusion and an unscientific practice, with consequences measured today with tears and sorrow without end." (6)
In 1896 Charles Eliot Norton, (editor of the North American Review) advocates for the "painless destruction" of insane and deficient minds. (117)
In 1896 the Massachusetts Audubon Society is founded. By the end of the following year there are Audubon Societies in ten states and the District of Columbia. (95) Its founding is instigated by the Boston society matron Harriet Lawrence Hemenway. (142)
In 1896, in an appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Congress establishes the Division of Biological Survey within the department. It succeeds the Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy and is renamed the Bureau of Biological Survey in 1905. (142) [see 1885]
In 1896 the American Academy of Sciences establishes a committee on forests, chaired by Charles Sprague Sargent, with Gifford Pinchot (S&B 1889) as its youngest member. It takes a census of the nation's forests and calls for their active management. (142)
In 1896 Connecticut becomes the first state to adopt legislation regulating marriages on a eugenic basis. Other states follow, some forbidding the marriage of insane people. (116)
In 1896 Chemical Composition of American Food Materials by W.O. Atwater and Bryant, USDA Bulletin 28, was the basic reference on food composition for 44 years. (82) [See note 99]
In 1896 Andrew Dickson White (S&B 1853) publishes A History Of The Warfare Of Science With Theology In Christendom. The publisher is D. Appleton and Co. which also published the monthly, Popular Science. (313) [See 1876]
From 1897 to 1902 Andrew Dickson White (S&B 1853) is U.S. Ambassador to Germany. (6), (1), (130)
From 1897 to 1899 F. Hoyt Pilcher performs castrations on 14 females and 37 males at the Kansas State Asylum for Idiotic and Imbecile Youth. (117)
In 1897 a German named Paul Ehrlich founded the science of hematology and developed the side-chain theory of immunity. (1)
In 1897, as part of an appropriations bill, Congress passes what is known as the Forest Management Act or Organic Act, making explicit the purpose of Forest Reserves (later, National Forests) as resources for lumbering, mining, and grazing. This act also places Federal forest administration under the jurisdiction of the General Land Office, Department of the Interior. (142)
In 1897 Martin Barr discusses benefits of desexualization to the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons. (117)
In 1897 Badische produces synthetic indigo on a commercial scale in Germany. (143)
In 1897 Christiaan Eijkman published his work on the causes of beriberi. (82) He produced experimental polyneuritis in chickens by feeding them polished rice, and called attention to rice hulls as containing the preventative agent of human beriberi. This work identified the first known deficiency disease. (105)
In 1897 the American Medical Association formally incorporated. It paid a three dollar fee to the Secretary of the State of Illinois. (48)
In 1897 Illinois banned cocaine sales without prescription. (44)
In 1897 Congress passes literacy requirement for immigrants. It is vetoed by President Cleveland. (117)
In 1897 Davenport went to England to meet Galton and Pearson and became an early convert to eugenics. (171:118) [See 1902, note 152]
In 1897 Charles Davenport "first advocated a human heredity project…when he addressed a group of naturalists, proposing a large farm for preliminary animal breeding experiments. (183)
In 1898 Heroin is introduced and hailed as a non-addicting substitute for morphine. (1) As an analgesic it is from four to eight times more powerful than morphine, but it also produces more undesirable side effects in the form of respiratory depression. Heroin was introduced as a substitute for morphine to minimize the danger of addiction, but subsequent experience showed it to be even more dangerous in this respect. It makes addicts more easily than morphine does, and the addiction is harder to cure. (1) The company that introduced heroin was Bayer Company of Elberfeld, Germany, which began mass production of diacetylmorphine, and coined the trade name heroin to market the new remedy. (44) The Bayer Company introduced heroin as a substitute for morphine and codeine. By 1917 this drug was found to be greatly addictive and its use in over-the-counter cough syrups was discontinued. (87) Chemists at the Bayer pharmaceutical company in Germany alter the morphine molecule slightly, creating heroin, which is widely promoted as a cough remedy. (116)
In 1898 the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists (made up largely of state employed chemists who ensured the purity and accurate labeling of fertilizers), establishes a committee to recommend food standards. The committee was headed by Harvey W. Wiley, Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (85)
In 1898 several blacks and whites die in racial riots in Wilmington, North Carolina. (160)
In 1898 the National Association of Retail Druggists was formed. (91)
In 1898, [in Egypt] over 10,000 kilos of hashish were seized and over 500 business were closed because their proprietors had allowed hashish to be used on the premises. In 1908 there were almost 2000 such closings. (106) [See 1884, (Cannabis Prohibition Previous, Next)]
In 1898 Hearst newspapers denounce Spaniards, Mexican-Americans, and Latinos after the seizure of 800,000 acres of Hearst-owned prime Mexican timber land by the "marijuana smoking army of Pancho Villa." Vigorous slander of the Mexican people continues in Hearst and other publications for three decades. Because of Hearst's personal prejudices against African-Americans and Hispanics and Hearst's covert motivations to link them with the proliferation of an "evil drug", the term "marijuana"—a word totally unfamiliar to the average hemp-using American—is used exclusively to identify [cannabis] throughout this public dis-information campaign. (28) [See (Cannabis Prohibition Previous, Next)]
In 1898 Canada established a board of management of the Marine Biological Station for a laboratory on a barge in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. (66)
In 1898 a eugenics sterilization bill is unsuccessfully introduced into the legislature in Michigan, providing for the castration of all inmates of the Michigan Home for the Feebleminded and Epileptic. (6) The bill would have allowed for castration of all inmates of the Michigan Home for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic and people who have been convicted of a felony for the third time. (116)
In 1898 twenty-four male children in Massachusetts are castrated for "persistent epilepsy and masturbation" and "masturbation with weakness of mind" among other forms of behavior. (116)
In 1898 the Vaccination Act of 1898 is passed in England. It was the first law of it's kind to contain a "conscience clause" although no claims of conscience were ever approved by magistrates. (6)
In 1898 Gifford Pinchot (S&B 1889) is appointed chief of the Division of Forestry in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (142)
In 1898 Henry Fairfield Osborn enunciated the concept of adaptive radiation in evolution. (105)
In 1898 Davenport was appointed director of the Summer School of the Biological Laboratory of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, (CSHL) at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. (171) He held this post until 1923. (185) Actually, according to Cold Spring Harbor documents, Davenport became director, not just of the biological laboratory's summer program but of the laboratory (CSHL) itself. (182), (177), (179), (187) Davenport's wife, Gertrude Crotty, who was earlier a zoology instructor at the University of Kansas, "for 26 years shared... management of the Biological Laboratory [CSHL] at Cold Spring Harbor." (225)
On February 15, 1898 the Battleship Maine explodes and sinks in Havana harbor. Two hundred and sixty American sailors die as a result. (49) This incident sparks the Spanish American war. Like another incident which took place in 1854, a Roosevelt is once again to be found at the center of festivities. [See February 25th]
On February 25, 1898 Theodore Roosevelt, technically in charge of the United States Navy for the day (being as Navy Secretary John D. Long is absent from Washington), ordered the American battle fleet under Commodore Dewey to steam into the Western Pacific to challenge the Spanish at the Philippine Islands. (49)
In April 1898 the Spanish American war began. (1) The declaration of war came about as a result of the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor two months earlier.
On May 17, 1898 Chauncey Depew (S&B 1856), a New York Central railroad tycoon, addressed the "Republican stalwarts" in congress concerning annexation of the Philippines by the U.S.: "A strong feeling spreading over the land in favor of colonial expansion [is] getting so strong that it will mean the political death of any man to oppose it pretty soon." (119)
On December 10, 1898 the Philippines, along with Puerto Rico and Guam were ceded by Spain to the U.S. by the Treaty of Paris at the end of the Spanish-American War. (1) [See (Philippines, 1900)]
In December 1898 the first Philippine commission is appointed. Known as the Schurman Commission, it was chaired by Jacob Gould Schurman. The remaining commissioners were Dean C. Worcester, Charles Denby, General Elwell Otis and Commodore George Dewey. The commission was operational on March 4. (149)
From 1899 to 1902 the Boer War is fought between the British and the two Boer republics, the South African Republic, (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State. (1) The Boer War was started by Rothschild's agent, Lord Alfred Milner, against the wishes of a majority of the British people. His plans were aided by another Rothschild agent, Cecil Rhodes, who later left his entire fortune to the furtherance of the Rothschild program, through the Rhodes Trust, a by no means infrequent denouement among Rothschild agents, and the basis of the entire "foundation" empire today. The British fought a "no prisoners", scorched earth war, destroying farms, and mercilessly shooting down Boers who tried to surrender. It was in this war that the institution of "concentration camps" was brought to the world, as the British rounded up and imprisoned in unsanitary, fever-ridden camps anyone thought to be sympathetic to the Boers, including many women and children, who died by the thousands. (130)
In 1899 Rosenfeld showed that the consumption of animal fats high in saturated fats and low in essential fatty acids causes obesity and fatty degeneration of the inner organs. (13), (42) [See (EFAs Previous, Next)]
In 1899 Emil Fischer began his classic investigations of protein composition. (82)
In 1899 the Harriman Alaska Expedition explores coastal Alaska by boat throughout the summer. The expedition is undertaken by a group of distinguished citizens, many of whom are actively involved in conservationism, including numerous scientists under the direction of Clinton Hart Merriam, (Chief, U.S. Biological Survey), John Muir, John Burroughs, photographer Edward Curtis, forester Bernhard Fernow, George Bird Grinnell, and artists Frederick Dellenbaugh and Louis Agassiz Fuertes, funded and accompanied by railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman and members of his family. (142) Additional members include William Emerson Ritter, biologist from Scripps; William Dall, paleontologist and even a number of geologists. (384) Apparently Harriman's entire family was along for the ride including his wife, daughter Mary, two sons, Edward Roland Harriman (S&B 1917), William Averell Harriman (S&B 1913) and his brother in law, William H. Averell. (385) Not surprisingly, one of the stops made during the trip was the Pribilof islands! (385)
In 1899 members of the Hague Conference hold long debates on settling of disputes between states [countries] by legal means or, failing these, by third-party arbitration. (1)
In 1899 the German chemical firm of Beyer introduced acetylsalicylic acid under the name "Asprin". (105)
In 1899 Dr. George H. Simmons became head of the American Medical Association. Though he claimed to be a licensed physician of the Rotunda Hospital of Dublin, in fact, Dublin Hospital had never issued any licenses, nor was it authorized to do so. … He soon realized that the medical schools control the hospitals; the medical examination boards control the medical schools, and so he expanded the power of the American Medical Association until he had total control over the medical examination boards. (48)
In 1899 the Marine Hospital Service was directed by Congress to investigate leprosy in the United States. (80)
On May 1 1899 Dr. Milton Joseph Rosenau succeeded Dr. Kinyoun as director of the Hygienic Laboratory. (80)
In 1899 the First International Congress of Genetics was held in London. (105) The Conference on Hybridization and Cross-breeding convened in London by the Royal Horticultural Society. In attendance were British, American, and continental scientists with wide-ranging theoretical, practical, and commercial interests in botanical hybrids. The participants included William Bateson, Hugo de Vries, and C.C. Hurst. Also present, by invitation, were American agricultural scientists Herbert J. Webber, David Fairchild, and Walter Swingle of the USDA and Willet M. Hays of the Minnesota experiment station. Liberty Hyde Bailey, also invited but unable to attend, sent a paper. (180) "In 1899 the idea occurred to those attending the Hybridizers Conference in London, under the auspices of the Royal Horticultural Society, that there should be in America an association of breeders, which should include both those, interested in plants and those interested in animals. This suggestion was placed before Secretary Wilson, who suggested that a committee of the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations would be the best auspices under which to organize such an association. Following this suggestion a promotion committee was appointed at the annual meeting of the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations at New Haven, Connecticut, in 1900." (229), (230) [See note 162, 1900]
In 1899 Elihu Root accepted the post of Secretary of War in McKinley's cabinet. (1)
In 1899 Harry C. Sharp, as physician at the Indiana State Reformatory devises the Vasectomy. (117)
In 1899, the Calorimeter Respiration Building at Pennsylvania State University is constructed near the Agricultural Experiment Station Building (Arts Cottage). This is considered the birthplace of animal nutrition studies in America. The building was used by Dr. Armsby and his colleagues to calculate metabolism and food values in dairy cattle and other farm animals. (324)
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