Biology History (1966) vol 6 part 1

BIOLOGY HISTORY Editor: Brian J Ford

Volume 6 Part 1

Spring 1993

HISTORY OF BIOLOGY COMMITTEE 20-22 QUEENSBERRY PLACE LONDON SW7 2DZ

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Dr Edward Jenner, FRS

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Special issue: DR EDWARD JENNER CONTENTS

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I. S. Bailey: EDWARD JENNER, 17 MAY 1749 - 26 JANUARY 1723

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T. B. Wallington: DEVELOPMENTS IN IMMUNOLOGY SINCE JENNER, AND PLANS FOR THE IMMUNOLOGY EXHIBITION

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Joint Bibliography

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M. L. Ryder: WHY WAS PIGMEAT REJECTED IN THE MIDDLE EAST?

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NOTE FROM THE CHAIRMAN

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CORRESPONDENCE - re P H Gosse FRS

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EDWARD JENNER 17 May 1749-26 January 1823 I. S. BAILEY, M.D., F.R.C.P. Chairman, Jenner Educational Trust.

Based on the talk given to a joint meeting of the Western Branch of the Institute of Biology and the History of Biology Group at the Jenner Museum and Conference Centre, Berkeley, Gloucestershire, on 24 April 1993.

THOSE of us who come to Berkeley and to the Jenner Museum and Conference Centre do so to honour Edward Jenner, country practitioner, naturalist, scientist and benefactor to mankind.

Jenner was born in the old vicarage house, Berkeley, the eight child of the Reverend Stephen Jenner. He was orphaned in early childhood.

After school in Wotton-under-Edge and Cirencester: he was apprenticed aged 13 to Daniel Ludlow, a surgeon in Chipping Sodbury.

In childhood he had been inoculated against the smallpox, a procedure introduced from the east in the early part of the eighteenth century. He had the usual several weeks of preparation with purging, starving and bleeding. The risk of severe smallpox and of spread to others was recognised, and Jenner was isolated in the "smallpox stables" and suffered a moderate attack. Around 1768, when in Chipping Sodbury, he learnt that there was a report rife in the dairies of a distemper named the cowpox which affected the teats of milking cows, infected the hands of milkmaids and was sometimes a preventive of smallpox.

After seven years as an apprentice, he became house pupil to John Hunter (1728-1795) the noted surgeon, experimentalist and teacher, and studied with him in his home and at St. George’s Hospital. When Joseph Banks returned in 1771 from Cook’s Pacific explorations, he asked Hunter who might best help in classifying the material. Jenner was recommended and did so well that, according to Lettsom, he was offered the post of Botanist to a new expedition on the Resolution. He refused, however, partly because of an attachment to the rural scenes and habits of his early youth, and returned to Berkeley in 1772.

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Jenner had been interested in natural history in childhood and spent time searching for fossils in cliffs around the Severn and collecting the nests of field mice. Back in Berkeley as country practitioner, he corresponded with Hunter and together they studied the breeding of toads, the cuckoo, the hibernation of the hedgehog and the migration of birds.

Hunter wrote; "Have you caves where Batts go to at night?", "Are there no batts in the castle at Berkeley?" "If you have I will put you upon a set of experiments concerning the heat of them at difft seasons". "Have you got the bones yet of a large porpass?", "Is ever salmon spawn seen, if it is I wish you could get some", "Send me all the fossils you can find", "I shall employ you with hedgehogs", and asked whether they lost weight in hibernation, what was their body temperature in winter, and if meat put in the stomach in cold weather digested. "This may be difficult, but make them lively in a warm room, feed them and put them immediately in the cold", "Collect air from the gut to see if a candle will burn in it as long as in common air". Finally, and the best known quotation from Hunter's letters, of 2 August 1775: "I thank you for your expt on the hedgehog; but why do you ask me a question, by the way of solving it. I think your solution is just, but why think, why not trie the experiment".

At a dinner party in Bath, there was discussion as to which was the hottest part of a candle flame. Jenner put his finger in the bottom of the flame for a short time and then at the top, but was obliged to snatch it away immediately. "This, gentleman, is a sufficient test". In 1784, a year after the pioneering flights of Montgolfier in Lyons and Charles in Paris, Jenner made the first balloon flight in Britain. In a letter to Dr. Caleb Hillier Parry of Bath he was thanked for the offer of tubes, half a yard of silk and directions for their use. Jenner oiled the silk, filled the balloon with hydrogen, released it in the hall of Berkeley Castle and then outside and followed on horseback until it came down in the grounds of Kingscote.

Jenner’s first paper "Observations on the emetic tartar" was published privately and described an improved method of preparation.

Hunter wrote: "I am puffing off your tartar as the tartar of all tartar", "Do you mean to take out a patint?", "I approve of it much but I would advise you to give it a new name expressive either of the composition or of its virtues in the body".

For some years, Jenner had been observing the nesting habits of the cuckoo. In a paper read to the Royal Society on 13 March 1788, he described how the young cuckoo ejected the eggs of the host hedge sparrow by means of a declivity on its back, and that this disappeared by the twelfth day of its life. Jenner, interested in the migration of birds, had noticed that the cuckoo was in England for only eleven weeks, that fifteen

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weeks were needed for independence of its young, and suggested that it was for this reason that the cuckoo laid its eggs in the nest of another bird.

For this work Jenner was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 26 February 1789.

Earlier, between 1780 and 1782, he had at the request of Joseph Banks, then and for many years President of the Royal Society, studied the value of blood as manure. Serum helped grass to grow but, prevented, unless diluted with two parts of water, the sprouting of seeds. Blood harmed Polyanthus and currant bushes. There may have been a connection between these experiments, reported in 1787, and Banks’s interest in the gardens of the King’s newly acquired house at Kew. In March 1788 Edward Jenner married Catherine Kingscote and they moved into the Chantry, now the Jenner Museum. Their first child, Edward, was born in January 1789. Hunter wrote, "I wish you joy. I hope Mrs Jenner is well and that you begin the look grave now that you are a father".

In 1785 Jenner founded the Medico Convivial Society which met at the Fleece Inn, Rodborough. It was a successor to the older Convivio-Medical Society which had met at Alveston. Dr Caleb Parry came from Bath, Dr Hicks from Bristol, Dr Matthews from Hereford, Dr Paytherus from Ross-on-Wye and Dr Ludlow from Sodbury. Jenner described mitral stenosis. He observed ossification of the coronary arteries. "When making a section of the heart, the knife struck against something so hard and gritty that I well remember looking up at the ceiling conceiving that some plaster had fallen down, but on further scrutiny the real cause appeared. The coronary arteries had become bony canals". Jenner was one of the first doctors to relate angina to coronary artery disease. He recognised that Hunter suffered angina. Home reported that the post mortem in 1795 had shown ossified coronary arteries.

Jenner had not forgotten the milkmaids of Sodbury. He studied those who had escaped smallpox after cowpox and challenged some with smallpox and found that this failed to take. Benjamin Jesty, a Dorset farmer (1737-1816) had inoculated his wife and two sons with cowpox in 1774. But it was Jenner who performed the crucial experiment on 14 May 1796. He inoculated James Phipps with material taken from a cowpox sore on the hand of a milkmaid Sarah Nelmes. Two months later he challenged James Phipps with smallpox. "But now listen to the most delightful part of my story. The boy has since been inoculated for the smallpox which as I ventured to predict produced no effect. I shall now pursue my experiments with redoubled ardour".

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Two years later, in 1798, Jenner published ‘The inquiry into the causes and the effect of variolae vaccinae, known as smallpox’. It sold well.

A copy bound in red velvet was presented to King George III. Vaccination spread rapidly. But it had its critics. Gillray drew people with cows’ heads sprouting from their bodies. Some were vaccinated with contaminated material and developed smallpox. Moseley foretold of a new race of minotaurs - ‘Semi Bovemque Virum, Semi Virumque Bovem’.

In 1801 Jenner published "The origin of the Vaccine Inoculation" and predicted that vaccination would end smallpox. "It now becomes too manifest to admit of controversy that the annihilation of the smallpox, the most dreadful scourge of the human species, must be the final result of this practice".

Smallpox was indeed a scourge. Macaulay had called it "the most terrible of the ministers of death". Between 200,000 and 600,000 people died in Europe each year. A third of childhood deaths were from smallpox. Those who recovered were disfigured by pock marks. It had led to the end of the reign of the House of Stuart. It destroyed the Aztecs and Incas. It disrupted the Franco-Spanish Armada of 1779, and later influenced the outcome of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.

Smallpox was eliminated as a result of the ten year eradication programme of the World Health Organization. The last natural case of smallpox was in Somalia in October 1977. On 8 May 1980 the thirty-third World Health Assembly adopted a resolution declaring that smallpox had been eradicated globally. Smallpox is the first and only infectious disease to be eradicated. There is no animal reservoir. Isolation and vaccination of contacts is possible in the twelve day incubation period, before they become infectious. There is cross immunity between orthopox viruses and protections lasts several years. Equine pox is now extinct. Dracunculiasis may be the next disease to be eliminated and poliomyelitis may soon disappear from the northern hemisphere. Helicobacter pylori, which has only a human host, may be eliminated from the stomach by a suitable vaccine with consequent reduction or prevention of peptic ulceration, gastric carcinoma and gastric lymphoma.

Jenner was lucky. Though he referred to ‘virus’ he used the word in its ancient sense of a noxious agent. Bacteria were described first well into the seventeenth century. The organisms which we know as viruses were discovered at the end of the last century. He knew nothing of immunity and was fortunate that cowpox protects against another orthopox virus, smallpox. Cowpox is, and probably was, rare and there are other commoner diseases of the udder and Jenner recognised that these did not induce immunity to smallpox and called them spurious cowpox. We now

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know these are parapox viruses and bovine herpes mammillitis, both diseases of cows, whereas cowpox is an incidental in the cow, cat and in man, with rodents as the natural reservoir host.

There are still puzzles. The material used for vaccination was shown in 1939 to be vaccinia and not cowpox. We do not know from where it came but it is possible that it arose from the now extinct equine pox. Recombinant vaccinia can be used to protect against other infectious diseases. A vaccinia based rabies vaccine is being used in spiked pellets to reduce and to push eastward rabies in foxes. A recombinant avipox virus, for example canary pox, may be better since these viruses - though producing immunity - do not replicate in man.

How do we honour Jenner, and how will be celebrate the bicentenary of the first vaccination, 14 May 1796? The late Malcolm Campbell, neurologist, with Bruce Perry, Professor of Medicine and other West Country physicians and interested people formed the Jenner Trust in 1966. A small museum was opened in Phipps’ Cottage, Berkeley, on 17 May 1966. In 1983, the Diocese of Gloucester wished to sell the Chantry, which had been the home of the vicars of Berkeley from 1885, and to build a new vicarage. A Jenner Appeal was launched and raised some money. A generous gift from Mr Ryoichi Sasakawa, in gratitude for the elimination of smallpox, allowed us to buy the Chantry, to refurbish the house and stables and to establish a larger museum in the Chantry and the Sasakawa Conference Centre in the stables. The museum opened to the public on 1 May 1985 and since then has attracted up to 10,000 visitors a year. A number of conferences for up to sixty people are held each year in the Sasakawa Centre and the Institute of Biology was welcomed there on 24 April 1993.

The centenary in 1896 was celebrated in Britain, Europe, and in a number of other countries. There were papers in several journals.

Gloucester, where there was at that time a strong anti-vaccination movement, suffered one of its worst epidemics of smallpox. Recently Gloucestershire has honoured Jenner with a plaque in County Hall and described him as pre-eminent among its six famous sons: Whittington, Tyndale, Holst, Raikes and W.G. Grace. In 1996 we hope that there may be a Jenner stamp, that there will be celebrations in America, Europe, in London, Bristol and Berkeley. The medical Royal Colleges, the Royal Society, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeon’s, St George’s Hospital, the Department of Health, the World Health Organization, the British Paediatric Association and The Institute of Biology have all expressed an interest. We hope that many people and other groups will wish to join in the celebrations, looking back to Jenner but forward from Jenner to the

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many developments in virology, infectious disease and immunity which continue at an ever increasing rate. The British Society for Immunology will meet in Bristol in April 1996 and there will be events in the University and in the Department of Child Health. We shall mount an appeal nearer 1996 for the better endowment of the Museum, for a new exhibition to show developments in immunology, to endow student prizes, to fund medical student intercalation in science subjects and perhaps research fellowships. We have this year started in a small way with a prize for Gloucestershire primary schools, the Jenner Environmental Challenge, and we are presenting prizes to two schools for studies of plants growing in the school grounds. They will, we think, appreciate Jenner’s studies just as he would have valued their observations and experiments.

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DEVELOPMENTS IN IMMUNOLOGY SINCE JENNER AND PLANS FOR THE IMMUNOLOGY EXHIBITION T.B. WALLINGTON B.A., F.R.C.P Immunologist, Member Jenner Educational Trust.

IMMUNITY EXPLAINED Hippocrates noted that those who had recovered from plague were used to nurse its victims. Variolation, the deliberate infection of children with smallpox in the hope that they would avoid a more severe attack later in life, was well established medical practice in the eighteenth century. Dr Edward Jenner was the first clinical scientist to design an experiment to demonstrate the phenomenon of acquired immunity when in 1796 he inoculated James Phipps with serum from a cowpox pustule on Sarah Nelmes’ finger and later challenged the boy’s immunity with smallpox virus. Pasteur immortalised its importance in 1880. With the insight of the knowledge of the germ theory of infection he realised the principle of specific immunization using attenuated bacteria and viruses and named the procedure vaccination in honour of Jenner’s discovery. Pasteur and those who followed him are the harvest of the seed, and the question posed to biological science by Jenner’s experiment: how is specific immunity to smallpox achieved? It is still producing fruit and now we know a great deal more about the working of the human immune system and can understand why Jenner’s experiment was successful. We hope that Jenner’s contribution to medical science, which is celebrated in the Jenner Museum, will be bought into even sharper focus in the museum with its displays linking it to modern immunology. I will outline our plans to achieve this in a hands-on exhibition of modern immunology which we hope will be opened for the bicentennial of vaccination itself in May 1996.

The short title of the exhibition is "Immunity Explained". The project is co-ordinated by the Management Committee of the Museum and the British Society for Immunology who have recruited a team of immunologists willing to take the project forward. The exhibition will illustrate the structure and working of the immune system through displays

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dealing with various states of health and disease. From these will come an understanding of how and why Jenner succeeded in vaccinating against smallpox. The link will be made by illustrating certain of the major discoveries of immunology in a section of the exhibition entitled the History of Immunology. Our plan is probably best illustrated by outlining our ideas for each module of the exhibition.

HISTORY OF IMMUNOLOGY Like other sciences, immunology has been through periods of frenzied activity and new discovery and quieter phases seemingly in the intellectual doldrums. Its development so far can reasonably be divided into three eras. The first was the realisation of immunity which started with Louis Pasteur and the germ theory in 1880 after quite a long period of seeming inactivity following Jenner’s discovery. Pasteur first discovered the principle of attenuation in experiments with chicken cholera and his rabies vaccine was the first deliberately attenuated vaccine used in humans. Pasteur understood the principle of immunity but not its mechanism. He thought infection deprived the infected person of essential nutriments, spoiling them as the seat for a further infection. It required the work of Roux, Yersin, von Behring and Kitatsato on bacterial toxins and the precipitating substances found in the sera of immune animals for immunity to be linked to the production of antibodies. At the same time the rôle for phagocytic cells in the immune response was described by Metchnikoff (1884), whilst the work of Koch (1891) on immunity to tuberculosis laid the foundation of the present understanding of specific cell mediated immunity.

All of these discoveries were made in the latter half of the nineteenth century and immunology then moved into the relative doldrums. The next important era might be described as the era of immunobiology starting in 1937 with the discovery of the histocompatibility complex by Gorer and then quickly in 1939 with the discovery that antibodies are globulins and the beginnings of the understanding of their chemistry. In 1944 Medawar put transplantation immunology on the scientific map. In 1953 the phenomenon of immunological tolerance was described by Billingham, Brent and Medawar. Discoveries starting in 1956 with Glick’s work on the bursa of Fabricius defined lymphocytes as the cells responsible for the immune response and divided them into sets and subsets with specific functions in immunity. The present era is of course that of the molecular biochemist and rapidly we are learning just how all of those phenomena work. By picking from these landmark discoveries we hope to draw a map for

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people visiting the exhibition which will link Jenner to the immunologists that followed him.

THE IMMUNE SYSTEM What is our present understanding? We will describe the cells, tissues and molecules that comprise the immune system. Such a display provides great possibilities for brilliant visual material. We hope that we will be able to use interactive computer technology with great effect. Such a display could be quite extensive with separate sections covering modern knowledge of antibodies, phagocytes, interleukins, and of course other topics.

They will be picked to link in with the pointers that history has given us.

WHAT IMMUNITY DOES In the context of Jenner it is important to tackle the topic of immunity to infection. Here inherited, developmental and acquired abnormalities that lead to immunodeficiency diseases can be illustrated powerfully to show in human terms why the immune system is so important. The effects of HIV are but one area of pressing interest here.

ALLERGIES This, like HIV, is viewed as a good point of contact and understanding with the general public. Almost everyone knows about hay fever and recognises it as an allergy. A suitable museum display could be a way for raising several interesting issues, in particular the distinction between harmful and protective immunity and the idea of malfunction causing disease: immunopathology.

ARTHRITIS This also is of course part of the common experience. Much arthritis is auto immune, the result of a fault in the immune system. We now know a lot about the mechanisms of auto-immune disease, but much is still to be considered. This is an area of very active medical research within immunology with great promise for the control of disease which we are sure will interest visitors to the Museum.

TRANSPLANTATION A grand example of how animal experimentation aided human medicine is through the discovery of histocom- patibility genes/antigens and immunosuppressive drugs. These discoveries can be linked to what has

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been achieved in kidney, liver, heart, corneal and bone marrow transplantation.

OVERALL INTENT OF THE EXHIBITION This could be a very big exhibition indeed. We have the concept that we may have a core of exhibits to which rotating displays are added from time to time. If these are of sufficiently high quality then other museums we are sure will be interested in using them. Interest has already been expressed. I hope that in this short outline of our plans I will have interested you in this endeavour. I hope also that you will consider it an appropriate part of our efforts to mark the bicentennial of Jenner’s discovery of vaccination.

REFERENCES Baxby, D., Paoletti, E. (1992) Potential use of non-replicating vectors as recombinant vaccines, Vaccine 10: 8-9.

Baxby D. (1993) Recombinant poxvirus vaccines, Reviews in Medical Microbiology 4: 80-88.

Baxby D. (1982) The natural history of cowpox, Bristol Med. Chir. J., 97: 12-16.

Baxby D. (1981) Jenner’s Smallpox Vaccine, The Riddle of Vaccinia virus and its Origin, 214pp., London: Heinemann.

Lakhani S. (1992) Early Clinical Pathologists: Edward Jenner (1749-1829), J. Clin. Path. 45: 756-758.

21 Morris, S. (1992) Edward Jenner, 48pp., New York: Bookwright Press.

Fisher, R. B., (1991) Edward Jenner, 361pp., London: A. Deutsch.

Perry, C. B., (1993) Edward Jenner, 23pp Bristol: University Press.

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Harding Rains A. J., [Ed] (1976) Letters from the past from John Hunter to Edward Jenner, 40pp. London: Royal College of Surgeons.

Roses, D. F. (1992) From Hunter and the great pox to Jenner and smallpox. Surg. Gynecol. Obstet.,175: 365-372.

Fenner, F., Henderson, D. A., Arita, I., Jezek, Z., Ladnyi, I. D. [Eds] (1988), Smallpox and its Eradication, 1460pp., Geneva: World Health Organisation.

Winkelstein, W., (1992) Not just a Country Doctor: Edward Jenner, Scientist. Epidemiologic Reviews, 14: 1-15.

Silverstein, A. M., (1989) A history of Immunology, 422pp., San Diego: Academic Press.

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WHY WAS PIGMEAT REJECTED IN THE MIDDLE EAST? MICHAEL L. RYDER The influx of Moslems into Britain in recent years has made us realise that the rejection of pigmeat is not restricted to the Jews. It is part of a wider distaste for pork in the Middle East, although the oldest record of this taboo, in Judaism, appears in the Old Testament of the Bible. The pig is also regarded as ritually unclean in Islam, which began as recently as the seventh century AD. What is it about pigs in that area that makes whole groups of people consider that these animals are unclean on what are now regarded as religious grounds?

The basis for this religious taboo against pigs is almost certainly not their over-rich fat, nor their habit of wallowing in mud to keep cool; neither is it their habit of scavenging for food. Douglas (1978: 30) pointed out that in the book of Leviticus there is no reference to the scavenging habit of pigs. She saw the answer in ritualistic and symbolic terms, pointing out that the Israelites considered as ritually unclean animals that did not fall clearly within certain categories. In the first few verses of Leviticus Chapter ii it is stated that only beasts which "parteth the hoof and chew the cud" may be eaten.

The pig is anomalous because, although cloven- hoofed, it is not a ruminant. She further suggested that the pig symbolised prohibited exogamy, since it was eaten by neighbouring peoples with which intermarriage was forbidden. I am among those who consider that direct explanations of cultural differences are more likely to be true than those relying on symbolism. A more attractive explanation is the proneness of pigs to become infested with the intestinal roundworm Trichinella spiralis.

This parasitic nematode reproduces in the intestine and the larvae produced bore through its walls and enter the muscles of the pig. Here they create cysts in which they lie coiled and dormant causing a condition known as trichinosis. People eating pork diseased in this way themselves

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become infested with the intestinal worms, which in turn invade the human muscles, often fatally.

This explanation was dismissed at a time when it was thought that primitive man is unlikely to have understood this connection, which was not thought to have been recognised (in Europe) until 1860, and in any case the cysts are destroyed by adequate cooking. Anyone who has studied zoology does not need to be told twice about the dangers (from parasites as well as bacteria) of eating uncooked meat - not just pork!

Over 40 years ago the American geographer C. S. Coon suggested that the religious prohibition of pork among Middle Eastern nomads is more likely to have had an ecological explanation (Coon, 1952: 346). Pigs are unattractive to nomads because they are not easily driven and do not adapt well to the hot dry conditions of the Middle East. Unlike other livestock, pigs supply little more than meat and are difficult to skin. Since pigs can compete with man for food, they may threaten the whole subsistence economy (Harris 1986) Other domestic animals also provided milk, wool or transport, and sheep and goats could survive on the little food available in the austere environment of the area (Ryder, 1983: 195).

The situation was different in Europe, where pigs were probably important in the Neolithic forest clearance carried out by the first farmers.

Pigs eat tree seeds and uproot seedlings; their manure enriched the soil so that the trees were replaced with grass, which was either ploughed to grow crops or used to graze sheep as in the Bronze Age of Northern Europe.

But did primitive man really not recognise the connection between diseased pork and human illness? He must for instance have learnt by trial and error which plants were poisonous. The Trichinella cysts are actually produced by the host animal as a reaction to the parasite and are coated with calcareous matter. Older livestock books describe how the gritty-like bodies can be felt when a piece of affected meat is cut with a knife, and the cysts are actually visible to the naked eye. The scholar San Isidoro who lived in Seville from about AD 560 to 636 described pork worms, which he called usia, and stated that their danger to man was the reason why the Jews were forbidden this meat.

The late George Ordish thought that San Isidora’s knowledge of worms plus his discussions with Rabbis might have led him to the conclusion that there was a practical foundation for the Mosaic prohibition on the consumption of pork (Ordish, 1976). This knowledge had wide ramifications; San Isidor did not wish to eat pork, but it was dangerous for him to appear to be following a Jewish custom. Therefore whenever pork appeared on the menu he claimed to be a special fast, and as a ‘cover’ he became particularly hard on the Jews.

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REFERENCES Coon, C. S., (1952) Caravan: the story of the Middle East. London: Jonathan Cape.

Douglas, Mary, (1978) Purity and Danger. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Harris, M., (1986) Good to Eat. London: Allen & Unwin.

Ordish, G., (1976) The constant Pest. London: Peter Davies.

Ryder, M. L., (1983). Sheep and Man. London: Duckworth.

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NOTE FROM THE CHAIRMAN Subscribers may know that Mike Buttolph had to relinquish the editorship with his change of job. We miss his skills already. The proposal for this publication was originally made by the current Chairman, and it is singularly inappropriate that the editorial burden should now land squarely in his lap. Messrs Olby, Ford and Smith from the 1993 Committee were all contributors to the recent biennial meeting of the Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology at Brandeis University in Boston, Massachussetts, so our activities are being well marked in the United States. We now have American subscribers, too. Now we are properly typeset and redesigned, and the circulation is rapidly increasing.

New subscribers may like to note that contributions are welcome, though a preliminary letter for the attention of our editorial board will enable us to offer a preliminary assessment of suitability for our pages.

BRIAN J. FORD C. Biol., F. I. Biol.

CORRESPONDENCE To: The Librarian, Institute of Biology I am researching into the life of a Victorian naturalist and past Fellow of the Royal Society, Philip Henry Gosse (1810-1888), and am attempting to find any papers, correspondence etc. relating to him.

I am not so much looking for material written or published by him (though, of course, anything is of interest), as much as material written about him, or unpublished materials.

If there is any information which you feel the Institute might hold, I would be most grateful to know about it; even other contacts which I might make, though I have contacted the Royal Society and other learned societies with which he might logically have had some connection. I would be most grateful for any information you could find for me.

Thank you in anticipation.

IAN LANCASTER, C. BIOL., M. I. BIOL.

14 Lannoweth Road, Penzance, Cornwall TR18 3AB