2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
George␣ D. Gale University of Missouri, Kansas City
Comprehending the Catastrophe:
The Role of Medical Models in the Phylloxera Grapevine Plague, France,
1868-1875
Plants get sick, too. Sometimes this banal truism masks events of incredible
significance. When the sick plants have economic importance to human beings,
consequences of truly global scope may be entrained. The Irish potato blight
of 1848 is a prime example of this fact. Other plant disease epidemics—
epiphytotics—also plagued the Nineteenth Century. Since plant pathology at
this time was sorely underdeveloped theoretically, the central question in each
of these disasters was: How are these plant diseases to be understood? The
present study, which focuses upon the scientific response to the devastating
Nineteenth-Century grapevine plague known as the phylloxera crisis, attempts
to answer this question in one important historical case. Bluntly stated, my
two conclusions are these: 1. Understanding the grapevine phylloxera
epiphytotic depended crucially upon then-extant medical models of human
disease; and 2. Since there were two competing disease models prevalent at
the time, a controversy regarding the etiology and nature of the malady
inevitably arose. My argument is organized as follows. First, I describe the
onset of the malady in some detail, and chronicle the first few years of its
march across the vineyards of France. Secondly, in the following two sections,
I provide a brief description of the Nineteenth Century versions, first, of two
general models of human disease and, secondly, of plant pathology. In the
penultimate section, I focus tightly upon the details of the first several years
of controversy between leading proponents of the two sides in the dispute
over the origin and nature of the malady. This discussion will situate the
arguments of the two sides under the aegis of their respective human disease
models. Finally, in a brief concluding note I will give an admittedly Whiggish
summary of the outcome of the crisis, and relate it to a similar epiphytotic
disaster unfolding in the vineyards of today’s California.
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Janet Garber Independent Scholar
Jane Franklin and the Natural History Museum Idea in Tasmania
In 1828, Jane Griffin, who had led a life of parties, balls, operas, museums, and
tours of the Continent, married the Arctic explorer, Sir John Franklin. In 1836,
Franklin became Governor of Van Diemen’s Land. He and Jane arrived in 1837,
and two years later founded a scientific society, where papers were presented by
visitors John Gould and Joseph Hooker, among others. In 1837, Jane bought
130 acres for a botanical garden. Exhibits were arranged in Government House,
pending construction of a museum. Jane then purchased 400 additional acres of