In 1920, Eugen Steinach and Paul Kammerer reported experiments showing that exposure to high temperatures altered the structure of the gonad and produced hyper-sexuality in "heat rats," presumably as a result of the increased production of sex hormones. Using Steinach's evidence that the gonad is a double gland with distinct sexual and generative functions, they used their findings to explain "racial" differences in the sexuality of indigenous tropical peoples and Europeans. The authors also reported that heat induced anatomical changes in (...) the interstitial cells of the gonad were inherited by the heat rats' descendants. Kammerer used this finding to link endocrinology to his long-standing interest in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The heat rats supported his hypothesis that the interstitial cells of the double gland were the mechanism of somatic induction in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The Steinach-Kammerer collaboration, Kammerer's use of Steinach's "puberty gland" to explain somatic induction, and his endocrine analysis of symbiosis reveal Paul Kammerer's late career attempt to integrate endocrinology and genetics with the political ideals of Austrian socialism. With them he developed a bioethics that challenged the growing reliance on race in eugenics and instead promoted cooperation over competition in evolution. I relate his attempt to the controversies surrounding the interstitial cells, to the status of extra-nuclear theories of heredity, and to Kammerer's commitment to Austromarxist social reforms during the interwar period. (shrink)

This article considers the sexual politics of animal evidence in the context of German sexology around 1920. In the 1910s, the German-Jewish geneticist Richard B. Goldschmidt conducted experiments on the moth Lymantria dispar, and discovered individuals that were no longer clearly identifiable as male or female. When he published an article tentatively arguing that his research on ‘intersex butterflies’ could be used to inform concurrent debates about human homosexuality, he triggered a flurry of responses from Berlin-based sexologists. In this article, (...) I examine how a number of well-known sexologists affiliated with Magnus Hirschfeld, his Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, and later his Institute of Sexology attempted to incorporate Goldschmidt’s experiments into their sexological work between 1917 and 1923. Intersex butterflies were used to discuss issues at the heart of German sexology: the legal debate about the criminalisation of homosexuality under paragraph 175; the scientific methodology of sexology, caught between psychiatric, biological, and sociological approaches to the study of sexual and gender diversity; and the status of sexology as natural science, able to contribute knowledge about the sexual Konstitution of the organism. This article thus shows that butterfly experiments function as important and politically charged evidence for a discussion at the heart of the sexological project of those involved in the founding of the Institute of Sexology: the question of the nature and naturalness of homosexuality and its political consequences. In doing so, this article makes a case for paying attention to non-human actors in the history of sexology. (shrink)

Masui Kiyoshi (1887–1981), a prominent Japanese geneticist, is best known for inventing the sex-sorting method of chicks and his contributions to experimental genetics in Japan. Masui drew inspiration from Goldschmidt’s sex determination theory and used chickens, transplantation techniques, and his own “chick sexing” methods in his scientific work. This paper examines the intersection of genetics and industrial breeding by tracing the evolution of Masui’s experimental systems. During the early 20th century, poultry farming emerged as a significant industry in Japan, resulting (...) in the development of standardized organisms and techniques for chicken farming. Masui, a professor at Tokyo Imperial University, collaborated with the Imperial Zootechnical Experimental Station to use these organisms as models for sex determination theory while exploring their further industrial possibilities. First, the paper show how Masui viewed chickens as epistemological objects and transformed his anatomical discoveries into standardized industrial practices. Next, it describes how Masui’s collaboration with German geneticist Richard Goldschmidt led to new academic questions about sex determination mechanisms and how he integrated his knowledge of chicken physiology into his research on “experimental gynandromorphs” to elaborate the theories. Lastly, the paper discusses the biotechnological ideals that Masui aimed to achieve and how they were co-constructed with his mass-production method of intersex chickens from the early 1930s. The trajectory of Masui’s experimental systems highlights the dynamic relationship between agroindustry and genetics in the early twentieth century and demonstrates the ‘biology of history’ in which the biological processes of organisms intertwine with their epistemological history. (shrink)

At the turn of the twentieth century, biologists such as Oscar Riddle, Thomas Hunt Morgan, Frank Lillie, and Richard Goldschmidt all puzzled over the question of sexual difference, the distinction between male and female. They all offered competing explanations for the biological cause of this difference, and engaged in a fierce debate over the primacy of their respective theories. Riddle propounded a metabolic theory of sex dating from the late-nineteenth century suggesting that metabolism lay at the heart of sexual difference. (...) Thomas Hunt Morgan insisted on the priority of chromosomes, Frank Lillie emphasized the importance of hormones, while Richard Goldschmidt supported a mixed model involving both chromosomes and hormones. In this paper, I will illustrate how the older metabolic theory of sex was displaced when those who argued for the relatively newer theories of chromosomes and hormones gradually formed an alliance that accommodated each other and excluded the metabolic theory of sex. By doing so, proponents of chromosomes and hormones established their authority over the question of sexual difference as they laid the foundations for the new disciplines of genetics and endocrinology. Their debate raised urgent questions about what constituted sexual difference, and how scientists envisioned the plasticity and controllability of this difference. These theories also had immediate political and cultural consequences at the turn of the twentieth century, especially for the eugenic and feminist movements, both of which were heavily invested in knowledge of sex and its determination, ascertainment, and command. (shrink)

This paper throws light on the development of experimental zoology in Britain by focusing on the establishment of the British Journal of Experimental Biology and the Society for Experimental Biology in 1923. The key actors in this story were Lancelot T. Hogben, Julian S. Huxley and Francis A.E. Crew, who started exploring the possibility of establishing an experimentally oriented zoological journal in 1922. In order to support the BJEB and further the cause of the experimental approach, Hogben, Crew, Huxley and (...) their colleagues decided to found a society, which led to the formation of the SEB. From its inception the journal was plagued with difficulties that led to the merger of the BJEB and the Biological Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in the autumn of 1925. Also discussed are the views that the leading proponents of experimental zoology in Britain in the 1920s expressed towards morphology and how their views further complicate the already much modified ‘revolt from morphology’ thesis. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, Tatsuo Aida in Japan, Øjvind Winge in Denmark, Richard Goldschmidt in Germany, and Calvin Bridges in the United States all developed different experimental systems to study the genetics of sex reversal. These locally specific experimental systems grounded these experimenters’ understanding of sex reversal as well as their interpretation of claims regarding experimental results and theories. The comparison of four researchers and their experimental systems reveals how those different systems mediated their understanding of genetic phenomena, and (...) influenced their interpretations of sex reversal. (shrink)