Trailblazing: A Sampling of the Best of the Last 350 Years of Science

December 2, 2009 — In celebration of its 350th anniversary, Britain’s Royal Society has launched Trailblazing, a fascinating interactive timeline highlighting sixty of the greatest scientific publications featured in the pages of its journals from 1665 to 2010. With online access to original manuscripts supplemented by commentary from modern-day experts, it’s a unique glimpse into the work of some of the scientific world’s greatest researchers--both quiet geniuses and renowned icons.

Beyond the simple wow-factor of so much great science (including many medical studies) in one place, I was particularly taken by the amusing writing styles of the older papers.  Many read almost as if the author were having a conversation with a friend, making them much more enjoyable than the dry, bare-bones articles often published today.  Furthermore, the inclusion of major historical events on the timeline helped put the discoveries into a context often not discussed in science classes. 

Biomed-relevant features include the following:

• Robert Boyle’s 1666 account of a blood transfusion between two dogs
• Robert Hooke’s 1667 experiment in which he kept a dog alive by blowing through its lungs with bellows
  
• Antonie van Leeuwenhoek’s 1677 observation of "little animals" in rainwater
• Surgeon William Cheselden’s 1727 account of eye surgery which gave a blind boy the ability to recognize colors
• Charles Blagden’s realization in 1775 that evaporative cooling via sweating allows humans to withstand a temperature at which the "greatest part of a beefsteak was pretty well done in 13 minutes" and eggs that were removed after 20 minutes were found to be "roasted quite hard"
• Captain James Cook’s 1776 explanation of how he protected his crew from scurvy aboard HMS Resolution
• A 1791 investigation of Dr. James’s Fever Powder, one of the most omnipresent patented medicines from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century.
• Joseph Lister’s 1858 set of observations on the early stages of inflammation
• The identification in 1904 of the first hormone by Dr. W.M. Bayliss and Professor E.H. Starling
• A 1913 scientific account of the effects of acute exposure to high altitude on the human body as observed on a Pikes Peak expedition led by a team of scientists from Oxford
• Barbara McClintock’s 1930 paper on "jumping genes" capable of moving from one region of the genome to another
• The 1940 development of penicillin into a clinically useful medicine by Howard Florey and others, a breakthrough which revolutionized battlefield medicine during World War II
  
• Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley’s 1934 research on how electrical impulses are generated and conducted along nerve fibers. Beyond the results, the story itself is a good lesson for graduate students everywhere who think they have it bad when MATLAB crashes or a there’s a power outage: Hodgkin and Huxley were delayed for eight years by World War I; and later, when the single existing computer at Cambridge went down, they used a hand-cranked calculator to analyse their data!
• The 1974 characterization of the atomic structure of insulin by Dorothy Hodgkin and colleagues
• Chris Miller’s 1982 demonstration that chloride channels are unique in having two pores per channel

Add to that impressive list Sir Issac Newton’s landmark paper on light and color (1672), Ben Franklin’s account of his famous kite-flying experiment (1752), scientific confirmation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as a musical child genius (1770), Stephen Hawking’s early thoughts on black holes (1970), and more.  While the source of the manuscripts results in a focus on British scientists, it is nonetheless well worth a look:  http://trailblazing.royalsociety.org.