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The Blechschmidt collection. The Institute of Anatomy at the University of Göttingen houses this impressive collection of 64 models of human embryos on average 0.75 m tall. Each was produced by cutting the structures of interest out of wax plates corresponding to highly magnified serial sections, stacking them up to create a mould for a plastic solution, and then removing the wax when it had set hard. The collection is still used for teaching and may be visited by appointment.
Photograph from 1963–4, courtesy of Gerd Steding.
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A German modelling project. Though the Carnegie Department dominated human embryology in the mid-twentieth century, scientists elsewhere pursued related research. The next most important project was by the Göttingen anatomist Erich Blechschmidt (1904–92), who independently developed new methods of reconstruction. Blechschmidt saw himself as following His in seeking through descriptive work to construct a ‘physics of the germ’. He also opposed Haeckel’s legacy. Yet Blechschmidt not only used embryology against abortion-law reform, by rejecting evolution he placed himself outside the biological mainstream. Many scientists nevertheless admired his reconstructions.
The Carnegie Department of Embryology
The new institution collected more human embryos in one place than ever before, made sophisticated 3-D reconstructions and set up an authoritative staging system.
The early twentieth century brought a bustle of institutional innovation in human and comparative vertebrate embryology. Building on Franz Keibel’s normal-plate project an International Institute of Embryology was established in 1911 to facilitate collection of embryos from rare colonial mammals. Human embryology also gained a major research institute of its own. Franklin P. Mall, His’s former student and the first professor of anatomy at the Johns Hopkins University, founded the Carnegie Department in 1914.
Embryo collecting expanded dramatically. ‘Twenty-five years ago it took 10 years to collect our first hundred specimens’, Mall wrote in 1917, but ‘since [the collection] has been taken over by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 400 specimens have been collected each year’. He and his successors used their position in a prestigious medical school to build a network of embryo-suppliers among gynæcologists. The collection, over 8,000 by the early 1940s, was stored in a fireproof vault. Developing His’s techniques, it was analyzed by a team of scientists, technicians, artists and photographers.
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The Carnegie collection. The cabinets on our left contain the microscope slides and those on our right the associated records; the reconstructions that formed an important part of the collection are not shown. Two scientists are posed with assistant Ellen P. Monaghan; only a few researchers, notably Elizabeth Ramsey, were women. The photograph was probably taken in the early 1960s, shortly after the Department moved to a new building on Johns Hopkins’ Homewood campus. Today the collection is at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C.
Carnegie Institution of Washington Archives.
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The Carnegie collection with staff, early 1960s
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| The modeller Osborne O. Heard. Modelling was so important that the Department set aside a special room and hired a full-time artist instead of relying on private ateliers. Mall recruited Osborne O. Heard (1891–1983), an engineer’s pattern maker and art student, in 1913. The scientists assigned problems to Heard, but he enjoyed much freedom in the production of models he called ‘studies’. Here, nearing retirement, he is featured in an article about his hobby, mountain climbing. He is shown drawing, with three of his many reconstructions. These were made by a lost-wax process and are considerably more detailed than the Zieglers’ models.
From Spencer L. Davidson, ‘The man who really slowed up’, magazine clipping, c.1956.
Carnegie Institution of Washington Archives, Embryology 3/3.
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The modeller Osborne O. Heard, c.1956
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