Experimental Embryology by Morgan, T.H - 1927

New York: Columbia University Press, 1927. First edition, first printing.

NOBEL LAUREATE TH MORGAN'S REVIEW OF 30 YEARS OF EXPERIMENTAL EMBRYOLOGY SINCE HIS MONOGRAPH ON THE FROG'S EGG IN 1897.

15x23.5 cm hardcover, black cloth binding, blinstamped with colophon of Columbia University press, spine gilt, sigature of Edith E. Rae, 1929 top of front free endpaper, color frontis showing development of the centirfuged eggs of Arbacia, i-xi, 766 pp, 263 figures, 100 page bibliography. Edges rubbed, scattered marginal pencil notatons, very good in custom archival mylar cover. From the Preface: "Between the years 1897, when I brought together the someswhat meagre results of experimental embryology in my book on The Development of the Frog's Egg: An Introduction to Experimental Embryology," and the present time, 1927, a very extenive literature has grown up covering a wide field of experimental research in embryology. Those who have followed this growth realize that many changes in outlook have taken place. The analysis of the first-found results of the experimental study of development of the egg, called Developmental Mechanics, soon became entangled in futile philosophical discussions about vitalism versus mechanism. Some discouragement and relapse was inevitable, but nevertheless a small band of individuals kept at work inventing newer and better methods of objective study, and trying out new experimental tests. There followed a period in which more attention was given to the study of embryological problems from a purely physiological standpoint and by chemical methods. This seemed to be, and was, an improvement, but was compromised to some extent by ignoring the facts then known, showing that the structure of the egg cannot be disregarded if showing that its development, rather than its chemical composition, is the goal to be sought. Nevertheless, the study of the chemical field has made many valuable additions to our knowledge. Meanwhile the realization that protoplasm contains materials in the colloidal state pointed to new possibilities unsuspected before by embryologists. Other openings appeared, notably the possibility of treating the developmental process as a system whose reactions could be measured by physical standards, and interpreted in terms of physical constants." Cited in Rainger American Development of Biology (1988): "Morgan had used the nuclear envelope as a conceptual and disciplinary barrier. Geneticists study the transmission of genetic traits within the nucleus, embryologists study the expression of those traits in the cytoplasm. This division was to allow each discipline to proceed separately. Thomas Hunt Morgan was an embryologist who inadvertentlv founded the gene theory in 1911. While the Mendelian geneticists had been analyzing the segregation of characters from one generation to another, Morgan investigated whether changes in the nuclear composition of an organism affected its development. The years 1911 to 1915 saw the emergence of a new discipline-genetics. Although genetics would eventually come to influence all areas of biological study, the first to feel its effects was its parent discipline, embryology, for the experimental embryology pioneered by Roux and Weismann in the 1880s saw the problems of inheritance and development as the same. … However, in the years following 1910, Morgan drove a wedge into embryology, splitting it into two divisions comprising the embryologists and the new geneticists. Morgan's refusal to integrate genetics and embryology and his extremely flexible, even epigenetic, view of the gene opened the way for others to attempt the synthesis. PROVENANCE: Edith E. Rae was an experimental embryologisst at Mount Holyoke College.