Nobel Prize Winners Notebooks Windows on Laboratory Life – PART I

by Katrina Dean, University Archivist

Attempt to establish common cold virus, 15 April 1936, University of Melbourne Archives, Frank Macfarlane Burnet Papers, Laboratory Notebook - Bacteriophage Experiments and Infectious Diseases, 1986.0107.00011 Part 2. — Attempt to establish common cold virus, 15 April 1936, University of Melbourne Archives, Frank Macfarlane Burnet Papers, Laboratory Notebook – Bacteriophage Experiments and Infectious Diseases, 1986.0107.00011 Part 2.

In the Melbourne winter of 1935 Frank Macfarlane Burnet, Head of the Virology Department at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) felt himself coming down with a cold. Instead of drinking a cup of tea or going home to lie down, he took a sample of his nasal mucous and tried to establish the virus on the outside layer of a chick egg embryo. This was Burnet’s technique for growing and studying viruses that he developed as a research fellow a few years earlier at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. A model of this technique as well as Burnet’s notebook is on display at the Melbourne Museum as part of its Biomedical Breakthroughs exhibition until 22 January 2017. Burnet’s sketches in the notebook depict the replication of a cold virus and he notes the end of the experiment, contaminated by a staphylococcus bacterium. The propensity of experiments to fail, for the wrong organisms to grow, or uncertainty about what was being looked at are just a few of the practical insights into laboratory life gained from Burnet’s notebooks.

Opening of Biomedical Breakthroughs exhibition at the Melbourne Museum. Photograph by Marc Gambino courtesy of Melbourne Museum. The white hanging installation top right shows a lymph node, that lights up to show B cell activity within the lymph node, part of the immune system described by Burnet’s clonal selection theory. This sculpture hangs above a showcase displaying Burnets laboratory notebook, his Nobel prize, and some information about his chicken egg culture technique, still used today to make and research vaccines. — Opening of Biomedical Breakthroughs exhibition at the Melbourne Museum. Photograph by Marc Gambino courtesy of Melbourne Museum. The white hanging installation top right shows a lymph node, that lights up to show B cell activity within the lymph node, part of the immune system described by Burnet’s clonal selection theory. This sculpture hangs above a showcase displaying Burnet’s laboratory notebook, his Nobel prize, and some information about his chicken egg culture technique, still used today to make and research vaccines.

One of Melbourne’s most famous scientists, Burnet shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine with Peter Medawar for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance in 1960. Five notebooks from Burnet’s substantial archive at the University of Melbourne document his journey from the common cold to immunology. These have been digitised and are for the first time available online worldwide. Detailing experiments, summaries of research at WEHI, ideas for research and notes on epidemiology these notebooks contain unexpected glimpses of Burnet’s life from family holidays and illnesses to his notes on the international situation and its local echoes in World War Two Melbourne. They reveal not just how much the practice of science has changed in the last 80 years, but also the nature of recording science.

Seventeenth century founders of the Royal Society like Robert Boyle, John Ray and Robert Hooke transformed the humanist tradition of commonplace books containing maxims, proverbs and quotations into a long-term quest for the empirical accumulation of facts and knowledge. According to early modern historian Richard Yeo, note-taking dealt with ‘the proliferation of printed books’ also ‘assembling and securing information books did not supply’. Memory was no longer sufficient in the accumulation of knowledge so ‘they made note-taking and information science a crucial part of the modern scientific ethos’. The scientific revolution valuing empirical knowledge and its demonstration in experiments was also an information revolution.

Since this reimagining of knowledge through notes, scientific notebooks have served a wide range of purposes. They have been used to separate private from public information, detail recipes and processes, for numerical accounting, standardisation, data sharing, visualisation and cognitive modelling, as a research technique, in management and for delineating ‘investigative pathways’. Some of these uses are evident in Burnet’s notebooks. Notebooks can be messy, ugly and impenetrable, but also things of beauty.

Scenes from Frank Macfarlane Burnet’s early hiking diary, 1920. The first image is titled The Jordan Valley (North East of Warburton), December 10, 1920. Burnet notes ‘Le grand tour commenced a 4 o’clock in an exodus in weird garb’. The second is a view from behind of Burnet or a companion carrying a swag. Diary / Sketchbook - F.M. Burnet, University of Melbourne Archives, Frank Macfarlane Burnet Papers 1986.0107, 2-5 Box 7 — Scenes from Frank Macfarlane Burnet’s early hiking diary, 1920. The first image is titled The Jordan Valley (North East of Warburton), December 10, 1920. Burnet notes ‘Le grand tour commenced a 4 o’clock in an exodus in weird garb’. The second is a view from behind of Burnet or a companion carrying a swag. Diary / Sketchbook – F.M. Burnet, University of Melbourne Archives, Frank Macfarlane Burnet Papers 1986.0107, 2-5 Box 7

Burnet’s laboratory notebooks have a precursor in his diaries and field notebooks kept while he was a student at Ormond College at the University of Melbourne. A shy young man from country Victoria, Burnet took comfort in the Australian bush and from an early age developed and sustained a passion for beetle collecting, like nineteenth century evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin. An accomplished sketcher, these are delightful renderings of Burnet’s otherwise lonely student days, with intricate scenes of hikes in the Yarra Valley and of the specimens Burnet collected. Unsurprisingly, Burnet’s laboratory notebooks retain many elements of field notebooks identified by US ecologist and historian of field science Michael Canfield, including the diary, journal, data and catalogue, with hand-drawn illustrations. Three examples suggest a laboratory life differing in many respects from today’s and provide fascinating insights into the broader context of a Melbourne biomedical research institute between the 1930s and the 1960s.

Burnet’s attempt to culture the cold virus from a sample taken from him-self was not a one-off. His laboratory notes especially in 1935 and 1936 (1986.0107.00011) record several attempts at self-experimentation and recruitment of volunteers among the staff and associates of the Institute including Burnet, nurses, family and friends (including children) through the collection of samples and attempts at infection, inoculation, and tests of antibody production. One such episode is described in Burnet’s biography by Christopher Sexton. Early in World War Two a group of 18 medical student volunteers were taken to Rosebud on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria and infected with non-virulent or virulent strains of influenza to study their reactions, providing Burnet with important clues about the effectiveness of virus strains cultivated on chick-egg embryos in humans and antibody production. Burnet’s main goal in this period was to develop a vaccine to protect against influenza outbreaks in the military services. He followed up with a similar experiment among 107 army volunteers at Caulfield racecourse in Melbourne in 1942. In the light of today’s protocols for clinical trials, this may seem irregular, but such experiments were not considered dangerous, unethical or biased and can be placed in a long tradition of self and volunteer experimentation in the history of science. In fact the two competing projects to sequence the human genome at the turn of the 21^st century both sourced their DNA samples from scientists working on the projects.

Continues – Part II here

Nobel Prize Winners Notebooks Windows on Laboratory Life – PART II

by Katrina Dean, University Archivist

(read Nobel Prize Winners Notebooks Windows on Laboratory Life – PART I here)

Portrait of Dora Lush, courtesy of Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

When a serious accident in Burnet’s laboratory did happen, self-experimentation was not the cause. An experienced researcher with a growing scientific reputation, Dora Lush had recently returned to Melbourne from a fellowship at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. In 1943 while inoculating animals to develop a vaccination for scrub typhus a tropical disease caused by a ricksettia (a form of bacteria) she accidently injected her-self in the hand when the needle slipped. As told in the Biomedical Breakthroughs exhibition, Lush became seriously ill and died within a few weeks. The progress of scrub typhus research is described in one of Burnet’s notebooks (1986.0107.00015). His summary for May 4^th reports: ‘No advance in scrub typhus work. Miss Lush has infected finger ? due to ricksesttia. None of the strains are yet growing adequately in yolk sac.’ The June 3^rd entry simply reads: ‘Miss Lush died of infection on May 20^th. Williams carrying on.’

Burnet often refers to his research assistants throughout the notebooks. These were all women with whom he worked alongside individually: Margot McKie (1928-1934), Mavis Freeman (1928-1940), Dora Lush (1934-1939), Diana Bull (1941-1943), Joyce Stone (1944-1950), Patricia Lind (1944-1965), Margaret Edney (1948-1956), Margaret Gilpin (1948-1949), Margaret Holmes (1958-1965) and his daughter, Debra Burnet (1960-1962, 1963-1964). Rather than working in large groups, these scientific partnerships were part of Burnet’ ‘small’, low technology approach science in the Institute, which changed when he retired in 1965. Their experiments and observations are often mentioned in the notebooks, along with delays to a line of research because one of Burnet’s assistants is away.

Photograph of Frank Macfarlane Burnet ‘at the bench’, University of Melbourne Archives, Frank Macfarlane Burnet Papers, 1986.0107.00056

Another observation is the number and variety of animals, humans and biomaterials that entered and exited the laboratory. We often think of biomedical laboratories today as being self-contained, highly secure environments. Biomedical breakthroughs are often associated with a single experimental organism, such as the geneticist’s fruit-fly Drosophila or worm C.elegans. The Howard Florey Institute for Experimental Physiology and Medicine across the road from WEHI on Royal Parade was at one time known as ‘The Sheep Hilton’. According to Sexton, Burnet collected his strains of bacteriophages (viruses infecting and replicating with bacteria) from the faeces of farm animals on his brother’s farm in Gippsland and took these with him to England when commencing his virology research fellowship at the National Institute for Medical Research in 1932. In 1933, virus research in Melbourne was given a boost when Burnet returned to WEHI with an old brown suitcase containing a collection of standard strains of viruses from the National Institute’s collection, including vaccinia, neurovaccinia, cowpox, fowlpox and canary pox viruses, and the Rockefeller strain of herpes simplex. Burnet further mentions in his notebooks parrots and human sputum (Psittacosis), monkeys (Polio), chick egg embryos (Influenza and other viruses), guinea pigs, ferrets , possums (Myxomatosis), sheep (Louping Ill), and human brain tissue. In this period, WEHI interacted widely with the outside world through the movement of biomaterials, animals and people, connected to both local and international networks of virus research.

How would Burnet’s laboratory notebooks measure up today? Increasingly, standardised laboratory notebooks including electronic notebooks are being retained for scrutiny by other researchers, administrators, lawyers and commercial partners. Sharing and re-using data, research integrity and the protection of intellectual property drive these developments. The shift from private to public document implies a changed understanding of what information is relevant to include. Even in the field sciences, scientists who make this shift notice the difference. According to late US botanist Jim Reveal, who moved to a computer based notebook in 1998 ‘my mental editor says “no, that is not proper for a scientific journal”. ‘Emotions of finding something new, once mentioned in my handwritten field books, are now missing.’

Many historical facts including the names of people working in the laboratory, details of recruitment for clinical research, animal experimentation and sourcing and use of biomaterials could likely be extracted from today’s electronic notebooks. Their juxtaposition in Burnet’s hand with sketches alongside details of his holidays, family illnesses, ideas, publication deals, current affairs and career highlights brings the page to life in a way that suggests connections and narratives, a richly decorated window on laboratory life.

After 1948, Burnet’s detailed summaries of goings on in the laboratory end. His last experiments with Margaret Holmes on autoimmune pathology in New Zealand Black Mice are documented in two laboratory notebooks dating 1960-1965 (1986.0107.00013; 1986.0107.00014). What can account for these gaps? Burnet became the Director of WEHI in 1944, so maybe he was too busy for work at the bench? Or maybe research assistants kept records that weren’t collected? Maybe laboratory notes are dispersed throughout the rest of his papers? To answer these questions, researchers would need to start with a conceptual map of his archive. At the very least, Burnet’s notebooks remind us that science is a human endeavour.

Mother’s Day card, University of Melbourne Archives Frank Macfarlane Burnet Papers, inserted in Experiments and InLaboratory Notebook – Bacteriophage Experiments and Infectious Diseases, 1986.01017.00011 Part 1. — Mother’s Day card, University of Melbourne Archives Frank Macfarlane Burnet Papers, inserted in Laboratory Notebook – Bacteriophage Experiments and Infectious Diseases, 1986.01017.00011 Part 1.

The digitised collection is available online with further details about Burnet’s notebooks and collection at the University of Melbourne Archives.

Wombat, wombach, whom-batt wonder: early scientific ‘trafficking’ of marsupalia to Europe

The unique fauna of Australia intrigued, bemused and excited the imagination of their European ‘discovers’ from the moment of the first animal sightings in the late 18^th century. One of these puzzling oddities was the wombat, which was described as a type of bear or a badger by northern naturalists grappling to classify the strange animal within existing scientific taxonomies, and said to taste of ‘tough mutton’ by sailors eager to sample fresh meat after many months at sea.

The nocturnal and retiring habits of the wombat appear to have protected it from the notice of the expeditionary voyages of James Cook, and the exploration parties associated with the first settlers. Indeed it was almost a decade after settlement before the first wombat was sighted (February 1797), shortly ahead of the platypus (November 1797), koala (January 1798) and Tasmanian tiger (1805), though all were preceded by the discovery of the echidna (1792). The earliest description of a kangaroo (or more precisely a wallaby) was made in Francois Pelsaert‘s 1629 account of the shipwrecked Batavia, though this report seems to have been unknown to Cook, who remarks on a kind of jumping ‘grey hound’ in his Endeavour journal of 24 June 1770.

As a group these strange pouched and egg-laying creatures presented a distinct challenge to European classifiers, as articulated by James Edward Smith (1759-1828), founder of the Linnean Society:

When [one] first enters on the investigation of so remote a country as New Holland, he finds himself as it were in a new world. He can scarcely meet with any fixed points from whence to draw his analogies.

The first transported wombat

If you should ever find yourself in Newcastle upon Tyne, visit if you can the Great Northern Museum of natural history and archaeology, and utter a friendly ‘wombat-cough’ to a well-connected and well-travelled 218 year old stuffed Tasmanian wombat, the first specimen to be transported from Australia to Europe.

After several wombat sightings in 1797, a live female specimen was captured on Cape Barren Island (Bass Strait) in March 1798 by a party of British naval officers (including a young Matthew Flinders). The creature was taken by ship to Sydney and presented to amateur naturalist and Governor of New South Wales, John Hunter, where the ill-fated marsupial died after six weeks in captivity. Hunter wrote of the unfortunate animal:

it was exceedingly weak when it arrived, as it had, during its confinement on board, refused every kind of sustenance, except a small quantity of boiled rice, which was forced down its throat.

Not wanting to let the opportunity for scientific research lapse, Hunter had the corpse preserved in alcohol and shipped to his friend Sir Joseph Banks (President of the Royal Society) in London for more detailed taxonomic examination. In 1799 the soused specimen was barrelled onwards to the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle (of which Hunter was a corresponding member), but not before the cask broke open, almost suffocating its carrier in ‘pungent and foul-smelling spirits’. There Thomas Bewick prepared an engraving of the wombat (based on an original drawing by Hunter) which was printed in the fourth edition of his A general history of quadrupeds (1800), becoming the first published illustration of the animal.

The ‘traffic’ in wombat specimens

From the early 1800s an increasing number of preserved wombats were shipped to Europe for dissemination amongst scientific circles. Several other wombat pioneers found themselves unwitting live specimens, who were met with wonder and curiosity on disembarkation. These included a wombat collected by the Scottish botanist Robert Brown (1773-1858) which he passed over to his friend, British surgeon and anatomist Everard Home (1756-1832), under whose watchful guardianship it lived cheerfully for two years:

It was not wanting in intelligence, and appeared attached to those to whom it was accustomed, and who were kind to it. When it saw them, it would put up its fore paws on the knee, and when taken up would sleep in the lap. [1808]

The British were not the only nation with a thirst for scientific discovery, and the rival Pacific expeditions of the French also resulted in the capture and repatriation of marsupial specimens. Three live wombats collected on the voyages of the Geographe and the Naturaliste commanded by Nicholas Baudin survived to arrive in France in 1803, at least one of which may have become the pet of Empress Josephine at Château de Malmaison.

A recent acquisition: Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s natural history studies, 1834-1835

The Baillieu Library is fortunate to have recently acquired a copy of the 1834-1835 published studies of the distinguished French naturalist Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844). The volume includes two detailed papers on the platypus and echidna, and a skilfully rendered fold-out illustration of pair of wombats placed in a naturalistic setting. As director of the Natural History Museum in Paris, Geoffroy was also administrator of the former Royal Menagerie, which had been relocated to the Jardin des Plantes after the French Revolution. Here he could observe at first hand exotic animals which had been collected from a variety of sources, many of them previously held in private hands. One of the more grisly directives following the 1789 revolution was that all exotic pets had to be turned over live to the former royal collection, or otherwise killed and given to the Jardin des Plantes for scientific studies, such as Geoffroy’s. It seems that our two ‘French’ wombats were amongst the lucky survivors.

Susan Thomas, Rare Books Curator

Bibliography and further reading:

Australian Broadcasting Commission. ‘The wombat boy’, Australian Story Program Archives, 25 March 2002 http://www.abc.net.au/austory/archives/2002/05_AustoryArchives2002Idx_Monday25March2002.htm

Cowley, Des & Brian Hubber. ‘Distinct creation: early European images of Australian animals’, The LaTrobe journal, no.66, Spring 2000, pp. 3-32.

‘The first wombat to leave Australia’ http://pickle.nine.com.au/2016/09/15/11/33/first-wombat-to-leave-australia

Flinders, Matthew. A voyage to Terra Australis undertaken for the purpose of completing the discovery of that vast country, and prosecuted in the years 1801, 1802 and 1803… Volume 1. London: Printed by W. Bulmer and Co., and published by G. and W. Nicol, 1814.

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Etienne. Etudes progressives d’un naturaliste pendant les années 1834 et 1835 : faisant suite a ses publications dans les 42 volumes des mémoires et annales du Museum d’Historie Naturelle. Paris: Chez Roret, 1835.

Pigott, L.J. & Jessop, L. ‘The governor’s wombat: early history of an Australian marsupial’, Archives of Natural History, v. 34, 2007, pp. 207-218.

‘The tale of a wombat: a journey from Australia to Newcastle upon Tyne’, The Guardian, 30 December 2013 https://www.theguardian.com/science/animal-magic/2013/dec/30/wombat-australia-to-newcastle-upon-tyne

Woodford, James. The secret life of wombats. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2001.

Metal crafts, printmaking and the acquisition of a nielli print

Looking at a work of art on paper, it can be difficult to imagine the close relationship between a print, and metal craft. Yet printmaking owes much of its legacy to metal arts and this affiliation was more apparent in early western prints as many of the masters learned their art from the metal smiths, such as Albrecht Dürer who was the son of a goldsmith and was familiar with that art. In the 15th century and early 16th century many experiments and innovations in printmaking took place in the design of metal (from which printed impressions are taken). Some of these early techniques were short-lived and are now unfamiliar to 21st century audiences.

One such technique thought to have developed in Italy is nielli printing which was practiced up to the 16th century. This is technique utilises an engraved decorative design on silver in which lines are filled with ‘niello,’ a black chemical substance, which contrasts with the silver. Before niello is applied to the metalwork, the lines are filled with ink and an impression taken, and this is a neilli print. Rare examples of niello objects and their impressions are held in the British Museum. The Baillieu Library Print Collection has acquired its first example of a neilli print and like most of these impressions it is tiny work measuring only 4.2 centimetres diameter.

The portrait depicts Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1351-1402) who became the first Duke of Milan. While the artist of this nielli print is uncertain, the portrait was adapted from an effigy that adorned the monastery Certosa di Pavia. Another version of this effigy was engraved by Agostino Carracci for the book Cremona fedelissima città, et nobilissima colonia de Romani published in 1585.

Another substantial example of metal craft held in the Baillieu Library is the Wilson Hall presentation set organised by the Walsh Brothers. The set comprising trowel, mallet, mortar board and their box was given to Sir Samuel Wilson on 2 October 1879 by Sir Redmond Barry, on behalf of the Council of The University for use during the ceremonial laying of the memorial stone for Wilson Hall. If the ornate silver trowel from this set were to be inked, it is easier to imagine its decorative design appearing in reverse on a sheet of paper, just as nielli prints were made directly from metal objects.

Other examples from the Print Collection displaying the relationship between metal work and prints include designs for medallions and ornamental decorations.

Further reading

Arthur M. Hind, Early Italian engraving: a critical catalogue with complete reproduction of all the prints described, London: Pub. for M. Knoedler, New York, by B. Quaritch, 1938-1948

Cricket on the fore-edge: finding hidden paintings within the page-ends of books

Next time you open a book from the late 18^th or 19^th century, take time to gently fan the pages. If you are lucky you may be surprised to find a hidden fore-edge painting lying unexpectedly within.

Fore-edge painting

The fore-edge of a book is the long open side opposite the spine where the page edges are exposed to view, and the side from which you enter to turn the pages of the text. The painting of decorative pictures on the fore-edge of books gained momentum in the 1750s, when it became a signature device of the Halifax, Yorkshire bookbinding firm Edwards. These watercolour illustrations were applied to the book edge whilst the fanned surface was held in a brace. Once dry, the book was allowed to relax to its normal position with the fore-edge painting cleverly retreating inside, out of immediate view. The closed fore-edge was often painted over in gold pigment, to cover the residual traces of watercolour that were sometimes faintly observable.

The technique of using the fore-edge to record information on books can be traced as far back as the 900s. In modern book shelving systems, the fore-edge faces towards the back of the shelf, but in the medieval period, books were commonly shelved on their side and/or in chests, with the fore-edge facing outwards and open to view. As the heavy leather bindings were difficult to write on, the fore-edges were inscribed with the title of the book or with a rudimentary shelf mark to aid identification, in much the same way that call numbers are attached to the spines of library books today.

Felicia Hemans and her poem, Casabianca

At first glance this elegant volume of poems by Felicia Hemans (1793-1835) is no different to many of similar age and provenance in the Rare Books Collection. But if you slowly splay the page edges and look again, a hidden image of a cricket field appears which did not seem to be there when the book was lying flat in its closed position. The effect is curiously captivating and you find yourself fanning the pages again to make sure, and miraculously the picture reappears!

Felicia Hemans was a prolific English poet, who spent much of her life in Wales, and whose early work gained the attention of Shelley, with whom she briefly corresponded. Her poem, Casabianca, is well known, especially for its oft repeated first line:

The boy stood on the burning deck,

Whence all but he had fled;

The flame that lit the battle’s wreck,

Shone round him o’er the dead…

The poem, which continues for another nine stanzas, tells of the heroism of a 13-year old boy, Giocante Casabianca, son of the Admiral of the Orient at the Battle of the Nile (1798). After the ship had caught fire and all guns had been abandoned, he remained at his post, and subsequently died in the tremendous explosion when the flames reached the gunpowder store.

Parodies of ‘The boy who stood on the burning deck’

On a more humorous note, the poem has also been much parodied since it was first published in 1826, including the following by English comedian Eric Morcombe (1926-1984):

The boy stood on the burning deck,

His lips were all a-quiver;

He gave a cough, his leg fell off,

And floated down the river.

And to accompany our cricketing scene, a contribution attributed to that great wit Anonymous:

The boy stood on the burning deck,

Playing a game of cricket;

The ball rolled up his trouser leg,

And hit his middle wicket.

Susan Thomas, Rare Books Curator

Bibliography & further reading:

Hemans, Felicia. The poetical works of Mrs Hemans. London : Frederick Warne, [1880?]

Weber, Carl. Fore-edge painting : a historical survey of a curious art in book decoration.

Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y. : Harvey House, c1966.

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