Book Reviews

As originally published in The Physiologist
Volume 45, Number 5, October 2002, page 464

Pavlov?s Physiology Factory: 
Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise
Daniel P. Todes.
Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2001, 504 pp., illus., index, $58. ISBN: 0-8018-6690-1.

    Prince Ol?denburgskii, a philanthropic member of the Russian royal family, conceived, built, organized, staffed, and supervised the Imperial Institute of Medical Research in St. Petersburg. When the Institute opened in 1891, the Prince appointed Ivan Pavlov, a scientific nonentity at the time, director of the Division of Physiology because no more suitable candidate was available. Pavlov was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1904. Daniel Todes chose not to integrate an account of Pavlov?s scientific work and its social and intellectual context with his ongoing biography of Pavlov. Instead, he has written this free-standing book. Todes has mined every pertinent Russian archive, and he has consulted French, German, English, and Scandinavian sources. He has produced a splendid example of the historiography of science.
    Pavlov had a large staff: senior assistants, students, laboratory technicians, and the men who cared for the hundreds of dogs used as subjects in research. The Russian government, in an effort to improve the quality of its medical corps, gave physicians leave for two years to work in scientific laboratories where they would earn the MD degree. As many as 23 at a time worked in Pavlov?s laboratory. They had no scientific training, but they were closely supervised by Pavlov. The dissertations they submitted for the degree were revised and edited by Pavlov, and they often recorded important results.
    Pavlov was the director responsible for the operation of a large factory for the production of knowledge claims. Todes? detailed account of labors on the shop floor tells us how the knowledge claims were manufactured.
    Pavlov studied gastric, pancreatic, and salivary secretion in that order. From the time of Starling onward, we in the West, who wrote textbook accounts of Pavlov?s contributions to the physiology of the digestive tract, had to rely on a few papers in French or German and on the second edition published in 1910 of W. H. Thompson?s translation of Pavlov?s Lectures on the Work of the Digestive Glands. When we read Pavlov?s declaration that meat placed directly in the stomach without arousing any extraneous reflexes stimulates acid secretion because its extractives stimulate endings of nerves in the gastric mucosa, we remembered Pavlov?s belief that all physiological functions are mediated by nerves. Todes does tell us about Pavlov?s reluctant acceptance of humoral control of pancreatic secretion by secretin, but he does tell us about Pavlov?s ultimate capitulation to gastrin. Pavlov?s Lectures refer to 23 of his students? dissertations in Russian, but the descriptions of the work are too brief to be useful. Todes has read the dissertations, and he uses what he has learned.
    Pavlov said the digestive tract is a great chemical factory that performs its operations in a stereotyped and purposive manner. He studied only secretion, and he paid no attention to digestion, motility or absorption. Pavlov showed no sign of interest in E. S. London?s massive study of digestion and absorption of foodstuff by fistulous dogs that were being carried out in the Imperial Institute?s Laboratory of General Pathology from about 1895. Walter B. Cannon?s contemporaneous studies of motility by means of X-rays produced results as important as Pavlov?s, but Pavlov apparently did not know about them.
    Operations of the gastrointestinal tract?s chemical factory are not so stereotyped as Pavlov claimed. In his Lectures on the Work of the Digestive Glands, Pavlov published a figure showing the volume rates of pancreatic secretion in a dog in two experiments in which the dog had been fed 600 ml of milk. The curves are so nearly identical that they could easily be superimposed. Todes reports that Pavlov constructed the curves from two out of 32 similar experiments. No curve drawn from the other 30 would be stereotypical. Todes excuses Pavlov by writing that Pavlov ? ...was, after all, following [Claude] Bernard?s dictum to present one?s ?most perfect experiment as a type,? ?but Pavlov was disingenuous when he used that figure in a book intended to be read by persons unfamiliar with his laboratory practice.?
    Daniel Todes? book gives us much to think about, and we should be grateful to him. 

H. W. Davenport
Birmingham, AL

Performance Standards and Animal Welfare: Definition, Application and Assessment
Parts I and II 
Gonder, Smeby, Wolfle
Madison, WI: Omni Press, 2001, 81 pp., $25.00

    The book Performance Standards and Animal Welfare: Definition, Application and Assessment: Parts I and II presents a summary of two related conferences sponsored by the Scientists Center for Animal Welfare (SCAW) that were held in June 1997 and May 1998. These conferences focused on an important topic in the development and management of programs for the care and use of research animals. The growing acceptance of performance standards by regulatory and oversight agencies offers greater flexibility to regulated institutions in achieving their research objectives and regulatory mandates in practical ways as compared to the imposition of rigid and perhaps arbitrary engineering standards of practice. However, the implementation of performance standards has perhaps out-paced the dissemination of information regarding how to appropriately develop and validate a performance-based program or activity. Thus, the topic of these conferences is timely. The book represents a summary of information and perspectives that could be useful to persons involved in program development for the care and use of research animals.
    Part I of the book introduces the concept of performance standards with the succinct statement that they ?define an outcome in detail and provide criteria for assessing that outcome, but do not limit the methods by which to achieve that outcome.? The three broad topic areas of the first conference are then reviewed. First, ?Enrichment of the Environment? Benefits to the Animals? focuses on the interpretation of USDA requirements for environmental enrichment of nonhuman primates and exercise for dogs, with the general conclusion that even well-implemented enrichment and/or exercise programs alone may not alleviate behavioral problems exhibited by these species. Next, ?Interpreting the Standards? provides an overview of the perspective of the three major animal research oversight agencies?the USDA, OPRR, and AAALAC. The primary emphasis of this section is that although federal regulations and the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals are performance-oriented, implementation procedures at regulated institutions should be well-defined, perhaps similar to engineering standards, and must have documented effectiveness. The final topic of this conference, ?Facilities and Equipment,? provides the useful synopsis that establishing performance standards for any process requires four elements: 1) to set the goal, 2) to define necessary measurements, 3) to establish the necessary frequency of measurements, and 4) to verify that target criteria are met.
    Topics for Part II were selected at least in part based on a survey in which Part I participants were asked to identify programs that they had found difficult to develop and oversee using a performance-based approach. ?Occupational Health and Safety? was overwhelmingly the primary problem area mentioned. Accordingly, the book devotes considerable discussion to risk assessment and evaluation strategies particularly as applied to allergies, biohazards, and zoonotic disease. Other topics addressed are ?Assurance of Performance Standards at Multiple Sites,? ?Surgery and Postoperative Care,? ?Animal Welfare: Introduction,? and ?Performance Standards and the Inextricable Link between Colony Management and Behavior Research.? Finally, two case reports illustrate the use of performance-based methods to investigate the acceptability of extending cage changing intervals and increasing the caging density for mice. 
    The book is primarily example-driven rather than prescriptive, and the text presents many useful and interesting examples of concepts that may be rather mysterious to those who are regulated under the ?performance standard? rubric. The book is, therefore, perhaps a useful introduction to these topics. The narrative style of writing makes the book quite easy to read, although in several places the text seems somewhat rambling and poorly organized. The major weakness of the book, however, is the lack of references. This reader was continually intrigued by some statements but then frustrated by the absence of a reference that could provide additional information or documentation. Although the book offers some useful opinions, the absence of appropriate references severely limits the potential value of the book as a data resource. In addition, the book was not indexed, which also greatly reduces its utility as a resource by making it very difficult for readers to locate topics of interest within the body of the text. A more satisfactory approach to presenting this information might have been to compile a series of chapters written and referenced by the conference participants, as SCAW has published in the past. 

Linda A. Toth
Southern Illinois University 

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