H. Newell Martin

Henry Newell Martin, FRS (1 July 1848 – 27 October 1896) was a British physiologist and vivisection activist.

H. Newell Martin

Biography

He was born in Newry, County Down, the son of Henry Martin, a Congregational minister. He was educated at University College, London and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1870, took the Part I Natural Sciences in 1873, and graduated B.A. in 1874. At the University of London, where he had graduated B.Sc. in 1870, he went on to become M.B. in 1871, and D.Sc. in 1872.[1]

Martin worked as demonstrator to Michael Foster of Trinity College from 1870 to 1876; and was a Fellow of Christ's College for five years from 1874.[1] Daniel Coit Gilman of Johns Hopkins University, on advice from Foster and Thomas Huxley, hired Martin in 1876 and set up the university's Biology Department around him.[2][3]

Martin was appointed to the university's first professorship of physiology, one of the first five full professors appointed to the Hopkins faculty. It was understood that he would be laying the foundation for a medical school: Johns Hopkins School of Medicine eventually opened in 1893.[4]

Having delivered the Croonian Lecture in 1883 on "The Direct Influence of Gradual Variations of Temperature upon the Rate of Beat of the Dog's Heart", Martin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1885.[5]

Martin's scientific career was curtailed around 1893, by alcoholism. He died on 27 October 1896 in Burley-in-Wharfedale, Yorkshire.[1]

Work

Martin developed the first isolated mammalian heart lung preparation (described in 1881), which Ernest Henry Starling later used.[6] He collaborated with George Nuttall, at Baltimore for a year around 1885.[7] With the hiring of William Keith Brooks came the opening of the Chesapeake Zoological Laboratory. It conducted its work at stations from Beaufort, North Carolina, to the Bahamas, studying marine life and interdependencies between species.[4]

Views

Martin represented and spread the views of the Cambridge school of physiology around Michael Foster, which took account in a basic way of the theory of evolution.[8] He co-wrote A Course of Practical Instruction in Elementary Biology (1875) with Thomas Huxley, a leading proponent of evolution. It was based on Huxley's annual summer course, given since 1871, of laboratory teaching for future science teachers; and concentrated on a small number of types of plants and animals.[9]

Biology labs were under attack by those opposed to experiments on live animals, a procedure known as vivisection. Martin defended vivisection, stating "Physiology is concerned with the phenomena going on in living things, and vital processes cannot be observed in dead bodies." He invited visitors to his lab to observe experiments.[4]

Selected publications

Personal life

In 1879, Martin married Hetty Cary, widow of Confederate General John Pegram.[10]

References
  1. "Martin, Henry Newell (MRTN870HN)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  2. Benson, Keith R. (1987). "H. Newell Martin, W. K. Brooks, and the Reformation of American Biology". American Zoologist. 27 (3): 761. doi:10.1093/icb/27.3.759. ISSN 0003-1569. JSTOR 3883157.
  3. John C. French, A History of the University Founded by Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, 1946)
  4. Hugh Hawkins, Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University, 1874-1889 (Ithaca, NY, 1960)
  5. Martin, H Newell (1 January 1883). "The Direct Influence of Gradual Variations of Temperature upon the Rate of Beat of the Dog's Heart". Philos Trans R Soc Lond. London. 174: 663–688. doi:10.1098/rstl.1883.0021. hdl:2027/nnc2.ark:/13960/t7pn9td9j. S2CID 110481064.
  6. Fye, W. B. (1986). "H. Newell Martin and the isolated heart preparation: The link between the frog and open heart surgery". Circulation. 73 (5): 857–64. doi:10.1161/01.cir.73.5.857. PMID 3516445.
  7. O'Connor, W. J. (1991). British Physiologists 1885-1914: A Biographical Dictionary. Manchester University Press. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-7190-3282-0.
  8. Romano, Terrie M. "Foster, Sir Michael (1836–1907)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33218. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  9. Desmond, Adrian. "Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825–1895)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/14320. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  10. "The tragedy, folly of a Baltimore Rebel's life". The Washington Times, LLC. 28 July 2007. Retrieved 13 July 2018.
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