An Asymmetrical Network: National and International Dimensions of the Development of Mexican Physiology.

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol. 0, No. 0, pp. 1–21 doi: 10.1093/jhmas/jrv011

MARCOS CUETO A B S T R AC T This article examines the history of Mexican physiology during the period 1910–60 when two noted investigators, José J. Izquierdo, first, and Arturo Rosenblueth, second, inscribed their work into an international network of medical research. The network had at its center the laboratory of Walter B. Cannon at Harvard University. The Rockefeller Foundation was its main supporter. Rosenblueth was quite familiar with the network because he worked with Cannon at Harvard for over ten years before returning to Mexico in the early 1940s. Izquierdo and Rosenblueth developed different strategies to face adverse conditions such as insufficient laboratory equipment, inadequate library resources, a small scientific community, and ephemeral political support. Both acquired local influence and international prestige, but the sources of financial and academic power remained in the United States. This case study provides insight into the circulation of scientific ideas and practices in an important Latin American country and suggests that the world’s circulation of science among industrial and developing nations during the mid-twentieth century was intrinsically asymmetric but opened temporary opportunities for talented individuals and group of researchers. K E Y WO R D S : Mexico, physiology, Walter B. Cannon, José J. Izquierdo, Arturo Rosenblueth, Rockefeller Foundation

Recent studies on the history of science in developing countries provide perspective on the global circulation of scientific knowledge, directing attention to the transnational move of books, instruments, ideas, and researchers.1 Historians of science have disputed the universality of science, examining how locally collected knowledge becomes validated for global consumption, and how it is inscribed in theoretical models. These studies Av. Brasil, 4365, Rio de Janeiro, RJ CEP 21040-900, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, FIOCRUZ, Brazil. Email: [email protected]. 1 See Kapil Raj, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

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An Asymmetrical Network: National and International Dimensions of the Development of Mexican Physiology

2 • Journal of the History of Medicine

T H E BE G I NN I NG S OF M EX I CA N P H Y S I O LO GY In the aftermath of the 1910 social revolution, higher education in Mexico came to a standstill. This occurred partly because “science” was a code word revered by the positivist acolytes of Porfírio Diaz (the dictator deposed by the revolution) and partly because the revolutionaries believed that the problems of illiteracy and insufficient primary education were the priorities—rather than the modernization of higher education. According to the president of Mexico’s National University, any institutional activities were considered “abnormal” and were frequently interrupted by government interventions and students’ strikes from 1911 to early 1912.4 During that period, Eduardo Liceaga, Dean of Mexico City’s School of Medicine, resigned from a position he had occupied for years because he was close to fallen dictator Díaz. Eight different successive deans provided little stability during the period 1910–15. A reduction in the budget for scientific work was accompanied by governmental criticism of the University for being a dysfunctional institution.5 2 The idea of scientific asymmetries is inspired by Michael Osborn’s “Science and the French Empire,” Isis, 2005, 96, 80–87. 3 For similar cases in other Latin American countries, see Marcos Cueto’s articles “Laboratory Styles and Argentine Physiology,” Isis, 1994, 85, 228–46, and “Andean Biology in Peru: Scientific Styles on the Periphery,” Isis, 1989, 80, 640–58. 4 Informe que el Doctor Don Joaquín Eguía Lis, Rector de la Universidad de México eleva acerca de las labores de la misma universidad, durante el periodo de septiembre de 1910 a septiembre de 1912 a la Secretaria de Instruccion Publica y Bellas Artes (México: Imprenta I. Escalante, 1913), 3. Biblioteca Facultad de Medicina, Palacio de la Medicina, México D.F. 5 Fernando Ocaranza, Historia de la Medicina en México (México: Laboratorios MIDY, 1934), 186; and “Lista de los médicos cirujanos legalmente titulados en la Facultad de Medicina, 1890–1921.” Legajo 293. Fondo


challenge traditional notions of “center” and “periphery” long used by historians of developing countries, and they enhance an appreciation of the capacity of locals to recreate, negotiate, and participate in world science. Many of these studies have concentrated on the scientific travels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Little has been done on the institutionalization of medical science during the twentieth century and on the asymmetries between the international and national dimensions of science.2 The goal of this article is to examine these issues in the context of the development of centers of medical science in twentieth-century Mexico, noting the successes and the difficulties, both personal and institutional. Moreover, I want to contribute to the history of two outstanding Mexican scientists who conducted research on physiology under the adverse conditions of scarce financial resources, low cultural esteem, and lack of full-time personnel.3 José J. Izquierdo, who worked both in the United States and in Great Britain; and Arturo Rosenblueth, who spent a large part of his career in the United States before returning to Mexico City after failing to secure employment at Harvard University probably because he was a jew. Both men were influenced by Harvard’s Professor Walter B. Cannon, who promoted among his students an overarching paradigm—the notion of “homeostasis” (self-regulatory physiological processes that maintain a stable internal environment; a notion that can be traced to Claude Bernard’s milieu intérieur). The work of these two Mexican investigators was crucial for the development in Mexico of an international network of physiological research.

Cueto: An Asymmetrical Network • 3

Escuela Nacional de Medicina. Archivo Histórico de la Facultad de Medicina, Palacio de la Medicina, México D. F. [hereafter AHFM]. 6 Alan Gregg, “Report on Medical Education-University of Mexico-Based on a visit to Mexico, 13–27 August 1923,” 5. Rockefeller Foundation Archives [hereafter RFA]. R.G. [hereafter Record Group] 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 95, Rockefeller Archive Center [hereafter RAC], 7. On public health, see Anne Emanuelle Birn, Marriage of Convenience: Rockefeller International Health and Revolutionary Mexico (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006). 7 Alfonso L. Herrera and Daniel Vergara Lope, La vie sur les hauts plateaux, Ouvrage couronneé par l’Institut Smithsonien de Washington (Mexico: Escalante, 1899). See Ana Cecilia Rodríguez de Romo and J. Perez Padilla, “The Mexican Response to High Altitudes in the 1890s: The Case of a Physician and His ‘Magic Mountain,’” Med. Hist., 2003, 47(4), 493–516. 8 Fernando Ocaranza, Programa para la cátedra de fisiología en el año de 1918. Legajo 202. Expediente No 3. Fondo Escuela Nacional de Medicina. AHFM.


In the second and third decades of the twentieth century, mistrust and tensions characterized the relations between the United States and Mexico. Nevertheless, the Rockefeller Foundation developed some public-health programs and surveyed the main medical school in the early 1920s. The survey resulted in a report that described a medical school where students emphasized hospital practice, memorized French textbooks, and worked in improvised laboratories. The library was “a private collection zealously guarded by an old man suspicious of the motives of those who visit [it].”6 According to the report, most of the physiology equipment was stored in crowded facilities; the course on anatomy had to accommodate a great number of students with a small a number of tables; and there was no laboratory for chemistry. However, individual attempts to modernize Mexican physiology were underway. Physicians Daniel Vergara Lope and Fernando Ocaranza bought books from abroad and did valuable studies at their own expense. The former managed to publish some important books and articles. Vergara Lope demonstrated that indigenous inhabitants of high altitudes were not physically inferior due to their low-oxygen environment (a theme that would be developed later by Peruvian physiologists). Unfortunately, his valuable work went largely unrecognized in Mexico, despite the fact that his book (co-authored with Alfonso Hererra) was awarded a prize from the Smithsonian Institution.7 Ocaranza was able to bring some stability to scientific training in the medical school, despite his initial difficulty even obtaining a laboratory from his department’s chairman. In 1915, he was appointed professor of physiology. Although he was not a noted investigator and had neither the patients nor the hospital appointment of other medical professors, he kept his focus on teaching. In the late 1910s, he proposed radicals reforms emphasizing laboratory work and overcame the opposition of some professors who believed his proposal was “too advanced.” His chairman was subsequently given a lecture hall, a vivisection lab, and four rooms for the students to practice in.8 Students were likewise free to choose their textbooks, thus dispensing with the routines of memorization. However, progress was unstable. Until 1923, Ocaranza taught an elective course that did not require passing an exam. Students needed to attend only three-quarters of the theoretical lessons and perform some experiments. Even so, students became familiar with instruments like the kymograph and with classical physiological works.


Dr. Izquierdo struck me as a wide-awake, enthusiastic person, probably quick to pick up on new things. . . . He was obviously impressed by the great discrepancy between the methods of teaching here and in Mexico. . . . Repeatedly, he said they must be made better. I suppose that when we find a man . . . with such intention, perhaps the best thing we can do is to support him and encourage him in every possible way.12 In 1926, Izquierdo returned to Mexico, but he was unable to secure a position as a researcher and returned the next year to Harvard again to study with Cannon (he 9 Eugène Gley, in Christophe Charle and Eva Telkès, Les professeurs du Collège de France (dictionnaire biographique 1901–1939) (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1988), 88–89. His Traité élémentaire de physiologie, cosigned with Mathias Duval (Paris: J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1910), had twelve editions by 1951 and was translated into Spanish in Mexico during the 1920s. 10 Ismael Ledesma-Mateos and Ana Barahona, “The Conflict between Alfonso Luis Herrera (1868–1942) and Isaac Ochoterena (1885–1950),” J. Hist. Biol., 2003, 36(2), 285–307. 11 Miguel E. Bustamante, “El Doctor José J. Izquierdo en el campo de la salud pública,” Anales de la Sociedad Mexicana de Historia de la Ciencia y de la Tecnología, 1974, 4, 107–19. 12 Cannon to R. Pierce, 17 November 1925, a facsimile copy of the letter in José J. Izquierdo, Desde un Alto en el Camino (México: Ediciones Ciencia, 1966), 134.


Thanks to Ocaranza, a Mexican Biology Society, an academic institution that replicated a French model, was created. In 1925, he helped to organize the visit of French physiologist Eugène Gley, professor at the College de France, to teach a course in Mexico.9 Experimental teaching of physiology progressed, all the more with the appointment of Ocaranza as Director of the Medical School. During the eight years he held this position (1925–32), and later during his brief Presidency of the University (1934–35), physiological education tried to follow international norms. This occurred despite the tension between the University and the revolutionary governments that held sway until the mid1930s. Ocaranza’s approach resonated with the changes that were occurring in other medical institutions at the time. According to Ledesma and Barahona, it was due to Ocaranza, Vergara Lope, and Alfonso Herrera that a basic-science perspective in biology and medical science emerged in Mexico during the early twentieth century.10 Thanks to these changes, a few university researchers appeared. A promising candidate was José J. Izquierdo who before moving to Mexico City had studied medicine in Puebla (where he was born in 1893), graduating in 1917. In Mexico City, Izquierdo was in charge of different public health jobs, and coauthored some articles with Ocaranza.11 It was Ocaranza who helped to draw Izquierdo to the faculty of Mexico City’s School of Medicine in the 1920s. Izquierdo began his professorial career on the lower rungs, assisting with laboratory work, and later became lecturer of physiology. At the same time, he also worked in the Military Medical School (created in 1917), which had no laboratories. In 1925, Izquierdo traveled to the United States to visit the laboratories of the renowned physiologists Frederick Lewis at Johns Hopkins University and Walter B. Cannon at Harvard University. At Harvard, Izquierdo purchased apparatuses to establish a laboratory in Mexico’s Military Medical School. Cannon wrote a strong but sober letter of recommendation to a Rockefeller officer praising Izquierdo as a future scientific leader in his home country:


13 Izquierdo and Walter B. Cannon, “Emotional Polycythemia in Relation to Sympathethic and Medulliadrenal Action of the Spleen,” Am. J. Physiol., 1928, 84, 545–62. On Cannon, see Chandler McC. Brooks, Kiyomi Koizumi, and James O. Pinkston, eds. The Life and Contributions of Walter Bradford Cannon, 1871–1945 (New York: State University of New York, 1975): Saul Benison, A. Clifford Barger, and Elin L. Wolfe, Walter B. Cannon: The Life and Times of a Young Scientist (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987). 14 At Cambridge University, Izquierdo worked on temperature, blood flow, and respiration and he studied hypertension. “J.J. Izquierdo, former fellow. 7 June 1952,” R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 14, Folder 110. From these works resulted: Izquierdo and Joseph Barcroft, “The Relation of Temperature to the Pulse Rate of the Frog,” J. Physiol., 1931, 71, 145–55. 15 Solicitud y Curriculum Vitae del Profesor Doctor José J. Izquierdo presentados para optar el cargo a la categoría de Profesor Universitario de Tiempo Completo (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1955), 16. More biographical information in Gabriela Castañeda López, “José J. Izquierdo en la creación del Departamento de Fisiología de la Facultad de Medicina,” Revista de la Facultad de Medicina (México) UNAM, 2005, 48(2), 76–79. 16 The English text was A Laboratory Course in Physiology, 7th ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927) translated as Water B. Cannon, Curso de Fisiología de Laboratorio (New York and London: Apletton and Co., 1929).


also studied at the Marine Biology Station at Woods Hole, Massachusetts). With Cannon, Izquierdo studied the role of the spleen in releasing erythrocytes during various emotional states, and its role when there is a lack of oxygen in the blood.13 He also learned of Cannon’s famous innovative work using x-rays to study gastrointestinal activity, which led the American to argue that these phenomena were regulated by the autonomous nervous system, and helped him in developing the notion of homeostasis. After Harvard, and thanks to the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, Izquierdo continued his training with Joseph Barcroft at Cambridge University and at the Institute of Physiology of Cologne with H. E. Hering.14 In diverse accounts of his career, Izquierdo emphasized the remarkable scholarship of his foreign mentors, suggesting that he had acquired their merits.15 In the late 1920s, Izquierdo was back in Mexico again but had lost the support of Ocaranza and failed to secure a permanent position. For some years, he moved between his temporary jobs in his home country and visiting positions in Europe and the United States and decided to promote experimental physiological science by several means. For example, he tried to set an example by co-signed articles with foreign colleagues; he published in nonacademic Mexican journals on the need for a scientific reform; and translated into Spanish the main textbooks used abroad. He obtained a subsidy from the Rockefeller Foundation for a Spanish edition of Cannon’s textbook (the Foundation purchased four hundred copies in advance for teachers of physiology in Spain and Latin America).16 By this time, physiology had become well established as the central discipline for training in the basic sciences in American medical schools. The American Physiological Society was a leading professional association, and chairs of physiology had been established in medical schools all over the world. Cannon was the center of an international network of physiology relevant to many Latin Americans, who became the most active group of medical researchers in their countries. Izquierdo developed connections with international scientific organizations. He was a member of the American


17 Izquierdo to Cannon, 19 February 1929, Papers of the International Union of Physiological Sciences. Folder XIII Congress, Boston, 1929, Cannon Letters. American Philosophical Society. 18 By the 1920s, the Foundation had a Division of Medical Education that supported research and medical education in Latin America. It enlarged its scope in 1930 becoming the Medical Sciences Division, directed by Allan Gregg, and existed until 1951 when it merged with the International Health Division resulting in a Division of Medicine and Public Health under Gregg’s former assistant, Robert Morison. On the history of physiology, see Karl E. Rothschuh, History of Physiology (New York: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company, 1973) and Gerald Geison, ed., Physiology in the American Context, 1850–1940 (Bethesda, Maryland: American Physiological Society, 1987). 19 Izquierdo, Solicitud y Curriculum, 17. 20 “Medical Education in Mexico survey by R. A. Lambert, 14–30 November 1936.” R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 95, RFA, RAC, 1 and 3.


Physiological Society and of the Physiological Society in the UK. However, his participation in international meetings was limited to himself and a few colleagues, partly because French was still the academic language for most Mexican and Latin American physicians.17 Physiology became an entry point for the Rockefeller Foundation in their efforts to reform medical science in Latin America.18 For the Foundation, it was part of a civilizing mission to establish in Mexico intensive laboratory work, to professionalize researchers in the School of Medicine, and to “Americanize” medical education. These goals echoed the American medical educational reforms inspired by Abraham Flexner, who in his 1910 report criticized low academic standards, excessive number students, few full-time professors in the basic sciences, and the lack of experimental work in the basic sciences. The changes provoked by this report became a template for the efforts of the Foundation in Mexico. Izquierdo’s main appointment was as professor at the Military Medical School, where he was able to include some practical work in the laboratory. By 1931, Izquierdo held several teaching positions without a permanent appointment in the major medical school, namely the National University. Eventually, he was appointed professor in the National University but since Ocaranza was in command (and on bad terms with his former disciple), Izquierdo could only carry out limited changes. He did not get along with Ocaranza, disagreeing about the role of physiology in medical education, and clashing with him personally. According to Ocaranza, Izquierdo overemphasized the teaching of physiology as if it were intended for future “physiologists, and not future physicians.” Izquierdo’s lack of support arose also because he was locally perceived as pro-American. During the left wing administration of President General Lázaro Cardenas (1934–40), who nationalized American oil fields, an anti-American cultural and political ethos was promoted. According to Izquierdo, he confronted local opponents who found it unreasonable for Mexican students “to work like the Anglo-Saxons.”19 The Rockefeller Foundation was willing to support science in Mexico in this difficult political context and did not believe that anti-American feelings were entirely responsible for the situation. According to a 1936 report made by a Rockefeller officer, Izquierdo had not done enough to transform medical education.20 According to Izquierdo, it was crucial to preach the value of physiology. With the help of his students, he translated books on physiology and prepared studies on the history of


It is my feeling that Izquierdo’s failure to start any research is due not so much to lack of apparatus and supplies as it is to the all too common inability to work unguided. Another factor is that his time is taken up . . . completely with teaching. He has to hold two teaching posts, in order to earn a livelihood. His income is modest, but apparently enough for a car, servant and other such “necessities.”24 Thanks to Izquierdo and his disciples, a refurbished Department of Physiology in the School of Medicine, with a library subscribing to mainstream journals, was established in 1942.25 The prominence of Izquierdo grew further in 1946 when he was elected President of the prestigious Mexican Academy of Medicine. Rockefeller Foundation officials were ambivalent. They believed that Izquierdo’s scientific career was disappointing but that he had enhanced the esteem of research in the local medical culture and had helped to create a space for some real investigators. Some of the beneficiaries of new Rockefeller grants were young men trained by Izquierdo, like Efrén del 21 José J. Izquierdo. Balance cuatricentenario de la fisiología en México (Mexico: Ediciones Ciencia, 1934). 22 Examples include: José J. Izquierdo, Harvey, Iniciador del Método Experimental: Estudio critico de su obra De motu cordis, y de los factores que la mantuvieron ignorada en los paises de habla espanola, con una reproduccion fascsimilar de la edicion original y su primera version castellana (México: Ediciones Ciencias, 1936) and Bernard, Creador de la Medicina Científica. Estudio crítico de su labor científica, seguido de una versión castellana de su Introducción al Estudio de la Medicina Experimental (México: Imprenta Universitaria, 1942). 23 Gabriela Castañeda López and Ana Cecilia Rodríguez de Romo, “Henry Sigerist y José J. Izquierdo dos actitudes frente a la historia de la medicina en el siglo XX,” Hist. Mexicana, 2007, 57(1), 139–91. See for example, J. J. Izquierdoa, “Note on the Early Relations between Scientists of Mexico and the United States: (Luis José Montana and Samuel L. Mitchill),” J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 1955, 10(1), 45–57. 24 Lambert to Cannon, 3 December 1936, Box 93, Folder 1279, Cannon Papers, Francis Countway Library, Harvard Medical School, Boston [hereafter FCL. HMS]. 25 José J. Izquierdo, “El Nuevo Departamento de Ciencias Médicas Básicas Funcionales en la Ciudad Universitaria,” Ciencia, 1955, 14, 11–12.


Mexican science criticizing the contemporary flaws in his country’s medical education and research. He published an encyclopedic essay claiming that the first book on physiology in Latin America was published in colonial Mexico.21 Izquierdo used history to remind Mexican physicians that they had once cherished a physiological perspective and to inspire them to demand support for research assistants, laboratories, and libraries.22 Despite the little success he had in obtaining funds from the government, his books increased his reputation as a local public intellectual. His historical studies received national and international recognition: corresponding with Henry E. Sigerist and publishing articles in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine and The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.23 The Rockefeller Foundation sided with some Mexican physicians in the belief that his historical work was not genuine medical investigation. Many scientists perceived Izquierdo as an extravagant scholar who concealed his lack of actual work in the laboratory with his historical publications and the prominent place he achieved in Mexico as a savant. The associate director of the Foundation’s Medical Science Division provided an ironic explanation of why such a brilliant student of physiology did so little original research in the laboratory:


26 Del Pozo worked at Harvard with Cannon and Guevara Rojas with Carl Wiggers at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland. 27 “Efrén del Pozo, 1940” Fondo Escuela Nacional de Medicina, Sección Alumnos. Archivo Histórico de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México D.F. [hereafter AHUNAM]. 28 Walter B. Cannon to Mr. Thomson, Box 81, Folder 1098, Cannon Papers, FCL, HMS. 29 Mentioned in “Allocation for the Purchase of Equipment for the Department of Physiology, J.J. Izquierdo, 19 January 1951.” R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 14, Folder 110, RFA, RAC. 30 See Michael C. Meyer and William L. Sherman, The Course of Mexican History (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 596–651. 31 Robert A. Lambert Visit to México, 1–14 March 1941, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 95, RFA, RAC.


Pozo and Alberto Guevara Rojas, who studied in the United States.26 Both returned to Mexico around 1943. Del Pozo became professor of physiology in the University of Mexico’s School of Medicine.27 However, his position was, initially, not permanent, and he had to hold several jobs. Cannon complained to an officer of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine arguing that support should be given to Mexicans trained in the United States returning to their home country.28 By the mid-1940s, Izquierdo and his disciples were able to get small grants from the Rockefeller Foundation (a total of $9,900 USD for the years 1941–45).29 This important financial support suggests that the Foundation, despite believing that the Izquierdo methods were heterodox, believed that the Mexican was instrumental to promote experimental science in the country. These hybrid strategies were part of a particular desire to recreate scientific practices inside the perimeter of an international network of physiology. In the 1940s, Mexico experienced a new economic and political era that favored the activities of the Rockefeller Foundation and the adoption of sustained laboratory work. Successive administrations began to leave behind the populist and nationalist trend that had characterized the Mexican government since the 1910s. The change was clear with Miguel Ávila Camacho and Miguel Alemán ( presidents between 1940 and 1946, and 1946 and 1952, respectively), who expanded foreign investments, promoted industrial investments, and developed a friendly relationship with the United States (becoming an ally during the Cold War).30 They began what has been called the “Mexican economic miracle,” which lasted about three decades, characterized by sustained economic growth, the embrace of liberal capitalist economic policies, and modest inflation. Ávila Camacho also maintained good relations with the National University and created national science centers. Moreover, these governments assumed that the development of the country depended a great deal on the formation of technocratic elites, of which medical doctors and scientists were a part. These changes were evident to the Rockefeller Foundation. The report of a visit made in 1941 by one of the Foundation’s officials noted that there was no longer “any hostility whatever to the capitalist Yankee or any suspicion of his dollar diplomacy.”31 In the same year, the Foundation decided to enlarge its support to research in the natural, medical, and exact sciences in Latin America. The decision was partly because the Foundation closed its programs in Europe during World


32 “Report by John A. Ferrel, Regarding His Visit to México, 19 April 1943–1943,” R.G. 1.2, Series 323, Box 24, Folder 167, RFA, RAC. In the early 1950s, the Foundation closed its International Health Division and concentrated on agricultural technology. Its major program, the “Green Revolution,” could be traced in Mexico to the year 1943. See Bruce H. Jennings, Foundations of International Agricultural Research: Science and Politics in Mexican Agriculture (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988). 33 For instance, Walter Cannon to Alberto Houssay, 5 January 1937, Box 65, Folder 859, Cannon Papers, FCL, HMS. 34 On the politics of other American scientists of the period, see Peter J. Kuznick, Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists as Political Activists in 1930s America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 35 Gerardo Sánchez Díaz and Porfirio García de León, eds., Los científicos del exilio español en México (Morelia: Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 2001). 36 Among the Spanish scientists who fled to Mexico were the physiologist Jaime Pi-Suñer, professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela, and his father Augusto Pi-Suñer, from Barcelona who was coauthor of a textbook on physiology widely used in Spain and in Latin America. Another Spanish émigré was the endocrinologist Rosendo Carrasco-Formiguera, a former disciple of Cannon. Two more noted researchers were the neuropathologist Isaac Costero from the University of Valladolid; and the neurologist Gonzalo Lafora, from the Instituto Cajal of Madrid. More on Spanish scientific emigration to Mexico, see Francisco Javier Dosil Mancilla, “Luces republicanas para una ciencia nacional, los científicos del exilio español en México,” in Otras Armas para la Independencia y la Revolución, ed. Rosaura Ruiz, Arturo Argueta, and Graciela Zamudio (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010), 304–11.


War II and found in the Western Hemisphere opportunities for medical education reforms.32 Important changes in Mexican physiology also accompanied the arrival of Spanish medical scientists. In 1939, toward the end of the Spanish Civil War, Walter B. Cannon described to Latin American physiologists the sad predicament of Spanish scientists who had to leave their home country because they sympathized with the Republic (since 1937, Cannon chaired the Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy).33 The American physiologist was known for his leftist’s politics. In the wake of the Depression in 1929, many leading American scientists, such as Cannon, lent support to progressive political ideas.34 Mexico’s government received the Spanish exiles with open arms; something that was not done by other Latin American governments. Izquierdo played a key role in the reception of the Spanish physiologists in Mexico. In February 1939, he applied his influence to obtain governmental support to welcome renowned Spanish intellectuals and professionals who sympathized with the Spanish leftist Republic. For example, they would enjoy a salary for two or three years in a Mexican university and were not required to revalidate their diplomas. After the end of the civil war in April 1939, there was a massive influx of refugee scientists and engineers to Mexico.35 Research in physiology carried out by refugee Spaniards in the Mexican National University was spurred by a Rockefeller grant. Some of them were disciples or followers of the first Spanish Nobel Prize laureate Santiago Ramón y Cajal—such as Augusto Pi Suñer who received postgraduate training at the German Erlich Institute in Frankfurt—while others trained with Cannon at Harvard.36 Shortly after their arrival, the Spaniards established a laboratory at the University and began to publish works on the hypophysis, a topic of interest to Cannon. At first, the Spanish physiologists


MO D ER NI Z I N G M EX I CA N LA B O R ATO R I ES Arturo Rosenblueth was younger than Izquierdo but also not a native of Mexico City (born in 1900 in Ciudad Guerrero). It is also important to underscore that he was the son of an Hungarian Jewish immigrant and a Mexican-American and was at times assumed by his school classmates to be a foreigner (and was less nationalistic than many Mexicans raised after the 1910 revolution). During his infancy he lived in Monterrey, an industrial northern city friendly to the United States.38 In 1918, he entered the School of Medicine of the University of Mexico, where he arrived as a child prodigy and was again thought to be of foreign origin, this time because of his last name (unusual in Spanish). In Mexico, Rosenblueth studied physiology primarily with Ocaranza. In 1921, he dropped his medical studies due to his low income and worked in a bookstore acquiring administrative capabilities that would be useful years later. In 1923, his elder brother helped him return to medicine by providing the necessary funds to pursue graduate studies abroad. Rosenblueth first went to Berlin and then to Paris, where he graduated as a surgeon in 1927. In Berlin, he experienced the anti-Semitism and strident nationalism that made him aware of his own double stigma: being a Latin American and a Jew. Toward the end of the 1920s, Rosenblueth returned to Mexico—not yet definitively—worked as a public health researcher, as a 37 Rosendo Carrasco to Robert A. Lambert, Puebla, April 21, 1941, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Folder 14, Box 109, RFA, RAC. 38 Biographical data come from a letter by Rosenblueth’s widow: Virginia T. Rosenblueth to James F. Mathias, 29 November 1970, Papers of A. Rosenblueth, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation [hereafter PAR]; Louisa B. Benton “Arturo Rosenblueth: Success or Failure? A Consideration of the Forces which Lie Behind ‘Success’ and ‘Failure’ through the biography of a Mexican neurophysiologist” (B.A. thesis, Harvard University, 1986); Raoul Fournier, “Los años juveniles de Arturo Rosenblueth,” Revista de la Universidad de México 1971, 25, 13; Jesús Alanis, “Homenaje a Arturo Rosenblueth,” Acta Physiol. Lat. Am., 1971, 21, 1–11; “Rosenblueth, Arturo,” Diccionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Coulston Gilliespie (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1975), 545–47; Pablo Rudomín, ed., Arturo Rosenblueth, fisiología y filosifía (México: El Colegio Nacional, 1996), Ruth Guzik Glantz, “Relaciones de un científico mexicano con el extranjero: el caso de Arturo Rosenblueth.” Revista mexicana de investigación educativa, 2009, 14(40), 43–67; Juan García Ramos, ed., Libro Homenaje a Arturo Rosenblueth (México: CINVESTAV, 1971) and the issue devoted to Rosenblueth in the Revista de la Universidad de México 1971, 25.


regarded the prospect of their future in their new country with optimism.37 Eventually, some of them, like the leader Pi-Suñer, relocated to Caracas where he directed the new Institute of Experimental Biology and attracted more Spaniards to Venezuela. Thus, only a few physiologists remained in Mexico. Many Spanish physiologists considered working in Mexico a step backward in their careers and decided to leave for the United States, where they might find institutions that matched their experience, or to seek better salaries in other Latin American countries. At that time, the Rockefeller Foundation faced a difficult choice between the slower route of fellowships and small grants for Izquierdo’s disciples or the more daunting challenge of convincing the Spanish scientists to remain in Mexico. The solution to these challenges came from abroad, from another Mexican who was at the front-line of the international network of physiology, Arturo Rosenblueth.


39 Rosenblueth to Henry Allen Moe, 2 July 1929, PAR. Arturo Rosenblueth, Programa de Estudios [ presented to the Guggenheim Foundation], 2, PAR. 40 Rosenblueth to Eyler N. Simpson, 31 October 1930, PAR. 41 Rosenblueth to Henry Allen Moe, 9 May 1931, PAR. 42 Rosenblueth to Henry Allen Moe, 9 June 1932, PAR. 43 See Walter B. Cannon and Arturo Rosenblueth, Autonomic Neuro-effector systems (New York: McMillan, 1937). 44 R. S. Morison and A. Rosenblueth, “The Action of Esferine and Prostigmin on Skeletal Muscle,” Science, 1936, 84(2190), 551–52.


neurologist in Mexico City’s asylum, and as a tutor for physiological experiments in the School of Medicine. He left Mexico once again in 1930. Rosenblueth studied and worked at Harvard University for fourteen years (1930–44), a position created through a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Initially, Rosenblueth’s criticisms and motives appeared not so different from Izquierdo’s. In letters to the Foundation, Rosenblueth pointed out that one of the problems with the physiology course taught in Mexico was that it followed outdated textbooks, used older equipment, and relied on a library that did not subscribe to the modern journals in the field. Moreover, he sought to contribute to the Foundation’s objectives of expanding science and the cultural exchange between the United States and Latin America.39 Rosenblueth felt well received in Boston and a member of an international community of scholars (where his condition as a Mexican and a Jew was destigmatized). In a letter to an officer of the Guggenheim Foundation, he pointed out that Cannon headed a laboratory where cordiality reigned, and everyone treated him with unusual attention. He was also impressed with the “abundance” of laboratory resources, including adequate instruments, chemicals, books, journals, and experimental animals.40 He gladly followed the first research topics indicated by Cannon, namely, the effect therapeutic drugs had on a denervated heart, and the effect of adrenaline on the metabolism of carbohydrates. Although he had originally intended to return to Mexico, on beginning his second year of study, Rosenblueth let the Guggenheim Foundation know that his decision could be changed “in case I did not find in Mexico the facilities for scientific work which I . . . need.”41 He was thirty-two at the time, engaged to an American, had been told by Cannon that he could remain at Harvard with him if desired, and lived in a milieu where nationality and ethnicity were, apparently, unimportant. At the end of his second year, Rosenblueth wrote a letter to the Guggenheim Foundation in which he was more emphatic: “I am afraid that it would be the end of my work if I should go back to Mexico now.”42 At Harvard, he became in 1934 assistant professor and Cannon’s right hand man. Both published monographs and almost ninety articles, alone or in collaboration, on the central nervous system, particularly the brain cortex.43 In addition, he co-authored articles with key American scientists and foundation officers including Robert S. Morison, who in the mid-1940s was the director of Medical and Natural Sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation.44 Rosenblueth also was an effective intermediary between Cannon and other graduate students, especially Latin Americans going to


45 This relationship gave rise to a few articles such as Rosenblueth and Joaquin Luco, “A Study of Denervated Mammalian Skeletal Muscle,” Am. J. Physiol., 1937, 120, 514–21. 46 Rosenblueth to Cannon, June 11, 1941, Box 117, Folder 1626, Cannon Papers, FCL, HMS. 47 Cannon to Hugh S. Cumming, October 1, 1941, Box 66, Folder 879, Cannon Papers, FCL, HMS. 48 His interest in science as a way of cultural rapprochement is clear in Walter B. Cannon, The Way of an Investigator: A Scientist’s Experiences in Medical Research (New York: W.W. Norton, 1945) and Walter B. Cannon and M. Fields, International Relations in Science: A Review of Their Aims and Methods in the Past and in the Future (New York: Chronica Botanica, 1945). 49 Cannon to J. V. Luco, September 17, 1940, Box 65, Folder 871, Cannon Papers, FCL, HMS. 50 Walter B. Cannon to Robert A. Lambert, October 22, 1940, R.G. 1.1, Series 309, Box 2, Folder 18, RFA, RAC. 51 Efrén del Pozo, “El fisiólogo Arturo Rosenblueth,” Revista de la Universidad de México, 1971, 25, 19.


Harvard. Over twelve important researchers in the region studied with Cannon and Rosenblueth.45 Cannon and Rosenblueth usually dictated the topics of investigation and were willing to co-author papers in mainstream journals (something that was not usual in the relationship between professors and graduate students in Mexico). In a letter to Cannon, Rosenblueth described the work he carried out with senior students.46 The goal was to identify a novel scientific problem linked to a concern of the laboratory—the autonomic nervous system, gastrointestinal motility, traumatic shock, and the physiological basis of emotion and/or homeostasis—and then tackle the problem with new experiments. Two weeks were devoted to reading all of the pertinent literature before any experiment took place. Finally, Rosenblueth asked students to write down the results following the format of an article that could be accepted by the American Journal of Physiology. He reviewed it carefully and noted its merits and problems. Before a final manuscript was prepared, more experiments were made. The system was an adaptation of Cannon’s case method of teaching, an innovation in American medical education. Rosenblueth also advised the grantees who returned to their countries about what research equipment they should request from the Harvard Apparatus Company. He likewise became a consultant for the Guggenheim Foundation on Latin American grantees; becoming a sort of regional scientific gatekeeper.47 As a result, he was crucial for the international network of physiology developing in the Americas. Cannon valued these activities, which relieved him of his teaching obligations, and he appreciated Rosenblueth’s energy, technical skill, and friendship. The American scientist furthermore believed that these activities would help to develop an international scientific elite in Latin America.48 Cannon was convinced that countries in North and South America could reach a closer understanding through science.49 In a letter to an officer of the Rockefeller Foundation, he admitted, “until fairly recently I think the Latin American countries have been parasitic on the advances in medicine achieved in other parts of the world. They are capable of making their contribution and should take their place in promoting the medical sciences.”50 Rosenblueth helped Cannon to study the nature of chemical neuromuscular transmission, how the connection between the nerve impulse and the mechanical response occurred, a major physiological issue of the time. It was not clear then whether nervous excitation was transmitted by electrical or chemical means, and a debate arose between those who defended one or the other position.51 Cannon was considered one of the


52 For example, Walter B. Cannon and Arturo Rosenblueth, “Studies on Conditions of Activity in Endocrine Organs. XXIX. Sympathin E and Sympathin I.” Am. J. Physiol., 1932, 104, 557–74. 53 Cannon’s search for the mediation of nerve impulses is discussed in: Elin L. Wolfe, A. Clifford Barger, and Saul Benison, Walter B. Cannon: Science and Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).


major supporters of the theory of chemical transmission of the nervous impulses. He had shown in previous experiments that the denervated heart of a cat (i.e., one from which the nerves had been removed), with deactivated adrenal glands, was still accelerated by stimulation of the sympathetic nerves. He concluded that there had to be an adrenaline-like substance that was diffused through the circulation when the nerves were stimulated (it was known that adrenaline accelerated the heart). Cannon and Rosenblueth believed in the existence of a substance with a similar effect to that of adrenaline, whose chemical nature had yet to be established. They called it sympathin. For years they concentrated their efforts on trying to establish the differences between sympathin and adrenaline and even proposed that there might be two types of sympathins: sympathin I with an inhibiting effect and sympathin E with a stimulating effect.52 The Rockefeller Foundation supported their theory and assisted in publishing a book that they co-authored entitled Autonomic Neuro Effector Systems (MacMillian, 1937). However, the critiques mounted. The sympathin theory appeared scientifically wrong or extravagant even to some former disciples of Cannon like the Belgian Zenon M. Bacq. Some suggested that neither of the two physiologists had sufficient training in biochemistry, and blamed Rosenblueth for stubbornness. In 1936, there were rumors circulating that Rosenblueth was the reason that the Nobel Prize that year had gone not to Cannon but to the British physiologist Henry Dale and the German pharmacologist Otto Loewi, who had studied the chemical transmission of nervous impulses with other techniques and better results. Cannon had been proposed for the prize on the basis of his work suggesting that nervous transmission relied on a chemical impulse.53 Cannon let the matter go, but Rosenblueth never fully accepted the critiques made against the theories of sympathin. The debate came to an end years later when Australian neurophysiologist John Eccles demonstrated that nerve impulses had a physical as well as a chemical nature (for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1963). In the mid-1940s, when these issues had not yet been fully settled, Cannon was going to retire and suggested that he would pass his chair to Rosenblueth because of his talent and abilities as an investigator and because he consider him very efficient in stimulating graduate students. In addition, Cannon also believed Rosenblueth would be instrumental in smoothing the path for Latin American students, which he anticipated would be important in the “coming years.” However, Cannon himself was not too optimistic about this possibility, first because Rosenblueth, although he was an assistant professor, was never fully recognized at Harvard. His salary was paid from the tutorial budget, a budget for non-permanent workers, and not from the budget of the Department. Secondly, the committee in charge of the appointment was assumed to look unfavorably upon the critiques made against Rosenblueth. These included his latest flop (he and not Cannon was portrayed as responsible for the mistaken sympathin theory), and his condition as a foreign national and a Jew. In addition,


many professors disliked his strong, flamboyant, and argumentative character.54 At the time, there was an unofficial policy of discriminating against Jews in major American universities (for example, limiting the number of students admitted).55 Cannon wrote to a colleague, resorting to terms that today would be controversial, trying to diffuse anti-Semitic feelings:

Although there is no evidence that the University expressed that they preferred a “gentile” or was against having a Mexican as a full professor that was possibly the case. It was probably then that Rosenblueth felt like an alien in the United States (as he felt in Europe and even during his youth in Mexico). Corollary, Eugene M. Landis from the University of Virginia, who had a command in biochemistry, was announced as Cannon’s successor.57 The budgets of the Department of Physiology did not allow for the salary of another professor. The logical solution for Rosenblueth was to leave Harvard. For some time, Cannon tried to secure Rosenblueth a position in the United States, who had begun the process of naturalization (he never finished it).58 Cannon was aware that Rosenblueth’s controversial personality: I admit that there are some persons who regard Dr. Rosenblueth as contentious. In my opinion, these persons do not realize that with him an argument is much a form of sport as a game of tennis would be to another who is more interested in neuromuscular exercise of the cerebral cortex. This is a trait which even if it were undesirable could be forgiven in view of the other qualifications which Dr. Rosenblueth possesses as an investigator.59 At one time, Rosenblueth had offers from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and the recently established National Institute of Cardiology in Mexico. Rosenblueth initially decided to go to Chicago, but he was asked to accelerate his naturalization process to ensure his promotion. According to most sources, he did not desire to abandon his Mexican citizenship and turned down the offer. Perhaps he was resentful of the United States as a whole, or perhaps he became a true nationalist, but in time this decision was construed as a wise demonstration of his commitment to promote modern 54 Cannon to Cecil Drinker, February 25, 1942, Folder 117, Box 1626, FCL, HMS. 55 Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005). 56 Walter B. Cannon to Dr. Leakey, Box 117, Folder 1626, Cannon Papers, FCL, HMS. 57 Wallace O. Fenn, History of the American Physiological Society: The Third Quarter Century, 1937–1962 (Washington, DC: American Physiological Society, 1963). 58 Cannon to Ludvig Hektoen, January 11, 1939, Box 117, Folder 1626, Cannon Papers, FCL, HMS. 59 Cannon to Cecil K. Drinker, February 25, 1942, Box 117, Folder 1626, Cannon Papers, FCL, HMS.


Dr. Rosenblueth has a Jewish name but his Jewish ancestry is remote. He has none of the unpleasant characteristics sometimes associated with the Jew. One of his sisters is a nun and he is married to a charming American, a graduate from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and for some years a graduate student at Radcliffe College.56


60 The citation from Cannon in Secretary General John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, August 7, 1945, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 97, RFA, RAC. 61 Chavez to Arturo Rosenblueth, April 16, 1942, Epistolario (México D.F.: Colegio de México), 68. 62 Lambert Diary, Entry, December 18, 1945, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 97, RFA, RAC. 63 Heart Research and Mathematical Biology, Excerpt from Trustees Bulletin, [no day] May 1948, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 98, RFA, RAC. 64 National Institute of Cardiology Mexico City, February 18, 1949, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 97, RFA, RAC. On Chávez, Bernardo Sepulveda, “Prólogo,” in Ignacio Chávez, Humanismo Médico (México: UNAM, 1991), 11.


science in his home country. In a letter sent to ensure an appointment in Mexico, Cannon wrote: “During the forty years of my service in the professorial rank in the Department of Physiology I have not known any other investigator who can compare with Dr. Rosenblueth in imagination, in critical judgment and in an artistic feeling for scrupulously careful manipulation and recording of physiological processes.”60 Rosenblueth returned to Mexico in 1944, as head of the department of experimental physiology at the Institute of Cardiology, convinced by Ignacio Chavez, a charismatic medical entrepreneur and professor of cardiology, who offered him a good salary, full-time assistants, and a prerogative to work on any aspect of physiology. Chavez encouraged Rosenblueth by subtly criticizing Izquierdo: “Unfortunately we [Mexicans] have not had someone who could revolutionize the field of experimental physiology, a progress without which all other areas of medicine will remain stagnant. You can, because you have the capacity and the moment is ripe. Come and do in Mexico what Houssay has done in Argentina.” (Houssay was also part of the international network of physiology that had as central reference Cannon.)61 For Chavez, the fact that Rosenblueth was a Jew was of no relevance whatsoever and for Mexico’s elite, that included Jews occupying leadership positions in business and education, having a Jewish scientist in one of the major laboratories of the country was not a major problem (the racism that existed was largely directed against the native indigenous people). Mexico’s Institute of Cardiology was opened in 1944 with a 120-bed hospital, a staff of forty-five physicians and space for research laboratories.62 It was an adaptation of the Flexnerian model of medical education that combined full-time research, clinical work, and medical control of the hospital—a novelty for Mexico. A bulletin of the Rockefeller Foundation prepared for its trustees described the center as “belonging” to a world different from the other Mexican medical institutions: “Here there are no makeshifts . . . [no] efforts to adapt antiquated and inadequate facilities. . . . The Institute . . . would be difficult to match anywhere in the United States or in Europe.”63 The Institute emphasized research in cardiology (it published the journal Archivos) and was supported by subsidies from the Mexican government. The independent board of Institute’s trustees also enjoyed a high degree of autonomy from other medical institutions, something unique in Mexico.64 It exhibited, as a sign of its mix of modernity and tradition, a splendid auditorium decorated with Diego Rivera’s frescoes (a painter usually associated with nationalist and revolutionary themes). On its opening, the government endowed it with a million pesos (approximately $200,000 USD) and guaranteed subsidies for the following years. In the first ten years, it


65 Discurso pronunciado por el Dr. Ignacio Chávez, al celebrarse el X aniversario de la Fundación del Instituto (México, Instituto Nacional de Cardiología, 1954). 66 Rosenblueth to Norbert Wiener, August 13 and December 4, 1944, Box 2, Folder 66, Norbert Weiner papers, MIT Archives. 67 Ignacio Chávez to Andrew J. Warren, September 22, 1953, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 14, Folder 100, RFA, RAC. 68 R. S. Morrison, Interview with Arturo Rosenblueth, February 7, 1946, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 97, RFA, RAC. 69 Charles A. Bailey to Robert A. Lambert, July 26, 1940. RFA R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 14, Folder 109, RAC and “Arturo Rosenblueth to Ignacio Chavez, Boston 21 January 1944,” in Ignacio Chavez, Epistolario selecto (1929–1979) (México D.F.: El Colegio Nacional, 1997), 64–65. 70 Rafael Méndez to Robert S. Morison, March 23, 1950, RFA RG 1.1, Series 323, Box 14, Folder 102, RAC. 71 In Spain, he signed his works as Isaac Costero-Tundaca. His most important publication was Tratado de Anatomía Patológica (México: Atlante, 1946). “Costero wrote his memoirs” in Crónica de una vocación (México: Asociados, 1977). See Carlos López de Letona, Vida y obra del profesor Isaac Costero Tudanca (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1995). 72 Ignacio Chavez to Manuel Martínez Baez, April 9, 1945 “Convenio celebrado con el Instituto Nacional de Cardiología para la formación de médicos especializados en Anatomía Patológica, 1947,” Caja 6, Legajo


trained a large number of physicians and medical researchers from Mexico and other Latin American countries.65 Rosenblueth returned to Mexico when he was forty-four years old and rapidly adapted to his new position. He began to work at full speed, teaching advanced physiology, augmented the salaries of assistant researchers, and solved even the minutest problems found in the installation of the imported laboratory equipment in need of spare parts not produced in Mexico.66 He was the Institute’s scientific star and therefore had the support of the Rockefeller Foundation and other philanthropies. He received donations locally and from abroad that allowed him to purchase more equipment and research materials.67 When he was visited by a Rockefeller Foundation official, Rosenblueth proudly noted that he had published twelve articles in his first eighteen months in Mexico, and had trained a young assistant who was technically “ten times better than Dr. Cannon at his best.” The official did not fail to note that the comparison suggested that Rosenblueth was even better than Cannon. He also added that even though the Mexican researcher did not like administration he was “good at it” and predicted that he “will stay [in Mexico].”68 Thus, the Foundation was pleased; it had finally found in Mexico a medical scientist, part of an international network of research, on which they could fully rely. Rosenblueth convinced experienced investigators to work with him like the Spaniard Rafael Méndez, an exile of the Spanish Civil War, who had worked with Otto Krayer’s pharmacology laboratory at Harvard and later taught at Loyola University.69 Mendez embraced his new country with passion, aiming to train new pharmacologists, and became, after a few years, a Mexican citizen. Mendez and Rosenblueth began a mild nationalistic defense of Mexican science during the 1950s making modern physiology and pharmaceutical work crucial for the local medical elite.70 Another important addition to Rosenblueth’s laboratory was the Spaniard Issac Costero (who arrived in Mexico with the expatriates leaded by Jaime Pi-Suñer) and del Pozo (a former student of Izquierdo).71 To retain young talent, Costero proposed an innovative system of four-year fellowships for recent medical graduates dividing money of two grants.72


73 74 75 76 77 78

79

4. Fondo Secretaria de Salubridad y Asistencia, Sección Subsecretaria de Salubridad, Archivo Histórico de la Secretaria de Salud. Mexico City. [hereafter Fondo SSyA, SSA, AHSS]. National Institute of Cardiology Equipment, Heart Research and Mathematical Biology. 1948. R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 98; RFA, RAC. Ignacio Chávez to Alan Greg, March 6, 1946, R.G. 1.1, Series 32, Box 13. Series 97, RFA, RAC. Rosenblueth to Cannon, May 29, 1944, Box 117, Folder 1626, Cannon Papers, FCL, HMS. Rosenblueth to Cannon, January 15, 1944, Box 117, Folder 1626, Cannon Papers, FCL, HMS. Arturo Rosenblueth “Mexico,” in Perspectives in Physiology, and International Symposium, ed. Ilza Veith (Washington, DC: American Physiological Society, 1954), 117–20. National Institute of Cardiology, Mexico City, January 22, 1954, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 97, RFA, RAC. Cannon to Alan Greg, September 27, 1994, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 97, RFA, RAC. Houssay was co-winner of the Nobel Prize in 1945. On Houssay, see Cueto, “Laboratory Styles.” Robert S. Morrison Interview, October 28, 1950, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 98, RFA, RAC.


In return, the government demanded that recipients had to work for two years in a public hospital after the completion of their fellowship. The Rockefeller supported Costero with a grant of $18,000, which enabled him the purchase of electroencephalograms, electrocardiograms, and other modern instruments.73 The Foundation was glad to learn that Mexican scientists were recruiting help from local philanthropists. For example, the last details of the building that housed the laboratories of physiology and pharmacology were done thanks to a private Mexican donation of eighty thousand dollars.74 Despite this support, Rosenblueth sometimes fretted about his personal situation because his position depended on Ignacio Chávez, who had broken with local traditions by giving him a full-time position with a good salary, something rare for a university professor in Mexico. To forestall any critique, Chávez confidentially recorded a part of Rosenblueth’s salary as being derived from another line in the Institute’s budget.75 A broader concern of Rosenblueth’s was that although many wanted to improve science in Mexico, it was “very difficult” to overcome “the handicap of many years of an . . . unfavorable tradition.”76 Rosenblueth’ misgivings were related to the fact that basic science and laboratory work—ideals with which he had identified so strongly during his years at Harvard—were in their infancy in Mexico. According to a rigorous account made by Rosenblueth in the early 1950s, besides his laboratory and a few centers in Mexico City, there was only one physiological laboratory at a Mexican provincial university (in Guadalajara, directed by one of his former disciples).77 In Mexico, Rosenblueth finished manuscripts he had begun preparing at Harvard and launched new studies on the physiology of the cardiac muscle, the supply of blood through the coronary arteries, and the excitability and automatism of cardiac tissue. His work was reinforced in 1945, when Cannon stayed in Mexico for ten weeks despite his failing health (the American died the next year), to verify the chemical transmission of nervous impulses. According to the Rockefeller Foundation, “Aside from the Institute of Dr. Houssay in Buenos Aires . . . it is difficult to find any group in Latin America more likely to forward the development of experimental medicine.”78 A Rockefeller officer who visited Rosenblueth described the prodigious energy of the Mexican physiologist who worked ten to twelve hours a day in his laboratory in “better health and spirits than I have seen him in a long time,” and “leading a much more active social life than he has for several years.”79


80 Arturo Rosenblueth, “Report of the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, 1 March 1949 to 22 September 1953.” R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 14, Folder 100, RFA, RAC. 81 Memo WGD to RSM, February 4, 1952, RFA R.G. 1.2, Series 300, Box 2, Folder 8, RAC. “Ramón ÁlvarezBuylla,” in Augusto Fernández Guardiola, Neurociencias en el Exilio Español en México (México: FCEPaidos, 1997), 102–28. 82 National Institute of Cardiology, RF 59170, R.G. 1.1, Series 1.2, Box 32, Folder 223, RFA, RAC. 83 With greater confidence in the country, the RF distributed between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s donations that favored research in the Department of Biochemistry in the National University and the departments of physiology of the universities of Guadalajara, San Luis Potosí, Chihuaua, and Guanajuato, February 4–5, 1952, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 99, RFA, RAC. 84 Ignacio Chávez to Andrew J. Warren, September 22, 1953, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 14, Folder 100, RFA, RAC. 85 Hans Freudenthal, “Wiener, Norbert,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Coulston Gillispie (New York: Charles Scribener’s Sons, 1976), XIV: 344–47.


In 1946, the First Inter-American Congress of Cardiology, attended by Carl Wiggers (at the time at Western Reserve University Medical School), was held in Mexico City, which gave rise to an Inter-American Society that had its headquarters in the Institute. Scientists from all over the world also began to publish in the journal Archivos del Instituto de Cardiología. In 1949–53 alone, members of Rosenblueth and Mendez’s laboratories authored forty-eight articles in this and in other prestigious periodicals such as Circulation.80 In 1952, the Rockefeller Foundation gave the Institute $50,000 to equip the department of cardiac surgery and the laboratories of clinical research. Its support reached a total of $160,000 in 1944–58, $50,000 of which went to the laboratory of physiology and pharmacology. A 1954 Rockefeller memorandum pointed out that future activity with Mexican medical institutions would be undertaken first with the Institute of Cardiology.81 In that year, the National University created the first full-time positions for a group of selected professors that included physiologists; a trend that would continue in the following years. In 1959, the Rockefeller Foundation made a significant grant to the Institute of $200,000, which included equipment and an amount to complement salaries—an unusual move on the Foundation’s part.82 The Foundation believed that the Institute would play a leading role in setting high academic standards in Mexico and in Latin America.83 In the early 1950s, there were eighteen Mexican researchers in Rosenblueth’s laboratory, and it had housed ten foreigners including the mathematician Norbert Wiener from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the physiologist Joaquín Luco from the Universidad Católica of Chile, the pharmacologist Otto Krayer from Harvard, and the physician Alfredo Lanari from Buenos Aires.84 The collaboration of Rosenblueth and Wiener was a noteworthy partnership between mathematics and biology. Rosenblueth’s work with Wiener was instrumental in the development of the concept of cybernetics, whose principle was the existence of a similar feedback system in engineering and in biology. Weiner and Rosenblueth met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they participated in an informal seminar on scientific themes along with other university professors that convinced them that the most productive areas of science lay on the frontiers between disciplines.85 There was also a military stimulus to their research. During World War II, the American government asked Wiener to improve the detection of enemy ships and aircraft. He called Rosenblueth and the engineer Julian Bigelow to


86 Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener, and Julian Bigelow, “Behavior, Purpose and Teleology,” Phil. Sci., 1943, 10(1), 18–24. 87 Heart Research and Mathematical Biology, Excerpt from Trustees Bulletin, [no day] May 1948, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 98, RFA, RAC. 88 Heart Research and Mathematical Biology, R.G. 1.1, Series 323, Box 13, Folder 98, RFA, RAC. Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1948). 89 Ruy Pérez Tamayo, “Arturo Rosenblueth: la filosofía de la ciencia en el Colegio Nacional,” in La Evolución de la medicina en México durante las últimas cuatro décadas, ed. Ramón de la Fuente et al. (México: El Colegio Nacional, 1984), 45–54.


explore the idea of a machine behaving similarly to animals to tackle the job. As a byproduct of this work, they produced an article examining how mechanical, biological, and electronic systems communicate and interact creating the basis for cybernetics’ studies.86 In Mexico, Rosenblueth became more interested in the examination of the mechanism of the nervous system, which could be also considered as a complex network of communication lines. According to a Rockefeller report both Rosenblueth and Wiener were “attacking the problem” from two angles.87 In total, the Foundation awarded grants that sum over $25,000 for the joint work of Weiner and Rosenblueth during the period 1947–52.88 This was also an important sum for Mexico. When Wiener published his landmark Cybernetics in 1948, partly written in Mexico, it was dedicated to Rosenblueth. Although Rosenblueth later abandoned the study of cybernetics, he continued to receive in Mexico Wiener’s graduate students, such as O. G. Selfridge, a pioneer of artificial intelligence. Slowly but steadily, Rosenblueth began to be recognized among his Mexican peers, and emerged as a new kind of public intellectual in Mexican culture, the rigorous scholar. Since the late 1950s, he received different awards such as the prestigious Mexican National Science Award in the category of Physics, Mathematics, and Natural Sciences, and named honorary professor at the universities of Sonora and Yucatán, in Mexico. In 1960, after fourteen years of work, he left the Institute of Cardiology. His motives are not clear. It could be that he received a tempting offer to work in a new center where he could totally devote himself to research. It could also be that financial resources for research at the Institute began to diminish. Rosenblueth left the Institute to become the first director of the new Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (known by the acronym Cinvestav), an organization for Mexico’s scientific elite. He would only have as his responsibilities research and giving a few conferences per year. In 1970, Rosenblueth resigned as director of the Center, at the age of seventy, when it had a staff of thirty-four investigators and a remarkable visibility, both nationally and internationally. Another duty Rosenblueth had was his activities in the Colegio Nacional, of which he was a member since 1947. It was a kind of national academy of the arts and sciences of Mexico, which in imitation of the Collège de France gave a lifelong pension to twenty prominent personalities in the sciences, the humanities, and arts.89 Each member of the Colegio gave an annual lecture for the general public. Rosenblueth prepared his lectures carefully on the physiology of the nervous system, the relationship between physiology and mathematics and the weak borderline that separates science


FI N A L R EF L E CT IO NS The development of physiology in Mexico in the mid-twentieth century occurred thanks to Izquierdo’s activities, which despite being considered heterodox by the Rockefeller Foundation received support. The Foundation was an integral actor in its own right as a promoter of the model of American medical education, a funder of experimental physiological research, an organization tolerant of dissidents, a facilitator of a transnational network emanating from Harvard, and to a minor degree as a shaper of research agendas. Izquierdo’s science was not always valued abroad but his activities appeared to be instrumental in creating a space for research. The ephemeral Spanish influence came at a turning point in the history of the country, a moment when capitalist development, the “Americanization” of medical education, and the institutionalization of science began to be accepted by governmental and medical authorities. More solid progress was due to Rosenblueth who achieved undisputed recognition for Mexican scientific institutions and academic production. Before returning to Mexico, Rosenblueth was a member—although never an uncontested member—of the elite of the international 90 Arturo Rosenblueth, Mind and Brain: A Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1970). 91 Salvador Aceves, “Informe sintético de las labores realizadas por el Instituto Nacional de Cardiología en el período del 1 de set de 1960 a 31 de agosto de 1961,” in Legajo “Informe presidencial,” Caja 2, Expediente 3, 1960–61, Fondo SSyA, SSA, AHSS, 4. 92 See C. M. Brooks, “The Development of Physiology in the Last Fifty Years,” Bull. Hist. Med., 1959, 33, 249–62.


from philosophy, and had a faithful audience. The lectures he gave in 1968 helped him to prepare the book Mind and Brain in which he discussed on how a physical activity becomes a conscious experience. In 1970, Rosenblueth died.90 Izquierdo died four years later. Both left a legacy in Mexican science and in the international network of physiology of the mid-twentieth century that cannot be ignored. It is important to mention that physiological research continued at the Instituto Nacional de Cardiología and the National University during the 1960s. Rosenblueth’s disciple, Jesus Alanis, replaced him as head of the physiological laboratory and diverse disciples of Izquierdo performed experimental work.91 They were part of a younger generation of researchers who struggled to maintain the relevance of physiology; a discipline that was losing its pre-eminence in the scientific hierarchy of most medical schools of the world. This was a difficult task not only because of Mexico’s political and social problems caused by the ending of the economic miracle era but because physiology was experiencing a process of fragmentation. It was no longer was a coherent discipline and younger researchers preferred to specialize in biochemistry, neurophysiology, endocrinology, biophysics, and other disciplines that took a life of their own. This situation created an obliteration of physiology as a whole were the discussion of holistic paradigms, such as homeostasis, became less pertinent.92 During the mid-1960s, the Mexican government, and the small scientific community that taught at the universities, had also to deal to the exponential increase in the number of medical students.


93 Osborn, “Science and the French Empire.”


network of physiology. When he moved to Mexico, Rosenblueth rediscovered his national identity and discovered his potential as a scientific leader. There is little evidence of collaboration between Izquierdo and Rosenblueth (in the early 1960s, they did some work together in the Mexican Society of Physiological Sciences). On the other hand, there is no evidence that they attacked each other (as Ocaranza and Izquierdo did). They probably respected each other’s positions and attitudes toward science. Seen in perspective, their careers are complementary, and, at least temporarily, helped to inscribe Mexico on the international map of physiology. Both came from outside Mexico City and acquired a reputation in the capital of the country. They also had in common that they reconfigured their own scientific practices, distancing themselves from the ideal of a researcher who works only in the laboratory. Both Rosenblueth and Izquierdo developed strategies for survival as scientists under adverse conditions, deviating from the ideal career patterns that they had witnessed in the resource-rich United States. They adapted to the multiple roles that scientific leaders have to perform in countries with scant resources, inadequate academic infrastructure, bad university administration, and where detailed budgets have to be submitted every other year. In addition, they confronted local traditional physicians and politicians that had a disdain for science. Despite the fact that both participated actively in an international network of physiology, their participation was frequently precarious. They had to validate themselves not only internationally but nationally. For Mexican physiologists, nationalism, even in the milder version that existed during the Rosenblueth years, was a requirement (in other industrial nations, most researchers were satisfied by a non-nationalistic and neutral research ethos and political opinions in most cases were an individual choice). The development of “national” scientific institutions, such as the Instituto de Cardiología, came about because they were a matter of pride for the government and portrayed as a need of national medicine and local medical education. Mexican physiologists had to relate their work to their country’s needs and at the same time make contributions to the international network of physiology. These two goals sometimes clashed, since the Mexican governments never fully endorsed the need for basic science and sustained laboratory work. Thus, the relationship between nationalism and internationalism in the networks of physiology was never fully resolved. This unresolved but persisting tension explains the title of this paper; Mexicans physiologists were the fragile part of an asymmetrical network. With care and skill, they gradually developed local influences and international prestige, although the major sources of financial and academic power remained in the United States. Following Michael Osborn’s lead, I would argue that despite the absence of clear-cut imperialist structures, the case of Mexican physiology was one of “asymmetric coevolution” between U.S. medical science and philanthropy, on the one side, and Mexican physiology, on the other.93 The study of the development of Mexican physiology during the mid-twentieth century confirms the observation that the circulation of scientific practices, materials, and of institutional norms was intrinsically asymmetric but during the 20th century unique opportunities for development of researchers and science institutions from developing nations existed.

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