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+----------------------------------+
| HOST: An Electronic Bulletin |
| for the History and Philosophy |
| of Science and Technology |
|----------------------------------|
| Volume 1, Number 1 |
| Spring/Summer |
| July, 1992 |
+----------------------------------+
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Institute for the History | Produced by IHPST through |
| and Philosophy of Science | the HOST BBS on EPAS and |
| and Technology, Room 316, | E-Mail, through INTERNET at |
| 73 Queen's Park Crescent, | JSMITH@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA |
| Toronto, Ontario, Canada. | IHPST@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA |
| M5S1K7 [IHPST]. |-----------------------------|
| Phone: (416) 978-5047. | Editors: Julian A. Smith |
| Fax: (416) 978-3003. | Gordon H. Baker |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
+------------+
| Contents |
+------------+
Subscriber's Information
About our Contributors
Editorial Introduction
Articles/Works in Progress
(1) Gordon H. Baker, "Paging Dr. Black"
(2) Mary P. Winsor, "Natural History and its Descendants:
Science for Curiosity or Use"
Electronic Resources
(1) Julian A. Smith, "Using Library Catalogues on INTERNET"
Book Reviews
(2) Review of M. K. Thomas, _Canadian Meteorology_.
(3) Review of M. Ainley, _Despite the Odds_.
Information for Authors
+--------------------------+
| Subscriber's Information |
+--------------------------+
HOST: An Electronic Bulletin for the History and Philosophy
of Science and Technology,is produced by the Institute for the
History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (or IHPST) at
Victoria College,Room 316,73 Queen's Park Crescent, University
of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1K7. HOST appears 2
times a year, in January and July, and contains articles,works
in progress, research notes, communications, book reviews,
electronic resources, and news of interest to the profession.
The HOST Bulletin is distributed in several formats. Copies
through E-Mail (INTERNET at JSMITH@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA) or by the
HOST BBS at EPAS.UTORONTO.CA are available free. Printed
copies ($8) or disk copies ($5) may also be ordered from IHPST
at the address above, and by telephone at 416-978-5047, or fax
at 416-978-3003. Inquiries, subscription orders, submissions,
and review copies of books should be sent to IHPST, addressed
to the HOST Bulletin editors.
+------------------------+
| About our Contributors |
+------------------------+
Gordon H. Baker is a B.A. candidate at IHPST, and an editor of
the HOST Bulletin. Mr. Baker's research interests include 19th
century medicine, and the history of science in Canada.
Julian A. Smith is a Ph.D. candidate at IHPST,and sysop of the
HOST BBS. He is also one of the editors of the HOST Bulletin.
Mr. Smith's research interests include medieval physics, 19th
century medicine, astronomy and cartography in Canada, and the
history of mathematics.
Mary P. Winsor is professor of the History of Biology at IHPST
and has written several books, including Starfish, Jellyfish
and the Order of Life. Professor Winsor's interests include
the history of natural history, ecology, classification, and
conservation.
+------------------------+
| Editorial Introduction |
+------------------------+
Though the history and philosophy of science and technology
is still a very young field,its dynamic growth in recent years
has left scholars struggling to keep up with current research.
Yet while traditional printed works in the field have grown
exponentially, an equally profound and much less appreciated
revolution in research and scholarship has also been taking
place. And our efforts to understand this new development may
ultimately prove far more important than this modern day
proliferation of print.
Since the introduction of personal computers in the late
1970s, scholars have been able to access an increasing number
of electronic databases, bibliographies, research tools and
on-line journals. Few researchers have remained untouched by
these developments, which range from the simple tasks of word
processing to the more complicated efforts of developing
specialized bibliographic tools, text analysis systems and
electronic mail networks.
Other fields in the humanities have not been slow to take
advantage of these new trends. On-line databases and text
archives are already commonplace in the fields of Medieval
History and Classical Studies;and there are several electronic
journals serving other disciplines in the humanities,including
Modern History and Religious Studies. Despite these trends,
however, there is as yet no electronic journal devoted
specifically to the history and philosophy of science and
technology. We believe that the time has come for this to
change.
The HOST Bulletin is intended to fill this gap. It will be
distributed both electronically and by traditional printing,
and hence will form a bridge between the two media. The
bulletin will advance all aspects of the history and
philosophy of science and technology, but has four principal
objectives:
(1) To provide a much more dynamic and rapid dissemination
of scholarly research, criticism and comment than is
possible with present-day printed texts, whose current
publication delays range anywhere from 1-5 years.
(2) To keep our readers abreast of the rapidly growing
computerized resources available to historians of science
and technology.
(3) To extend the community of scholars by electronic
linkages to libraries, colleges, schools and research
facilities not yet served by traditional history of
science journals.
(4) To help evolve new formats in the presentation of
scholarly research, including evolving works in progress,
motion pictures, interactive video and sound, historic
experiment computer simulations, and so forth.
The support we have already received from historians of
science is promising, and is a happy omen for the future. We
invite you to join us in this new and exciting venture, and
welcome your comments, criticisms and contributions.
Julian A. Smith
Gordon H. Baker
+----------------------------+
| Articles/Works in Progress |
+----------------------------+
+-----------------------------------------------+
| Paging Dr. Black, or, An Inquiry Regarding |
| Medicine as the Model of Choice for Funeral |
| Service, and whether the Principles Adopted |
| are Used with Legitimacy |
| Work in Progres |
| By Gordon H. Baker. |
+-----------------------------------------------+
| Received May 20, 1992 |
| Revised May 22, 1992 |
+-------------------------+
Funeral service personnel seeking social recognition and
prestige in the mid-to late-twentieth century, used the
credibility of science to support their claim to
professionalism. In so doing, funeral directors, funeral
assistants and licensed embalmers, emulated the 'scientising'
techniques utilized by medical practitioners of the late-
nineteenth and early - twentieth centuries. Whether this
'scientising' of funeral service held any value for its
practitioners (or the general public) is questionable. It may
merely have been a public relations method by which to raise
the status of the 'trade' or 'business' to a 'profession'. In
light of this, one may well ask whether the licensed funeral
director of the 1990s is approaching funeral service as a
theory-based professional, or merely as an applied arts
technician familiar with the language of medical science?
To address these concerns properly,one must examine the claim
to professionalism that funeral directors make and determine
the premises upon which this claim is made. To this end the
development of the species 'late-twentieth century Funeral
Director', in North America generally, and in Ontario,
specifically, must be delineated. Thence, the 'evolution' of
funeral service through its acquisition of a basic body of
abstract knowledge and the ideal of service[2] will be
examined through the institutionalisation, education, and
professional organization of funeral directors. Once done,
questions about the legitimacy of the premises upon which
funeral service practitioners and organizers have built their
impression of 'medical scientising' into a claim to pro-
fessionalism, will be addressed.
"Embalming and the care of the dead forms the foundation for
the entire funeral service structure...and--in the opinion of
many -- [is] the really professional facet of our vocational
structure" claims Lawrence G. "Darko" Frederick and Clarence
G. Strub.[3] In their textbook, The Principles and Practice of
Embalming, Frederick and Strub carry on to argue that
Protection of the public health is at one and the same
time the mortician's chief obligation and his most
reliable guarantee of privileges ordinarily granted to
only the most respected professions. In truth, the
mortician is a man apart from the layman of his
community....a person who protects his friends and
neighbors against infection and disease, as well as
providing a more specific service when death occurs.
Like the other recognized professions we have a deep
obligation to the public. This obligation always takes
precedence over the services we perform for compen-
sation. In time of epidemic or catastrophe it is our
professional obligation to serve and protect, no matter
what our personal jeopardy may be. It should be
remembered that in his capacity of sanitarian the
mortician more closely approaches true professionalism.
It is for this function that he receives most of his
formal training, his license to practice, and the
supervision and protection of the State Board of
Health.[4]
How did the funeral director come to be empowered with this
skill, service above self and mysterious knowledge that permit
Frederick and Strub to boldly claim this ascendancy to a level
of 'true professional'? The answer to this question will
provide the social context by which this inquiry into the
scientising of funeral service as a means to professionalism
might be grounded.
Research to date has not yet disclosed a monograph of a
specifically Canadian history of funeral service, save Robert
Forrest's Death, Here is Thy Sting.[5] Even in his section
concerning the evolution of funeral service, Forrest is
dependent upon American histories of funeral directing.[6]
Bearing this in mind, and considering the demographic
similarity of Upper Canada/Ontario and the United States in
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (being over-
whelmingly Eurocentric, primarily of British or American
origin),[7] until further research is done in this area, the
assumption shall be made that the development of Canadian
funeral service was similar, albeit on a smaller scale,to that
of the Americans. Briefly, then, here is an examination of the
development of the 'funeral business' in North America.[8]
James J. Farrell[9] presents a clear and accurate description
of the changes in the role of funeral service personnel
between 1850 and 1920. He argues that before the 1880s,
"undertaking was largely an informal, unorganized enterprise,
often the adjunct of a furniture business." [10] This
supposition is supported by other commentators, including
Habenstein and Lamers, Frederick and Strub, Puckle, and
Pine.[11] Upon the occurrence of a death, a member of the
family or a neighbour (often a woman)[12] would wash, shroud
and 'lay out' the body upon a board placed between two chairs.
Sometimes the features were 'set' (i.e. closing the eyes and
mouth for presentation). At this time the coffin was purchased
from the local cabinetmaker who built to order, or if the town
was large enough to support one, the furniture dealer, who had
a prepared stock.
The six-sided box with a hinged lid[13] was carted to the
home of the deceased, wherein the body was placed for the
funeral. Upon completion of the religious rite the family and
friends would view the body 'in the open air',[14] close the
coffin and transport it to the graveyard, where the sextant or
family friends had dug the grave. After the committal these
same people filled in the grave. "In the period before the
professionalization of American funeral service [pre-1870s],
most funerals were simple and unaffected"[15]
Over time, people began to ask the furniture dealers[16] to
undertake the 'laying out' of the body rather than have family
or friends perform those duties. A box was added to the
'undertakers' wagon to make a hearse for transportation of the
ready made, polished, trimmed and upholstered caskets to the
home.
The development of larger towns saw the emergence of a
bourgeois class of individuals desirous of displaying their
wealth any way they could. Funerals were not unaffected by
this change in prosperity. The furniture-dealers/undertakers
proffered (or were asked to provide) a better grade of
paraphernalia, the black horses and specially built hearse of
the local livery stable operator, and a wider range of
services, for funerals. "The availability of caskets with
silk-lined interiors undoubtedly encouraged efforts to make
the corpse look as good as its container. And the
manufacturers of embalming fluids promoted a product to help
undertakers achieve such results."[17] In order to appeal to
the status sensibilities of the bourgeois customer who
"demand[ed] something more in accordance with their sur-
roundings,"[18] it fell to the undertakers to direct the
arrangement of the funeral procession, so that rank and social
standing would be kept in order.
Here,then,we have the funeral service personnel of the late-
nineteenth and early - twentieth centuries moving from an
undertaker providing funeral paraphernalia such as a rough box
and a wagon, to an undertaker/funeral director providing
upholstered caskets, special mourning coaches or hearses and
services such as the new scientific embalming.
The scientific embalming became practical with the simple
and economical preparation of formaldehyde established by
August Wilhelm von Hofmann in 1868. Formaldehyde proved to be
a more effective preservative when arterially injected than
the solutions of oil of turpentine, oil of lavender, oil of
rosemary and vermillion recommended by the Scottish anatomist
Dr. William Hunter.[19] Hofmann "prepared formaldehyde by
passing a mixture of methanol vapors and air over a heated
platinum spiral."[20] This, in conjunction with the form-
aldehyde solution, gas and polymer described by Alexander
Mikhailovich Butlerov, (jointly credited with the discovery of
formaldehyde because of his 1859 work)[21] was used after 1870
by medical schools in the preparation of anatomical specimens.
But how did this lead to scientising of funeral service as a
means to professionalization?
It would seem, according to Habenstein and Lamers, that the
want for chemical embalming by injection of preservatives
resulted from (1) poor results with the use of ice placed on
or about the body to retard putrefaction and keep the corpse
on display in the period 1830 to 1870; (2) the rise of the
sanitation movement and desire to prevent smallpox,diphtheria,
scarlet fever and other epidemics in America; and (3) the
development of medical pathology.
At the first National Funeral Directors' Association
convention in 1882, S. R. Lippincott suggested that "from the
earliest age of which we have any authentic history, it seems
to have been the ardent desire of the scientific world to
obtain the mystery of preserving this wonderful mechanism from
waste and decay and dissolution, so that time should not
efface or destroy it."[22] In other words, for medical science
to learn how the human body functioned, and how disease could
be corrected,it was necessary to have a body that was as close
to the living thing as possible, rather than a putrefying,
discoloured, inexact specimen. From the stand-point of the
funeral director, preserving bodies to prevent decomposition
also relieved intense emotions, "not only of grief, but of
horror and revulsion."[23] But what of the other benefit of
chemical embalming, sanitation?
The progress of the sanitation movement on the Continent
inspired travels to Europe by Richard Harlan to study methods
of plague control. Harlan, an American educator in anatomy,
sanitation and public health and one of the earliest advocates
of creosote as a disinfectant, was so impressed with the use
of embalming as a sanitary measure, that upon his return to
America, in 1840, he had the French chemist Jean Gannal's
History of Embalming translated and published at Philadelphia.
From this time to the 1860s, physicians , anatomists,
pathologists and chemists preserving specimens at American
medical schools,and others interested in preservation of flesh
(including urban undertakers who had to delay burial of the
deceased while relatives arrived from the frontier), ex-
perimented independently to discover a satisfactory method of
preservation and sanitation.[24]
In this period, however, the undertaker's first reason and
primary motivation for embalming was probably preservation.
The watershed for the use of these chemical preservatives was
the American Civil War. At the beginning of the War embalming
was the province of "physicians, surgeons, physiologists,
anatomists, chemists, pharmacists, druggists and other persons
connected with the rising medical profession."[25] However,
the desire to have high ranking soldiers returned to their far
away homes, for 'good Christian burials',necessitated that the
undertaker on government contract to perform this duty hire or
go into partnership with a surgeon-embalmer, or learn the
process, and acquire the technology of chemical preservation,
himself. The new scientific embalming was seen as preferable
to having ice quickly melt away or the released gasses of
putrefying bodies blow out the sides of hermetically sealed
metal shipping containers during transport. After the war, the
surgeon-embalmers returned to the advancing medical field,
leaving embalming to those outside of or on the periphery of
the medical arts.
Undertakers, now familiar with the embalming process,
returned to civilian life and founded undertaking estab-
lishments, offering their newly learned skill as part of the
regular service to clients. The embalming of high ranking
officers during the war (and Abraham Lincoln after the war)
brought familiarity and acceptance of the process to the
growing, status hungry, middle class American citizens;a ready
market for the funeral director-embalmers.
But,Farrell convincingly argues, disinfection quickly became
a strong second rationale for the process of scientific
chemical embalming--for reasons of sanitation, social service
and professional posturing. He states that
the refinement of embalming technique coincided closely
with the rise of sanitary science and the acceptance of
the germ theory of disease. As early as 1883, an NFDA
speaker explicitly identified the germ theory of disease
and the influential 1882-83 researches of Dr. Robert
Koch. The speaker also related how he had unwittingly
brought diphtheria into his own home by using an ice
casket to preserve the remains of a diphtheria victim.
Ice, he said, did not kill germs, nor did it do more than
retard decomposition of the body. Embalming, on the other
hand, was an excellent disinfectant and preservative.[26]
Thence, after 1883, funeral directors increasingly linked
preservation and disinfection as reasons for embalming. One
funeral director drew the medical analogy that "the surgical
operation saves but one life. Who can not say how many lives
are saved sometimes by proper embalming and disinfecting of a
tubercular body and of the home?"[27] Farrell continues:
The concern for survivors which permeated this inter-
pretation of embalming placed it within a species
perspective of life and death. But funeral directors also
realized the potential professional and commercial
implications of an attachment to sanitary science. "On
the subject of sanitation as an educational leverage too
much cannot be said," said [National Funeral Directors'
Association] President Robert R. Bringhust in 1890. "If
we would take the position up...how soon we would be
recognized as of much importance in our community." After
1883, funeral directors consistently hitched themselves
to the star of sanitary science.[28]
The existence of the translated History of Embalming, the
work of Koch, and the commercial advantages of the sanitation
movement, together provided 'inspiration and material basis
for numerous articles in early mortuary trade journals'.[29]
Eighty years later the validity of this claim continues to be
sanctioned, as Frederick and Strub, in their "bible,"[30]
proclaim "the modern mortician is primarily a sanitarian, and
only secondarily a beautifier of the dead."[31]
In the late nineteenth century, then, it was the provision
of a premium paying bourgeois clientele interested in the
status of a Lincoln-like funeral, acting upon the suggestion
of the sanitation conscious and community health responsive
funeral director-embalmer, that opened up a market for the
druggists and pharmacist-physicians to experiment and compound
fluids commercially. By 1880 at least four chemical concerns
engaged in this:
The Hill Chemical Company of Springfield, Ohio,
[manufacturer of a product formulated by Springfield
druggist Ed. Hill] which had started in 1878 and shortly
afterward became The Champion Chemical Company; The
Clarke Chemical Works; and Mills and Lacey, of Grand
Rapids,Michigan...[and] "Crane's Excelsior Preservation"
...prepared and sold as a sideline by the Globe Casket
Manufacturing Company.[32]
In order to expand their markets further, these and later
chemical companies independently set up embalming classes in
their factories or local funeral homes, or lobbied medical
colleges for assistance to set up embalming 'schools' or
'institutes'.[33] These institutes then, some connected with
medical colleges through the use of their facilities and
instructors, became established embalming schools for the
purpose of the instruction in embalming techniques, with the
additional benefit of product promotion.
This institutionalization of education, concern for sanita-
tion and the commercial viability of embalming, led to a self-
consciousness on the part of these funeral director-embalmers
that their vocation held a particular place in society.
Formalization of this awareness is seen in the creation of the
National Funeral Directors' Association in 1882, with its main
goals being "education, professionalization and financial
security."[34] This group recognized the modification in
funeral ceremony that arterial chemical embalming provided.
With this knowledge, they set to work upon formally shifting
the status of all American undertakers to the more skilled,
professional, funeral director-embalmers.
In this situation, the National Funeral Directors' Associa-
tion's efforts to professionalize followed the marketing
strategy of their affiliated manufacturers.[35] The industrial
revolution had empowered manufacturing companies,enabling them
to produce caskets or chemicals far more effectively and
cheaply than the local cabinetmaker/undertaker-embalmer. As
these companies (which had organized into industry associa-
tions) began to supply the cabinetmaker/undertaker with goods,
that part of the undertakers' control over pricing was lost.
The undertakers followed the example of their suppliers and
banded together to control the prices of goods they purchased
and the services they sold. Further to this, the NFDA
(composed of representatives of funeral service establishments
in small towns in several states) was able to act as an
organized lobby group to defend themselves from adverse
legislation on both state and federal levels.[36]
Yet from its beginnings, as Frederick and Strub informed us
above, embalming was at the centre of professionalization.
Farrell reports that
if necessary,[NFDA members] would develop a scientific
body of knowledge as the basis of a profession. At the
1883 convention Allen Durfee attributed the "Progress of
the Profession" to the spread of the "noble art
preservative." Embalming, he said, had "revolutionized
the methods of the profession, elevating the keeping of
the body to [the] completeness and certainty of an exact
science" Embalming enhanced professional status,because
it allowed undertakers to sell a scientific service in
addition to the traditional wares of the funeral trade.
The similarity of embalming to surgery also suggested
the dignified comparison of undertakers to doctors as
professional colleagues....The semi-scientific services
of comforting the family and directing the funeral
ceremony also required professional performance.[37]
The success of this groups' efforts can be seen in the
American language terminology that reflects the change in
funeral director's professional status. H. L. Mencken, in his
The American Language,[38] reports that the term mortician was
proposed by a writer in the Embalmers' Monthly for February,
1895, but the undertakers, 'who were then funeral-directors,'
did not rise to it until some years later. The term mortician,
Mencken informs the reader,
of course, was suggested by physician, for undertakers
naturally admire and like to pal with the resurrection
men,[39] and there was a time when some of them called
themselves embalming surgeons. A mortician never handles
a corpse; he prepares a body or patient. This business
is carried on in a preparation-room or operating-room,
and when it is achieved the patient is put into a casket
and stored in the reposing-room or slumber-room of a
funeral-home.[40][41]
Mencken points out another interesting detail about the
professionalization of funeral directors: "On September 16,
1916, some of the more eminent of [the funeral directors] met
at Columbus, O., to form a national association, on the lines
of the American College of Surgeons, the American Association
of University Professors, and the Society of the Cincinnati,
and a year later they decided upon National Selected
Morticians as its designation."[42] It is noteworthy that
William J. Goode in his article The Theoretical Limits of
Professionalization suggests that "most of the occupations
that do rise to such high levels [of knowledge and dedication
to service that society considers necessary for a profession]
will continue to be viewed as qualitatively different from the
four great person professions: law,medicine, the ministry, and
university teaching."[43] Clearly, NSM was trying to overcome
just that difference.
In support of this idea of professionalization through
emulation of these professional groups, Burton J.Bledstein[44]
suggests that middle-class Americans upgrade their occupations
by moving from the distribution of a commodity to offering a
service based on an acquired skill. To demonstrate this point
he cites that "only in America,for example, did undertakers of
the nineteenth century sever their historical ties with
cabinet - makers, manufacturers of funeral furniture and
liverymen...[where upon] the subject mortuary science soon
entered the curriculum of accredited colleges."[45] In this
way, "funeral directors would not follow in the wake of 'broom
makers, box and basket-makers'. As legal agents certified by
county boards of health, they proposed that the members of the
National Funeral Directors' Association be educated, examined
and licensed as professionals."[46]
In this process of professionalization, American undertakers
became aware of the new scientific embalming through
familiarity with the process itself by the Civil War practice
of hiring or working with surgeon-embalmers, their trade
journals, attendance at chemical manufacturers' institu-
tionalized mortuary science courses or their local profession-
al associations.
Physicians, surgeons, pharmacists,dentists and veterinarians
all had organized their national societies and associations
for the betterment of their status, before 1870.[47] Following
their lead, the National Funeral Directors Association (1882)
with its self-regulating Code of Ethics (1884)[48] and mandate
of education, [49] professionalization and provision of
financial security was able to spread the gospel of embalming,
and pressure all levels of government for friendly legis-
lation. Friendly legislation included regulating the practice
of embalming by state boards of health. This was accomplished
by instituting a framework of special boards of embalmers to
examine and license the members of their own occupational
group, which in turn was used to defined undertakers-embalmers
as a distinct occupational group engaged in sanitary embalming
to reduce epidemics and plagues in large centres.[50]
With this basic foundation of the American situation, it is
now possible to examine existing sources, and extrapolate (for
yet to be researched material),to determine the scientising of
funeral service in Canada since the end of the nineteenth
century. One must be cautious, however, and recall the
difference in funeral service population size over the time
period considered; in Mencken's 1965 description of National
Select Morticians, he states that "to this day the association
remains so exclusive that, of the 24,000 undertakers in the
United States, only 200 belong to it."[51] The Dominion Bureau
of Statistics conducted a survey of funeral directors in the
year 1964; at that time the total number of funeral directors
in Canada was reported to be 5 908; roughly 25% of the
Americans.[52] So it must be recognized that the voice of
Canadian funeral directors would not be as strong as that of
their American brethren during professional development.
One must also recall that it was in the 1920s that Canadian
trade exports to the United States surpassed those to Britain
(and have been increasing ever since). The 1920s was also the
decade in which Canada gained its independence from Britain,
becoming a member of the Commonwealth. From this time then,
American culture and ideas began to gain some ground over the
previously Victorian-minded, strictly protectionist Canadian
political and cultural alignment with Britain.[53] With these
foundations, recognition of new influences and cautions in
place, let us examine Ontario funeral service through its
legislation, education, and scientific professionalization.
Finn, in his Evolution of Funeral Service Education in
Ontario,[54] reports that prior to 1936 one could become
qualified to practice embalming by (1) attending a school of
Mortuary Science in the United States, such as The Champion
School of Embalming in Springfield,Ohio, or The Eckels College
of Mortuary Science;[55] (2) attending a school of embalming
in Europe; (3) attending The Ontario College of Embalming,
established in 1891 by the English trained F. W. Turner;[56]
or (4) attending a course of instruction conducted by Robert
U. Stone at his business, Stone Funeral Service, at 525
Sherbourne Street, Toronto--this course (of about 10 days
duration)[57] began around 1900,was called the Canadian School
of Embalming and ceased to operate when the provincially
recognized Canadian School of Embalming at the Banting
Institute, University of Toronto, received its charter in
1937.[58]
According to Finn, Robert Stone, other local members of the
profession, faculty of the University of Toronto and staff of
various American Mortuary Science colleges, all lectured
students in preparation for their licensing examinations.
These lectures were held at Central Technical School and the
Anatomy Building at the University of Toronto. The Board of
Examiners sponsored this training session and were responsible
for the course of study.[59]
But what qualifications for setting a course of study did
these Examiners have? According to An Act Respecting
Embalmers, 1911, the Board of Examiners was appointed by the
Lieutenant-Governer in Council, and consisted of 'five persons
practically conversant with the business of embalming'. These
five were empowered to 'prescribe the subjects in which
candidates for certificates of qualification as embalmers'
were to be taught. They set and supervised examinations for
registered applicants,and upon the candidates' passing, issued
licenses and certificates of qualification to the new,
qualified embalmers.[60]
With the introduction of the 1911 legislation, the state
recognized, accounted for and regulated the Embalmer; the
regulatory limits of this legislation were prescribed by
individuals of the same learned and occupational rank.
Elizabeth McNabb indicates the significance of this legis-
lation by arguing that "the purpose of the statutes is to
ensure, through registration, that only those considered
qualified can avail themselves of certain privileges relating
to the practice of a given profession."[61] Just as in the
case of physicians, there exists here the notion that only
those within the group can adequately test, judge and regulate
the qualifications of those desiring to be recognized by
the group.
Included in An Act Respecting Embalmers, 1911, were
provisions for recognition and certification of embalmers:
8. Every person engaged in or carrying on the business
of embalming in Ontario at the time of the passing of
this Act and who applies to the Board for a certificate
of qualification before the first day of January, 1912,
shall, upon furnishing such evidence of sobriety, good
character and experience as the Board may require, and
upon payment of the prescribed fee, be entitled to
receive a certificate of qualification from the Board.
14. (1) No person shall after the 1st day of January,
1912, carry on business as an undertaker in Ontario
without a license from the Provincial Board of Health
which shall be issued upon such terms and subject to
such conditions and regulations and upon payment of such
fee and subject to cancellation or suspension for such
cause as the Provincial Board of Health and the approval
of the Lieutenant-Governer in Council may prescribe.
(2) Every person carrying on business as an undertaker
after the 1st day of January, 1912, without such notice,
shall incur a penalty of $25.
15. Every person who as an undertaker conducts or
directs to burial any human body shall forthwith notify
the Secretary of the Provincial Board of Health of such
burial upon the form prescribed by the regulations of
the Provincial Board of Health,and any person neglecting
or refusing to carry out the provisions of this section
shall incur a penalty of $25, and upon conviction his
license may be suspended or cancelled by the Board. [62]
The Board of Examiners determined one's qualifications, and
the Provincial Board of Health issued a license. Clearly the
state had become interested in the regulation of sanitation
and statistics associated with it. As a part of the 'health
team' the properly trained embalmer was a member of a state
recognized, skilled occupational group; a group legitimately
trained to engage in sanitation by virtue of its knowledge of
embalming--"the disinfection or preservation of the dead human
body entire or in part, by the use of chemical substances,
fluids or gases,ordinarily used, prepared or intended for such
purpose, either by outward application of such chemical
substances,fluids or gases on the body, or by the introduction
of the same into the body by vascular or hypodermic injection,
or by direct application into the organs or cavities."[63]
It was not until 1914, with the introduction of An Act
Respecting Embalmers and Undertakers that the union of these
two groups was fully recognized. With this legislation,
embalming was officially accepted as the province of the
undertakers.[64]
It is not surprising that the introduction of such an Act,
and knowledge of the American NFDA's efforts to ward off
unfriendly legislation, sparked the interest of Ontario
undertakers and embalmers to form the Ontario Funeral Service
Association, in 1922. Their mandate of education,professional-
ization and financial security was the same as their American
counterparts.[65]
One year later Canadian Funeral Service, "Canada's Only
Funeral Paper" was founded by James O'Hagan.[66] This paper
regularly published the reports of the Ontario Board of
Examiners[67] and the Ontario Association Bulletin, the report
of the Ontario Funeral Service Association. James O'Hagan,
through his trade journal, became the mouthpiece of these two
organizations,and constantly editorialized on issues pertinent
to funeral service in Canada; especially the need to profes-
sionalize along the American's higher, scientific, educational
model.
Active lobbying, by the Board of Examiners and the OFSA with
politicians, and by O'Hagan within funeral service, culminated
in a most progressive piece of legislation in April 1928. An
Act Respecting Embalmers and Funeral Directors[68] identified
the Funeral Director, and made him distinct from the Embalmer.
The difference between the two was that the Embalmer held a
certificate of qualification from the Board of Examiners,while
the Funeral Director, a person qualified as an Embalmer, had
the management role of operating "a partnership, firm or
incorporated company...for the purpose of furnishing to the
public funeral supplies and services."[69]
Further, it was no longer the province of the Lieutenant-
Governor in Council to make regulations for the examinations
of candidates for licenses and certificates of qualification
and permits. Under the new legislation, the Board of Examiners
continued to set courses, examine candidates, and issue
certificates of qualification, licenses or permits to em-
balmers, but they were now allowed to make proposed changes in
regulation directly to the cabinet minister responsible for
administration of the act. The Board was also given the power
to 'provide for the establishment of new, or approve of
existing, schools of embalmment [sic], and conduct special
courses of instruction in embalming and preparing the remains
of deceased persons for interment' as well as: issue 'licenses
for engaging in or carrying on a business as a funeral
director; inspect, regulate and approve in accordance with the
local board of health, the premises, accommodation and
equipment of funeral directors';and most importantly,the Board
of Examiners could 'specify what was to be considered infamous
or disgraceful conduct in a professional respect on the part
of an embalmer or funeral director'.[70]
The Board of Examiners, composed of "five qualified funeral
directors"[71] had gained the power,through state legislation,
to self regulate and discipline,while being responsible to the
Minister of the Ontario Board of Health. This process in
medicine is what Blishen[72] refers to as 'collegial control'.
The activities of O'Hagan's trade journal, new powers for the
Board of Examiners and development of the OFSA, laid the
foundations for the emergence of a group consciousness, as
happened in the United States, in 1882. "These bodies and
their activities were to become the basis of professional
identity because they helped to created uniformity of interest
among practitioners by imposing a monopoly of the field of
expertise, by regulating entry into the profession, and by
developing uniform policies and codes of ethics."[73] While
Blishen here is referring to physicians in Canada around the
time of Confederation, the similarity of evolution among
Canadian funeral service personnel sixty years later cannot
be denied.[74]
Blishen notes[75] that in the early stages of development of
organized medicine in Canada, the practitioners had been given
control over education, just as the Board of Examiners had for
funeral service. For physicians, later developments saw this
control pass to medical schools. "The result was consolidation
of a uniform, scientific doctrine as the basis for
practice."[76] In Canadian funeral service, the institutional-
ization of education was made possible by An Act to amend The
Embalmers and Funeral Directors Act, 1928.[77]
The specific changes in this amendment gave the Board of
Examiners the "power to pay out...such sums as it [deemed]
proper to assist in the establishment and maintenance of any
such school or college"[78] of embalming. Further, in keeping
with 'collegial control', "subject to the approval of the
Board, any such school or college [could] conduct a course of
instruction in embalming and general preparation..for articled
students, provided the Board [had] exclusive authority to
grant a certificate of qualification as an embalmer."[79] A
prerequisite for writing an examination of qualification
became "evidence satisfactory to the Board that [the articled
student had] completed the full course of instruction in one
of such school or colleges" and "any such school or college
[could] conduct a post-graduate course of instruction for
embalmers." Further, "the Board [could] exempt... any person
who [had] qualified as an embalmer in a place outside of
Ontario, provided the qualifications required in such place
[were], in the opinion of the Board, equal to the qualifi-
cations required by this Act"[80] In other words, one had to
go to a recognized Ontario school of embalming to be able to
write the qualifying exams, but there was reciprocity with the
American Colleges of Mortuary Science.
This legislation provided the funds and flexibility for the
Board of Examiners to charter the Canadian School of Embalming
at the Banting Institute,in 1937. The Banting institute served
as the headquarters of the Canadian School of Embalming
until 1968,when it moved to the Humber College of Applied Arts
and Technology.
Finn states that although there was not a formal connection
between the CSE and the University of Toronto Medical School,
the faculty of the CSE were staff of the University of Toronto
and its teaching hospital The Toronto General.[81] The
prerequisites for entrance to the CSE were established as: the
completion of Ontario Grade X; employment with a licensed
funeral director or licensed embalmer; and registration with
the Board of Examiners. The courses at the Canadian School of
Embalming were initially of two weeks duration in each of the
two years of apprenticeship. By 1968, the course had been
extended to six weeks in the first year and seven weeks in the
second year.[82]
This was a pale effort, according to James O'Hagan, when
compared with the Eckels College of Mortuary Science, which by
1944, was "offering its regular fall 9 and 12 month courses in
scientific embalming and mortuary management...[the outline of
which could be found in] the College's new 24-page brochure --
"Professional Training For The Mortuary Field'."[83] When
compared to the Americans, how much scientific education could
one attain in a four week period at the Canadian school?
James O'Hagan took this question to heart in a series of
editorials in the Fall 1946 and Spring 1947 issues of Canadian
Funeral Service.[84] "In order to maintain the present high
standards of the profession we should all be very careful and
see to it that those entering as apprentices have good mental
and physical qualifications."[85] "We... hold the view that
it is high time that our educational standard be improved"[86]
to be more like the Americans. The American curicula,
according to O'Hagan's editorial, included
Anatomy instruction including lectures, demonstrations
and dissection. Charts, models, lantern slides, motions
pictures, anatomical specimens,manikins and cadavers are
used as visual aids. Histology is studied so the student
may learn some of the important aspects of all structure
and organ architecture. Embryology is approached from
the stand-point of developmental anatomy. Physiology
correlates the subjects just mentioned, and explains the
functions of the various organs of the body and the
changes which take place at death. Pathology covers the
cause, course, results and effects of disease processes
in the human body, as well as anatomical and functional
changes caused by disease processes. Bacteriology deals
with bacteria, protozoa and fungi and their relation to
pathology and particularly to infectious and contagious
diseases. It is related to embalming by studying the
effects of disinfectants and embalming fluid on
bacteria. Hygiene instruction provides practical in-
formation on public health disease, and the precaution
necessary to prevent and overcome the spread of disease.
...Embalming is, of course, the basic subject. The
history of embalming, tests of death, physical and
chemical post mortem changes, decomposition, and the
relationship of other curricular subjects are given
attention in both classroom and laboratory. Each student
is made personally familiar with all embalming
techniques...Chemistry lectures and laboratory work take
up that broad subject from its inorganic, organic and
physiological aspects. Toxicology and the chemistry of
disinfectant and embalming fluids are covered. What is
your opinion, Mr. Reader? What do you think should be
done?[87]
O'Hagan then provides a statistical analysis of American
requirements for licensing by number of states. Those of
interest to this paper are:
43 states require 4 years of high school education; 2
require 1 year of college; 2 require 2 years of college.
29 states require 2 years of apprenticeship training
[after college];4 require 3 years;2 require 1-1/2 years;
11 require 1 year.
1 state requires applicant to have 2 years in an
approved school of embalming; 2 require 16 months; 37
require 1 year; 6 require 8 months. [88]
Clearly O'Hagan's point is that standards of scientific
education were far higher, and thus better, in the United
States; it was his expressed wish that Canadians continue to
strive for this level of professional training.
Whether he realized it or not, it would appear that in these
editorials O'Hagan was attempting to emulate the impact of
Abraham Flexner's 1910 report on Medical Education in the
United States and Canada.[89] In his report, Flexner's
standard, Johns Hopkins Medical School under the leadership of
William H. Welch, was patterned after the progressive German
university state model put in place by Bismarck. All hospitals
that did not fit within Flexners' standard of that model were
'marked for slaughter' as Dr. D. A. Campbell of the Halifax
Medical College stated.[90] "After Flexner, research would be
enthroned as a central function of a medical school and there
would be no more room for the "practical" school whose only
aim was to educate physicians...control of the modern school
would be placed firmly in the hands of full - time
academics."[91]
O'Hagan, it is reasonable to argue, is citing the American
model of funeral service, with its 'medical' science based
curriculum, as his standard model. "Once upon a time, we in
Ontario were able to boast of the advances we had made but we
seem to have been contented to rest on our laurels and let the
rest of the world pass us by. We have had no changes in the
Act for a number of years; our scholastic requirements still
remain at 2 years' high school although this should have been
raised to matriculation [Grade XII] long since; [92] our
Canadian School of Embalming still offers only a one-month
course,despite the fact that 9 months of intensive school work
is the minimum in most of the States of the Union."[93] In
point of fact, it was not until 1951 that the Board of
Examiners, with the support of the OFSA, was able to convince
the Ministry of Education to raise the entrance requirement to
Junior Matriculation.[94]
By 1951, the Canadian School of Embalming course was two
months in length: four weeks in each of the two years of
apprenticeship. The June 1951 scientific curriculum for first
year students involved
34 hours of instruction in Anatomy and Physiology, 22
hours on Principles of Embalming, 8 hours of Bacteriol-
ogy,...10 hours on General Medical Science....A visit to
Toronto's two crematoria and autopsy demonstrations will
round out the curriculum.
Second-year students will attend somewhat similar
lectures but in a more specialized and expert vein,
plus Sanitation, Accounting, Special Embalming,
Psychology, etc.[95]
By June of 1954 the CSE had increased in its "efficiency and
worth since its reorganization some years ago, [numbering]
among its faculty some of the finest lectures to be
found."[96] These included University of Toronto professors,
employees of the City of Toronto, the Province and the best
embalmers and demonstrators available.[97] By this time the
Medical Science course had been extended by 7 hours in the
first year, and in second year, Chemistry of Embalming, and an
additional six hours of Special Anatomy, had been added.
All this curriculum information indicates that the education
of funeral service personnel was in fact becoming more
scientised. The establishment of the Community Colleges of
Applied Arts and Technology system, provided the CSE with and
opportunity to permanently institutionalize in a facility
of its own design.
In 1969 the CSE temporarily moved to the Queensway Campus of
Humber College, thence to its permanent facilities at North
Campus at the completion of building, in January, 1971.[98]
O'Hagan stated that it would "give to funeral service an
advanced status in the minds of everyone; it will provide more
and better training for our future students; it will provide
facilities that were not available previously."[99] These
included a three table embalming theatre,new equipment and the
best available technology.[100]
In conjunction with new facilities , The Board of Examiners
(now called The Board of Administration) received a request
from the OFSA for a new program of two semesters (equivalent
to 9 months) in length. After a survey of the members of the
OFSA, asking for input for curricula, the two semester program
was accepted and installed by the Board of Administration in
September 1973.[101]
The science based courses, each one term in length,consisted
of Anatomy and Physiology, Microbiology, Cell Physiology,
Pathology, First Aid and Accident Prevention, Community Health
for Funeral Service Education, Embalming Theory I and II, and
Embalming Lab I and II.[102] There were, of course,
administrative courses offered as well. Here then, we have the
minimum standard that James O'Hagan was calling for in 1946-
47. A nine month scientised, theory-based college experience
with a twelve month 'internship' including on going assign-
ments in a correspondence format.
Upon successful completion of the course work and internship,
the articled student would return to Humber College for a ten-
day refresher theory session followed by two sets of exam-
inations: the theoretical examinations set and supervised by
the Board of Administration; and the practical examination----
embalming a body in a local Toronto funeral home under the
supervision of a member of the Board.[103]
This is the scientific content of the course today. Frederick
and Strub claim these "essential portions of the basic
sciences...give you a more complete understanding of the
principles and procedures [enabling you to understand] WHY
problems occur and WHY they are treated in certain ways as
well as HOW the individual problems are treated. It is our
purpose to present you with the fundamental knowledge which
will enable you to think scientifically. Without the ability
to reason and to adapt this basic knowledge to the problem at
hand you can never hope for successful resultsw....In no other
vocation does the practitioner need to be so adaptable to
changing conditions and ever-new problems."[104]
Embalming is based upon a certain degree of knowledge of
chemistry, anatomy, bacteriology, histology and pathology;
this cannot be denied. But is this training, as it stands, a
good premise to use as the 'standard of professionalism upon
which this vocation rests'? A. M. Carr-Saunders and P. A.
Wilson, in their often cited The Professions,[105] provide a
prescriptive method by which to attain the status of a
professional; when compared to the legislative and organ-
izational accounts of doctors[106] funeral directors seem to
have generally followed directions.
This account, however, is unsatisfactory. The professional
medical community is much larger,and the services they provide
are demanded, not proffered and accepted as those services of
the funeral director. In other words, if one is sick, one
seeks help to get better; it is only because of middle class
sensibilities and the desire for 'presentation' of the
deceased that the funeral director's services are required.
Otherwise sanitation could be more easily accomplished with
modern technology's answer to the funeral pyre, the cre-
matorium retort.
William J. Goode[107] provides a more suitable framework for
analysis. He argues that the "processes by which an occupation
tries to rise constitute a set of transactions among the
occupation as a collectivity, its individual members, other
related occupations, and the larger society....An occupation
can command more prestige only if the society, applying its
evaluative criteria, perceives the performances of the
occupation to be better than before or higher than those of
similar occupations. An occupation can enjoy more power if it
can exchange some of its friendly relations, income, prestige,
or political influence for legal privileges or controls."[108]
This, as has been demonstrated, is exactly what funeral
service personnel did through their organizations and
institutions. Scientific embalming in modern times came out
of anatomical medicine and pharmacy. By giving up control over
commercial chemical and casket manufacture, in a non-hostile
fashion, the core task of the embalmer was more strictly
defined; and both groups were satisfied -- the embalmers could
offer their services of preservation and sanitation to the
bourgeois, and the manufactures had a steady market for their
products.
The organization of groups such as the National Funeral
Directors Association and the Ontario Funeral Service
Association permitted a focused pursuit of 'friendly'
legislation that would permit self regulation and a raising of
professional entrance standards.
The Canadian Funeral Services trade journal (and its more
recent competition Canadian Funeral News) provided a forum for
transactions among the occupation as a collectivity.
The Board of Administration provided legitimacy as being the
disciplinary, final arbitrating, self-regulatory extension of
the state that created, organized and transmitted knowledge to
its members.
Once entered into the profession as an apprentice, or rather
articled student, organized educational programs and in-
stitutions provided the novice with 'abstract knowledge and
skills organized into a codified body of principles which were
applicable to concrete problems, that society at large
considered relevant (viz. sanitation for community health;
preservation and presentation for psychological well-
being).'[109]
In their claims to professionalism, the funeral service
occupational group can be seen to have a mysterious knowledge
in the form of scientific embalming;they are thus a group that
possesses knowledge others do not. Professional knowledge
is one of the two traits by which the 'semi-professionals' as
Goode calls them, generate professionalism.[110]
The other trait of professionalism that Goode requires is
that of 'the service ideal. "The ideal of service...may be
defined in this context as the norm that the technical
solutions which the professional arrives at [being] based on
the client's needs, not necessarily the best material interest
or needs of the professional himself, or for that matter,
those of the society."[111]
In identifying a group that fulfils the criteria for a
professional ideal of service, Goode demands the members of a
group be self-sacrificing, and believe that in a system of
rewards and punishments set out by the professional community,
'virtue pays'. Also, the practitioner must be the person who
decides upon the client's needs, not the reverse. Finally, the
society at large must also believe that the profession not
only attests to, but follows these ideals.[112]
In funeral service there seems to exist the ideal and fact
that real sacrifice is required by its practitioners. This is
exemplified by the willingness of some funeral directors to
risk personal health and embalm identified AIDS cases in the
early 1980s, before substantial evidence of the ways of trans-
mission were available; whether these practitioners were using
scientific reasoning in their judgement is not clear.
Most practitioners live by the ideal that 'virtue pays';even
though statistical data may differ, most funeral directors
today believe that word-of-mouth is the best advertising;
having your name in Newsletter of the Board of Administration,
or worse,the daily newspapers, in connection with professional
misconduct, induces significant conformity in the occupational
group.
Variance from Goode's formula has already been described in
that the medical practitioner decides upon the clients' needs,
in funeral service, the client imposes his own judgements. By
Goode's standard, funeral service is less than professional.
The final factor in Goode's formula is the most difficult to
assess: 'The society actually believes that the profession not
only accepts these ideals, but also follows them to some
extent.' If this were the case, Robert Forrest, Jessica
Mitford[113], or any of the other critics of funeral service
would not have been able to, nor had the need to, publish
monographs encouraging simple, unaffected funeral services----
either in the form of a simple casket and service or immediate
disposition of the deceased by cremation with a memorial
service held later. Further,there would have been no need for
the Canadian Funeral Service Association and the Federal
Government to survey the funeral industry in 1956, '64,'68 and
'75, questioning the cost of funerals and the income of
employees.[114] Does society believe that the funeral
profession follows its ideals? It is not clear at this point,
but is worthy of further research. But what of the scientising
of funeral service?
Once one knows the six points of injection,[115] is able to
raise arteries and veins without breaking them, had dependable
fluids and suitable personal protection, a limited theoretical
knowledge may help in postulating why swelling is occurring,
but it is generally heroic measures passed on by a senior
embalmer, or the panic stricken operator's ingenuity, that
provide a solution. Most students will only embalm two bodies
in the first year school setting, and that will be in a group
of four to six other novices. This is not a research setting,
nor, probably, is it meant to be. There is little room in the
training of a funeral director for an arena of research--this
is left to the chemical company researchers[116] and the
university medical researchers.
It is now clear, however, that science was used as a premise
for professionalization of funeral service and the scientising
of the medical profession was used as a model; self regulating
organizational structures such as the Board of Examiners or
Administration, and professional organizations mandated for
education, professionalization and financial security, namely
the NFDA, NSM, and OFSA provided the public relations and
government lobby voice to raise the status of the 'trade' or
'business' to a profession.
There can be no question that funeral service ' stood on the
shoulders' of medicine to reach a level of professionalism
through many means, including scientising. Is this scientising
a legitimate premise? One might argue that it was for
physicians and surgeons in the late nineteenth century,
when they 'stood on the shoulders' of the natural scientists.
It would seem, then, that the use of science as a legitimating
factor in the professionalization of funeral service by
emulation of the medical model is as legitimate as the use of
science in the professionalization of medicine. Whether the
premises of the medical practitioners' claim to professional-
ism is legitimate is yet another question worthy of
consideration.
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O'Hagan, James, "This Matter of Higher Education" Canadian
Funeral Service, 25 (May 1947)5: editorial page.
O'Hagan, James, ed. "School Session" Canadian Funeral Service,
29 (June 1951) 6:10.
O'Hagan, James, ed. "Embalming School Offers Fine Course"
Canadian Funeral Service, 32 (June 1954) 6:10.
O'Hagan, James, ed. "A Big Step Forward." Canadian Funeral
Service, 46 (May 1968) 5:10.
Penny, Sheila M. " 'Marked For Slaughter': The Halifax Medical
College and the Wrong Kind of Reform, 1868-1910." Acadiensis,
19 (1989): 27-51.
Government Publications
Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Funeral Directors, 1964
(Ottawa: Published by Authority of the Minister of Trade and
Commerce, November, 1966).
Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Funeral Directors, 1968
(Ottawa: Published by Authority of the Minister of Trade and
Commerce, November, 1970).
Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Funeral Directors, 1976
(Ottawa: Published by Authority of the Minister of Trade and
Commerce, May, 1978).
McNabb, Elizabeth, A Legal History of the Health Profession in
Ontario (Toronto: Queen's Printer, 1970), as cited in Blishen,
Bernard R., Doctors in Canada: The Changing World of Medical
Practice. (Toronto: Statistics Canada, in association with
University of Toronto Press, 1991), p. 8.
Statutes of Ontario, An Act Respecting Embalmers (Toronto:
L. K. Cameron, 1911), S.O., 1911, 1 Geo. V, Chap. 51, Sect. 3
pp. 430-33.
Statutes of Ontario. An Act Respecting Embalmers and Funeral
Directors (Toronto: The United Press, Ltd., 1928), S.O., 1928,
18 Geo. V, Chap. 31, pp. 74-79.
Statutes of Ontario An Act to Amend The Embalmers and Funeral
Directors Act, 1928 (Toronto: T. E. Bowman, 1936), S.O., 1936,
1 Ed. VIII, 1936, Chap. 20, pp. 88-91.
Revised Statutes of Ontario, An Act Respecting Embalmers and
Undertakers (Toronto:Warwick Bros. & Rutter, Publishers,1914),
R.S.O., 1914, Vol. 1, Chap. 174, pp. 1834-1837.
Revised Statutes of Ontario, The Embalmers and Funeral
Directors Act (Toronto: T. E. Bowman, 1937), R.S.O., 1937,
Vol 1, Chap. 242, pp. 2591-2597.
Personal Communications
Baker, Gordon H. (Personal Experience and notes , Humber
College, Sept. 1980 - June 1982).
Bliss, Michael, personal communication, lecture, HIS262Y, Mar.
10, 1992.
Brodie, Sheelah, Secretary, Ontario Funeral Service
Association, (Personal communication, January 30, 1992).
Knight, Robert, LFD, (Personal communication, Jan. 21, 1992).
Unpublished manuscripts
Finn, John R., Evolution of Funeral Service Education in
Ontario (Rexdale, Ont.: Unpublished paper submitted to Humber
College of Applied Arts and Technology to fulfil a Pro-
fessional Development requirement, June 1974).
Notes:
*I would like to express my thanks to the staff of the
Funeral Service Education Program at Humber College of Applied
Arts and Technology, Rexdale, Ontario, for their invaluable
assistance through the research stage of this paper, most
notably: Donald Foster, Director of the program for his
comments and the use of the FSE Journal Library, John Finn,
for the use of his unpublished paper Evolution of Funeral
Service Education in Ontario, (Rexdale, Ont., June, 1974),
Paul Faris, and Jean Ball, Office Coordinator.
[1] This was, and, to the author's knowledge, still is the
message used over the public address system at the Toronto
General Hospital to request a morgue attendant to assist a
Funeral Home representative in a transfer of human remains.
[2] This follows William J. Goode, "The Theoretical Limits of
Professionalization" in Etzioni, Amitai, The Semi-Professions
and Their Organization: Teachers, Nurses, Social Workers. (New
York: Collier-Macmillan Limited and The Free Press, 1969), pp.
266-313.
[3] Frederick,L.G."Darko" and Clarence G.Strub. The Principles
and Practice of Embalming, 4th. ed. (Dallas, Texas: L. G.
Frederick, 1958, 1975), p. 2.
[4] Ibid., p. 3.
[5] Forrest, Robert, a.k.a. Coriolis. Death, Here is Thy Sting
(Toronto, MontrDal: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1967).
[6] That history which has formed the bed-rock of funeral
service is Habenstein, Robert Wesley and William Mathias
Lamers. The History of American Funeral Directing, rev.
(Milwaukee,: Bulfin Printers, 1955, 1962); others include
Farrell, James J. Inventing The American Way of Death, 1830-
1920, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980); Irion,
Paul E. The Funeral: Vestige or Value? (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1966); Mitford, Jessica The American Way of Death
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963); Puckle, Bertram S.
Funeral Customs: Their Origin and Development (New York:
Frederick A. Stokes Company, Publishers, 1926); and Pine,
Vanderlyn R., Caretaker of the Dead: The American Funeral
Director (New York: Irvington Publishers, Inc.,1975). Perhaps
an organized group such as the Ontario Funeral Service
Association or the Ontario Board of Administration for Funeral
Service will commission such a document in the future.
[7] See Francis,R. Douglas, Richard Jones and Donald B. Smith.
Origins: Canadian History to Confederation, (Toronto: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston of Canada, Ltd.,1988) and Francis, R.
Douglas; Richard Jones and Donald B. Smith. Destinies:
Canadian History Since Confederation, (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston of Canada, Ltd., 1988) for the best Canadian
history to date.
[8] The information concerning the development of funeral
service was central to the training that the author received
in his Funeral Service Education Course at Humber College
A.A.T. in the 1980/81 school year and was based upon the
sources listed in footnote 6. For the purposes of this paper
with the exception of specific quotations or ideas (for which
notation will be provided) the information presented will be
considered 'public domain' (i.e. in funeral service education)
for its delineation here.
[9] Farrell, (op. cit., 1980).
[10] Ibid., p. 147.
[11] See note 6 for bibliographic references.
[12] In early to mid-nineteenth century towns this woman would
often be a nurse or midwife. Habenstein and Lamers (op. cit.,
1962), p. 237.
[13] Ibid.
[14] In very hot weather the body was not present within the
place of the funeral service because of the odour.
[15] Farrell, (op. cit, 1980), p. 148.
[16] The sextant or livery stable operator may well have been
asked as well,depending on the local situation. See Habenstein
and Lamers (op. cit., 1962), pp. 240-41.
[17] Ibid., p. 149. See also Habenstein and Lamers (op. cit.,
1962), pp. 226 - 250.
[18] Benjamin, Charles, "Essay" The Casket 7(Feb. 1882): 2 as
cited in Farrell, (op. cit., 1980), p. 149.
[19] Ibid. See also Forrest, (op. cit., 1967), p. 25.
[20] Frederick and Strub, (op. cit. 1975), p. 41.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Farrell, (op. cit., 1980), p. 162.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Habenstein and Lamers (op. cit., 1962), pp. 321-22.
[25] Ibid., p. 337.
[26] Farrell (op. cit., 1980) 162.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ibid., pp. 162-63.
[29] Habenstein and Lamers (op. cit., 1962), pp. 323.
[30] ..as The Principles and Practice of Embalming is referred
to in funeral service education programs.
[31] Frederick and Strub (op. cit., 1975), p. 3.
[32] Ibid., p. 340.
[33] Ibid., p. 344. Habenstein and Lamers suggest that a
certain Prof. Clarke suggested (in the fall of 1881) "to Dr.C.
M. Lukens, a demonstrator of anatomy in Pulte Medical College,
Cincinnati that an embalming school should be set up at that
institution. Agreement was reached in March, 1882; and the
first session open in the amphitheatre March 8 and ended
March 31."
[34] Farrell, (op. cit., 1980), p. 150.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid., p. 146.
[37] Ibid., p. 151.
[38] Mencken, H. L. The American Language: An Inquiry into
the Development of English in the United States, 4th ed. rev.
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), pp. 287-88.
[39] Puckle, (op. cit., 1926), p. 178, reports that this is a
term used to refer to body-snatchers who, "finding that good
prices were paid by the anatomists for bodies of those
recently dead open up a nefarious traffic with the schools,
which assumed the most disgraceful proportions before any
sever measures were adopted to stamp out the evil". For well
argued information about this trade, see Richardson, Ruth.
Death, Dissection and the Destitute. (London and New York:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987).
[40] Frederick and Strub (op. cit., 1975), p 47, suggest that
"Mortuary...is usually applied to an establishment exclusively
designed and equipped for this particular work and for the
comfort of the bereaved. The funeral home is generally thought
of as a residence remodeled or adapted for this purpose."
[41] Mencken, (op. cit., 1965), p. 287.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Goode, William J. (op. cit., 1969), p. 267.
[44] Bledstein, Burton J. The Culture of Professionalism: The
Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in
America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1976).
[45] Ibid., p. 4-5.
[46] Ibid., p. 33.
[47] Carr-Saunders, A. M. and P. A. Wilson, The Professions
(London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1964).
[48] Farrell, (op. cit., 1980), p. 151.
[49] Ibid. At the first national convention of the NFDA,
secretary S. R. Lippincott called for the laying of "the
cornerstone to a new structure to art and science...to plant
our standard in the army of science...[and gain] greater
scientific inquiry into the best methods of mortuary science."
[50] Habenstein and Lamers (op. cit., 1962), p. 451.
[51] Mencken (op. cit., 1965), p. 287.
[52] Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Funeral Directors,
1964 (Ottawa: Published by Authority of the Minister of Trade
and Commerce, November, 1966), p. 4. Ontario composed 560 of
the 1,418 firms or 40% with 2 289 of the 5,908 paid employees,
or 39%.
[53] Bliss, Michael, personal communication, lecture, HIS262Y,
Mar. 10, 1992.
[54] Finn, John R. Evolution of Funeral Service Education in
Ontario (Rexdale, Ont.: Unpublished paper submitted to Humber
College of Applied Arts and Technology to fulfil a
Professional Development requirement, June 1974).
[55] The Eckels College of Mortuary Science, so named in March
1944, was originally know as The Philadelphia Training School
for Embalmers (established 1897) and the Eckels College of
Embalming. See O'Hagan, James, ed. "Eckels College Revises
Name" Canadian Funeral Service, 22(Mar. 1944) 3:26.
[56] Finn (op. cit., 1974), Pt. Intro., p. 1, cites Canadian
Funeral Service 46(Aug. 1960) 8 as his reference, and although
I have no doubt as to the accuracy of this reference, the
author has not as yet had the opportunity to check it
personally. Thus greater information is not available about
the history of this particular institution. Turner emigrated
to Canada in 1870, Finn reports.
[57] Ibid., Part I, p. 1.
[58] Finn (op. cit., 1974), Pt. Intro., pp. 1-2.
[59] Ibid.
[60] Ontario Statutes, An Act Respecting Embalmers (Toronto:
L. K. Cameron, publisher and printer to the King's Most
Excellent Majesty, 1911) 1 Geo. V., 1911, Chap. 51, Sect.3 pp.
430-31.
[61] McNabb,Elizabeth A Legal History of the Health Profession
in Ontario (Toronto: Queen's Printer, 1970), p. 1, as cited in
Blishen, Bernard R. Doctors in Canada: The Changing World of
Medical Practice. (Toronto: Statistics Canada, in association
with University of Toronto Press, 1991), p. 8.
[62] Ibid., p. 433. Italics added.
[63] Ibid., Sect. 2, p. 430. This definition was consistent
through all acts up to and including the penultimate one;
however, in the 1937 RSO, The Embalmers and Funeral Directors
Act (Toronto: T. E. Bowman, 1937), Vol 1, Chap. 242, Sect. 12
(2),p.2596, indicates that "the Lieutenant-Governer in Council
may make regulations governing and prescribing the kinds of
fluid and chemicals which may be used in the practice of
embalming." Research has not indicated at this point whether
this was Embalming fluid company pressure, or the desire of
the coroner's office to eliminate embalming chemical's arsenic
and other lethal materials from the Coroner's equation of a
cause of suspicious death.
[64] Revised Statutes of Ontario, An Act Respecting Embalmers
and Undertakers (Toronto: Warwick Bros. & Rutter, Publishers,
1914), R.S.O. 1914, Vol. 1, Chap. 174, pp. 1834-1837.
[65] Brodie, Sheelah, Secretary, Ontario Funeral Service
Association, (Personal communication, January 30, 1992).
[66] O'Hagan, James "Dean of Canada's Funeral Industry" and
"First Professional Instructor Speaks," Canadian Funeral
Service (op. cit) 22 (Mar. 1944) 3:10
[67] These reports consisted of the changes in curriculum,
number of students in first and second year training and
professional discipline information.
[68] Statutes of Ontario. An Act Respecting Embalmers and
Funeral Directors (Toronto: The United Press, Ltd., 1928) 18
Geo. V, 1928, Chap. 31, pp. 74-79.
[69] Ibid., Sect. 2 (e), p.74.
[70] Ibid., pp. 75-76. Italics added.
[71] Ibid., Sect. 3 (1), p. 75.
[72] Blishen (op. cit., 1991).
[73] Ibid., p. 13.
[74] For examples of the power of self regulated liscensure in
medicine, see Hamowy, Ronald, Canadian Medicine: A Study in
Restricted Entry (Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 1984), pp.
148-58.
[75] Blishen (op. cit., 1991), p. 15.
[76] Coburn, David, George M. Torrance, and Joseph M. Kaufert.
"Medical Dominance in Canada in Historical Perspective: The
Rise and Fall of Medicine." International Journal of Health
Services, 13 (1983): 407-32, as cited in Blishen (op. cit.,
1991), p. 15.
[77] Statutes of Ontario, An Act to Amend The Embalmers and
Funeral Directors Act, 1928 (Toronto: T. E. Bowman, 1936), 1
Ed. VIII, 1936, Chap. 20, pp. 88-91.
[78] Ibid., Sect. (4).
[79] Ibid. Italics added.
[80] Ibid.
[81] Finn (op. cit., 1974), Pt. I, p. 1
[82] Knight, Robert, LFD, (Personal communication, Jan. 21,
1992).
[83] O'Hagan, James, "Eckels College Fall Opening Date,"
Canadian Funeral Service, 22 (Sept. 44) 9:27.
[84] O'Hagan,James, "This Matter of Higher Education" Canadian
Funeral Service, 24 (April, August, Sept. Nov. 1946) 4, 8, 9,
11 and 25 (Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May 1947) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5:
editorial page.
[85] Ibid., 24(Apr. 1946)4:10
[86] Ibid., 24(Aug. 1946)8:11.
[87] Ibid.
[88] Ibid.
[89] Flexner, Abraham, Medical Education in the United States
and Canada: a Report to the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching, Bulletin No. 4 (New York: Carnegie
Foundation, 1910).
[90] Penny, Sheila M. " 'Marked For Slaughter': The Halifax
Medical College and the Wrong Kind of Reform, 1868-1910."
Acadiensis, 19 (1989): 27.
[91] Ibid., p. 28.
[92] This, of course, is exactly what Abraham Flexner was
suggesting in his Medical Education in the United States and
Canada (op. cit., 1910). By raising the standards of entrance
only the better educated, better suited applicants would get
into the course to being with. Fewer graduates would be the
result; an added bonus was that the reduced number of
practitioners were able to raise their prices (and income =
status) because they would be in greater demand. Whether this
is sound reasoning on the parts of Flexner or O'Hagan is
questionable (although it may be overstating the case on
O'Hagan's part), since it would only be those who could afford
to go to school long enough to attain the prerequisites that
would enter the profession; these people generally had the
community status to begin with.
[93] O'Hagan, James "This Matter of Higher Education: What of
our Articled Students?" Canadian Funeral Service 24 (Sept.
1946) 9:11.
[94] Finn (op. cit., 1974), Pt. II, pp. 4-6.
[95] O'Hagan, James, ed. "School Session" Canadian Funeral
Service, 29 (June 1951) 6: 10.
[96] O'Hagan, James, ed. "Embalming School Offers Fine Course"
Canadian Funeral Service, 32 (June 1954) 6: 10.
[97] Ibid.
[98] Finn (op. cit., 1974), Pt. II, p. 2.
[99] O'Hagan, James, ed."A Big Step Forward." Canadian Funeral
Service, 46 (May 1968) 5: 10.
[100] Baker, Gordon H. (Personal Experience, Humber College,
Sept. 1980 - June 1982).
[101] Ibid, p. 5.
[102] Baker, Gordon H. (Personal Notes, Sept. 1980-June 1981).
[103] Ibid. Several of the sixty funeral homes in Toronto
opened their preparation room doors to the examiners and
candidates annually.
[104] Frederick and Strub (op.cit.,1975), pp. 11-12. Emphasis
added.
[105] Carr-Saunders, A. M. and P. A. Wilson (op. cit., 1964).
[106] Ibid., pp. 65-103.
[107] Goode, William J. (op., cit., 1969).
[108] Ibid., p. 268.
[109] Ibid.
[110] Ibid., pp. 277-78. Amitai Etzioni in his preface to the
collection of which Goode's essay is part points out that
'semi-professional' is not used in a derogatory way. The
meaning is that of a group: whose training is shorter; status
less legitimated; right to privileged communication less well
established;specialized body of knowledge smaller;and autonomy
from supervision or societal control less than the pro-
fessions. See Etzioni, Amitai, The Semi-Professions and their
Organization (New York: The Free Press, 1969), p. v.
[111] Ibid., p. 278.
[112] Ibid., 278-79.
[113] Forrest, Robert (op. cit., 1967); Mitford, Jessica (op.
cit., 1963).
[114] Canada, Statistics Canada (op, cit., 1958, 1966);Canada,
Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Funeral Directors, 1968
(Ottawa: Published by Authority of the Minister of Trade and
Commerce,November,1970); Canada,Dominion Bureau of Statistics,
Funeral Directors, 1976 (Ottawa: Published by Authority of the
Minister of Trade and Commerce, May, 1978).
[115] The six points are: both Carotid arteries and Jugular
veins; Auxiliary arteries and veins; and Femoral arteries and
veins.
[116] For example, Dr. Jerome F. Frederick, Director of
Chemical Research, The Dodge Chemical Company. Frederick is a
Fellow of the American Institute of Chemists, a Fellow of the
New York Academy of Sciences and an Honorary member of the
British Institute of Embalmers; the Dodge Chemical Company
supplies embalming fluid products commercially.
Note to the Reader:Thank your for taking the time to read this
work. In reading, please keep in mind that your comments are
welcome and encouraged. In the message/replies section of the
HOST BBS, you will find places where you can enter your
thoughts. Comments that would be helpful include: accurate
correction of dates, places, people mentioned; suggestions for
direction of the argument (viz. are there questions that you
feel should be addressed, etc.); of course, in a draft such as
this there are bound to be some typos (even with these
electronic spell checkers--what we really need is a grammer
and syntax checker). If you have any questions as you read
through the work, please do not hesitate to call me at 588-
1750 (area code 416). Thanks again.
Gordon H. Baker.
+----------------------------------------+
| "Natural History and its Descendants: |
| Science for Curiosity or Use" |
| by Mary P. Winsor, copyright 1992 |
| Work in Progress |
+----------------------------------------+
| Received July 9, 1992 |
| Revised July 11, 1992 |
+-------------------------+
Much of the charm of botanical illustrations flows from their
sense of serene objectivity. They evoke the quietude of pure
study, for we see in them both the concentration of the
artist, whose goal was to record the unchanging essence of the
species, and then the careful hand of engraver and colorist,
whose goals were to transmit faithfully what the scientific
artist has seen. Similarly, the disinterested curiosity
motivating the scientific explorer is central to the romantic
allure of the tale of Banks, Solander, and other Eighteenth
Century naturalist-travellers. Indeed for all science, purity
of motive is an essential ingredient to its privileged claim
in our hearts. Who is unmoved by the image of Archimedes,
concentrating so intently on a problem of pure geometry that
he forgets to be afraid of the soldier about to slay him?
Indeed, the pursuit of truth for its own sake is an ideal of
enduring power, inspirational to historians as well as to
scientists.
Carl von Linni, great teacher that he was, sometimes drew
upon this noble ideal of pure curiosity. For example, when
trying to inspire his pupils to study insects, he would tell
them a story. "Once upon a time," he would say, "the seven
wise men of Greece" were discussing what might be "the
greatest wonder in the creation. One of them, of higher
conceptions than the rest," suggested there may be life on the
moon, and so they asked the chief of the gods, Jupiter, to let
them visit there, and their wish was granted. Athough their
purpose was to record the wonders of that place, upon their
arrival they spent the first day gathering their strength for
the task ahead, the second day distracted by the charms of the
local ladies, and the third day in court, settling lawsuits
brought on by their activities on the second day! When they
got back to earth they could give no details about the kinds
of plants and animals of that distant and wonderful place.[1]
We are told that Linnaeus meant his students to interpret the
fable thus: the three days represent the three stages of a
man's life, the first devoted to the idleness of youth, the
mature devoted to family responsibilities,and old age to legal
wrangling over one's estate. Although he evidently intended
his morality tale simply to shame young men into resolving not
to neglect any of the undescribed wonders that surrounded them
at home, the fable would seem to apply especially well to the
students he sent forth to scour faraway lands: Pehr Kalm who
went to North America, Frederik Hasselquist who went to the
Middle East, Pehr Loefling who went to Spain, and of course
Daniel Carl Solander who circumnavigated the globe with Cook
and Banks. The dissertation in which we find the fable dates
from the period when Solander was himself a student, and
carries an extra sting when we recall that Banks did allow
himself some distractions in Tahiti,and did later find himself
involved in some legal wrangling. The fable seems even more
pointed when we recall that Banks and Solander failed to
publish a full account of the wonders they had seen and
collected, a failure which greatly disappointed Linnaeus
himself.
For people who are still working on the great unfinished
catalogue of the species on our planet, and also for those of
us who have been celebrating with our research the history of
systematics, this little fable seems to capture nicely the
spirit of worthy curiosity motivating naturalists and their
supporters, the noble and disinterested love of creation which
fueled the production of countless volumes and filled museums
and herbaria with specimens. That it is right and good for
naturalists and illustrators to try to record the diversity of
living things, we accept implicitly, just as the wise men in
Linnaeus's story agreed that it was a worthy goal to describe
the wonders of creation. And the historian of botany or
zoology, like the fable's narrator, tells us stories, the more
true the more moving, whose purpose is to encourage us to
continue this great quest.
Yet have a care. Linnaeus understood very well that his
fable was a fantasy. He knew that not only was the journey to
the moon the stuff of dreams,so too the society that sponsored
it was utter fiction. Everyone in the fable accepts that
describing living things, purely out of curiosity, is an
admirable thing to do, so that the failure to do it earned
blame. Furthermore, we are presented at the outset with the
prior existence of specialized researchers - the wise men or
philosophers whose speculative discussion of an eminently
useless question is accepted by the storyteller as perfectly
legitimate. The fable also assumes the existence of expert
describers, the "chosen companions" - artists and naturalists
- who were invited along on the expedition to the moon.
Linnaeus was keenly aware that neither the professional post
of expert naturalist nor the cultural attitude necessary to
support it was well established in eighteenth-century Europe.
The same essay that gives us the foolish moon travellers
begins with a powerful complaint against prevailing attitudes.
A question is often put, says Linnaeus, by the vulgar to men,
who are busied in examining the productions of nature, and
that with some sort of sneer, "To what end are all these
inquiries?" By which they mean to insinuate, that these
vertuosi are at the bottom but madmen, who spend their time in
a kind of knowledge, which promises no advantage; and in this
way of thinking they are the more convinced of being right,
as they find natural history no part of public institutions,
not received into academies amongst the philosophical
sciences, and as holding no rank either in church or state.
For this reason they look on it as a mere curiosity, which
only serves as an amusement for the idle and indolent. This
objection has been made to myself...and by its frequent
repetition has at last quite worn out my patience."[2]
We have other testimony besides that of Linnaeus to show that
the scientific study of nature could be received with sneering
scorn, and that this attitude caused problems. In 1752 Richard
Pulteney in England wrote to John Hill, commiserating with him
that a hoped-for post as botanist to Kensington Gardens had
not materialized. So indignant was Pulteney that he forgot to
break his thoughts up into sentences.
I...lament that Natural History whose dignity &
importance is so great that it certainly claims the
highest regard from the intelligent part of mankind,
meets with so little encouragement amongst our great
men who have it in their power to render it respectable
and flourishing & under whose patronage it would not
longer be laughed at and despised as is its general
fate at least with us in the country where few people
even of those whose education should have taught them
otherwise have any other Idea of it than that it is a
useless & idle curiosity.[3]
Knowledge for its own sake can be seen as nobly dis-
interested, but it can just as easily seem frivolous because
pointless. In every generation, scientists have to grapple
with the problem of educating policymakers away from their
natural tendency to see research that is undertaken merely to
satisfy curiosity as a ridiculous waste of money and time.
Of course the fable of the wise men of Greece is no help at
all in combatting disrespect for natural history. Far from
showing why we ought to devote effort to describing the living
world, the story simply assumes that this is desirable.
Linnaeus even claims that upon returning ignorant from their
moon trip, the wise men "were treated every where with
contempt," even though no useful spinoff had been promised.
In this story it is taken for granted that perfectly idle
curiosity is virtuous. We can render it as an argument thus:
Premise - that describing creatures is good. Postulate - a
wonderful opportunity to describe new creatures exists.
Conclusion - one must not neglect this opportunity. It is a
morality tale inciting to action only the already converted.
It does nothing for anyone who might think natural history is
a frivolous pastime.
The essay in which we find the fable was the an academic
dissertation, "Of the Use of Curiosity," defended by
Christopher Gedner in 1752. Its purpose was to arm students of
Linnaeus and other naturalists against the common view that
their study was useless. Similar themes feature very
prominently in many other of Linnaeus's writings. Everyone
familiar with Linnaeus knows how often and how vigorously he
insisted that there are solid reasons for doing natural
history, but how his various arguments fit together, and how
they connect with the young sciences of botany and zoology has
received little attention. These questions deserve a closer
examination than I can make, so my intention here is more to
raise issues than to settle them.
Commentators in our century have tended to regard Linnaeus's
writings on utility as quaint and inconsequential,and the most
authoritative scholars scarcely mention them. Those writers
who do not his great interest in the economic usefulness of
natural history seem to want to discount it or apologize for
him [4], like one who states, "The importance of science for
economic progress is one of the grand themes of his speeches
and his general remarks, but it was hardly decisive of the
priorities in his everyday work."[5] For many years I shared
this attitude, reading those essays only for whatever inklings
of proto-ecology I could extract from his sketches of the
policing of nature - the interdependence of plant and
herbivore, prey and predator. I now see my former reaction as
wrong, for I now think that the question of the usefulness or
purity of natural knowledge is just as important for the
actual operation of science, then and now, as Linnaeus claimed
it was. To neglect "the use of curiosity" is to convert the
real world into mere fable.
At the very beginning of his career, Linnaeus was hired by
the wealthy George Clifford to catalogue the plants in his
garden. This context allowed the young botanist to affirm
that there were other justifications for his science beyond
its time-honored usefulness to medicine. In the 1738 Hortus
Cliffortianus, Linnaeus says that besides its relevance to
health, botany is an innocent pleasure resembling Adam's, and
also that philosophers are not entitled to consider themselves
wise when there is so much in nature of which they are
ignorant.[6] He thus mentions one argument based on utility -
botany as an accessory to medicine - and three arguments
independent of utility - pleasure, part of total body of
possible knowledge (these two assumed in the fable), and
imitation of Adam. All four were to remain in Linnaeus's
repertoire throughout his career, but these four were of
lesser importance than two other claims he would soon begin to
make: appreciation of God, and economic utility.
The duty of humankind to admire the works of the Creator as
a form of worship was commonly proclaimed, and there is no
doubt about Linnaeus's sincere piety in his many repetitions
of it. He asserts that "every part of knowledge, which sets
forth the stupendous works of the Creator, is never to be
looked upon as of no consequence."[7] Natural theology in the
broad sense covers a spectrum from vague appreciation by the
devout to the logical demonstration of God's existence and
character based on evidences from nature. We may be called
upon to admire the creation aesthetically, or to appreciate
with our intellect the cleverness of God the engineer.
Linnaeus shows little interest in such distinctions, however.
Religious sentiment being so clearly important in Linnaeus's
own love of nature,what I think remarkable is not his frequent
allusions to the Creator but his easy admission that most
people,be they farmers or kings, need motives other than piety
to justify natural history.
Linnaeus devoted his most extended arguments to economic
rather than theological uses of natural history. We can
perhaps forgive him the rhetoric he produced in the first few
years after his return from Holland, for he was then eager to
occupy himself with his beloved botany but had to practice
medicine to earn a living. In those years a belief in the
practical benefits to be expected from science was highly
fashionable in Sweden. The promotion of useful science was the
dominant goal of the new Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences,
which Linnaeus helped found in 1739.[8] It was in that context
that he elaborated a version of the utility argument so
extreme as to be positively embarrassing to a post-Darwinian
reader. His goal was evidently to expand the list of useful
plants and animals beyond familiar examples like medical herbs
and farm animals, to include every species without exception.
In an essay delivered to the Swedish Academy, he declared,
"The end of Nature in the creation of every distinct species
of animal is not exclusively confined to its own well being,
it is also subservient to that of man and other animals."[9]
And he means subservient. Fish come to the shallows to lay
their eggs,instead of reproducing in the safety of deep water,
in order that the animals which feed on them may have food;
mergansers do us the favor of herding schools of fish to
where we can catch them; the bee makes honey, and the silkworm
silk, in order that humans may enjoy them. For anyone weaned
on the Origin of Species, this is hard to swallow. However
arrogant this belief may seem to us, we must recall that it
was a well-established view even before Linnaeus's birth.[10]
It did not take long, though, for Linnaeus to attain his
wished-for post as professor of botany at Uppsala. After 1741
what further need had he for constructing arguments on behalf
of natural history? Yet something was driving him to keep up
an energetic campaign to prove that his favorite study may not
be labelled mere idle curiosity. He was fond of pointing out
that all the economic production of a nation can be based only
on the productions of nature, because aside from the very
elements, all things that exist in the world are either
mineral, vegetable, or animal, and thus fall within the
purview of the natural historian. The naturalist can advise
the farmer which fodder is preferred by sheep or cattle or
horses, which crop will thrive best on which soil, which tea
from the tropics might be acclimatized to Europe, and which
migrating bird the hunter can expect on which date. He seemed
never to tire of such examples, and he assigned to his
students data-collecting projects to substantiate this kind of
claim.[11]
His utility arguments go even further, for these eminently
practical and common-sense examples would limit the economic
utility of the naturalist's expertise to species of direct
usefulness, like silkmoths and bees and wheat. Linnaeus tries
to do more; he insists on the utility of every single
species of organism. Even things of small stature, like
insects or mosses, easy to despise, must be included. He
believes that the world is so constituted that one may not
regard any part of natural history as useless.
How can he push his claim for utility so far? Not by
claiming that everything is directly useful or usable by man
(though direcly harmful organisms are of course just as good
for the utility argument as useful ones, since the naturalist
will advise us how to fight them, as he tells us when running
down the list of noxious insects). He does this in two ways:
first, by claiming that everything that is not directly useful
is indirectly useful. A tiny insect is food to another insect
which is food to birds whose song gives pleasure. Second,
things which seem irrelevant to us now will some day be put to
use after naturalists have identified their hidden potentials.
Both approaches are summed up in the credo: "the all-wise
Creator made every thing for man's use."[12]
Such views accorded with the theology of his day, based on
the Biblical statement that after God had finished making the
plants and beasts, He declared that they were good. He and his
contemporaries found it in their interest to ignore the very
explicit message of Genesis that none of the descendants of
the fallen ancestors of humanity may expect nature to be
benign. The most vivid description of nondomestic creatures
to be found in all of Scripture is the voice of God
admonishing Job that to understand why wild animals behave as
they do, indeed even to know very much of what they do, is
beyond human powers.
After two and a half centuries of exploding population, we
must see Linnaeus's belief that God made everything for our
use as tragically oblivious to any distinction between
undisturbed primeval nature and living things manipulated by
humans. From this side of the environmental crisis, he looks
naive, or worse, for his theology assures him that every
attempt to exploit or alter nature is not only legitimate,
it is fulfilling the original intention of the Creator. There
is no place in his scheme for the idea that creatures in the
wild have the right to their own pristine way of life, or that
human activity could threaten nature's proper order. Educated
by Malthus and by cruel experience, we are struck by the
inherent contradiction between Linnaeus's admiration for the
wonderful balance of nature, where every creature depends on
others so that all are necessary, and his claim to the
unlimited rights of our species to exploit to the fullest
every other living thing. While imagining himself to be like
Adam in Paradise - naming, and learning about, every species -
Linnaeus had somehow managed to forget the Fall, when we took
upon ourselves the freedom to do evil, and our Maker did not
give us any guarantees that we would not mess things up.
In making comments like these I am straying from my proper
place. I would be a poor historian indeed if I expected
Linnaeus to foresee the future or to be other than a man of
his own time. His contemporaries felt as he did, that they
were just beginning to explore an earth of virtually limitless
resources, an earth intended by God for the human race to
dominate; his contemporaries did not read in Job a warning to
respect the sanctity of wilderness. It is we of the late
Twentieth Century, however, not Linnaeus's contemporaries, who
are gathered here now to consider the global reach of European
naturalists. We cannot and we should not censor our awareness
of what occurred after Cook's voyages. What we must be very
careful to do is to identify our claims of causation clearly
rather than allowing the sequence of events to imply
causation. It is common for environmentalists, reading the
unenlightened writings of earlier generations, to infer that
such old bad attitudes were the cause of subsequent abuses to
nature. I think the connection has not been shown.
When Linnaeus insists that there will be economic advantage
and not merely spiritual good in the study of every single
living kind, it strikes us as so implausible that we become
suspicious. Thus for example K. G. Hildebrand said, "Of
course, even Linnaeus may have felt the temptation that is
known to most scholars, in our own days as in the eighteenth
century - the temptation to over-emphasize the practical
usefulness of one's work, in the hope of getting better grants
in that way."[13] Hildebrand is reluctant, however, to
attribute any hypocrisy to a hero of botany,and so he suggests
that Linnaeus could have genuinely believed that one must do
first things first, and agrees with Linnaeus that the project
of naming must precede any direct applications of knowledge.
Deciding that Linnaeus was sincere, however, does not dispose
of the question why utility remained such an important theme
throughout his life. First of all, why were motives of
pleasure and piety not enough, and secondly, once installed in
a professorship what further support did he need? I think
Hildebrand was right to whiff the scent of grantsmanship. The
comparison, however, should not be to a modern researcher
applying for a grant who is tempted to puff up its
applicability, for grantsmanship occurs within an established
system. The comparison should be to one of those pioneering
entrepreneurs who convinced the government to set up the
granting system in the first place.
Gunnar Ericsson argues in a stimulating little essay that
Linnaeus engineered the success of his botanical system by
careful attention to personal contacts. He was skilful,
Ericsson says, at "the marketing of his ideas in the
international republic of letters."[14]
I regard this as a very important insight, but I would extend
it much beyond the marketing of his taxonomic ideas. I suggest
that Linnaeus not only wanted to see his own taxonomic ideas
triumph, he wanted to promote the business of natural history.
Linnaeus was concerned not just with his personal love of
nature and with the spiritual well-being of his students,
he was visionary enough to recognize that immortality for
his enterprise required what we may call a higher degree of
professionalization. The scorn of the ignorant was common, he
said, because people "find natural history no part of
public institutions, not received into academies amongst
the philosophical sciences, and as holding no rank either in
church or state." He bent his efforts throughout his career
to change this situation. Clearly, this attitude must be
combatted if professorships and institutions for natural
history are to increase.
Linnaeus, in saying that the vulgar "are the more convinced
of being right, as they find natural history no part of public
institutions," was pointing to the cycle of cause and effect;
he was suggesting that if natural history were to have a
larger place in public institutions, that status in itself
would help counter the sneers of the vulgar.
Botany was already deeply entrenched in medical teaching, but
Linnaeus's ambition was to open up a much larger base of
support for natural history. He wanted to establish an
entirely new justification, which would encompass all plants
and animals, not just those already known to be useful, and
which would relate to all aspects of the national interest,
not just curing disease. To accomplish this end, the arguments
he used with George Clifford are not enough. The difference
between the pleasure and piety motives and the usefulness
motives are the difference between an individual's actions and
a public activity. Worship and amusement are esentially
private concerns, whereas something that promises economic
advantage has a call on the public purse; it merits support
from public-spirited sponsors or from government.
When Linnaeus wrote to the Spanish ambassador to ask that
Pehr Loefling be allowed to collect in Spain, he didn't
mention Adam, or the pleasures of innocent botanizing, or the
virtue of knowing God's works.[15] He spoke only of direct
practical utility, asserting that natural knowledge can aid
agriculture and all the other useful arts.
Frans Stafleu emphasized to us twenty years ago that
Linnaeus's influence was spread by his students.[16] For some
reason, though, we generally allow ourselves to assume that
this just happened, that is, that there is a law of nature
causing good ideas to be taken up and gain adherents. Surely
the instance of Mendel should keep reminding us that there is
no such law. That Linnaeus's students travelled widely, and
that many of them found careers as naturalists, was in large
part the result of his actions on their behalf. He was
behaving like the founder of a new school or discipline; even
though his own employment was secure, for the sake of the
students who would continue his work, he had a strong interest
in convincing potential supporters of the utility of natural
history.
Marti Kerkkonen's study of Pehr Kalm's journey in North
America demonstrates beyond doubt the vivid belief in utility
that Linnaeus shared with predecessors and contemporaries.[17]
They expected a large and immediate economic benefit to come
from the study of plants and animals of exotic lands. Kalm's
own motive was not something we would recognize as scientific
curiosity; it could be called greed, in the most positive
sense we can give that word - he had a passionate desire to
discover things that would prove economically beneficial.
University administrators in Turkku, Finland, convinced by the
same belief in the utility of knowledge of new plants and
animals (especially those already used by people of other
lands), created a professorship for Kalm,and it is significant
that they named it a professorship of economics. Banks and
Solander evidently had | | |
