1878-1899: Science and Medicine: Publications

Edward Drinker Cope, The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution (Chicago: Open Court, 1896)—a defense of the Lamarckian theory that acquired characteristics may passed on genetically to an organism’s offsprings;

Cope, The Vertebra of the Tertiary Formation of the West (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1883)—Cope’s report on the fossils of extinct vertebrates that he found on Ferdinand V. Hayden’s geological survey of the American West;

Elliot Coues, Birds of the Colorado Valley (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1878)—an important treatise on bird life that draws on Coues’s research as part of Hayden’s survey of the Colorado River basin;

John Call Dalton Jr., The Experimental Method in Medical Science (New York: Putnam, 1882)—an early treatise on experimental physiology by one of the founders of modern medical science;

James Dwight Dana, Manual of Geology, third edition (New York: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor, 1880)—a standard college geology textbook that remained in use well into the twentieth century;

Amos E. Dolbear, First Principles of Natural Philosophy (Boston: Ginn, 1897)—a summation of Dolbear’s “atomic theory,” in which he describes molecules as “minute vortex rings of ether”;

John William Draper, History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, eighth edition (New York: Appleton, 1884)—a discussion of the role of science in the secularization of Western society in a book that remained popular and influential well into the twentieth century;

Henry H. Gorringe, Coasts and Islands of the Mediterranean Sea, 4 volumes (Washington, D. C: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1875-1883)—a pioneering study of the physical geography of the Mediterranean region;

Ferdinand V. Hayden, The Great West (Philadelphia: Franklin / Bloomington, Ill.: C. R. Brodix, 1880)—a description of western geology and geography based on Hayden’s observations during his survey of the West;

Clarence King, Systematic Geology (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1878)—an important manual by one of the foremost government scientists and surveyors of the nineteenth century;

Samuel P. Langley, The New Astronomy (Boston: Ticknor, 1888)—an important work of nineteenth-century astrophysics by an American pioneer in the scientific study of astronomy;

Leo Lesquereux, The Flora of the Dakota Group, edited by F. H. Knowlton (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1891)—a description of western plant life by a participant in the Hayden survey;

Simon Newcomb, Popular Astronomy (New York: Harper, 1878)—one of several popular books on astronomy by a leading nineteenth-century authority on the subject;

Charles Sanders Peirce, Photometric Researches (Leipzig: W. Englemann, 1878)—results of Peirce’s measurements of the acceleration of gravity;

John Wesley Powell, On the Organization of Scientific Work of the General Government (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1885)—observations on the role of government in organizing and setting policy for scientific research projects;

Powell, Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1878)—an influential survey of irrigation in the western United States that opened the possibility of farming lands once thought inhospitable to agriculture;

Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, Nature and Man in America (New York: Scribners, 1891)—an environmental interpretation of history;

John B. Stallo, The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (New York: Appleton, 1882)—an influential popularization of the nineteenth-century mechanistic view of physics.