Everyone knows about Pavlov's dogs that would salivate when a bell was rung, but it was actually a metronome the dogs heard. And did you wonder how he knew they salivated? He performed surgery to cause the saliva to be produced so that it was not only identifiable, but measurable, outside of the dogs' mouths. This followed his earlier work in which he opened permanent channels from the skin of a dog into the interior of its organs so that samples could be drawn without killing the subject. The Bolshevik revolution occurred in the middle of his experimental career, and though he was a critic of the regime and asked to move his lab abroad, the regime honored him and funded his work. The programs that he was in charge of were all marked by great success not only in his own work but by well-regarded staffs and numerous brilliant students who continued his work after his death. Apparently he could be single-minded once he started on a course, for example, his three sons were named Vladimir, Viktor, and Vsevold, and his daughter was Vera.
After being sworn in as president, Theodore Roosevelt asked Secretary of War Elihu Root to take a short walk with him. His host for the ceremony asked to come along, but Roosevelt didn't want an entourage. Buffalo police detectives then started to follow the new president, and Roosevelt told his secretary to send them away, saying, "I do not want to establish the precedent of going about guarded." It didn't work, within a block he had officers walking behind him and on the other side of the street.
1741 - George Frederick Handel completed the instrumentation for the oratorio Messiah. Based on scripture selected by his friend Charles Jennens, Handel started composing on 22 August, a total of 24 days.
1770 - Dr J. F. Struensee, nominally the court physician for the mentally ill Danish king Christian VII but functionally regent, had the king officially abolish all pre-publication censorship in Denmark.
1812 - Napoleon Bonaparte, with a force reduced to 95,000 from the original 422,000 that had entered Russia in June, occupied a deserted Moscow. Fires broke out throughout the city, the pumps had been sabotaged and two thirds of the city was destroyed.
1901 - Moments after the death of President McKinley (shot on 6 September) Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president in the Buffalo, New York home of Ansley Wilcox. The simple ceremony was attended only by Judge Hazel, Roosevelt, most of the cabinet, and several newsmen.
1909 - Leo Hirshfield registered the trademark "Tootsie" for the penny candy he manufactured in New York, from his daughter's nickname. The company now called Tootsie Roll Industries, Inc., is currently rolling out 49 million of the original wrapped candies every day, along with 16 million Tootsie Pops.
1930 - The National Socialist Party in Germany received 6,400,000 votes (18%) in the Reichstag election, winning 107 seats. This was up from 810,000 votes and 12 seats in the 1928 election, and made the Nazis the second largest block in the legislature.
Battle of San Jacinto Day, Nicaragua - Commemorates 1856 battle between US "filibuster" William Walker, then president and self-styled emperor of Nicaragua who hoped to join Nicaragua to the US as a slave state, and a band of natives armed with sticks, stones, and few rifles. Walker lost.
1849
- Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Russian physiologist - Born to a village
priest at Ryazan, Russia, educated at church school and entered theological
seminary. Abandoned religious career for science, entered University of
St Petersburg to study physiology and chemistry 1970, then medicine at
the Imperial Medical Academy, graduating in 1879 with a gold medal. Married
in 1881, had three sons (and one who died in infancy) and a daughter.
Studied in Leipzig (now in Germany) and Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland),
returned to St Petersburg in 1888 and began independent research on circulatory
system of dogs. Developed surgical procedure to create a fistula, a passage
from the outside of the animal to the inside of a hollow organ, allowing
him to remove samples from inside working organs. In 1890 he was asked
to organize and direct the Department of Physiology at the Institute of
Experimental Medicine, apost he held until his death. The same year, he
became Professor of Pharmacology at the Military Medical Academy, appointed
to the Chair of Physiology in 1895. From 1891 to 1900 he performed most
of his research on the physiology of digestion, demonstrated that digestive
processes were controlled by the brain rather than the presence of foods.
This work earned him the 1904 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
Began his definitive work on conditioned reflexes in 1898, externalized
the salivary glands in his test dogs so that he could measure the quantity
of salivation and thereby the strength of a conditioned reflex, using
a metronome as the external stimulus. Announced his findings at medical
congress in Madrid in 1903, first definition of conditioned reflexes.
In addition to Nobel, his other honors included full membership in Russian
Academy of Sciences (1907), honorary doctorate at Cambridge (1912), French
Legion of Honor (1915), and a special decree signed by Lenin in 1921 recognizing
his work. Pavlovs team was given wide scope and generous funding, but
in 1924 he learned that the sons of priests had been expelled from the
medical academy, resigned his chair at the Military Medical Academy in
protest. Died at Leningrad (now St Petersburg again) on 27 February 1936.
Handel is the greatest composer who ever lived. I would bare my head
and kneel at his grave.
- Ludwig van Beethoven
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home, but unlike charity, it
should end there.
- Clare Boothe Luce
As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence,
so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored into existence.
- Dwight David Eisenhower
Gradualness, gradualness, and gradualness. From the very beginning of
your work, school yourself to severe gradualness in the accumulation of
knowledge.
- Ivan Petrovich Pavlov
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