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Pharmacology and war: the papers of Sir John Henry Gaddum (1900 65)
Rebecca Pohancenik Notes Rec. R. Soc. 2007 61, 347-348 doi: 10.1098/rsnr.2007.0186

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Notes Rec. R. Soc. (2007) 61, 347348 doi:10.1098/rsnr.2007.0186 Published online 2 July 2007

REPORT

Pharmacology and war: the papers of Sir John Henry Gaddum (1900 65)

Rebecca Pohancenik*, Wellcome Trust Project Cataloguer, The Royal Society,

6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG, UK

The Wellcome Trusts Research Resources in Medical History has funded a one-year-long project to catalogue the Royal Societys twentieth-century medical collections. As part of this project, the papers of British pharmacologist Sir John Henry Gaddum FRS have been catalogued. The collection spans Gaddums entire career, from school writings and rst forays into science to his nal post as Director of the Institute of Animal Physiology, Babraham, Cambridge, in 1958. In addition to a wealth of working papers, laboratory notebooks and correspondence, the collection includes material on Gaddums war-related research and provides an insight into the role of the medical scientist in World War II. Trained as a physiologist, Gaddum made his rst major contributions to the eld while working at the National Institute for Medical Research in the laboratory of Sir Henry Hallett Dale FRS (18751968). Together with Ulf von Euler ForMemRS, he discovered a previously unknown but vital vasodepressor substance in the brain and intestine (Substance P). Gaddum was able to establish the role of acetylcholine in sympathetic nerve transmission. His later research focused on the mode of action of drugs, and his studies on the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) led to a better understanding of serotonin.1 The laboratory notebooks in the collection chart the course of these discoveries: one days entry reads, various unsuccessful attempts to show that sympathetic ganglia act by liberating acetylcholine;2 other notable entries include a 1953 self-experiment to record LSDs physiological effects under the supervision of his research team.3 Gaddum developed ever more sophisticated methods of testing the pharmacological activity of substances. Among his papers are many diagrams of apparatus and pushpull cannulae, devices for withdrawing uids from tissue. Extensive correspondence on bioassay techniques shows how widely these methods were taken up by colleagues. Like many of his colleagues working in physiology during the 1940s, Gaddum was called upon to use his expertise in the eld of gas warfare research. At Porton Down, he studied how the different dispersal properties of gases used in warfare determined their toxicity. In the company of Sir Joseph Barcroft FRS, Gordon Roy Cameron FRS and Sir Charles Arthur Lovatt Evans FRS, he advised the Porton group on both defensive and offensive war strategies. One such report discusses the feasibility of poisoning enemy water supplies with capsaicin, the active component of hot chillies.4 Gaddums correspondence with physiologists across the globe reveals a different side to the effects of war. Letters from the American pharmacologist Chauncey Leake discuss the

*rebecca.pohancenik@royalsoc.ac.uk

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problems of placing a refugee scientist.5 Others refer to the bombing of University College London, the rebuilding of laboratories, and the inux of students after the war. Active on several committees, Gaddum took a lively interest in the research of others, often reviewing books and contributing articles to Nature and other journals. His correspondence is not limited to scientists in his own eldexchanges with the statistician R. A. Fisher FRS, the evolutionary biologist J. B. S. Haldane FRS and the animal behaviourist W. H. Thorpe FRS demonstrate the scope of his interest. An exchange between Gaddum and the environmentalist A. M. (Tony) Harthoorn, over supply of a drug for anesthetizing white rhinoceros, documents early efforts to save a rare species through population management.6 A complete description of Gaddums papers is now available through the Archives online catalogue (http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/library).

NOTES
1 2 3 4 5 6 W. Feldberg, John Henry Gaddum, 19001965, Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. 13, 6769 (1967). JHG/2/6, Laboratory notebook, p. 97. JHG/2/19, Laboratory notebook, p. 58. JHG/2/13, Wartime notebook, between pp. 197 and 198. JHG/9/2/18, Letter from Chauncey Leake. JHG/9/24, Drug supply to capture rhinoceros.