James Bell Pettigrew (1832–1908) MD,LLD,FRS,comparative anatomist,physiologist and aerobiologist

Abstract

After leaving Glasgow University, Pettigrew joined the Edinburgh Medical School in 1856. Professor Goodsir determined Pettigrew’s entire future by awarding him the Anatomy Gold Medal for an essay on cardiac muscle. The essay was accompanied by dissections of such high quality that they led to the Croonian Lecture of the Royal Society of London in 1860. After graduating, Pettigrew’s time as House Surgeon to James Syme was followed by a position in the Hunterian Museum, London. Intensive studies of urinary and alimentary muscle, and observations of insects and animals, with lectures on flight to distinguished societies, contributed to disabling illness and a long convalescence but in 1869 Pettigrew became Conservator of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and then Pathologist to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. The publication of Physiology of the Circulation and of Animal Locomotion, with its emphasis on aeronautics, ensured international fame. Fellowship of both London and Edinburgh Royal Societies was another factor contributing to Pettigrew’s election to the Chandos Chair at St Andrews University in 1875. The construction and abortive flying of a motor-driven aeroplane came near the end of his life and Pettigrew gave his remaining years to completing his monumental Design in Nature.

Keywords

Anatomy aviation flight movement physiology

Beginnings

James Bell Pettigrew^1,2 was born on 26 May 1832³ at Roxhill in Lanarkshire, the son of Robert Pettigrew and of Mary Bell. A relation of his father was Thomas Joseph Pettigrew MRCS,⁴ a controversial surgeon-apothecary, antiquary and author⁵ who became an attendant to the Duke of Kent – one of Thomas Pettigrew’s tasks was to vaccinate the Duke’s young daughter, Victoria. James’s mother, Mary Bell, was a great niece of Henry Bell,⁶ a pioneer of navigation and a marine shipbuilder responsible for the construction and launch, in 1812, of the Comet, a very early, steam-engine paddle steamer. Young Pettigrew had two sisters and five brothers, four of whom set up businesses in Ireland: two in Sligo, one in Wexford town and one in Enniscorthy, County Wexford.

James Pettigrew attended Airdrie Free West Academy and became well versed in the classics and familiar with French and German. He had a talent for drawing and in his own time made models of machines such as windmills, watermills and engines.⁷ He was athletic, greatly enjoyed the countryside and took many walks in the Scottish Borders and Highlands.

Accepted in 1850 by the Faculty of Arts of the University of Glasgow, Pettigrew matriculated for 1851. Year by year, he read Latin, Greek, Logic and Ethics although his favourite subjects were Mathematics and Physics. During his vacations he dissected sheep, oxen, calves and horses.

He remained a Glasgow student until 1855 but, as was commonly the case, chose not to graduate. For reasons perhaps due to his familiarity with the professional work of Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, he moved to Edinburgh to study Medicine. As his Design in Nature records,^8,9 in the winter term of that year, uncertain about how he might react to the sight of anatomical procedures and to ‘test his nerves’, he attended lectures by John Struthers (1823–1899) at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. This was still not sufficient to convince him that he should become a medical student and he embarked on the natural history lectures at the Free Church College of Edinburgh under Professor John Fleming‘s guidance.¹⁰ Struthers’ and Fleming’s words were finally enough to ‘persuade me to adopt medicine as a profession'. He added 'The natural history lectures were a great source of pleasure as I had always been fond of all kinds of natural objects, living and dead’.

As a medical student at the University of Edinburgh in the winter session of 1856, Pettigrew ‘came under the influence of a galaxy of genius and talent'. Among his professorial teachers were James Syme (Clinical Surgery); John Hughes Bennett (successor to Allen Thompson in the Chair of the Institutes of Medicine, as physiology was designated at that time); James Young Simpson (Midwifery); and John Goodsir (Anatomy). Pettigrew met his fellow students at the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh where original papers were debated in ‘the best training in the world for public men’. On 23 November 1859 Pettigrew was elected Society President for 1860 (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

James Bell Pettigrew, President of the Royal Medical Society 1860–1861. Reproduced by courtesy of the Lothian Health Services Archive.

His meticulous observations of nature flourished, covering a great range of living forms, both plant and animal. In the winter session of 1857/1858 Pettigrew’s future was determined when Goodsir proposed On the arrangement of the muscular fibres in the ventricles of the human heart as the subject of the competition for the next senior anatomy gold medal. Responding to this challenge, Pettigrew made dissections of the human heart that so impressed Goodsir that he decided that Pettigrew should be awarded the medal, his preparations given to the University Anatomical Museum.

By the summer of 1859 Pettigrew had prepared 112 dissections (Figure 2), recording some by photography. He demonstrated that the muscle bundles of the cardiac ventricles of man are arranged as two double but continuous conical screws, intersecting in every direction.¹¹ Although he claimed his observations were ‘according to strict mathematical principles’, unlike his future colleague D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson¹² he did not publish the calculations but used precise drawings to demonstrate anatomical relationships. In the autumn, James Syme brought his associate, the London physiologist Professor William Sharpey, together with Allen Thompson, to visit Pettigrew and to inspect his dissections. Sharpey was so impressed that he suggested Pettigrew’s work should form the subject for the 1860 Croonian Lecture of the Royal Society of London. On 22 November 1859 the revised essay Pettigrew had written on his observations was offered to the Society by Goodsir. His opinion was endorsed by the Council who resolved on 23 February 1860 that Pettigrew should indeed be appointed Croonian Lecturer and he spoke to the Royal Society on 19 April of that year.¹³ As he wrote later, 'Having no experience as a lecturer, and being only a third-year medical student, I undertook the task with grave misgiving’.¹⁴

Figure 2.

One of Pettigrew’s drawings of sheep cardiac muscle, derived from a photograph made in 1858 and showing the layers of spiral, looped, figure-of-8 fibres of ventricular muscle. From Design in Nature, volume 2, plate 97.

In the following summer he rose at 4 am each morning to write on The Presumption of Survivorship', an essay that secured the Gold Medal in the class of Medical Jurisprudence and Police, of Regius Professor Thomas Stewart Traill. His erudite essay¹⁵ was revised and published subsequently.¹⁶

Pettigrew then devoted himself to the anatomy of nerves. One hundred and sixty-four of his preparations were presented to the Anatomical Museum. He graduated MD on 1 August 1861 with the Gold Medal for his inaugural dissertation. The understandable choice for his subject, accompanied by 50 dissections, was The ganglia and nerves of the heart and their connection with the cerebrospinal and sympathetic systems in mammals, a subject on which, at a later date, he addressed the Royal Society of Edinburgh.¹⁷ His degree was presented by Professor Balfour and he was capped by Sir David Brewster. Soon afterwards Pettigrew became House Surgeon to his sponsor, James Syme, whose patients endured the wards of the Surgical Hospital of the old Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

Assistant curator to the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England

Ending his time with Syme, and again with his support, Pettigrew moved to London in 1862 to be Assistant to the Hunterian Museum. In 1863 he began to style himself Bell Pettigrew. His first paper under this name and based on his Croonian Lecture described his pioneering studies of the heart musculature. The Royal Society (of London) published it on 23 April 1863 after John Goodsir had communicated it to the Society.¹⁸ On 21 March 1864 Pettigrew demonstrated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh his evidence of the intricate structure and function of the cardiac valves in mammals, birds, reptiles and fishes, a talk not published in its original form until 1866.¹⁹ However he had already prepared a full account of this work, with a different title and illustrated with 57 of his intricate drawings and this was published in the same year as his talk.²⁰

In the Hunterian Museum he contributed 600 dissections, continuing his special interest in cardiac muscle and demonstrating them to College students. In 1866 the Lancet was enthusiastic about his use, in specimen preparation, of plaster of Paris, gypsum, to fill anatomical cavities while throwing them into relief by surrounding them with the same material, coloured with ultramarine²¹ and the quality of Pettigrew’s dissections attracted the praise of a wide medical press. Many years later the Lancet published his autobiographical account of his work in London and Edinburgh,²² a record Pettigrew reprinted in Design in Nature.²³ He employed the same meticulous approach in an analysis of the structure of the human, ox, sheep, horse and pig urinary bladder and prostate,²⁴ presenting his results to the Royal Society (of London) on 21 June 1866. The paper that followed²⁵ was a comprehensive account of this work, beautifully illustrated with 38 of his drawings, made from photographs, and with 20 diagrams in which the disposition and predominantly spiral actions of the lower urinary tract muscles were explained. Pettigrew used a similar approach in an investigation of the stomach of man and of a range of mammals extending from the whale and porpoise to the orang-utan and chimpanzee²⁶ while, outside the College, he devoted time to recording the movements of insects, reptiles, birds and mammals, often at the London Zoo.

Meanwhile Pettigrew had begun to collect the evidence that led to his pioneering theories of flight (Figure 3) and it was in this field that he caught the attention of the scientific world. The twenty-nine experiments he conducted in 1867 exemplify his life-long approach.²⁷ On 22 March 1867 he spoke at the Royal Institution. His communication appears to have been published first in France²⁸ and in the United Kingdom only two years later.²⁹ It was shortly afterwards, on 6 and 20 June 1867, that he addressed the Linnean Society, revealing his views on the nature of the mechanical appliances necessary to make flight possible.³⁰ He demonstrated that the figure-of-8 movements he had recognised throughout the animal and plant kingdoms were identical to those made by wings in flight. It was a milestone in the story of aeronautics.

Figure 3.

The right wing of a bat with the bones of the arm, leg and tail which all take part in supporting the flying membrane. From Design in Nature volume 1, section 35, p.213.

During these years Pettigrew had been intensely active and towards the end of 1867, he became unwell and was compelled to resign from the Hunterian museum. The Lancet³¹ reported his illness as ‘a sudden disorder of the retinae of both eyes but affecting but one half of each retina’. Responding to medical advice, he moved to the west of Ireland, using his prolonged, enforced leisure to study the flight patterns of insects, bats and birds and experimenting on artificial flight.

Every significant scientific discovery evokes debate. The observations made by Pettigrew during the years 1865 to 1867 were no exception. The distinguished French physiologist Etienne Jules Marey had been investigating the hydrodynamics of the heart and circulation since 1858. Approaching the related problems of insect and avian flight in a report published at the end of 1868,³² he claimed priority for his account of the central role played by figure-of-8, helical, movements.

In response to Marey’s critical comments, Pettigrew wrote to the French Academy emphasising that he and not Marey, had been ‘the first to describe and illustrate’:

that quadrupeds walk, and fishes swim, and insects, bats, and birds fly by figure-of-eight movements.

that the flipper of the sea bear, the swimming wing of the penguin and the wing of the insect, bat and bird, are screws structurally and resemble the blade of an ordinary screw propeller.

that these organs are screws functionally, from their twisting and untwisting, and from their rotating in the direction of their length, when they are made to oscillate.

that they have a reciprocating action and reverse their planes more or less completely at every stroke.

that the wing describes a figure-of-eight track in space when the flying animal is artificially fixed.

that the wing, when the flying animal is progressing at a high speed in a horizontal direction, describes a looped and then a waved track, from the fact that the figure-of-8 is gradually opened out or unravelled as the animal advances.

that the wing acts after the manner of a kite, during both the down and the up strokes.

The Academy published his letter³³ and Marey responded by writing ‘I leave entirely to M. Pettigrew the priority over me relative to the question, as restricted’.³⁴

Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh

It has been argued that Pettigrew could have promoted his scientific career in London had it not been for his illness, part of a ‘constitutional weakness’. However, by chance, in 1869 William Rutherford Sanders offered his resignation from the Conservatorship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh when he was elected to the University of Edinburgh Chair of Pathology. Anxious to settle in his native land, Pettigrew, supported by Syme, was proposed for the College vacancy. Now a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, he was appointed on 4 December 1869, a time when the College Council included Joseph Lister. Pettigrew attended his first quarterly meeting of the Museum Curators on 25 January 1870. Almost certainly on Syme’s recommendation, he became Pathologist to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. The work proved to be varied and on 8 May 1870, accompanied by John Chiene, he undertook the autopsy on the late James Young Simpson, pioneer of chloroform.³⁵

As Conservator, Pettigrew managed the work of the College Museum to the entire satisfaction both of the Curators’ Committee and of the Council.³⁶ Pettigrew did not allow his duties to impede his experimental research and writing. On 2 August 1870 he presented his pioneering views on flight to the Royal Society of Edinburgh.^37,38 On 6 August it is said that a paper which he and Sanders had written was communicated by Sanders.³⁹ In November of the following year Pettigrew was awarded £100 by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh for ‘experiments on artificial flight’. In one example he removed the alternate primary and secondary feathers from either wing of a house sparrow. It flew successfully for 46 metres.⁴⁰

In 1872, the year in which he was elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Pettigrew gave a course of lectures on physiology to the President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, the Fellows and others, at the Surgeons’ Hall. He introduced the lectures in a short, preliminary paper⁴¹ that provoked severe criticism from Dr LS Beale who wrote⁴² ‘I am surprised that Dr Bell Pettigrew should have so misrepresented my views [on bioplasm and protoplasm]’. Shortly afterwards another critic, Dr J Ross, claimed⁴³ that Pettigrew had distorted Huxley’s views on evolution and the origin of species as well as those of Ernst Haeckel and Tyndall. In a long letter Pettigrew responded to both critics together.⁴⁴ The lectures evoked the praise of the Lancet.⁴⁵ They were reproduced in extenso in the Edinburgh Medical Journal⁴⁶ and a book comprising the lectures was published in Edinburgh and in London.⁴⁷ With engaging frankness, Pettigrew admitted in the Preface to the London edition that ‘a friend relieved me of the labour of reading the proof’. On 3 March 1873, he was appointed Lecturer on Physiology at the Extramural School of Medicine of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and in August of that year was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

It was in 1873 that Pettigrew’s outstanding work Animal Locomotion⁴⁸ was published, translated into French in 1874^{4
9} and into German in 1875.⁵⁰ In his book he brought together the principles of mechanics that underlay his theories, allowing him to demonstrate that for men to walk, swim or fly in natural or artificial motion, a source of energy was essential. On land, locomotives were being driven by steam engines, pistons and wheels while, on water, steamboats could be pushed by paddles or propellers. Beautifully illustrated,⁵¹ many pages are given to Progression on the Land and to Progression on the Water but more than one half of the book is devoted to Progression on or through the Air and to his pre-occupation, Aeronautics. Flying, he stressed, was not confined to birds and insects, and was not limited by weight. Moreover, extinct reptiles such as pterodactyls flew as did some fish and occasional mammals such as bats.

Pettigrew quoted Cayley who in 1796 had shown his readers how to demonstrate flight in their own homes and predicted that men would soon be able to fly provided they could install the forces needed to pull/push a craft through the skies.⁵² In his book Pettigrew illustrated de la Landelle’s steam engine-driven helicopter, with propellers arranged in tiers; Henson’s 1843 aerostat which used vertical fans; and the model with a vertical screw propeller designed by Stringfellow in 1868. He referred to Wenham’s 1867 aeroplane with its ‘superimposed planes’, powered by a steam engine weighing no more than six kilograms, and argued that human flight was inevitable. However, it was to be 30 years before the Wright brothers made the first flights in a powered aeroplane, the longest lasting 59 seconds over a distance of 260 metres and 36 years before Bleriot crossed the English Channel, travelling at 64 kph at a height of 76 metres.

In the following year the international scene again became contentious when Marey published Animal Mechanism,⁵³ once more criticising Pettigrew’s views and writing ‘Notwithstanding his apparent agreement, our theory and that of Dr Pettigrew, differ materially from each other’. The matter seemed to have been brought to a conclusion by Coughtrie⁵⁴ who wrote that Marey had not been entitled to say that his theory (of flight) and that of Pettigrew differed materially, nor that Marey was entitled to appropriate Pettigrew’s descriptions and figures without proper acknowledgement or to modify or misrepresent them. However, Pettigrew chose to revert to the debate in 1908 in his Design in Nature.⁵⁵

In 1874 the French Academy awarded Pettigrew their Godard prize for his discoveries in Anatomy and Physiology.

The Chandos Chair of St Andrews University

In April 1874 and encouraged by James Syme, Pettigrew sought the Chair of Anatomy in the University of Edinburgh which had become vacant after the death of Goodsir. William Turner was an applicant with John Struthers a third candidate. In spite of Syme’s strong support and testimonials from fifty-one eminent colleagues including William Ferguson, Richard Quain, James Duncan and Moncrieff Arnott, Pettigrew was unsuccessful and Turner was appointed.

Not deterred, in July 1874 Pettigrew applied for the Chair of Physiology of the University of Edinburgh, a vacancy caused by the impending retirement of John Hughes Bennett. It was the year in which Pettigrew became a Laureate of L’Institute de France. He was unsuccessful with his application but his hopes were fulfilled when he was appointed unanimously to the Chandos Chair of Medicine and Anatomy of the University of St. Andrews on 24 September 1875,⁵⁶ a position to which he was admitted formally on 15 November at a salary which rose from £279 per annum in 1881 to £375 in 1886.

Moving to Fife, Pettigrew’s address became East Bay View, on the East Scores. He was soon to be an integral part of the local community so that in 1882 he was elected to the St Andrews Council. Two years later he organised a meeting of the Fifeshire Medical Association.

Pettigrew belonged to the St Andrews Musical Society and, with Dr Donaldson, was a founder of the University Philharmonic Society. He amassed a fine collection of violins. Understandably he was captivated by the novel design of the phonograph, the properties of which encouraged him in 1882 to describe the analogies between this invention, ‘one of the latest outcomes of modern science’ and the structure and function of the human ear.⁵⁷ Of both he wrote ‘we are dealing with the physics of matter’. It was not until 21 May 1890 that he married. His bride was Elsie, the second daughter of the late Sir William Gray of Greatham, Durham and first Lord Mayor of Hartlepool. Aged 38, she had already been widowed twice. For four years they lived at East Bay View before moving to their large new house, The Swallowgate, at the corner of Butts Wynd and The Scores, a road leading to the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. Elsie and James had no children, enabling him to remain busy with teaching, research and administration.

In the spring of 1876 he gave 20 lectures⁵⁸ at Dundee High School, arranged ‘as for medical students’ and helped by the use of microscopes. The lectures, together with those given by University Principals Tulloch and Sharp at the Albert Institute, were part of the St Andrews University response to pressure from the Dundee Town Council calling for the foundation of University College, Dundee which eventually was established in 1881.⁵⁹

Pettigrew’s 1881 Introductory Address at St Andrews itself began by considering two opposing theories of Creation and of the formation of the Universe.⁶⁰ It was a hint of the direction in which his mind was turning. He then moved to his main theme, Education, comparing and contrasting symbolic with objective teaching. He called for changes in the St Andrews approach to Science so that the MA degree of the Faculty of Arts, educating principally for the Church and for the profession of teaching, might give greater attention to scientific disciplines. In Science, he said, ‘the laboratory is a necessity’. He continued by hoping that the forthcoming Executive Commission would deal liberally with everything pertaining to laboratories and to practical science teaching.

A member of St Andrews’ University Senate, he became Dean of the Medical Faculty and during the 1880s was drawn into the sometimes acrimonious discussions between St Andrews University and University College, Dundee on the proposal that Dundee should also have a Medical School.⁶¹ On 24 January 1887, for example, he wrote ‘telling sentences’ explaining that ‘if Dundee were to have a complete Medical School, only two of its four medical years could function, according to existing regulations’. He was at variance with the approach and direction of the Senate and with changes that might affect his own discipline, in particular the possible creation of a Faculty of Science. Although it was likely that the rise of Dundee and the establishment of a Conjoint Medical School, constitutionally distinct from University College and initially to comprise the subjects of Surgery, Pathology, Materia Medica, and Midwifery and Gynaecology, would still allow St Andrews to grant medical degrees on the same footing as other universities; this was a matter for debate that continued for years until it was ended when the Conjoint Medical School was inaugurated in 1898,⁶² the Dundee Medical School building in 1904.

Adding to his responsibilities, from 1877 until 1886 Pettigrew represented the Universities of St Andrews and Glasgow on the General Medical Council. In the latter year, a new Medical Act enabled each of the Scottish universities to return its own Council member and Bell Pettigrew continued to represent St Andrews.

During these difficult years Pettigrew’s academic studies were unabated (Figure 4). In 1879 he was invited to contribute an article on flight to the Encyclopaedia Britannica,⁶³ a subject favoured by other journals.⁶⁴ He wrote again on education⁶⁵ and in 1883 was awarded the Honorary LLD by the University of Glasgow. In 1889 he was invited to deliver the Harveian Oration to the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.^66,67 Subsequently Pettigrew was elected President of the Harveian Society and, in 1901, again expressed his views on growth and movement.⁶⁸

Figure 4.

James Bell Pettigrew in 1902, an oil painting on canvas, by Walter William Ouless. Reproduced by courtesy of the University of Edinburgh Fine Art Collection.

The later years

By 1897 Pettigrew’s time as a member of the St Andrew’s Senate was effectively over. It was the year in which, to Pettigrew’s dismay, a Faculty of Science was established. Now aged 65, he had become a ‘tired and unhappy man’. It is recorded that ‘he would fail progressively and soon even his class teaching would become a burden’. In 1898, in a ‘pathetic letter’ he requested assistance. Succeeded as Dean by Weymouth Reid, he was relieved of his teaching duties and ‘passed quietly and sadly from the academic scene’, entering years of prolonged illness. His teaching had ended and it appears that he was inactive after 1905 but remained in office until 1908. A proposal to translate the Chandos Chair of Medicine and Anatomy into one of Physiology was advanced in 1900 but did not come into effect until after Pettigrew’s death.

By the end of the nineteenth century, competition to become the first to pilot a motor-powered flying machine was intense. Pettigrew is said to have made small model aircraft⁶⁹ and to have tested them on the Scores. He is also believed to have corresponded with the Wright brothers, before their successful 1903 flights. Despite his poor health, it is reported that, in secret, Pettigrew built his own aeroplane,⁷⁰ an aircraft constructed of wood and sheet iron and thought to have had flapping wings. Powered by a two-stroke engine, Pettigrew flew his aircraft for 18 metres before it crashed, breaking his femur. For a time the engine was a showpiece. Fortunate to survive but confined to a chair, he was still able to edit the chapters of his final book, to dictate but to undertake little other activity.

Design in nature

During his last years Pettigrew devoted his time to Design in Nature.⁷¹ One reason for the great length of this extraordinary book lay in Pettigrew’s decision to reproduce much of his published work, including 17 of his papers and parts of two of his earlier books. A second reason was the repetitive inclusion of disagreements that he had had with others working in fields close to his own, perhaps a reflection of the state of his mind at the time of writing⁷² and including his criticism of the views of Cook who, misguidedly, had argued that Leonardo da Vinci had been among the first to interpret the mechanisms of flight correctly.⁷³

Design in Nature is as much a work of philosophy as of science and it invokes classical archaeology and geology to support arguments central to late nineteenth century debate on evolution and the origins of life. The views that underlie the book are revealed by his statement ‘In considering the Universe as a whole, or in parts, it is necessary to postulate an intelligent Creator or First Cause, a Designer and Adapter, an Upholder and Sustainer’. However, he admitted ‘It is difficult and dangerous to attempt to define the properties and powers of living matter’ and ‘The operations of Nature are mysterious and often inseparable’.

Pettigrew explained ‘The present work naturally and necessarily covers a wide field, from the fact that it attempts to trace Design, Order and Purpose in the inorganic and organic kingdoms, especially the latter’ and ‘it concerns itself not only with inorganic matter and physical force, but also with organic matter, vital force and intellect’. He claimed to have written ‘in a popular style – all technicalities being avoided or explained’ but admitted it (the book) ‘has attained much greater dimensions than was originally intended’ and ‘due to the large number of subjects treated and to the fact that they are correlated, and, in many instances, overlap’. Familiar with the discovery of X-rays, of radium and of electrons as part of the atom, he added ‘it was necessary to deal with Physics, Chemistry, Botany, Zoology, Anatomy, Physiology, Psychology and Palaeontology, more or less in detail, as these all hang together’.

A central part of Pettigrew’s arguments was the importance in all forms of movement in the Universe of the helical, spiral motion that he had demonstrated in many forms of life. He accepted that the eye can only see ‘the slower movements in mechanics and in animal locomotion’ and turned to the work of Muybridge,^74,75 a pioneer of ‘instantaneous photography’ who had devised an automatic electrophotographic apparatus allowing him to obtain consecutive images of horses’ walking, trotting and galloping, at regular times and distances. Pettigrew reproduced some of Muybridge’s images as drawings, adding lines and lettering to enhance their meaning. However, he condemned Muybridge as ‘neither an anatomist nor a physiologist’, commenting that Muybridge’s writings ‘made no reference to the curves, spirals and figure-of-eight movements made when bipeds and quadrupeds move’.

Pettigrew died on 30 January 1908 at his home, The Swallowgate. The precise cause of his death remains uncertain.^76–79 His widow gave £6000 to the University of St Andrews to help in the establishment of a museum to be named after him. A Museum of Natural History had been founded by the Literary and Philosophical Society of St Andrews in 1838 but the collection had been passed to the University in 1904. It had outgrown its first venue and the new Bell Pettigrew Museum of Natural History was located in 1912 in the recent museum addition to the 1899 Bute Building.⁸⁰ Much of the collection is now of birds and their flight.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Dr Martin J Milner, Curator of the Bell Pettigrew Museum of the University of St Andrews, and to Helen Rawson, Senior Curator of the University of St Andrews Museum Collections, for their patient support of my investigations. Access to the literature relating to Pettigrew’s life and work would not have been possible without the indefatigable help of Marianne Smith and Steven Kerr of the library of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the skilled assistance of Estela Dukan of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh library. I also acknowledge the assistance of the libraries of the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Reading; of the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and of the libraries of the Royal College of Physicians of London, the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Royal Society of Medicine.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biography

Dugald Lindsay Gardner, MA ScD (Cantab) PhD MD (Edin) FRCP, FRCPEd, FRCSEd, is Conservator Emeritus of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh; Emeritus Professor of Histopathology of the University of Manchester. He was the first Director of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, London, and Musgrave Professor of Pathology of the Queen’s University of Belfast. His books include Pathological Basis of the Connective Tissue Diseases (1992); Surgeon, Scientist, Soldier: the Life and Times of Henry Wade 1876–1955 (2005) and My Path to Pathology by Rivers, Lakes and Seas (2012).

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. James Bell Pettigrew: an admirable man. Scottish Local History 2008; 73: 14–21.

The inscription on his gravestone at St Andrews reads 1834, not 1832.

Symons J. Pettigrew, Thomas Joseph (1791–1865), surgeon and antiquary. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: University Press, 2004, online edition 2007.

Pettigrew TJ. Medical portrait gallery: Biographical memoirs of the most celebrated physicians, Surgeons etc. etc. who have contributed to the Advancement of Medical Science. In 4 volumes, London: Fisher, Son & Co, 1838–1840.

Moss MS. Bell, Henry (1767–1830), hotelier and developer of steam navigation. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: University Press, 2004, online edition 2007.

Editorial. Professor J. Bell Pettigrew, M.D., F.R.S. The Biograph and Review 1881; VI: 617–628.

Bell Pettigrew J. Design in nature. Illustrated by spiral and other arrangements in the inorganic and organic kingdoms as exemplified in matter, force, life, growth, rhythms, &c., especially in crystals, plants, and animals. With examples selected from the reproductive, alimentary, respiratory, circulatory, nervous, muscular, osseous, locomotory, and other systems of animals. London: Longman, Green, and Co, 1908.

In 3 volumes, Design in Nature was, he wrote, ’ illustrated by nearly two thousand figures, largely original and from nature’. Some 500 copies are believed to have been printed and the 3 volumes together were sold for three guineas (£3.15).

10.

Bell Pettigrew J (op. cit. ref.8): p.1363.

11.

The external component of one screw wound from right to left externally, from left to right internally whereas the muscle bundles of the other screw wound in the converse directions. Overall, the cardiac muscle fibres formed seven layers, each crossing increasingly obliquely towards the centre and constituting the spiral, figure of eight arrangement that Pettigrew found to be so characteristic of muscles in the viscera. The contractions of these muscle bundles, he concluded, gave to the blood an helical motion.

12.

Thompson DW. On growth and form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917; revised second edition 1942; abridged edition 1961.

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Pettigrew JB. On the arrangement of the muscular fibres in the ventricles of the vertebrate heart, with physiological remarks. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 1859–1860; 10: 433–440.

14.

Bell Pettigrew J (op. cit. ref. 8): p.1368.

15.

Beginning with the Roman legal code and the Code Napoléon, this masterly essay examined legal priority in instances of survival. He discussed medical testimony, the physical signs which could be used to assess survival, outlined a new legal code and how the duration of life could be judged in deaths caused during childbirth and by wounds, suffocation, cold, heat, lightning, drowning, hanging, intoxication, starvation or burning.

16.

Bell Pettigrew

. On the presumption of survivorship. The British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review 1865; 35: 173–207.

17.

Bell Pettigrew

. On the ganglia and nerves of the heart, and their connection with the cerebro-spinal and sympathetic systems in mammalia. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1866; 5: 452–455.

18.

Bell Pettigrew

. On the arrangement of the muscular fibres in the ventricles of the vertebrate heart, with physiological remarks. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 1864; 154: 445–500.

19.

Bell Pettigrew

. On the anatomy and physiology of the mitral, tricuspid, and semilunar valves in mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1866; 5: 193–197.

20.

Bell Pettigrew

. On the relations, structure, and function of the valves of the vascular system in vertebrata. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1864; 23: 761–805.

21.

Editorial. Anatomical preparations at the College of Surgeons. Lancet 1866; II: 640.

22.

Bell Pettigrew J. Anatomical preparation making as devised and practised at the University of Edinburgh and at the Hunterian museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Lancet 1901; II: 1399–1403; 1479–1484.

23.

Bell Pettigrew J (op. cit. ref. 8): pp.1363–1383.

24.

Bell Pettigrew

. On the muscular arrangements of the bladder and prostate, and the manner in which the ureters and urethra are closed. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 1866; 15: 244–249.

25.

Bell Pettigrew

. On the muscular arrangements of the bladder and prostate, and the manner in which the ureters and urethra are closed. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 1867; 157: 17–48.

26.

Bell Pettigrew

. On the distribution of the fibres in the muscular tunics of the stomach in man and other mammalia. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 1867; 16: 65–67.

27.

Beginning with 11 studies made on bluebottle flies, he continued with four on dragon flies, six on butterflies and eight on house sparrows, testing the effect on flight of the removal of selected parts of their wings. He demonstrated that there was no definite relation between the weight of a flying animal and the size of its flying surfaces. However, it appeared that the ‘larger the volant animal, the smaller by comparison are its flying surfaces. Thus, the sparrow weighs 330 times less than the Australian crane but possesses, relatively, seven times more surface. The gnat weighs 97,000 times less than the pigeon and has, relatively, 40 times more surface’.

28.

Bell Pettigrew

. Les divers modes de vol dans leur rapport avec l’aéronautique. Revue des cours scientifiques de la France et de l’Ėtranger 1867; 4: 673–679.

29.

Bell Pettigrew

. On the various modes of flight in relation to aeronautics. Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 1869; 5: 94–107.

30.

Bell Pettigrew

. On the mechanical appliances by which flight is attained in the animal kingdom. Transactions of the Linnean Society of London 1868; 26: 197–277.

31.

Medical Annotations: Dr James Bell Pettigrew. Lancet. 1868; I: 96–97.

32.

Marey

E-J

. Detérmination expérimentale du mouvement des ailes des insectes pendant le vol. Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaire des Séances de l’Académie des Sciences 1868; 67: 1341–1345.

33.

Bell Pettigrew

. Observations relative aux faits signals dans deux communications précédentes de M.Marey, sur le vol des insectes. Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaire des Séances de l’Académie des Sciences 1870; 70: 875–877.

34.

Marey

E-J

. Réponse à une note précédente. Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaire des Séances de l’Académie des Sciences 1870; 70: 1093–1094.

35.

Obituary. JY Simpson. British Medical Journal 1870; I: 505–508.

36.

In a typical quarterly report it was recorded that ’82 specimens had been overhauled or refurbished’ and that ‘a list of specimens received was being prepared’. He asked the Curators to agree to recommend to Council the provision of the £3 to £5 necessary ‘to purchase 15 or 20 injection bottles’.

37.

Bell Pettigrew

. On the physiology of wings: being an analysis of the movements by which flight is produced in the insect, bat and bird. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1872; 7: 336–350.

38.

Bell Pettigrew

. On the physiology of wings: being an analysis of the movements by which flight is produced in the insect, bat and bird. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1872; 26: 321–348.

39.

A record of this paper has not been found.

40.

When only a single wing was operated upon, the bird flew irregularly and in a lopsided manner. He then removed the alternate primary or secondary feathers from either wing, starting with the second primaries. The bird’s flight remained perfect although when one wing only was cut, its flight became irregular as it had done in the previous study. From another bird he removed half the feathers from either wing, this time transversely, in the direction of the short axis of the wing. When one wing only was operated upon, flight was only very slightly impaired but when both were cut, the ‘bird flew heavily and came to the ground at no very great distance’. In the last of these experiments he investigated the role of the avian wrist (carpal) joints, testing their importance by lashing them with slender reeds but allowing the elbow joint freedom of movement and confirming this result with the wings of a pigeon. He satisfied himself that a large proportion of the wings of the most volant animals may be removed without destroying the power of flight. Of great importance, artificial wings, dropped from a height, moved in double curves. ‘The roots of the wing reach the ground first, the tips of the wings having great buoying power’.

41.

Bell Pettigrew

. On the relations of plants and animals to inorganic matter, and on the interaction of the vital and physical forces. Introductory to a course of physiology. Lancet 1873; II: 691–696.

42.

Beale LS. Dr Bell Pettigrew on vitality. Lancet 1873; II: 756.

43.

Ross

. Dr Bell Pettigrew on vitality. Lancet 1873; II: 789–789.

44.

Bell Pettigrew

. Dr Bell Pettigrew on vitality. Lancet 1873; II: 855–855.

45.

Editorial. Lancet 1873; II: 744–745.

46.

Bell Pettigrew J. On the physiology of the circulation in plants, in the lower animals, and in man: being a course of lectures delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Edinburgh Medical Journal 1873; 18: 1–26; 97–120; 193–216; 289–312; 385–408; 481–504; 577–599; 673–696; 769–791; 865–890; 961–984.

47.

Bell Pettigrew J. The physiology of the circulation in plants, in the lower animals and in man. Being a course of lectures delivered at the Surgeons’ Hall to the President, Fellows, etc, of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, in the summer of 1872. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1873; London, MacMillan and Co., 1874.

48.

Bell Pettigrew

. Animal locomotion or walking, swimming, and flying with a dissertation on aeronautics, London: Henry S King & Co, 1873.

49.

Bell Pettigrew

. La locomotion chez les animaux; ou marche, natation et vol, suivie d’une dissertation sur l’aéronautique, Paris: G Baillière, 1874.

50.

Bell Pettigrew

. Die Ortsbewegung der Thiere nebst Bemerkungen über Luftschiffahrt, Leipzig: FA Brockhaus, 1875.

51.

There are 130 engravings together with six that are unnumbered.

52.

Cayley wrote that armed only with propellers constructed in 10 minutes from four avian wing feathers, two corks, a round shaft such as a knitting needle and a bow made from a whalebone, the machine ‘will rise to the ceiling’. He argued that if the area of the screws (the propellers) was increased to 200 square feet, and moved by a man, they would elevate him.

53.

Marey EJ. Animal mechanism: a treatise on terrestial and aerial locomotion. London: Henry S King & Co., 1874.

54.

Coughtrie M. Aerial locomotion. Pettigrew versus Marey. Quarterly Journal of Science 1875; V(NS): 234–251.

55.

Bell Pettigrew J (op. cit. ref. 8): pp.1385–1394.

56.

Local Intelligence, University of St Andrews. East Fife Record, 24 September 1875: 3.

57.

Bell Pettigrew

. The phonograph or speech recorder, in its relation to the human voice and ear. Modern Thought 1882; 7: 61–68.

58.

Bell Pettigrew J. Professor of Medicine and Anatomy, in the University of St. Andrews. A lecture on Man in his anatomical, physical, and physiological aspects. Introductory to a course of lectures on the Institutes of Medicine (Physiology). Lancet 1876; I: 4–6; 41–43.

59.

Cant

. The University of St Andrews. A short history. New and revised ed, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1970.

60.

Bell Pettigrew

. Introductory address on Man’s place in creation; his education and development from a science point of view. Delivered at the University of St. Andrews. British Medical Journal 1882; II: 925–927.

61.

Blair

JSG

. History of medicine in the University of St Andrews, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987.

62.

Cant RG (op. cit. ref. 59): p.129.

63.

Bell Pettigrew J. Flight, flying machines. Encyclopaedia Britannica 9th edition 1879; 9: 308–323.

64.

Bell Pettigrew

. Flight natural and artificial. Fraser’s Magazine 1881; NS23: 227–246.

65.

Bell Pettigrew

. Man’s place in creation – his education and development and from a science point of view. Educational Times 1882; 15: 329–332.

66.

Bell Pettigrew J. The Harveian oration for 1889. The pioneers in medicine prior to and including Harvey. Edinburgh Medical Journal. 1889; 34: 977–998; 1073–1091.

67.

The published work, of some 18,000 words, could not have been delivered in the time normally given to a lecture. It may be assumed, therefore, that, following the practice he had acquired when delivering his Croonian Lecture, he revised the address, converting it into a substantial and erudite history of medicine from Greek and Roman times while emphasising those pioneers who had examined the nature of the vascular circulation.

68.

Bell Pettigrew J. On the formation of crystals, dendrites, and spiral structures, in relation to growth and movement, especially rhythmic movements. Edinburgh Medical Journal 1901; 9: 212–222; 320–334.

69.

Willsher E (op. cit. ref. 2): p.18.

70.

Walmsley R (op. cit. ref. 1): p.133.

71.

Bell Pettigrew J (op. cit. ref. 8).

72.

The old argument with Marey regarding priority in the description of spiral movement in flight, a debate apparently concluded in 1874, was not only reopened but given nine further pages as Appendix II of volume 3 of Design in Nature.

73.

Bell Pettigrew J (op. cit. ref.8): p.1398.

74.

Muybridge E (James Edward Muggeridge). Animals in motion. London: Chapman & Hall, 1899.

75.

Muybridge

. The human figure in motion. An electro-photographic investigation of consecutive phases of muscular actions, London: Chapman & Hall, 1901.

76.

Our Portrait Gallery: Professor J. Bell Pettigrew. Provincial Medical Journal 1886; 5: 193–198.

77.

Sloan AD. The late Professor James Bell Pettigrew. The Citizen, 8 February 1908.

78.

J. Bell Pettigrew M.D., F.R.S. Obituaries. British Medical Journal 1908; 1: 357.

79.

The late James Bell Pettigrew M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P. College Echoes, St Andrews University, 7 February 1908.

80.

The Pettigrew Museum of Natural History is located in the Bute Building of the School of Biology of St. Andrews University, S. Andrews, Fife, KY16 9TS.