Pavlov effectively united his workforce with an authoritarian structure and cooperative ethos. The chief’s administrative authority was absolute: he hired and fired, assigned research tasks, decided when a task had been satisfactorily completed, and determined whether a coworker would receive his doctorate. His intellectual authority was also, of course, considerable by virtue of his knowledge and experience. The atmosphere of free, cooperative inquiry in the lab permitted coworkers to disagree openly with Pavlov on scientific questions, although the chief’s legendary temper could make this extremely unpleasant. Institutional realities and the career trajectory of the coworkers—who lacked physiological expertise and were chiefly interested in a quick doctoral degree—shaped the results of this mixture of authority and cooperation. Coworkers came and went, but “we, the laboratory” remained.
Coworkers frequently paid tribute to this ethos in memoirs and acknowledgments, of which the following, written in 1894, is typical: “My fervent thanks to the profoundly esteemed professor Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, according to whose thought and guidance this work was conducted; and whose active participation and precious help greeted its every step.... [My thanks also]...to all the laboratory comrades, who always came to my aid enthusiastically as a result of both their personal goodwill and the principle of broad mutual aid that reigns in Professor Pavlov’s laboratory.”1
Scientific issues were openly discussed among coworkers in general meetings and in one-on-one sessions with Pavlov. As one coworker recalled, “Everybody felt himself a member of one common family and learned much, studied much, knowing the course of the work of his comrades. No secrets were permitted.”2 This combination of openness and Pavlov’s immense authority allowed the chief to direct, monitor, and process the research of the fifteen or so coworkers in the lab at any one time and to incorporate their observations into ongoing lab traditions.
Pavlov always openly and proudly acknowledged that the data for his own general works were obtained entirely by his coworkers, whom he credited by name for specific results and technical innovations. He himself, however, took credit for the lab’s methodologies, and so implicitly for a large share of his coworkers’ findings. “With a good method,” he once remarked in a lecture, “even a rather untalented person can accomplish much.”3 Furthermore, the concepts that gave these results meaning belonged to “the laboratory.” As Pavlov put it in the preface to Lectures on the Work of the Main Digestive Glands:
In the text of the lectures...I use the word “we,” that is, I speak in the person of the entire laboratory. Citing constantly the authors of specific experiments, I discuss jointly the experiment’s purpose, sense, and place among other experiments, without citing the authors of opinions and views. I think it is useful for the reader to have before him the unfolding of a single idea increasingly embodied in tenable and harmoniously linked experiments. This basic view that permeates everything is, of course, the view of the laboratory, encompassing its every fact, constantly tested, frequently corrected, and, consequently, the most correct. This view is also, of course, the deed of my coworkers, but it is a general deed, the deed of the entire laboratory atmosphere in which everybody gives something of himself and breathes it all in. Looking upon everything the laboratory has accomplished in our field, I value especially the participation of each separate worker and therefore feel the need on this occasion to send to all my dear coworkers, scattered throughout the broad expanses of our motherland, heartiest greetings from the laboratory which they, I hope, remember as it does them.4
This statement goes to the heart of the division of labor and intellectual property. For Pavlov, “we, the laboratory” involved the collective work of all its personnel over the years, but he himself provided its stable personal and interpretive identity (the others were soon “scattered throughout the broad expanses of our motherland”). The experiments belonged to the coworker, but the “basic view” or “single idea” that united them and gave them meaning belonged to “the laboratory,” that is, to Pavlov himself. At the same time, his constant references to “the laboratory’s view” and the experiments of his many collaborators gave Pavlov’s conclusions greater authority, portraying them as the results of collective thinking and independent experimentation by numerous individuals on countless dogs.
These values were embodied in the highly standardized structure and language of the dissertations. These invariably began with a review of previous literature that developed into a rationale for “Professor Pavlov’s proposal” that the coworker investigate a particular issue in a particular manner.5 The impression created is captured nicely by the words with which one of Pavlov’s favorite coworkers concluded this section of his thesis: “To the author of the present work fell the happiness of participating in the elaboration of a small part of this great task: Professor Ivan Petrovich Pavlov proposed that...” In the body of the theses, the word “I” appears almost exclusively with reference to specific observations or to the actual process of conducting experiments; either the passive voice, the word “we,” or the name of the chief himself is attached to conclusions and ideas. So, for example, Anton Sanotskii (1892) writes that “I tested the influence of teasing with meat” and refers to “my observations,” “my experiments,” and so forth; but “we have a right to conclude,” “we come to the conclusion,” and so on.6 Pavlov’s central role in the interpretive moments arising during experiments was acknowledged in standard phrases: “suggestion of the theme,” “constant guidance and aid in word and deed,” “constant participation and warm attention.”
The chief no doubt expected such phrases, yet this was not the empty rhetoric of obeisance. It reflected, rather, Pavlov’s extraordinary energy and engagement and a production system that made him an active participant at critical junctures in the coworker’s labors.
Pavlov’s managerial style meshed with the workforce at his disposal in a system of production that gave both the chief and his coworkers what they most wanted. For Pavlov, it set his collaborators to work on his own scientific vision, multiplying his sensory reach manyfold while enabling him constantly to monitor the work process and its results, to incorporate these into his developing ideas, and to convert them efficiently into marketable products. For the coworker, this system provided a sometimes exciting investigatory experience and, as Babkin observed, justified the confident expectation “that after one year in Pavlov’s laboratory the thesis would be written and the degree of doctor of medicine would be received.”7 Central to this mutual satisfaction was Pavlov’s ability to generate an endless series of topics that, within his laboratory system, could be quickly and successfully completed by a coworker with no prior physiological training.
A fundamental, unalterable principle, then, was that Pavlov assigned all research topics. One coworker later recalled that the chief appreciated initiative among his collaborators, but “he could not give it a wide range, since this would interfere with the development of his scientific idea, which proceeded according to a set plan.” A coworker could express a desire or intention, and this might be sanctioned temporarily if it corresponded with Pavlov’s plans. Otherwise, should he contest the point, “there arose an argument that rarely ended with the victory of the coworker.” Another coworker recalled that “when a young scientist had matured and was able to formulate his own ideas and plans for research, work with Pavlov became difficult. Subjects that had no direct relation to the work of the laboratory did not interest him, and often he would even refuse to discuss them.” Boris Babkin, Lev Orbeli, and Alexander Samoilov—all talented and much-valued assistants—decided that they would not be able to develop into independent investigators under Pavlov’s wing, and departed to pursue their own interests.8
By what rationale did Pavlov assign topics? Wandering into his lab, one would find experimenters addressing a wide variety of subjects. The chronological development of research topics, however, clearly reflected Pavlov’s “set plan” and the reason for his insistence on assigning research topics. In the years 1891–1904, the topics assigned to coworkers reflected a standardized approach to the main digestive organs (the gastric glands, the pancreatic gland, and, somewhat less and somewhat later, the salivary and intestinal glands). Research on each organ followed a general sequence: establish nervous control over the gland, develop an appropriate dog technology, identify the specific exciters of glandular secretion, use a model dog technology to establish quantitatively the pravil’nye patterns of glandular activity, and verify those results on another dog or two. Research on the different glands proceeded in parallel, each providing models for research on the others. Alongside these principal lines of investigation, coworkers were often assigned topics designed to fortify the Physiology Division’s institutional position, explore possible new research paths, respond to critics of lab doctrine, or examine puzzling results that lay off the main investigative paths.
When these lines of investigation developed normally, Pavlov never assigned two coworkers to the same topic simultaneously, as the results obtained by one were a necessary prelude to the research of the next along the standardized route of investigation. Pavlov departed from this practice only three times: in assignments for work on the pathology of the digestive system in 1898–1900; on the psychic secretions of the salivary gland, beginning in 1903; and on the influence of nerves and humors upon pancreatic secretion in 1902. In the first two cases, he was considering a major shift in the focus of research; in the third, he was responding to the discovery of secretin—a major blow to the nervist views underlying lab work.
This investigative strategy emerges clearly from a brief look at work assignments concerning the pancreas. During his wilderness years, Pavlov had traversed the first part of his standard investigatory path, demonstrating to his own satisfaction that the vagus and sympathetic nerves controlled pancreatic secretion. Animals with a pancreatic fistula, however, died unexpectedly and were still considered insufficiently “normal” for chronic experiments. The main task, then, was to improve this dog technology. In the Physiology Division’s first year (1891), Pavlov assigned two coworkers to this objective—one to develop a better fistula, the other to explore various dietary means to keep animals with pancreatic fistulas alive. In 1894 and 1895, armed with the results of this research, Pavlov assigned new coworkers to test likely exciters of pancreatic secretion. By this time, experiments on the gastric glands had convinced Pavlov that they responded to specific foods with specific secretory patterns, so in 1896 he assigned an especially promising coworker, Anton Val’ter, to find similar patterns in the pancreatic gland. When Val’ter succeeded in doing so, Pavlov assigned Abram Krever to confirm his results. Two other coworkers elucidated mechanisms of nervous control.9
Two interesting features of Pavlov’s research style emerge here. First, Pavlov assigned Krever to verify Val’ter’s results in 1898—a year after Pavlov had showcased those results in his own Lectures on the Work of the Main Digestive Glands. Indeed, Pavlov declared Val’ter’s results “stereotypical” even before Val’ter had managed to complete his thesis, let alone before Krever’ s (as it turned out, tortured) confirmation of them. This raises an obvious question about the process and meaning of such verification. Second, since Pavlov was satisfied by 1897 that research on the pancreas had confirmed that, like the gastric glands, it produced precise, purposive secretory reactions to various foods, research on this gland was slowing by the end of the century. New coworkers were assigned instead to other topics (for example, to the study of intestinal secretions and to the interaction of the glands). This changed suddenly in 1902, with William Bayliss and Ernest Starling’s announcement of a humoral mechanism for pancreatic secretion. Pavlov immediately assigned several to investigate this challenge to lab doctrine and to repair Val’ter’s earlier findings in light of this and other new developments.10
This great productive capacity and flexibility was an important advantage of factory production. Pavlov was able to develop concurrently his standardized line of investigation for each gland while also using incoming coworkers to respond quickly to critics, new developments, and simply curious phenomena. No workshop physiologist could do so. Furthermore, the chief’s position in the factory afforded him a broad view of his subject. Moving at will from one coworker’s experiments to another’s, he could concentrate his own efforts on the key task of the moment while keeping his eye on synthetic possibilities. He confided to his son some years later that “I have turned this into a system. If I did not move simultaneously from one research task to another I would never have been able to conduct one task as successfully as I now conduct tens of them.”11
Upon entering the physiology factory, the coworker was incorporated into a highly structured system of production that harnessed his senses to Pavlov’s directing mind. Little was left to chance. An attendant cared for the coworker’s dog and provided the craft skills necessary at the bench; an assistant socialized him into laboratory culture, familiarized him with necessary procedures and interpretive models, and supervised his work; and, when experimental results proved baffling, “all physiological difficulties were solved by Pavlov or his assistant.”12
Typically, a physician desiring to work in the lab applied directly to Pavlov, who interviewed and quickly accepted him. Sometimes the lab was filled to capacity, and a strong letter of recommendation was necessary for an applicant to gain admission. Pavlov was chiefly concerned in the interview to begin sizing up the applicant’s ability and to establish that he would be completely at his disposal.13
Once accepted, the coworker was assigned to an assistant, under whose watchful eye he spent several weeks or even months. This gave Pavlov and his assistant an opportunity to determine an appropriate work assignment. As Babkin observed:
This lengthy ordeal to which the worker had to submit was partly due to the fact that, according to Pavlov, one of the most difficult tasks which devolved on him as laboratory chief was the choice of problems for his coworkers. He gave most careful thought to each question that he was planning to investigate with a new collaborator and worked out a preliminary plan in his mind, but all this required time.14
Babkin’s choice of words here—his reference to problems that Pavlov “was planning to investigate with a new collaborator”—is most appropriate.
The coworker’s socialization involved all aspects of laboratory culture. During his first few weeks, he observed the experiments of other coworkers and imbibed general values. For example, upon arriving thirty minutes late one day, Ivan Tsitovich found his assistant, Alexander Sokolov, waiting for him: “With his very first words Sokolov criticized my half-hour tardiness. I was a little insulted by such captiousness, which I ascribed to hostility on his part. Later I became convinced that his criticism was fully deserved, since Ivan Petrovich and the entire laboratory worked like the mechanism of a watch. With the laboratory’s strict discipline, my lateness really could not be justified.”15
After a few weeks, the coworker received his own dog, either that of a departing investigator or, if a new animal was required, one prepared surgically by Pavlov or an assistant. The choice of dog reflected Pavlov’s decision about which line of investigation he would pursue. Under the assistant’s eye, the coworker now familiarized himself thoroughly with the appropriate techniques. He also read the “relevant literature”—which consisted almost exclusively of reports of previous work in Pavlov’s lab—thus further familiarizing himself with the chief’s expectations. When both assistant and chief judged the coworker ready for work and had sized up his abilities, Pavlov assigned him a specific task. Work began under careful supervision. Tsitovich’s recollection is typical: “The assistant related to me in great detail how and what I must observe, how to take notes on the experiment, how to avoid extraneous influences [on the dog].” Chronic experiments demanded a great deal of patience and self-discipline, often compelling the experimenter to sit virtually motionless for hours. (Pavlov later liked to recount an anecdote about walking in on an experiment to find both dog and human asleep at the job.) The ability to endure these lengthy periods of observation and collection was the chief obstacle between the coworker and his doctoral degree. Possessing a surgically prepared dog and an expertly defined topic, and guided by attendants, assistants, and the chief himself, “all that was necessary for a doctor’s success was that he should perform his work carefully, bringing to it all his concentration and understanding.”16
The relationship between observation and interpretation, however, is rarely that simple, especially within a context that locates the two in different persons. Furthermore, it was well recognized within the lab, let alone by the chief, that the raw data obtained from the dog technologies required careful interpretation, especially according to the dog’s mood and personality. In Pavlov’s physiology factory, these interpretive moments were shaped by two interactions: that between Pavlov and the coworker, and that between the coworker and his laboratory dog(s).
Pavlov’ s presence permeated the lab. Unless he was lecturing at the Military-Medical Academy, he arrived between 9:30 and 10:00 a.m., immediately checking the coat rack in the entrance hallway to ascertain who was present and who was not. Longtime coworker Alexander Samoilov described the chief’s appearance and its effect:
When in the mornings he entered, or, more correctly, ran into the laboratory, there streamed in with him force and energy; the laboratory was literally enlivened, and this heightened businesslike tone and work tempo was maintained until his...departure; but even then, at the door, he would sometimes rapidly deliver instructions regarding what remained to do immediately and how to begin the following day. He brought to the laboratory his entire personality, both his ideas and his moods. He discussed with all his coworkers everything that came into his mind. He loved arguments, he loved arguers and would egg them on.17
Pavlov spent his mornings and afternoons attending to the work of one or more coworkers—observing, commenting, and participating in experiments if moved to do so. He managed to make himself a presence in the work of each, although he singled out one or two whose work interested him especially at any given time. He used these sessions to exercise a steady influence upon both the course of experiments and the interpretation of their results. Lev Orbeli recalled:
In regard to the correctness of the [experimental] protocols, Ivan Petrovich was very demanding. He did not limit himself to asking how things were going. He would take the notebook with the protocols and begin to look through it. He might ask one of the workers how much juice he had acquired over a quarter of an hour. He would then take the notebook and check. If the verbal answer conflicted with the notes in the protocols, even by several tenths [of a cubic centimeter], the session would end with a dressing down. He knew how to retain in his memory for several days or weeks the most minor details of a work, and sometimes would recall that “at such and such a time an experiment yielded such and such figures.” This extraordinary strictness, perspicacity, and attention to the protocols, this extraordinary memory for all the details of the work conducted in his laboratory was Ivan Petrovich’s unique quality.18
Aside from these one-on-one sessions, Pavlov often initiated lab-wide discussions, sometimes by convening coworkers in the common room and sometimes by drawing others into a discussion at the bench. Vasilii Kashkadamov, a coworker from 1895 to 1897, recalled:
Not less than once a week he would confer with each of us and attempt to draw all the workers into these discussions. Thanks to this we were always aware of all the work being conducted in the laboratory. All facts were subjected to an all-sided discussion and to the strictest criticism. If the slightest carelessness, inattentive relationship to work, or hurried conclusion was revealed, Ivan Petrovich would hurl himself upon the guilty party and criticize him sharply. Such sharpness, especially at first, offended me, and I reacted to it very painfully. Then, when I became convinced that Ivan Petrovich’s rage cooled in fifteen minutes and he forgot about it entirely, relating to the guilty party as he had previously, I came to regard it much more calmly.
Orbeli recalled similarly that, excited about a new fact or observation gathered at a coworker’s side, Pavlov would wander from room to room, informing everybody about its significance. “Having established an important proposition or noticed a new fact, he would call everybody together and begin a public discussion on the spot. This habit (thinking publicly) facilitated the precision of his ideas and thoughts, and also attracted the coworkers to the work.”19
These discussions also helped the chief direct the work of his subordinates and unite them behind a single perspective: “Each scientific fact, achievement, or error was heatedly discussed at our daily general meetings,” recalled Ivan Tsitovich. “Everybody knew what others were working on, what interpretation to ascribe to new facts, how one could interpret them otherwise, what perspectives were revealing what results.”20 In the great majority of cases, Pavlov’s guidance was exercised smoothly, as his greater authority, knowledge, and commitment allowed him to dominate free-ranging discussions and shape the interpretation of data.
Sometimes, however, a coworker proved less pliable, eliciting the chief’s intolerant, even belligerent, reaction to results and interpretations that contradicted his own views. For example, in 1901 a self-confident coworker, Vladimir Boldyrev, showed Pavlov the protocols of some experiments that apparently contradicted the lab’s doctrine of purposiveness. Boldyrev had not fed his dog for an entire day but observed that, nevertheless, the pancreatic gland secreted periodically. This seemed to contradict Pavlov’s view of the factory-like response of the digestive glands to specific excitants. The result was an “extraordinarily stormy scene.” Pavlov hollered that Boldyrev was obviously a sloppy observer, that he must have had food in his pockets, or smelled of food, or made some inadvertent movement that excited the dog. The scene ended with Pavlov literally chasing Boldyrev out of the lab. Yet the stubborn coworker returned and repeated the experiment with another dog. The result was identical, as was Pavlov’s response. Boldyrev then sat with the dog for twenty-four straight hours, with the same result. Finally, Pavlov joined him and confirmed his observation—which was soon incorporated with great fanfare into lab doctrine.21 The memoir literature contains several such examples, always with Pavlov exploding and then finally surrendering to the force of scientific facts. Yet it was a rare coworker who stood up to Pavlov’s authority and legendary temper, and who was as committed as the chief to a particular interpretation of experimental results. Furthermore, the chief decided which data and perspectives revealed by a coworker’s research would be pursued—and which would not.22
Pavlov edited all reports, articles, and dissertations. This allowed him to shape the interpretation of data, to incorporate works into the lab’s institutional memory, and to project a unified voice into the broader scientific and medical communities. Upon drafting one of these literary products, the coworker was invited to Pavlov’s office, where he was treated to sweet tea, black bread, and Ukrainian bacon while he read his draft aloud to the chief. (For a dissertation, this continued for two hours a day over about two weeks.) Pavlov sat with his head back and eyes closed, one coworker recalled, frequently interrupting with questions or corrections, and “sometimes revising all through, most attentively, before publication. He even wrote some of them himself.”23
Each genre was edited to a particular style. Reports to the Society of Russian Physicians, for example, were no more than ten minutes long, with a simple presentation of data and conclusions. When Tsitovich submitted a draft in which he polemicized with other scientific traditions and elaborated future research perspectives, Pavlov reacted negatively: “‘What is this? What have you scribbled about here? Let me see this!’ With a highly skeptical look he took my notebook and leafed through it. ‘Well, what have we here!’ and tore out about half of it. ‘Words, little brother, are just words—empty sounds. Just give the facts, this will be valuable material.’”24
Pavlov’s editing lent a highly standardized structure and content to lab publications. By the mid-1890s, discussions of previous research and issues in digestive physiology—even the language itself—were almost identical from one lab report to the next. The exceptions were written by the few people who arrived with well-developed scientific interests and inclinations, and this was often an early sign of impending trouble.
This editing reached deeply into the content of the final product. Babkin later recalled one revealing detail about Pavlov’s editorial preferences:
One of [Pavlov’s] favorite expressions was “quite definite.” An experiment had to show “quite definite” results, and if the results were indefinite then the worker had to ascertain the reasons for this. Pavlov was never satisfied with half measures. Either some wrong technique had been employed or the phenomenon was more complex than the experimenter had imagined. In the latter case it was necessary to change the plan of attack, taking the new factors into consideration. In both his own and his students’ publications Pavlov tried as far as possible to avoid such expressions as “it would seem” and “probably.” In other words, he avoided “suggestive results.” He was a determinist by conviction and believed that every phenomenon had its cause.25
As editor, then, Pavlov “processed” results—pressing the praktikant to offer “quite definite” conclusions and offering helpful interpretations to this end. The coworker needed to explain very complex phenomena in a short period of time and knew that he would not receive his doctorate until he had done so to Pavlov’s satisfaction. The chief’s suggestions, then, seldom fell on deaf ears.
A common recollection about this editing process is worth pondering: “He loved not to read but to hear the work, immediately elucidating inexactnesses, demanding explanation and confirmation of the material through experiments. There frequently arose heated discussions, during which Ivan Petrovich, using his brilliant memory, would refute the figures and propositions offered by the writer of the dissertation.” Many coworkers pointed out that Pavlov remembered the data better than the experimenter himself.26 This appears suspicious, even absurd, on the face of it—however prodigious Pavlov’s memory—when one considers that he was usually supervising the work of some fifteen coworkers conducting hundreds of experiments, each generating columns of data.
Yet such recollections are entirely plausible, and a revealing reflection of Pavlov’s scientific style. He could not, of course, remember all the experimental data, but neither was he equally interested in it all. Just as he considered the research of some coworkers more important than that of others, so he considered some experiments more telling than others. Contrary to his carefully cultivated image, Pavlov was a deeply intuitive thinker. His notion of experimental reasoning, like Bernard’s, left ample room for intuition and the preconceived idea; he confidently identified the signal amid the noise. Pavlov carried with him an ideal template for good experimental results along his main lines of investigation. When he observed results that fit this template, he remembered them well, and so was quite capable of citing such data to refute or amend interpretations of other experiments that fit his preconception less snugly.27
This highlights a critical point for reading the coworkers’ literary products: Pavlov was the coauthor of each. Throughout the coworker’s tenure—during his initial socialization, the meetings with assistant and chief at the bench, the give-and-take of group discussions, and the editorial sessions with Pavlov—his “borrowed senses” constantly confronted the chief’s “directing mind.” In the dissertations, this confrontation was often reflected in detailed physiological explanations downplaying results that threatened established lab views and emphasizing those that affirmed them. Reading these dissertations, one sometimes notices that their argumentation changes direction—that data and prose that run counter to, say, the notion of a purposive pattern in pancreatic secretions suddenly shift and take the opposite direction; or, more commonly, that tentative suggestions become “quite definite” conclusions. This testifies to Pavlov’s hand, and to the deeper significance of Babkin’s observation that “all physiological difficulties were solved by Pavlov or his assistant.”28
Appreciation of that role leads back to the interpretive moments inherent to the chronic experiment, and to to the second critical interaction in the laboratory—that between coworker and lab dog. The tension between lab dogs as technologies and as intact organisms created a series of interpretive moments in chronic experiments. As technologies, the dogs were expected to yield pravil’nye results. For example, the gastric glands in one dog were expected to produce the same pattern of secretions in response to 200 grams of meat from one meal to the next, and this secretory curve was expected to be “essentially” the same as that produced by another dog. Yet Pavlov and his coworkers also recognized that, as an intact organism, each dog possessed a psyche and a distinctive personality, and that these influenced experimental results. The coworker’s task, then, went far beyond collecting, measuring, and analyzing digestive fluids; he also had to assess the normality and personality of his dog and interpret his results accordingly—with Pavlov’s help and until gaining Pavlov’s approval. The lab’s doctoral dissertations reveal several features of this interpretive process.
In keeping with Pavlov’s scientific vision, a coworker necessarily assessed the normalcy of his dog. This assessment rested in part on such objective indicators as the animal’s maintenance of a stable weight and temperature, but it was not limited to these. The word “happy” (veselyi) occurs regularly in attestations of normalcy. For example, Anton Sanotskii assured his readers that, having recovered from their operations, “the dogs were happy and energetic, possessed a marvelous appetite, and gave at a glance the general impression of completely normal animals.” Attesting to the full recovery of his dogs from the implantation of the troublesome pancreatic fistula, Anton Val’ter noted that they “create the impression of entirely normal, well-fed, happy animals.” The dog upon whom his conclusions were based, Zhuchka, “ate its food enthusiastically,” ran a normal temperature, and “produced the impression of a healthy animal enjoying its life.” Sometimes, as in a dog with a pancreatic fistula, the experimenter knew that the operation had fundamentally disrupted the dog’s digestive system and would eventually lead to its death. He then needed to attest that the dog was “sufficiently normal” to generate trustworthy data. To this end, Iakov Bukhshtab described the medical ups and downs of his Lada, who suffered from both a pancreatic fistula and the transection of the nerves between its stomach and intestines. Bukhshtab related that Lada actually gained weight and “felt good” but had lost some of her “former stamina”: “She would become exhausted from standing in the stand, and ate unenthusiastically after the end of the experiment; therefore, the next day her weight declined. Therefore, we began to conduct experiments, not every day, but with breaks of a day or two, to allow the dog to recover and preserve her health and weight longer.” Despite these efforts, Lada developed mouth ulcers, refused food, and lost weight, finally dying three months after her nerves were transected. Bukhshtab insisted, however, upon the validity of his data, since experiments had been conducted only when the dog was “in complete health.”29
The experimenter also needed to identify the dog’s specific personality and character, and to interpret experimental results accordingly. “Professor Pavlov has many times told those working in his laboratory that knowledge of the individual qualities of the experimental dog has important significance for a correct understanding of many phenomena elicited by the experiment,” explained one coworker in his dissertation. “During the conduct of our experiments we always kept this in view.”30 Such judgments drew upon observations concerning the dog’s ease in adapting to the experimental setting, its reaction to teasing with food, its preference for certain foods, the relative quantity of its secretory reactions, the consistency of these reactions from day to day, and often the attendants’ testimony about its behavior off the stand.
This assessment of the dog’s personality was often invoked in interpreting experimental data. For example, Georgii Vasil’ev noted that his two dogs produced markedly different secretory reactions, perhaps reflecting their different backgrounds: one was a “simple street dog” and so ate any food readily; the other was “obviously a hunting dog, judging by the breed and by its nervous temperament.” Abram Krever’s dog Sokol was “distinguished by the great sensitivity of his digestive canal” and was so easily disturbed that he had to be taken for calming walks between experiments. Even the possible effect of these walks themselves played a role in the interpretation of experimental results. Iakov Zavriev’s Volchok was “very cowardly, reacting to every manipulation with panicky terror.” Nikolai Kazanskii’s Laska was “peaceful, happy, and affectionate” and “very greedy for food. She trembled at the sight of the food bowl and burst off the stand, almost tipping it over.”31 Kazanskii’s other dog, Pestryi, was entirely different:
As for particularities in Pestryi’s nature, we can note that he was not distinguished by greed for food. He never threw himself upon the food being brought to him; he always ate calmly, unhurriedly, but with visible appetite. During the initial experiments he did not eat raw meat enthusiastically, as a consequence of which the quantity of juice in the first hour sometimes was less than during the second (a little); but then having become accustomed to meat he began to eat it enthusiastically. He was happy and always obedient during the experiments, but was also distinctively nervous and easily offended. It was enough to raise one’s hand at him for him to begin to squeal, bark, and grumble.... Pestryi initially leaned toward the pieces of meat and sausage offered him [in teasing experiments]; but then, as if he had been offended or had understood the deception, he would turn away from the food offered him in that way.32
Here Kazanskii invoked Pestryi’s personality and relative apathy toward food in order to reconcile experimental data with lab doctrine. According to the prevailing view, the rapidity of gastric secretion elicited by a meal of raw meat should peak in the first hour, not the second (as was sometimes the case with Pestryi). This rapid secretion during the first hour, however, owed much to “psychic secretion,” which, according to Kazanskii’s argument, was muted by Pestryi’s particular character. Similarly, Pestryi’s changing disposition explained the different results in presumably identical experimental trials (sometimes secretion peaked in the first hour, sometimes in the second). Lab doctrine also held that appetite itself—rather than the actual mechanical effects of food upon the nerves of the mouth—generated the initial “psychic” phase of gastric secretion. This could usually be demonstrated by teasing animals with food and observing the secretory results. Pestryi, however, often failed to produce this secretory response, instead turning away from the food “as if he had been offended or had understood the deception.” Kazanskii’s voracious Laska would of course respond both to feeding and to teasing with a more copious “psychic secretion” than would the restrained Pestryi, and their differing psychological profiles were necessarily borne in mind when constructing a single, standard curve from the differing data produced by the two animals. Such interpretive moments constituted an industrial secret well known to those who worked on the factory floor but largely unappreciated by consumers familiar only with its finished products.
In his physiology factory, then, Pavlov effectively harnessed his scientific vision to a powerful mode of production. The result was a wide variety of products that appealed to various markets, raising him quickly to national and international eminence.
The product line included knowledge claims of varying character and scope; literary products (dissertations, reports, articles, generalizing statements); methodologies, techniques, and dog technologies; pure digestive juices; and alumni. Each product had an independent history beyond the lab, contributing to a composite—Pavlov’s reputation and authority—that was greater than the sum of its parts.
The knowledge claims produced in the laboratory ranged from relatively simple facts (e.g., the pepsin content of gastric secretions) to larger claims about the functioning of the glands (e.g., the important role of the vagus and the psyche) to unifying metaphorical statements (e.g., that the digestive system is a purposive, precise, and efficient factory). As is generally true with complex knowledge claims, these existed both as a package and as separable components. Just as some naturalists accepted Darwin’s argument for evolution (or his description of island finches) and rejected his emphasis on natural selection, so physicians and scientists picked and chose among the knowledge claims generated by the Pavlov laboratory.
These claims were formulated and communicated in a constant output of various written products, which were processed differently for various markets. The raw material—the experimental protocols—was the private property of the lab, where it remained in the form of notebooks arranged by dog. These provided an immense reservoir of data that was often drawn upon years after the trials they recorded. The least-processed public product was the dissertation, which was edited by the chief for a few readers. Dissertations often contained contradictory data and interpretations, confessions about experimental difficulties, and other impurities absent in more refined products. Next came the coworkers’ public reports and published articles. These were tightly edited, highly focused, self-consciously public products that projected the lab’s confident voice to scientific and medical audiences. Here many of the contradictions and complexities contained in the dissertation were omitted. The most highly processed form—in which vision and data meshed most grandly and smoothly—were the publications of the chief himself. These (and selected articles by coworkers) were the only publications readily available to the laboratory’s foreign consumers.
The physiology factory also produced methodologies, techniques, and dog technologies whose usefulness to other investigators was somewhat independent of the lab’s knowledge claims. These ranged from the Mett method for measuring the proteolytic power of glandular secretions to the Pavlov sac, and they attracted a number of Western scientists to St. Petersburg. Enhancing production in other labs and fortifying the scientific status of physiology in general, these products provided a stable source of Pavlov’s authority even when his specific knowledge claims were called into question.33
Perhaps most important among them were the dog technologies, which were impressive embodiments of the lab’s surgical and doctrinal achievements. Pavlov displayed several of these dogs at the All-Russian Hygiene Exhibit in 1893 to impress the general public with the power of experimental physiology. They served in public lectures not only for scientific-pedagogical purposes but, more broadly, as Pavlov put it, for “convincing the usually so stubborn public of the correctness and obvious usefulness of experiments on animals.” Exhibited proudly to the lab’s visitors and in a 1904 photo album celebrating Pavlov’s achievements, they also made an impressive gift to a valued colleague.34
These dogs also enabled Pavlov’s lab efficiently to produce large quantities of pure digestive juices, which themselves proved an especially successful product among both scientists and clinicians. A number of Russian and Western European investigators requested samples of gastric and pancreatic secretions in order to pursue their own biochemical studies of digestive fluids.35
The “natural gastric juice of a dog” (as Pavlov referred to it proudly) created a sensation in the international medical market. Located in the lab basement, the gastric juice factory, which swung into production in 1898, bottled the gastric juice drawn from esophagotomized dogs by sham feeding and sold it as a remedy for dyspepsia. By 1904 this enterprise was selling more than 3,000 flagons a year, increasing the lab budget by about 70 percent. Even more important to Pavlov, it demonstrated dramatically the clinical value of experimental physiology, and considerably enhanced his reputation among physicians and physiologists both in Russia and abroad.36
The lab also produced alumni. Just as they had as coworkers, alumni qualitatively extended Pavlov’s reach. Armed with doctoral degrees, they often rose to influential positions in Russia’s medical establishment. About half acquired professorial positions in clinical medicine (often combining these with a clinical position in a hospital); others assumed posts in the state medical bureaucracy and in a wide range of military and civilian institutions throughout the empire. Few became physiologists, although this began to change at the turn of the century.37 Even alumni who attained only modest professional heights enhanced Pavlov’s reputation simply by making their way, in the course of their everyday lives, into innumerable milieus that were inaccessible to the chief for many reasons, including the sheer limitations upon the time of any single person. Former coworkers lived throughout the empire, treating and chatting with patients, attending meetings, delivering and commenting upon papers, recommending the lab’s home remedy for dyspepsia, and, apparently quite often, regaling acquaintances with tales of their investigative experience in St. Petersburg. Like alumni of other academic institutions, many preserved some connection after graduation: corresponding with the chief, visiting him when in the capital, requesting letters of recommendation, and so forth. Favored alumni continued to perform important tasks: several traveled abroad on study leaves, teaching Pavlovian techniques and otherwise extending the chief’s European contacts. One alumnus, Anton Val’ter, qualitatively enhanced Pavlov’s European reputation by translating Lectures on the Work of the Main Digestive Glands into German (1898). These foreign contacts were especially important to Pavlov given the rarity of his own forays beyond Russia’s borders, and they generated significant return traffic to St. Petersburg.
These considerations highlight an important advantage of factory production: the efficient generation of sheer numbers of products. The enormous quantity of experiments and data—over which only Pavlov had total access and control—allowed him to mobilize them selectively for his purposes. The sheer quantity of coworkers and lines of investigation afforded him great flexibility and what he termed a “panoramic view,” allowing him to move among related projects at will, to note interesting similarities and differences among them, and to initiate new ones as seemed fit. The sheer quantity of alumni amplified his voice and extended his reach both in Russia and abroad.
The impact of sheer productiveness is evident in Pavlov’s participation in the St. Petersburg branch of the Society of Russian Physicians. Founded in the 1880s as a leading organ of the medical profession, the society provided a principal market for the laboratory’s reports and articles. Its membership included about 150 of St. Petersburg’s most eminent physicians, professors of clinical medicine, and medical administrators, who gathered twice a month to hear and discuss brief reports. Society proceedings were published both in its Works and in other Russian medical journals (which sent their own reporters to meetings). Rarely did any investigator take the podium more than once a year, but between 1891 and 1904 representatives of Pavlov’s laboratory presented about ninety reports. Delivered by physicians and buttressed by impressive experimental data, these reports conveyed the range, methodologies, fundamental conclusions, and therapeutic promise of the laboratory’s research. At the conclusion of a coworker’s report, the chief usually rose to summarize its significance and, almost always, to handle any questions or objections. The sheer number of these occasions created a role for Pavlov: he became, as he once put it, “the voice of contemporary times”—the experimental physiologist explaining to practicing physicians the nature and value of scientific medicine. Elected to society membership only in 1892, Pavlov became its vice president the following year and held that post until assuming the presidency in 1907.38
This brings us full circle to the lab’s first and final product: Pavlov himself. The talented but undisciplined procrastinator who labored erratically during the 1870s and 1880s himself became part of the purposive, precise, and regular operation of his physiology factory. No longer did he work by inspiration or stroll along the Neva River during weekdays, dreaming of future accomplishments. Every moment was accounted for, and those who sought unscheduled counsel could usually obtain it only—literally—on the run. Placed upon the public stage by his lab’s products, Pavlov used the spotlight skillfully. As the nation’s most visible experimenter on animals, he became physiologists’ spokesman against antivivisectionists; as the Russian physiologist whose works were most familiar in the West, he became the Russian medical establishment’s candidate for a Nobel Prize; as the source of numerous technical innovations, a lab-based therapy for dyspepsia, and a precise portrayal of subtle physiological mechanisms, he became a spokesman for—and, later, a symbol of—the unlimited possibilities of experimental biology.