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Carnegie Human Embryo Collection Becoming a Science Franklin P. Mall Exceptional Scientist Staging Expansion New Direction Molecular New Era |
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An eight-week-old normal human embryo. This specimen (No. 417 of the Carnegie Collection), was sent to Franklin P. Mall in 1915. |
The prize for man in the study of embryology is not to merely satisfy
curiosity. The knowledge of the biologist can enrich the skill of the
physician. This is the frontier of embryology today: to understand the
mechanism that governs and controls orderly growth in time to prevent,
perhaps treat, the puzzling departures from the orderly
patterns.
Geraldine Lux Flanagan The book in which these still timely words appeared-a slim volume with a tattered cover and well read pages-sits on the Carnegiea shelf of the Carnegie library. Carnegie contains books by and about Carnegie scientists. Here are found histories of the institution and stories about the people who called and still call the institution home. The book by Geraldine Flanagan is a story of a different kind. It is a story not about the institution but about ourselves-ourselves unborn. The book's beautiful photographs- many of them from the famed Carnegie Collection of Human Embryos (which explains its presence on the Carnegiea shelf)-show in vivid detail how the form of the human embryo changes from egg cell to birth. They remind us that even today, when the subjects of study are more likely to be fruit flies, fish, and yeast, the science of embryology is first and foremost about us. |