At the end of April 1923, 12 Madingley Road had a house guest. Edward and Bertha Bles were entertaining Paul Kammerer who had been invited to give a talk to the Cambridge Natural History Society about his claims on the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Bles and Kammerer would have had much to talk about since both kept and bred amphibians, and three of Kammerer’s claims centred on such species, the Midwife Toad (Alytes obstetricans), the Fire Salamander (Salamandra salamandra) and, to a certain extent, the Olm (Proteus anguinus).
The lecture at Cambridge provided the opportunity for a verbal punch-up between the neo-Darwinists and the neo-Lamarckians. Discussion at the time was concerned with the possibility that the scientific world was being gulled by a plausible fraudster. Despite the efforts of some to resurrect Kammerer’s reputation, notably the mystic and over-taken-notice-of Arthur Koestler with his book, The Case of the Midwife Toad, informed opinion seems to have swayed towards the view that Kammerer’s studies were fraudulent since there are plausible explanations as to how he, possibly with the assistance of others, had contrived to present doctored evidence that favoured his Lamarckian hypothesis.
There is a letter from George Albert Boulenger mentioned in Koestler’s book stating that Bles had visited Kammerer in Vienna at some time around 1908, so their meeting, at which all parties would have spoken German given Kammerer’s limited conversational English, would have been an opportunity to catch up. It would have been interesting to know if Hans Gadow (1855-1928) was also present. He helped Kammerer by translating the discussion at the Cambridge lecture but was not impressed by his science. Gadow was another amphibian enthusiast, notably writing the classic volume in the Cambridge Natural History series, but also keeping and breeding them at his house Cleramendi (since renamed) on Hinton Way at Great Shelford. I get the impression that Bles and Gadow were close; they operated as a team as two of the local organsers of the 1898 zoological congress held in Cambridge.
Both Kammerer and Bles had kept Olms, the cave-dwelling blind salamander of south-eastern Europe. Kammerer claimed to have bred them in captivity, a claim now strongly disputed since his ‘findings’ bear no relation to what has been observed either before or since, i.e. that they are viviparous and breed every year or so. Both had found that when kept in the light, the normally white animals turn black. Bles got there first on that one since Hans Gadow in his book published in 1901 wrote:
Mr. Bles has succeeded in producing several totally black specimens, having kept them for several months in a white basin under ordinary conditions of light. No experiments have yet been made to find out if the black pigment deposited is lost again in darkness.
Kammerer also claimed that eyes became larger when they were kept under alternating red light and daylight. When the skin over the eyes was removed, a specimen with normal eyes was produced. An alternative explanation, that he might have obtained such a specimen from a natural population in this highly variable species, has been advanced. However, Kammerer does not appear to have claimed that Olms with eyes or which had turned black produce young with these characteristics, as some neo-Lamarckists seem to have imagined.
In a previous post (here) I have described how it was intended to repeat and extend Kammerer’s experiments with Olms at London Zoo in the 1930s under the direction of Ernest W. MacBride, arch-lamarckist, Kammerer’s vicar on earth and a powerful, dogmatic but totally misguided figure in British science during the early decades of the 20th century. He also, incidentally, assumed the role of ‘Master of Ceremonies’ at the Cambridge lecture where it was said, ‘old MacBride’s ridiculous ex-cathedra statements did not help’.
Edward Bles was reported as having found Kammerer ‘absolutely honest’. However, he was clearly not convinced by what he had been told or had seen. After all he did insist that the chair he funded at Cambridge should be named after Darwin.
Bles did not live long enough to see the sad end of Kammerer; he died suddenly on 3 May 1926. Three months later, on 7 August, a letter to Nature by Gladwyn Kingsley Noble (1894 –1940) appeared. It delivered a bombshell: the alleged black nuptial pad of the only specimen of Kammerer’s Midwife Toad that was said to have survived was Indian Ink. Kammerer shot himself and was found dead on an Austrian mountain path on 23 September.
Alphen JJM van, Arntzen JW. 2016. Paul Kammerer and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Contributions to Zoology 85, 457-470.
Gadow H. 1901. Amphibia and Reptiles. The Cambridge Natural History Volume VIII. London: Macmillan
Koestler A. 1971. The Case of the Midwife Toad. London: Hutchinson.
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