History of American Science and Technology

Higby examines the professional life of William Procter, Jr., generally regarded as the “Father of American Pharmacy,” and follows the development of American pharmacy through four decades of Procter’s professional commitment to the field. 

Henry Darwin Rogers was one of the first professional geologists in the United States.  He directed two of the earliest state geological surveys--New Jersey and Pennsylvania--in the mid-1830s.  His major interest was Pennsylvania, with its Appalachian Mountains, which Rogers saw as great folds of sedimentary rock.  He belived that an interpretation of these folds would lead to an understanding of the dynamic processes that had shaped the earth.  From Rogers' efforts to explain these Pennsylvania folds came the first uniquely American theory of mountain elevation, a theory that Rogers personally considered his most significant achievement.

 Sloss Furnaces resonates with the class of competition and the frenetic energy with which southerners joined other Americans in a rush to transform a continent after a fratricidal drive for independence had failed. The sweeping narrative that Lewis has produced amply justifies its subtitle, An Industrial Epic.

Homicidal insanity has remained a vexation to both the psychiatric and legal professions despite the panorama of scientific and social change during the past 200 years.  Still, to this day no rational method exists to discriminate the dangerous from the harmless in matters of involuntary commitment, nor insanity from crime in the courts.

Contains a useful panoramic account of the fresh perspectives that early American practitioners brought to the natural sciences