Preliminary Observations and Suggestions for Further Study

The need for direct acquaintance with the state of European knowledge was nowhere more acute than in the fields of science, medicine, and technology. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries' rapid advances in these fields outstripped the abilities of conscientious American correspondents or energetic booksellers. Moreover, there were certain aspects of science, medicine, and technology which had to be experienced in person. In science the comraderie of fellow specialists was seldom available on this side of the Atlantic until well into the nineteenth century; scientifically-active Americans cherished the personal respect they found among those Europeans who knew their work. But there was also a more practical value in direct contact with European science: the use of laboratory apparatus and the conduct of elegant classroom demonstrations required hands-on experience. Numerous Americans with fine scientific training were enthralled by the scientific instrument shops and lecture halls of London and Paris.¹

In medicine and surgery Americans found European experience invaluable. Many who were already well-trained in medical doctrine and materia medica found that several months to a year in a large London or Parisian hospital provided them with opportunities to observe diseases or take part in surgical operations which would have required years in smaller American population centers.

Personal contact was of even greater importance in various areas of technology. As Eugene S. Ferguson pointed out in a classic article, there is much technical knowledge which cannot be reduced to the spoken word and needs to be learned by direct observation or by on-the-job training. ² Thus technically-inclined Americans who wanted to be truly up-to-date went abroad and actually observed (or even took part in) industrial processes and technologies. Frequently they kept journals or diaries which supplemented verbal summaries with pictorial or diagrammatic representations.

The flow of American scientific, technical, and medical visitors prior to 1860 (the terminal date for this study) was, of course, subsumed within a far greater number of Americans abroad for other purposes, including diplomacy, business, pleasure, and other studies. Often the travelers mixed observations of science, technology or medicine with one or more other interests. There are several bibliographies or studies which provide access to American travel accounts. ³

My focus has been on those Americans who made substantial written comments (journals, diaries, notebooks, letters or published accounts) on science, technology, or medicine, usually on the basis of their training or experience in those fields before they left America. These informed travelers' accounts are valuable to historians for at least three reasons: (1) they often provide detailed information about European personalities, sites, or techniques; (2) they are closely associated with the transfer of technology, scientific ideas and methodology, and medical and surgical techniques from Europe to America (and occasionally vice-versa); and (3) by the travelers' comparative and other statements they provide an index of the state of American science, technology, and medicine.

Previous utilization of travelers' accounts for these purposes has been less than one might expect. A sufficient reason may be that the significance of foreign travel in an individual's training and education has been inadequately understood. In preparing this study I have noticed that European travel has often been omitted from biographical sketches in standard reference works, or if mentioned, little is made of it. Authors seem to regard European travel as more akin to leisure than to education--yet the accounts themselves indicate dedicated (occasionally frenzied) gathering of specimens, visits to industrial works, and meetings with eminent Europeans. I think it is worth quoting the dean of mid-19th century American science, Benjamin Silliman, Sr., who looked back on his European visit of 1805-06 with the perspective of45 years and commented: "The year I passed in Great Britain in my youth [was] the most instructive year of my life." ⁴ For many Americans the fund of observation and experience acquired had profound effects on their careers and interests.

Another reason for many historians' relative indifference to foreign travel is certainly the national (even nationalist) framework within which much history is written. To admit the significance of foreign travel implies recognition as well of the international context of knowledge and action. Allowing for the international flow of technical ideas, for instance, calls into question the "invention" of numerous devices by recently-returned Americans. To use a hoary example, the textbook stories of Robert Fulton's first steamboat normally fail to point out that his technical ideas and his practical knowledge were developed during his twenty years abroad.

In general, then, I expect that further study of Americans' accounts of European science and technology will deepen historians' understanding of the generation and flow of ideas and techniques in the North Atlantic community in the century or so prior to 1860. Since that time period coincides with a period of rapid industrialization, the rise of scientific professionalization, and the transformation of medicine and surgical practice, the fruits of such study would be immense.

Travelers' accounts were kept for varying purposes and in varying forms, but it is possible to categorize them roughly in order to grasp which kind of sources they are. ⁵ Fundamentally, the accounts reflect the reasons the writers traveled. Some, for example, were commissioned to go abroad to gather information, and they were often expected to submit formal reports on their findings. One of the earliest instances of government support was in 1815 when the Department of War sent Major Sylvanus Thayer abroad to study advanced engineering. His instructions read:

...you will proceed to the Continent and prosecute those enquiries and examinations calculated for your improvement in the military art. The military schools, workshops, and arsenals, the canals and harbors, the fortifications, expecially those for maritime defense will claim your particular attention. ⁶

Thayer's European knowledge was deemed so valuable that he was on his return appointed superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point. The Department of War subsequently sent a number of other officers abroad, but whether it had an established policy of doing so I do not know. ⁷

Although Benjamin Silliman went abroad under Yale's auspices in 1805-06, it was a decade after Thayer's departure until private organizations regularly gave commissions. Beginning with William Strickland's 1825 trip to England at the behest of a group of Pennsylvania internal improvement enthusiasts, there was a regular succession of trips, including those of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad engineers, Alexander Dallas Bache, Samuel V. Merrick, Wilbur Fiske, and Benjamin Franklin Peale. The accounts of commissioned visitors were often published and at their best represent landmark assessments of European technology and science. For example, Ellis Sylvester Chesbrough's report on European sewerage systems of 1856-57 (for the Chicago Board of Sewerage Commissioners) was the first comprehensive statement of sanitary engineering practice available to Americans. ⁸

A larger body of material is that produced by Americans who were abroad for formal study. The bulk of this material, and certainly the most thoroughly studied, is that of physicians and surgeons. Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., and Russell Jones have pursued American physicians in Britain and France, the latter concluding that there were at least 616 Americans studying in Paris from 1820 to 1861. ⁹ Other compilations of American students yield smaller numbers, but since we have studies for only a few schools and since students attending public lectures (such as Moncure Robinson) or paying for tutorials are not included, estimates of their numbers are likely to be low. ¹⁰ I think that diligent research on the French engineering schools after 1815, for example, would turn up a surprising number of Americans.

In any case, students were necessarily literate, normally kept lecture notes, and often wrote home to inform those who were paying tuition and board how their education was progressing. Ensconced in some of the best educational institutions in the world American students often described famous figures of science, engineering, and medicine, and their class notes may sometimes record the formulation of their mentors' scientific and technical ideas before they were published.

The bulk of scientifically-and-technically-inclined Americans abroad, however, were neither commissioned experts nor students, but were engaged in pursuing personal studies and goals. John Griscom, George Escol Sellers, Joseph Henry, and Maria Mitchell, for example, went abroad armed with letters of introduction and mental lists of sights to see. Traveling as their resources and linguistic skills allowed, these Americans stayed abroad several years (William Maclure) or for a few months (Sellers).

If these three types of travel accounts tend to share any common element, it is in the sights they record. As strangers in strange lands they tended to seek out the places already known to them from history or previous travelers' accounts, in part no doubt because they knew they would be asked about them on their return. Some sights seemed to be perennial (Vesuvius, Stratford-on-Avon, French cathedrals), but some clearly changed with the times. The Duke of Bridgewater's canal was an attraction of the 1770s and 1780s, but the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad was a mecca in the latter 1820s and the 1830s. Likewise, Herschel's great telescopes at Slough made it a stopping place of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, but later the Greenwich Observatory became an object of admiration.

As residents of a country with relatively few cultural institutions and few persons with the wealth to devote to amateur science, Americans were also fascinated by European museums and collections. Some, like the wax anatomical models in Florence and Vienna, had no equal in America, and excited almost uniform admiration. Collections of scientific instruments and models of machinery also brought enthusiastic responses, particularly the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiérs. John Griscom thought it the best arranged and presented exhibit of its type in the world. Zachariah Allen thought it was equaled by the Patent Office collection in Washington, but believed that both were excellent sources of mechanical instruction.

Over the years thousands of Americans toured industrial and engineering works throughout Europe, but especially in Britain. Military depots and government works were obvious choices. Many saw the Arsenal at Venice (now long past its years of glory but still functioning) no doubt because it was described by Dante and Galileo. The porcelain works at Sèvres and the Gobelin tapestry workshop were favorite stops in France. The Portsmouth and Plymouth naval yards attracted attention in England, but after the Revolution subterfuge was required, since only citizens of the Empire could be admitted to British military and naval sites.

The greatest technological attractions for Americans, however, were the wonders of the British industrial revolution. Numerous Americans, such as George Escol Sellers, frankly made the observation of special machinery and processes the object of their visits. Others were omnivorous and, like Joshua Gilpin, took in everything they were able to see. Most were impressed by the evident superiority of British technology: Thomas Jefferson's visit of 1786 moved him to remark that "the mechanical arts in London are carried to a wonderful perfection." ¹¹ Fewer American commentators took an interest in agriculture, though Jefferson was an exception, as was Robert R. Livingston. Probably the bulk of those writing accounts were urbanites, and only the landed gentry (a small class in America) were likely to find the agrarian arts instructive.

For the scientifically-, technically-, and medically-inclined, meeting Europeans of similar inclinations was of equal importance to sightseeing. Most Americans came with some letters of introduction, often written by their predecessors. Joseph C. Naurede drew upon his acquaintance of 18 years earlier when he wrote to Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey to recommend to him an American surgeon visiting Paris in 1840. ¹² Those who needed letters could usually obtain them from American ambassadors or consuls, or from Americans permanently abroad, such as Benjamin West, Charles Leslie, Samuel I. Fisher, or David Bailie Warden.

In any case, Americans were generally well received by their European contemporaries. Some Americans seem to have enjoyed meeting as many of the great and near-great as possible: whether out of self-aggrandizement or a sense of professional obligation it is not easy to say. Often the encounters were brief, but even brief ones could leave lasting impressions, as Maria Mitchell's notes on a half-hour encounter with Humboldt demonstrate.

A surprising number of Americans attended professional meetings abroad. A few, such as Franklin or Warden, were long resident in European capitals and regularly attended meetings of the Royal Society and the Institute de France. American medical students often joined local medical societies (some of which were specifically for students), and they even founded their own American Medical Society in mid-nineteenth-century Paris. Occasionally traveling Americans of some distinction were elected corresponding or foreign members of learned societies which they visited: John James Audubon seems to have collected memberships during his travels in Britain as easily as he collected bird specimens in America.

The annual meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (beginning in 1831) were a particular attraction for Americans, undoubtedly because for some time they had no similar group of their own. Several Americans made BAAS meetings a prime object of their visit abroad, and I think it likely that no meeting of the 1830s lacked a contingent of Americans. The impact of seeing such an immense body of the erudite was summarized by Wilbur Fisk after attending the 1836 BAAS meeting at Bristol: "Never did I before so fully realize what was meant by'the feast of reason and the flow of soul' as during my attendance upon these meetings of the British Association. I never expect again to enjoy the like ..." ¹³ Fisk's tribute to the BAAS was echoed, though less emotionally, by travelers such as Joseph Henry, Alexander Dallas Bache, and William Gibson.

As a final note on the nature of the sources, let us consider for whom the accounts were written. Without doubt, most accounts were kept for personal reasons, primarily for personal enjoyment and reference. Closely related are groups of letters written home or journals kept for a spouse or intimate friend. The most systematically or conscientiously kept accounts were probably the more treasured and consequently have tended to be preserved. A few, certainly, were kept with a view toward publication, since travel accounts of all sorts were very popular in the period under study here, and presses seem to have been kept busy printing or reprinting them. ¹⁴

The published accounts, indeed, partake of the tastes of the times by devoting considerable space to observations of antiquities (particularly in Italy) or of exotic places and cultures (especially Turkey and Egypt, though they are not European). There was clearly a regional bias at work: Valentine Mott opened his book by telling readers that in writing about northern Europe he would "embrace almost exclusively matters seldom dwelt upon by tourists, and related to medical science" but "as we advance into the more ancient countries of Southern Europe and the East, the degraded condition of medicine there ... furnish again occasion to revert to the prouder epochs of their history in bygone ages." ¹⁵ Mott thus made assumptions about what his audience wanted to hear (and what would make his book sell) which profoundly affect his book's content and its value as a historical source. The writers of travel accounts, like historians, had distinct points of view which should be assessed before the accounts are put to use as historical evidence.

The importance of transfers of European technology to the United States is well-known and can scarcely be overestimated. Without question historians can discern early in colonial times the signs of distinct American technologies in agriculture and waterpowered milling. Yet it is symbolic that in northern Delaware where the American genius Oliver Evans developed the automatic flour mill, there was established contemporaneously a gunpowder works of advanced form which Eleuth&eacut;re Irénée du Pont regarded as "a colony" of the French Administration of Powder and Saltpeter. ¹⁶

The importance of the transfer of technology has recently been cast in a new form by Anthony Wallace. Trying to come to grips with the flow of textile technology ideas between Europe and America, Wallace asserted that there was in the first half of the nineteenth century an "international fraternity of mechanicians" in the English-speaking world. A group of a few hundred skilled machine builders, he concluded, knew each other by reputation, writings, and to a large degree by personal contact. ¹⁷ Certainly the accounts written by Zachariah Allen and George Escol Sellers support Wallace's argument, though few mechanics were as verbal as they were.

In American science, technology, and medicine, then, international contacts were extremely important. Travelers' accounts are significant to a large degree because they provide information on how the international contacts were made and because they sometimes indicate their effects. We know, for example, that during his visit to Britain in 1825 William Strickland established a long-term friendship with civil engineer Jesse Hartley, and that Hartley was subsequently a gracious host to other American engineers, including Horatio Allen, the B&O engineers, George Escol Sellers, and Samuel V. Merrick. ¹⁸ Similarly the eighteenth-century Quaker physician in London, Dr. John Fothergill, routinely provided advice and introductions to American students, while the nineteenth-century Belgian astronomer L. A. J. Quetelet was always ready to welcome visiting Americans.

All told, my impression is that surviving travel accounts, as well as our existing knowledge of diffusion of ideas, are just the visible tenth of an iceberg. First, we probably do not have (and may never have) anything close to an accurate count of visitors. ¹⁹ Secondly, we have not fully explored the means by which new scientific ideas were spread, new technologies were transferred, or advanced medical and surgical methodologies were taught, although the very accounts which are the subject of this essay were one means. Research in both of these areas will do much to promote our understanding of the growth of American science, technology, and medicine to 1860.

Moving from this larger issue, let us turn to four specific topics on which travelers' accounts can shed considerable light. One that I have been particularly sensitive to is the extent to which Americans were prevented from learning crucial industrial secrets abroad. If restrictions were significant, then the value of travelers' accounts (and the transfer of technology) would be limited. The question of secrecy is raised by comments such as that by Samuel Curwen (1777) that "it is with difficulty that one is admitted to see their works [at Manchester], and in their many cases it is impracticable, express prohibitions being given by their masters." Benjamin Franklin Peale, abroad in 1834, found that private coining and rare metal businesses in France and England were "exceedingly close." ²⁰

But for every case like these there were others (I think many others) in which Americans had the opportunity to inspect thoroughly industrial processes. Even supposedly uncooperative machine manufacturers became cooperative in the right circumstances (as George Escol Sellers found with Bryan Donkin), and civil engineers and textile mill operators seem to have been uniformly responsive to requests for information. My impression is that well-intentioned Americans, particularly those who could be identified as businessmen (such as Joshua Gilpin), or as fellow members of "the international fraternity of mechanicians" (such as Zachariah Allen) seldom had difficulty obtaining the information they sought. Occasional obstinancy was often overcome by more-or-less deliberate industrial espionage.

Another issue which the use of travelers' accounts might address is the role of women in disseminating scientific and medical ideas to Americans. John Morgan's journal, one of the earliest accounts by an American physician in Italy, describes a meeting with Dr. Laura Maria Catherina Bossi, a distinguished physical scientist at the University of Bologna. (Nearly a century later Silliman visited Bologna and noted that university's tradition of women professors.) Encounters with women of some reputation and skill in science or medicine occur with some regularity thereafter. Often they took place in the context of a learned household, such as the Herschels or the Murchesons, but sometimes Americans sought out independent interviews, such as Isaac Lee's visit with "Mrs. Marie to see her beautiful collection of shells," or Maria Mitchell's fascinating meeting with Mary Somerville. If (the mostly male) travelers' accounts sometimes carry a note of surprise or even a sexist remark on encountering their intellectual equals in feminine form, they nevertheless indicate that they were required to come to grips with the international brotherhood of science in a way which was perhaps not so common on this side of the Atlantic.

As this point suggests, travelers' accounts are excellent sources for comparative studies. Clearly one can find numerous comparative statements which measure the level of American education, institutions, or achievements by European standards. Sometimes these assessments seem motivated as much by patriotic pride as by realism, but when both Zachariah Allen (1825) and George Escol Sellers (1832) found that American machines and machine tools already exhibited distinctive and sometimes superior qualities when compared to British examples, it seems safe to go on to determine why there was a difference. I also see no reason to take exception to a series of remarks by American physicians abroad that from the late colonial period onward the theory of medicine was as well taught in leading American colleges as in London, Edinburgh, or Paris. Those remarks are in themselves powerful reminders of the success of and continual renewal of transatlantic flows of knowledge. Should there be any questions about the relative standing of European and American science, technology or medicine, travelers' accounts written by informed Americans should go a long way toward providing answers.

There is a related issue that can be addressed as well. What were the motivations for Americans who went abroad, in addition to acquiring new knowledge? Clearly for many Americans a trip abroad was a symbol of status. In medicine or surgery, European experience (whether it improved one's methodology or technique) was regarded as a means of attracting a more extensive (or more elite) clientele. In that case it took money to make money: John Morgan reported that his three years of study, 1763-65, cost #1500.

For others some time abroad provided the opportunity for leisure or, as Thomas Jefferson feared, dissipation. Moncure Robinson remarked on how easy it was for students in Paris to enjoy the cafes more than the classroom, and numerous letters of recommendation in the Warden Papers are frank about a visitor's intent to combine professional improvement with pleasure.

Finally it should be noted that numerous institutions in Paris provided free public lectures which were of very high quality. Although the costs of transatlantic travel and residence in Paris were certainly not low, the saving of tuition was frequently touted as a major reason for studying abroad.

In sum, American accounts of European science, technology, and medicine may provide new resources for examining issues and questions of importance to scholars. The following annotated bibliography of sources provides a substantial sample of such accounts because they were accumulated by an institution whose members cultivated international communication. I believe that scholarly understanding of sources like these will aid in continuing the development of international communication today, in a world that sorely needs understanding and cooperation.