Herrick, Charles Judson

Herrick, Charles Judson

(b. Minneapolis, Minnesota, 6 October 1868; d. Grand Rapids, Michigan, 29 January 1960)

HERRICK, CLARENCE LUTHER (b. Minneapolis, 22 June 1858; d. Socorro, New Mexico, 15 September 1904)

comparative neurology, psychobiology.

Clarence Luther was the oldest and Charles Judson the youngest of the four sons of Nathan Henry Herrick, a farmer and Free Baptist minister who later served as a chaplain in the Fifth Minnesota Volunteer Regiment. Their mother was Anna Strickler, a girl from Washington, D. C., who had answered Herrick’s advertisement for a wife because she was attracted by the prospect of living in the West. The family income came mostly from their small farm, while a little church on the edge of Minneapolis was the center of most of their community and social life.

Both brothers attended one-room country schools. Clarence Luther Herrick then entered the Minneapolis High School in 1874 and proved to be an exceptional student, enrolling in the University of Minnesota as a freshman in 1875. He received the B.A. in 1880, having completed the six-year preparatory and college course in five years, even though he had to earn his own way as assistant in the Minnesota Geological and Natural History Survey and was absent from the university during his junior year, in which he taught in a country school.

Charles Judson Herrick had become interested in natural history early in life through the influence of his brother. He planned to enter the ministry but, soon realizing that he lacked the vocation, returned to his first love, science, and obtained the B.S. under Clarence Luther Herrick at the University of Cincinnati in 1891. (The older brother had begun his academic career in 1885 as professor of geology and natural history at Denison University, where he founded the Bulletin of the Laboratories of Denison University ; in 1888 he resigned from Denison to accept a similar appointment at Cincinnati, where he founded the Journal of Comparative Neurology.)

Charles Judson Herrick’s first teaching post was a one-year assignment (1892–1893) at Ottawa University, Ottawa, Kansas, where he was a professor of natural history, including physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and psychology. In the meantime, in 1891, Clarence Luther Herrick was appointed professor of neurology at the University of Chicago, but a misunderstanding led to his resignation in 1892. He was then appointed professor of biology at Denison, where, in 1893, Charles Judson Herrick became his graduate student.

Clarence Luther Herrick’s career was cut short by pulmonary tuberculosis, and he resigned his post at Denison and went, in an attempt to regain his health, to New Mexico, where he worked for a while as consulting geologist and mining surveyor. He spent the rest of his life there, being second president of the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque (where he met George Ellett Coghill, whom he influenced greatly) in 1897, and manager of the Socorro Gold Mining Company from 1901 until his death in 1904.

While still at Cincinnati, Clarence Luther Herrick had launched the new science of psychobiology, which was fostered and put on an academic footing by Charles Judson Herrick, and later by Coghill. Toward this end, both brothers encouraged comparative anatomists, physiologists, and psychiatrists to coordinate their attack upon the body-mind problem, and to cooperate in advancing the interdisciplinary exchange of scientific information. Charles Judson Herrick also assumed editorship of the Journal of Comparative Neurology upon his brother’s removal to New Mexico, as well as assuming his teaching duties at Denison. Maintaining the Journal strained both the health and the finances of the younger Herrick, but under his editorship it became one of the outstanding biological periodicals in America. In 1904 R. M. Yerkes joined the staff, and the name was changed to Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology.

Charles Judson Herrick remained at Denison until 1907, except for a year’s study (1896) for the Ph.D. under Oliver Strong and Henry Fairfield Osborn at Columbia University; the degree was granted in 1900. His dissertation was concerned with the nerve components of bony fishes. In 1907 he became professor of neurology at the University of Chicago, where he remained until his retirement in 1934. His major work, The Evolution of Human Nature, was published in 1956 and summarized the advance of psychobiology.

Until Charles Judson Herrick’s work on correlating nervous structure with function, very little was known in this area. Selecting species with highly adaptive modes of life, he correlated their behavior with their well-developed central nervous systems and with their highly specialized peripheral nerve peculiarities. Concomitant to these studies, he made the first analysis of the four distinct functional longitudinal columns found in all vertebrates, a contribution of inestimable value to the clinician. His analysis (covering forty years’ work) of the salamander brain is the most complete account ever made of the structure of any vertebrate brain. This analysis, coupled with his studies of the developing larval brain and in strict cooperation with Coghill’s studies, permitted him to formulate his concepts on “The Nature and Origin of Human Mentation,” a milestone in the natural history of the body-mind problem.

That Charles Judson Herrick’s thinking was both broad and deep is illustrated by a passage in the introduction to The Evolution of Human Nature:

I did not devote 60 years to intensive study of the comparative anatomy of the nervous system merely to collect dead facts or add to the score of “accumulative knowledge.” I wanted to find out what these animals do with the organs they have and what they do it for, with the expectation that this knowledge would help us to unravel the intricate texture of the human nervous system and show us how to use it more effectively.

Herrick’s desire was realized, and he presented evidence toward the understanding of the mind: he defined psychobiology—his brother’s science and his own—as “the study of the experience of living bodies, its methods of operation, the apparatus employed and its significance as vital process, all from the standpoint of the individual having the new experience.”

Clarence Luther Herrick was married to Alice Keith in 1883; they had a son and two daughters. Charles Judson Herrick was married to Mary Talbot, daughter of a former president of Denison University. They had one daughter, with whom they lived in Grand Rapids following his retirement. Clarence Luther Herrick’s brilliant academic and professional career ended with his early death, while Charles Judson Herrick’s emeritus years were devoted primarily to propagating his specialized knowledge among those whose interest was in the philosophy and psychology of animal and human behavior. Their science of psychobiology was given its widest coverage in the writings of Adolf Meyer, one of America’s pioneer biologically oriented psychiatrists. Charles Judson Herrick also wrote biographies of his brother and of Coghill.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. The Herrick papers, which are deposited in the Kenneth Spencer Research Library of the University of Kansas, list 637 published works of C. Judson Herrick, which include twenty-one books, with the remainder divided equally between scientific papers and reviews of articles and books. There is also a listing of 108 unpublished articles and books. David Bodian’s memoir on C. Judson Herrick. Biographical Memoirs. National Academy of Sciences (in press), lists his major publications. The following books by C. Judson Herrick contain, in their respective bibliographies, references to his major publications. These listings will cover adequately the fields of his endeavors: An Introduction to Neurology (Philadelphia, 1915; 5th ed., 1931); A Laboratory Outline of Neurology (Philadelphia, 1915; 2nd ed., 1920), written with Elizabeth C. Crosby; Neurological Foundations of Animal Behavior (New York, 1924), translated into Chinese, with extensive revision and additions, by Yu-Chuan Tsang (Peking, 1958); Brains of Rats and Men. A Survey of the Origin and Biological Significance of the Cerebral Cortex (Chicago, 1926); Fatalism or Freedom. A Biologist’s Answer (New York, 1926); The Thinking Machine (Chicago, 1929; 2nd ed., 1960); The Brain of the Tiger Salamander, Amblystoma tigrinum (Chicago. 1948); “A Biological Survey of lntegrative Levels,” in Roy Wood Sellars et at., eds., Philosophy for the Future (New York, 1949), pp. 222–242; George Ellett Coghill, Naturalist and Philosopher (Chicago, 1949); “Clarence Luther Herrick, Pioneer Naturalist, Teacher, and Psychobiologist,” in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. 45 , pt. 1 (1955), 1 –85, which includes a list of all C. L. Herrick’s published writings; and The Evolution of Human Nature (Austin, Tex., 1956; repr. New York, 1961), translated into Spanish by Eloy Terróin as La euolución de la naturaleza humana (Madrid, 1962).

His seminal article “The Nature and Origin of Human Mentation” was published posthumously with intro. and notes by Paul G. Roofe, in World Neurology, 2 (1961). 1027–1045.

II. Secondary Literature;. The following are obituaries of C. Judson Herrick: George W. Bartelmez, “Charles Judson Herrick, Neurologist,” in Science, 131 (1960). 1654–1655; Elizabeth Crosby, “Charles Judson Herrick,” in Journal of Comparative Neurology. 115 (1960), 1–8; J. L, O’Leary and G. H. Bishop, “C. J. Herrick and the Fouriding of Comparative Neurology,” in Archives of Neurology, 3 (1960). 725–731; and Paul G, Roofe, “Charles Judson Herrick.” in Anatomical Record. 137 (1960), 162–164. The biography by C. Judson Herrick, cited above, is the only available source for the life of Clarence Luther Herrick.

Paul G. Roofe