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Waldo Burnett

Southborough, Massachusetts, 1828 - 1854, Southborough, Massachusetts

BiographyBurnett, Waldo Irving (12 July 1828-1 July 1854), zoologist and physician, was born in Southborough, Massachusetts, the son of Joel Burnett, a physician, and Sarah (maiden name unknown). His early education, obtained at local schools, seems to have been eclectic, and he neither sought nor received a college degree. From his father, who was a skilled physician and a dedicated botanist and entomologist, he acquired an interest and received training in medicine and zoology. In his early boyhood, he embarked on the study of insects and other animals with an intensity that would characterize his life. He was precocious, something of a prodigy, and an autodidact. He developed such ability in mathematics that his teachers were no longer capable of giving him instruction. Almost without assistance he mastered French, Spanish, and German. By the age of sixteen he had dedicated himself to the study of medicine; his decision was stimulated by involvement in his father's professional activities. Equally enthralled by entomology, he collected, studied, and classified insects, demonstrating critical powers of inquiry and observation. A change in the family's finances following his father's death during Burnett's sixteenth year made it necessary for him to begin teaching school as he embarked on the study of medicine. He received his medical education under the direction of Dr. Joseph Sargent of Worcester, Massachusetts, at the Tremont Medical School in Boston and Massachusetts General Hospital and became a skilled microscopist and essayist. For two consecutive years (1847 and 1848) he was awarded the prize for the best essay offered by the Boylston Medical Society. In the first of his prize essays, titled "Cancer," he addressed the subject in terms of microscopic tissue structure, a pioneering insight for the time. His second essay, "The Sexual System," was one of the earliest American contributions to the fields of reproductive biology and embryology. Burnett was awarded the degree of doctor of medicine in 1849 at the age of twenty-one. Shortly thereafter, he embarked for Europe, where he spent four months, mostly in Paris, engaged in microscopic observations and the study of natural history. While in Paris, he discovered that he had tuberculosis, the disease that eventually killed him. Returning to the United States, he became a peripatetic scholar for reasons of health. Based in Boston, he passed the winters in South Carolina, Georgia, or Florida. In spite of his constant travels, he was incessantly occupied with microscopic observations and accomplished an almost incredible amount of intellectual labor.

Burnett became an active member of the Boston Society of Natural History whilst still a medical student. He was elected curator of entomology in 1848, and beginning in 1845 he published extensively. At the close of his short life, he had produced about fifty papers and other scholarly contributions. The quality and diversity of his research and his productivity were soon recognized. In 1851 he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. At age twenty-three he was one of the youngest members ever admitted into that body. At about the same time, he became an associate editor of the American Journal of Science and Arts. Most of Burnett's publications were concerned with six areas of activity, namely, microscopic anatomy, e.g., kidney, spleen, bioluminescent organs; embryology, e.g., parthenogenesis and the development of viviparous aphids and philosophical speculations; entomology, e.g., insect metamorphosis and hibernation; cytology, e.g., nature of the cell, cell division, the role of the nucleus, and gametogenesis; human pathology, especially changes in microscopic structure of cells and tissues; and critical reviews of recent scientific publications, mostly European. His papers appeared in Proceedings and Journal of the Boston Society of Natural History, Proceedings and Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Journal of Sciences, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Proceedings of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, and the American Journal of Medical Science. His major work, "The Cell, Its Physiology, Pathology, and Philosophy, as Deduced from Original Observations: To which Is Added Its History and Criticism," was published in 1853 in the Transactions of the American Medical Association. This prize essay, at 187 pages and forty-seven figures, is almost book-length. As the title implies, the work contains both the results of his own original research as well as a synthetic overview of the subject. The topic is discussed under four headings: Cell Genesis, i.e., the origin of cells; Cell Physiology, i.e., normal cell function; Cell Pathology, i.e., the function of diseased cells; and Cell Philosophy, i.e., the relationship between cellular organization and teleology and the cellular basis of neural function, behavior, and the intellect. It is possible that this book had its origins in a course of lectures on microscopic anatomy that he delivered at the Medical College in Augusta, Georgia, in the winter of 1851. Burnett's The Cell is of significance because it can be regarded as the first book in English devoted specifically to cells. It is also important in the field of pathology. Burnett's concept that cancerous tissue is derived from normal cell types that have become neoplastic and his approach to pathological anatomy invite a favorable comparison with the views of Rudolf Virchow in his 1858 Cellular Pathology, as Based upon Physiological and Pathological Histology. Burnett's last major work was his translation from the German and extensive annotation of Carl Theodor von Siebold's Anatomy of the Invertebrata, which appeared in 1854.

Plagued with ill health throughout his life, Burnett died at his boyhood home of Southborough, Massachusetts. He was highly regarded by his contemporaries, and his death was considered by Jeffries Wyman, the Sillimans, James Dana, Louis Agassiz, Asa Gray, and Wolcott Gibbs to be a major setback to the progress of science in the United States.

Bibliography

An obituary is Jeffries Wyman, "Notice of the Life and Writings of the Late Dr. Waldo Irving Burnett," American Journal of Science and Arts 18 (1854): 255-64.

John P. Wourms

Citation:
John P. Wourms. "Burnett, Waldo Irving";
http://www.anb.org/articles/13/13-02250.html;
American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
Access Date: Fri Aug 09 2013 13:20:22 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time)
Copyright © 2000 American Council of Learned Societies.

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Last Updated8/7/24

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