Between the Clinic and the Laboratory: Ethology and Pharmacology in the Work of Michael Robin Alexander Chance, c.1946–1964

Whilst ethology has garnered the attention of historians of science, particularly those interested in the biological and behavioural sciences, historians of medicine have yet to explore ethology’s medical significance. Ethology, “the biological study of behaviour”, is historically associated with the work of Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz, who, alongside Karl von Frisch, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1973 for their research into the “organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns”. This particular award is notable as it was the first to be given in part recognition of the establishment of a discipline rather than for a specific discovery or advance. This award was also provocative as it was the first to recognize non-reductionist behavioural research. Prior to 1973, otherwise renowned psychologists including Wilhelm Wundt, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung had failed to gain recognition, whereas some behavioural physiologists were awarded the Nobel Prize, for example Ivan Petrovich Pavlov in 1904. Historians of medicine should be interested in ethology as the 1973 prize recognized that ethological research had “led to important results for, e.g. psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine, especially as regards possible means of adapting environment to the biological equipment of man with the aim of preventing