In July 2024, Umeko Tsuda (1864-1929) featured on the new bill in Japan. Recent books about her have been well received, and interest is growing in her previously little-known paper “The Orientation of the Frog’s Egg” (Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, Vol.35, pp.373-405, 1894), co-authored with American zoologist Thomas Morgan (1866-1945). Morgan took up a position at Bryn Mawr College in 1891. The first student he supervised was Umeko, a woman student from Japan. She enrolled at Bryn Mawr in 1889, and in the fall of 1891, Umeko began researching the early development of frogs under Morgan's instructions. In the spring of 1892, she wrote her paper and submitted the manuscript to Morgan before returning to Japan. Morgan compiled Umeko's research with his own and published the co-authored paper mentioned above in 1894. This is considered to be the first scientific paper written in English by a Japanese woman. Umeko gave up on becoming a biologist and founded Tsuda University in 1900. The authors obtained a copy of the manuscript of this paper, which is stored in the Tsuda Umeko Archives at Tsuda University. Focusing particularly on the diagrams Umeko drew of the egg cleavage and the figures and conclusion of the paper, they analyzed what Umeko had done and to what extent in this paper, and what she had revealed. Here they report the results of their analysis. The authors would like to point out that without Umeko's observations, this paper may not have been completed.

Tomoko Nakagomi
Tsuda University Alumni Association

Following World War I, American medical researchers faced renewed attacks on animal experimentation within a changed political landscape. Women, always the majority of antivivisectionists, gained the vote nationally, and many western states had adopted initiatives and referendums, allowing antivivisectionists to bypass state legislatures and place animal protection measures directly before voters. Although the AMA’s Council on Defense of Medical Research (CDMR) had previously rejected involving laymen in their fight against outside regulation, by 1920 the Council hesitantly revisited the idea. Winning over the public, especially women, was essential.
In 1921, popular author Ernest Harold Baynes waded into the debate with the publication of “The Truth about Vivisection” in a widely-circulated women’s magazine. Baynes accused antivivisectionists of knowingly misleading animal-lovers and endangering human health. The scientists regarded the article with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. Editors of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal embraced Baynes as “a veritable knight errant in the cause” to be welcomed “to the ranks of the defenders of human [and] animal life.” Baynes, a layperson, could defend scientific medicine without charge of self-interest. Furthermore, Baynes was a bona fide member of the humane movement, best known as a defender of birds and savior of the American bison.
I argue that Baynes overcame CDMR distrust of laypeople and was uniquely successful as a proxy due to his humane credentials, superior understanding of media, and ability to travel extensively. (American antivivisection battles were largely local, unlike in the United Kingdom.) When Baynes died unexpectedly in 1925, he proved to be irreplaceable.

This paper examines the biopolitics of rodent control in Cold War Taiwan through the two technical objects that rendered the life of non-humans governable: rodenticide and rat tails. Amid tensions with mainland China, the government considered food production vital for national security. The promotion of high-yielding, chemical-intensive rice and sugarcane farming in the 1950s nonetheless led to worsened rat problems. Anticoagulant rodenticides from the US were then adopted to standardize rodent control and evaluate the efficiency of these programs. Meanwhile, the collection of rat tails, which farmers cut off from dead rats in exchange for a monetary reward, was turned into a mass spectacle: not only was the number of rat tails used to compute the number of rats eliminated, but rat tails in plastic bags were exhibited in villages before being burned publicly. Using archival records, extension magazines, and education films as the primary source, this paper shows how the state, to paraphrase Foucault, "make crop live and let rats die," and highlights the complicated ecological legacies of the widespread use of rodenticides.