The toad kisser

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The Toad Kisser (English title The Case of the Midwife Toad ) is a non-fiction book by Arthur Koestler from 1971.

Arthur Koestler, who has been interested in natural sciences since his early youth, dedicates this book to the life and suffering of the biologist Paul Kammerer , who came from Vienna and voluntarily divorced in 1926 . Using a large number of documents, Koestler sketches a scientific color scheme of the first half of the 20th century, depicting the human being and biologist Paul Kammerer in a sensitive way.

After several attempts at mating, Paul Kammerer tried to use the midwife toad to prove that certain acquired characteristics ( rutting calluses ) would be passed on or strengthened in the next generation. His experiments and their evaluations were called forgeries by the American guest scientist Gladwyn Kingsley Noble . In one of the "evidencing" male toads, ink splashed under the skin was noticed, which was held responsible for the development of the calluses. Possibly to avoid a scientific scandal, Kammerer chose suicide. However, the exact circumstances of the case are still unclear.

The debate described here concerned not only the history of biology, but was also politically and ideologically explosive, because Kammerer was a Lamarckist and was consequently absorbed by the Soviet communist Marxist doctrine of the time, especially of the 1930s. This fact was one of the reasons why Koestler took on this "case".

Bernhard Kegel takes up the story in his science crime thriller A Deep Fall (2013).

expenditure

  • The Case of the Midwife Toad. Hutchinson, London 1971; Random House, New York 1971
  • The toad kisser. The case of the biologist Paul Kammerer. Translated from English by Krista Schmidt. Molden, Vienna / Munich / Zurich 1972, ISBN 3-217-00452-3 ; Rowohlt, Reinbek 1974, ISBN 3-499-16864-2
  • The toad kisser. The case of the biologist Paul Kammerer. Translated from English by Krista Schmidt. With an afterword by Peter Berz and Klaus Taschwer. Czernin, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-7076-0314-9

Reviews

  • Paul Gary Werskey: Kammerer Redivivus , Nature 234, December 24, 1971, pp. 489-490
  • John Marion Thoday: Apologia for Paul Kammerer ( PDF file, 50 kB), Heredity 28, April 1972, pp. 263-265
  • The toad war . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1972, p. 106-107 ( Online - Aug. 21, 1972 ).
  • Elof Axel Carlson: The Case of the Midwife Toad. Arthur Koestler , The Quarterly Review of Biology 47, September 1972, pp. 322-324
  • Lester Ralph Aronson: The case of The case of the midwife toad , Behavior Genetics 5, April 1975, pp. 115-125