38 FARRERAS
This program incorporated most of the eight already-existing
sections: Developmental Neurology, Physical Chemistry, Neurophysi
ology, Spinal Cord Physiology, Technical Development, Aging, Drug
Addiction, Endocrinology, and Socio-Environmental Studies.^16 Roger
Sperry headed the Section on Developmental Neurology that was
organized on September 1, 1952, at the University of Chicago while the
Clinical Center on the NIH campus was being built. His section focused
on the development of the nervous system, specifically, “the integrative
principles operating and the respective roles of experience and matura
tion in the development of the visual system, and an assessment
of the importance of the integument in the chemical specification of
the cutaneous nerves during development.”^17 Sperry’s section was in
tended to be a section within the planned Laboratory of Anatomical
Sciences^18 but he resigned to accept a position at the California Institute
of Technology.^19
The Section on Endocrinology involved Hudson Hoagland and
Gregory Pincus in a collaborative project with the Worcester Founda
tion for Experimental Biology. Its most important contribution was
the development and use of improved or new methods and techniques
to determine urinary and blood steroids as well as adrenalin and nor-
adrenalin in urine and blood.
Due to the deliberate attempt not to allocate the budget to the spe
cific institutes or even laboratories within each institute–indeed because
they also served the research interests of both institutes–the various
sections of each laboratory were to be assigned to one or another insti
tute. This assignment depended on the nature of the research conducted,
which was expected to undergo revision depending on the future labora
tory chiefs’ appointments.^20
Two of the proposed laboratories, the Laboratory of Neurophysiol
ogy and the Laboratory of Socio-Environmental Studies, were able to be
established quickly because their chiefs had already been conducting
research when the NIMH was still the PHS Division of Mental Hygiene.
Physiologist Wade H. Marshall was in the Laboratory of Physical Biology
within the Institute of Experimental Biology and Medicine, later absorb
ed by the NIAMD. When he joined the NIMH-NINDB intramural basic
research program, his Laboratory of Neurophysiology became the first