(no subject)
I bring this morning, for your interest, three brief passages about period medicine, taken from British Military and Naval Medicine, 1600-1830.
James Lind (1716-94), the celebrated and most widely read of all eighteenth-century writers on imperial medicine throughout Europe and America, commented blandly in 1768: 'There is a large field for medical observations during a very sickly season in the West Indies, when thousands of Europeans are sent thither at once, in case of a war in that part of the world.' Lind's famed scurvy trials on board HMS Salisbury in 1747 were merely the best known of numerous experiments conducted upon British servicemen. A philosophy and practice of experimentation which began with Cockburn's anti-dysentery remedy in the 1690s progressed through a multitude of natural restoratives to the exploration of the medical benefits of electricity, nitric acid, and other chemicals at the close of the eighteenth century. The unprecedented health challenges at sea and overseas were favoured targets of those actions, and trials were conducted at appropriate times upon sailors, soldiers, prisoners-of-war, and incapacitated allied servicemen alike.
Imperial medicine was focused upon the European body, but this was a peculiar body: gendered male, identified as a young adult, characterised as temperamentally childlike and in need of firm guidance. All these characteristics arose as a consequence of the fixation upon the lessons and requirements of war and state service. Prior to 1800, references to women within the literature were rare. Within a genre which depended upon extensive reproduction of, and commentary on, individual medical case histories, women were almost invisible; the professional practices of authors who acquired their expertise primarily in the services or long-distance commerce were dominated by the experiences and health needs of young males. The ostensible object of the discourse is the European body, but the advice is all focused, silently, upon the youthful male. For women, we learn merely that they were prone to sea-sickness, and less likely to contract or to die from yellow fever, but more inclined to be hysterical in the tropics. As with the more numerous references to Africans, women appear as counter examples in an effort to understand better the male experience.
There is little doubt that most practitioners in India and other tropical colonies believed that the diseases of these localities were distinctive to some degree, though there is still some disagreement over how far this was so. The history of therapeutics sheds further light on this matter as it is in this branch of medicine that the distinctiveness of tropical practice is most clearly shown. From the middle of the eighteenth century, the Company's surgeons began to reject prevailing views on the treatment of fevers in Britain and to insist that the different varieties of fever found in India required different forms of therapy. The history of therapeutics in British India reveals other aspects of professional identity, too. Most obviously, perhaps, it reveals the empirical ethos of the Company's practitioners, who claimed to base their practice on observation - both at the bedside and post-mortem - rather than on the teachings of respected medical authorities back home. Yet, like many avowed empiricists, their practices sometimes suggested the opposite and even bordered on the dogmatic. Further more, the hierarchical structure of the Company's medical services may have compounded any tendency towards uniformity that was based on intellectual conviction.
One distinctive feature of the treatment of fevers in the Company's armies was the growing tendency, during the late-eighteenth century, towards heroic forms of treatment such as violent purging. Such practices were based upon certain assumptions about the nature of fevers in India and may have reflected the military ethos of the Company's service. Military surgeons considered themselves men of action - tough, practical, and resourceful - and were prepared to take drastic action if this seemed appropriate. The need to preserve manpower, and the rapidity with which fevers claimed their victims, no doubt encouraged such heroic intervention. Also significant is the fact that most of the patients were in no position to object to such treatments. Though not compelled to undergo treatment, most soldiers in the Company's armies had little option but to accept what was on offer or forego the benefit of professional intervention altogether. Only the most senior officers had the benefit of personal physicians. The existence of such a large population under military discipline enabled the Company's surgeons to conduct mass testing of remedies in a way that was impossible in most civilian contexts. But standardisation was never complete, no matter how desirable it might have been militarily and economically.
James Lind (1716-94), the celebrated and most widely read of all eighteenth-century writers on imperial medicine throughout Europe and America, commented blandly in 1768: 'There is a large field for medical observations during a very sickly season in the West Indies, when thousands of Europeans are sent thither at once, in case of a war in that part of the world.' Lind's famed scurvy trials on board HMS Salisbury in 1747 were merely the best known of numerous experiments conducted upon British servicemen. A philosophy and practice of experimentation which began with Cockburn's anti-dysentery remedy in the 1690s progressed through a multitude of natural restoratives to the exploration of the medical benefits of electricity, nitric acid, and other chemicals at the close of the eighteenth century. The unprecedented health challenges at sea and overseas were favoured targets of those actions, and trials were conducted at appropriate times upon sailors, soldiers, prisoners-of-war, and incapacitated allied servicemen alike.
Imperial medicine was focused upon the European body, but this was a peculiar body: gendered male, identified as a young adult, characterised as temperamentally childlike and in need of firm guidance. All these characteristics arose as a consequence of the fixation upon the lessons and requirements of war and state service. Prior to 1800, references to women within the literature were rare. Within a genre which depended upon extensive reproduction of, and commentary on, individual medical case histories, women were almost invisible; the professional practices of authors who acquired their expertise primarily in the services or long-distance commerce were dominated by the experiences and health needs of young males. The ostensible object of the discourse is the European body, but the advice is all focused, silently, upon the youthful male. For women, we learn merely that they were prone to sea-sickness, and less likely to contract or to die from yellow fever, but more inclined to be hysterical in the tropics. As with the more numerous references to Africans, women appear as counter examples in an effort to understand better the male experience.
There is little doubt that most practitioners in India and other tropical colonies believed that the diseases of these localities were distinctive to some degree, though there is still some disagreement over how far this was so. The history of therapeutics sheds further light on this matter as it is in this branch of medicine that the distinctiveness of tropical practice is most clearly shown. From the middle of the eighteenth century, the Company's surgeons began to reject prevailing views on the treatment of fevers in Britain and to insist that the different varieties of fever found in India required different forms of therapy. The history of therapeutics in British India reveals other aspects of professional identity, too. Most obviously, perhaps, it reveals the empirical ethos of the Company's practitioners, who claimed to base their practice on observation - both at the bedside and post-mortem - rather than on the teachings of respected medical authorities back home. Yet, like many avowed empiricists, their practices sometimes suggested the opposite and even bordered on the dogmatic. Further more, the hierarchical structure of the Company's medical services may have compounded any tendency towards uniformity that was based on intellectual conviction.
One distinctive feature of the treatment of fevers in the Company's armies was the growing tendency, during the late-eighteenth century, towards heroic forms of treatment such as violent purging. Such practices were based upon certain assumptions about the nature of fevers in India and may have reflected the military ethos of the Company's service. Military surgeons considered themselves men of action - tough, practical, and resourceful - and were prepared to take drastic action if this seemed appropriate. The need to preserve manpower, and the rapidity with which fevers claimed their victims, no doubt encouraged such heroic intervention. Also significant is the fact that most of the patients were in no position to object to such treatments. Though not compelled to undergo treatment, most soldiers in the Company's armies had little option but to accept what was on offer or forego the benefit of professional intervention altogether. Only the most senior officers had the benefit of personal physicians. The existence of such a large population under military discipline enabled the Company's surgeons to conduct mass testing of remedies in a way that was impossible in most civilian contexts. But standardisation was never complete, no matter how desirable it might have been militarily and economically.