"The tender frame of man": Disease, climate, and racial difference in India and the West Indies, 1760-1860

Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Volumn 70, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 68-93

  Harrison, Mark ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ACCLIMATIZATION; ARTICLE; CARIBBEAN ISLANDS; HISTORY; HUMAN; INDIA; POLITICAL SYSTEM; RACE; TROPIC CLIMATE; TROPICAL MEDICINE; UNITED KINGDOM;

ACCLIMATIZATION; COLONIALISM; CONTINENTAL POPULATION GROUPS; GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HUMANS; INDIA; TROPICAL CLIMATE; TROPICAL MEDICINE; WEST INDIES;

EID: 0030093838     PISSN: 00075140     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (132)

1. Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Chatto and Windus, 1993), p. 10.
2. On medicine and racial theory, see Malcolm Nicolson, "Medicine and Racial Politics: Changing Images of the New Zealand Maori in the Nineteenth Century," in Imperial Medicine and Indigenous Societies, ed. David Arnold (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. 66-104;
3. Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991);
4. Mark Harrison, "Tropical Medicine in Nineteenth-Century India," Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 1992, 25: 299-318;
5. Sander L. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985);
6. Sander L. Gilman, idem, Inscribing the Other (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991).
7. Philip D. Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), chaps. 2 and 3.
8. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, "Fear of Hot Climates in the Anglo-American Colonial Experience," William and Mary Quart., 1984, 41: 213-40;
9. Dane Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1939 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1987), chap. 6.
10. Philip D. Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe's Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);
11. Mary J. Dobson, "Mortality Gradients and Disease Exchanges: Comparisons from Old England and Colonial America," Soc. Hist. Med., 1989, 2: 259-97.
12. Kenneth F. Kiple, The Caribbean Slave: A Biological History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984);
13. Richard B. Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves: A Medical and Demographic History of Slavery in the British West Indies 1680-1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
14. David N. Livingstone, "Human Acclimatization: Perspectives on a Contested Field of Inquiry in Science, Medicine and Geography," Hist. Sci., 1987, 25: 359-94;
15. Richard Grove, "Conservation and Colonial Expansion: A Study of the Evolution of Environmental Attitudes and Conservation Policies on St. Helena, Mauritius and in India, 1660-1860" (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1988);
16. Michael A. Osborne, "The Société Zoologique d'Acclimatation and the New French Empire: The Science and Political Economy of Economic Zoology during the Second Empire" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1987);
17. Michael A. Osborne, idem, "A Collaborative Dimension of the European Empires: Australian and French Acclimatization Societies and Inter-colonial Scientific Co-operation," in International Science and National Scientific Identity: Australia between Britain and America, ed. R. W. Home and Sally Gregory Kohlstedt (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1091), pp. 97-119;
18. Warwick Anderson, "Climates of Opinion: Acclimatization in Nineteenth-Century France and England," Victorian Stud., 1992, 35 (2): 135-57;
19. Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventive Medicine, 1859-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
20. See Michael Worboys, "Tropical Diseases," in Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine, ed. W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1993), 1: 512-36.
21. Sloane declared that he "never saw a disease in Jamaica which [he] had not met with in Europe" (Sir Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbadoes, Nieves, St. Christopher's, and Jamaica with the Natural History of the . . . last of those islands, to which is prefix'd An Introduction, wherein there is an account of the inhabitants, air, waters, diseases, trade, etc, of that place [London: printed for the author, 1707-25], 1: iii). Sloane sailed to the West Indies early in his career to become physician to the Duke of Albermarle, hoping to gain there a knowledge of the region's medicinal plants.
22. Robert Jackson, An Outline of the History and Cure of Fever, Endemic and Contagious (Edinburgh: Mundell and Son, 1798), pp. 105-9, 261-73. Jackson's distinction between "endemic" and "epidemic" fevers was analogous to the more usual distinction made between "continued" and "periodic" fevers, the latter (corresponding to Jackson's "endemic" fever) being widely seen as influenced by climate.
23. See Leonard G. Wilson, "Fevers and Science in Early Nineteenth-Century Medicine," J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 1978, 33: 386-407.
24. John Hunter, Observations on the Diseases of the Army in Jamaica; and on the best means of Preserving the Health of Europeans, in that Climate (London: G. Nicol, 1788).
25. James M'Cabe, Military-Medical Reports; containing Pathological and Practical Observations illustrating the Diseases of Warm Climates (Cheltenham: G. A. Williams, 1825), p. 6.
26. Charles Curtis, An Account of the Diseases of India, as they appeared in the English fleet, and in the Naval Hospital at Madras, in 1782 and 1783; with Observations on Ulcers, and the Hospital Sores of that Country (Edinburgh: W. Laing, 1807), p. xvi.
27. Charles Curtis, An Account of the Diseases of India, as they appeared in the English fleet, and in the Naval Hospital at Madras, in 1782 and 1783; with Observations on Ulcers, and the Hospital Sores of that Country Ibid., p. xvii.
28. Paisley to Curtis, February 1774, cited in Charles Curtis, An Account of the Diseases of India, as they appeared in the English fleet, and in the Naval Hospital at Madras, in 1782 and 1783; with Observations on Ulcers, and the Hospital Sores of that Country ibid., p. 86.
29. Charles Curtis, An Account of the Diseases of India, as they appeared in the English fleet, and in the Naval Hospital at Madras, in 1782 and 1783; with Observations on Ulcers, and the Hospital Sores of that Country Ibid., p. 90.
30. George Ballingall, Practical Observations on Fever, Dysentery, and Liver Complaints, as they occur amongst the European Troops in India (Edinburgh: D. Brown and A. Constable, 1818), pp. xi, 40.
31. George Ballingall, Practical Observations on Fever, Dysentery, and Liver Complaints, as they occur amongst the European Troops in India Ibid., pp. 41, 81.
32. Cited in Kupperman, "Fear of Hot Climates" (n. 4), p. 215.
33. James Lind, An Essay on the Diseases Incidental to Europeans in Hot Climates, 6th ed. (1768; London: J. Richardson, 1808), p. 44.
34. Today Lind is better known for his Treatise on the Scurvy (Edinburgh: Kincaid and Donaldson, 1753) in which he advocated the prophylactic use of citrus fruits. During his lifetime, however, the above work on the diseases of hot climates was his most popular publication, and went through six editions, as well as being translated into German, French, and Dutch.
35. Thomas Trapham, A Discourse of the State of Health in the Island of Jamaica. With a provision therefore calculated from the air, the place, and the water: the customs and manners of living, etc. (London: R. Boulter, 1678), pp. 5, 19, 70-71, 81.
36. John Clark, Observations on the Diseases which prevail in Long Voyages to Hot Countries, particularly those in the East Indies; and on the same Diseases as they appear in Britain (London: John Murray, 1809), pp. 78, 84.
37. John Clark, Observations on the Diseases which prevail in Long Voyages to Hot Countries, particularly those in the East Indies; and on the same Diseases as they appear in Britain Ibid., p. 81.
38. Montesquieu's notion of climatic influence as expressed in De l'esprit des lois was not consistently deterministic, although it was sufficiently strong to enable him to explain different cultural, political, and religious traditions in such terms. Count Buffon, in his Histoire, naturelle, générale et particulière (1749-1804) employed a similar climatic theory in his explanation of variation in the natural world, including the physical characteristics of humans. Although Montesquieu and Buffon were not without their critics, their work was in a very real sense "the repository of the age," as well as being enormously influential on subsequent generations of scholars.
39. See Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 565-610;
40. Peter J. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 92-93.
41. Lind, Diseases Incidental to Europeans (n. 20), pp. 171-72.
42. Clark, Diseases which prevail in Long Voyages (n. 22), p. 345.
43. Ballingall, Practical Observations on Fever (n. 17), pp. 3-6.
44. Richard Towne, A Treatise of the Diseases Most Frequent in the West Indies, and herein more particularly those which occur in Barbadoes (London: John Clarke, 1776), pp. 8-9.
45. Hunter, Diseases of the Army in Jamaica (n. 11), p. 24.
46. John Hunter, "Inaugural Disputation on the Varieties of Man," inaugural dissertation to the Fellows of the Royal Society (Edinburgh: Balfour and Smellie, 1775).
47. William Falconer, Remarks on the Influence of Climate, Situation, Nature of Country, Population, Nature of Food, and Way of Life, on the Disposition and Temper, Manners and Behaviour, Intellects, Laws and Customs, Forms of Government, and Religion, of Mankind (London: C. Dilly, 1781), p. 2.
48. See George W. Stocking, Jr., "Scotland as the Model of Mankind: Lord Kames' Philosophical View of Civilization," in Toward a Science of Man: Essays in the History of Anthropology, ed. Timothy H. H. Thoresen (The Hague: Morton, 1975), pp. 65-89;
49. Curtin, Image of Africa (n. 3), pp. 42-43.
50. See, for example, Edward Long's History of Jamaica (London: T. Lowndes, 1774),
51. the discussion of this debate in David Brian Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975).
52. I am grateful to Morris Sakwa Mante for allowing me to read his unpublished paper "Placing Charles White's Account of Regular Gradation in Man and in Animals and Vegetables in the Context of the Political Crises of the 1790s."
53. See also Curtin, Image of Africa (n. 3), pp. 53-55.
54. William Hillary, Observations on the Changes of the Air and the Concomitant Epidemical Diseases in the Island of Barbadoes (London: L. Hawkes, W. Clarke and R. Collins, 1766), p. ix.
55. Trapham, State of Health in Jamaica (n. 21), pp. 61-64.
56. Curtis, Diseases in India (n. 13), pp. 280-81. However, Curtis did not believe that all Europeans were equally adaptable to tropical climates. They were more or less fitted according to certain "idiosyncrasies of habit" and physical characteristics, with persons of sanguine temperament and swarthy complexion being the most easily acclimatized (p. xxiv).
57. Adam Burt, A Tract on the Biliary Complaints of Europeans in Hot Climates; founded on Observations in Bengal; and consequently designed to be particularly useful to those in that Country (Calcutta: John Hay, 1785), pp. 9-10.
58. Adam Burt, A Tract on the Biliary Complaints of Europeans in Hot Climates; founded on Observations in Bengal; and consequently designed to be particularly useful to those in that Country Ibid., p. 14.
59. Adam Burt, A Tract on the Biliary Complaints of Europeans in Hot Climates; founded on Observations in Bengal; and consequently designed to be particularly useful to those in that Country p. 14. Ibid.
60. On Jones, see S. N. Mukherjee, Sir William Jones: A Study in Eighteenth-Century British Attitudes to India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).
61. On indigenous Indian medical traditions see O. P. Jaggi, Indian System of Medicine (New Delhi: Atma Ram and Sons, 1973);
62. A. L. Basham, "The Practice of Medicine in Ancient and Medieval India," in Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative Study, ed. Charles Leslie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 18-43;
63. J. Christophe Bürgel, "Secular and Religious Features of Medieval Arabic Medicine," in Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative Study, ibid., pp. 44-62;
64. Poonam Bala, Imperialism and Medicine in Bengal: A Socio-Historical Perspective (New Delhi: Sage, 1991), pp. 23-39.
65. James Johnson, The Influence of Tropical Climates, more especially of the Climate of India, on European Constitutions; the Principal Effects and Diseases thereby induced, their Prevention or Removal, and the means of Preserving Health in Hot Climates, rendered obvious to Europeans of every capacity, 2d ed. (London: J. Callow, 1815), pp. 416-37, quotation on p. 417.
66. James Johnson, The Influence of Tropical Climates, more especially of the Climate of India, on European Constitutions; the Principal Effects and Diseases thereby induced, their Prevention or Removal, and the means of Preserving Health in Hot Climates, rendered obvious to Europeans of every capacity, 2d ed. Ibid., p. 422.
67. James Johnson, The Influence of Tropical Climates, more especially of the Climate of India, on European Constitutions; the Principal Effects and Diseases thereby induced, their Prevention or Removal, and the means of Preserving Health in Hot Climates, rendered obvious to Europeans of every capacity, 2d ed. Ibid., p. 437.
68. James Johnson, The Influence of Tropical Climates, more especially of the Climate of India, on European Constitutions; the Principal Effects and Diseases thereby induced, their Prevention or Removal, and the means of Preserving Health in Hot Climates, rendered obvious to Europeans of every capacity, 2d ed. Ibid., p. 465.
69. Curtin, Image of Africa (n. 3), p. 85.
70. Johnson, Influence of Tropical Climates (n. 43), pp. x, 2.
71. Johnson, Influence of Tropical Climates Ibid., pp. 1-2.
72. Johnson, Influence of Tropical Climates Ibid., pp. 3-4.
73. Johnson, Influence of Tropical Climates Ibid., p. 479.
74. James Kennedy, The History of the Contagious Cholera; with Facts Explanatory of its origin and Laws, and of a Rational Method of Care (London: James Cochrane, 1831), p. 3.
75. James Kennedy, The History of the Contagious Cholera; with Facts Explanatory of its origin and Laws, and of a Rational Method of Care 1831, p. 3. Ibid.
76. Thomas Jackson, "General and Medical Topography of Meerut," Trans. Calcutta Med. Phys. Soc., 4 September 1824, 1: 292-98;
77. D. S. Young, "An Account of the General and Medical Topography of the Neelgerries," Trans. Calcutta Med. Phys. Soc., ibid., 7 July 1827, 4: 55.
78. J. Grierson, "On the Endemic Fever of Arracan, with a Sketch of the Medical Topography of That Country," Trans. Calcutta Med. Phys. Soc., 5 March 1825, 2: 209.
79. Young, "General and Medical Topography" (n. 54), p. 45.
80. Young General and Medical Topography Ibid., p. 53.
81. Dane Kennedy, "Guardians of Edenic Sanctuaries: Paharis, Lepchas, and Todas in the British Mind," South Asia, 1991, 14: 77.
82. See, for instance, the description of the Khasia tribe of the Jyntia Hills in northeastern India, in J. H. Thornton, Memories of Seven Campaigns: A Record of Thirty-Five Years' Service in the Indian Medical Department in India, China, Egypt and the Sudan (London: A. Constable, 1895), p. 130.
83. William Twining, Clinical Illustrations of the More Important Diseases of Bengal with the Result of an Inquiry into their Pathology and Treatment, 2d ed. (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1835).
84. James Thomson, A Treatise on the Diseases of Negroes as they occur in the Island of Jamaica, with Observations on the Country Remedies (Kingston: Alex Aikman, Jnr., 1820), pp. 2-8.
85. James Thomson, A Treatise on the Diseases of Negroes as they occur in the Island of Jamaica, with Observations on the Country Remedies Ibid., p. 35.
86. James Thomson, A Treatise on the Diseases of Negroes as they occur in the Island of Jamaica, with Observations on the Country Remedies Ibid., p. 16.
87. James Thomson, A Treatise on the Diseases of Negroes as they occur in the Island of Jamaica, with Observations on the Country Remedies Ibid., p. 2.
88. James Thomson, A Treatise on the Diseases of Negroes as they occur in the Island of Jamaica, with Observations on the Country Remedies Ibid., p. 10.
89. See Nancy Stepan, "Biology and Degeneration: Races and Proper Places," in Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress, ed. J. Edward Chamberlin and Sander L. Gilman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), pp. 97-120;
90. Nancy Stepan, idem, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800-1960 (London: Macmillan, 1982).
91. On the impact of pathological anatomy on "tropical hygiene" see Harrison, "Tropical Medicine" (n. 2).
92. Ludmilla Jordanova, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), pp. 25-27, 55.
93. However, not all British administrators in the 1830s showed contempt for Indian culture. A good example is Mountstuart Elphinstone, Governor of Bombay (1819-27), who combined paternalism with the principles of Benthamism. See Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 148-50;
94. J. W. Burrow, Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 50-52, 156-78;
95. William F. Bynum, "The Great Chain of Being after Forty Years: An Appraisal," Hist. Sci., 1975, 13: 19.
96. James Ranald Martin, Notes on the Medical Topography of Calcutta (Calcutta: G. H. Hutman, 1837), p. 45.
97. See G. D. Bearce, British Attitudes Towards India, 1784-1858 (London: Greenwood Press, 1982).
98. Martin, Notes (n. 70), p. 24.
99. Martin, Notes Ibid., pp. 27-28.
100. Martin, Notes Ibid., p. 52 (emphasis in the original); see also pp. 43, 45.
101. James Ranald Martin, The Influence of Tropical Climates on European Constitutions, including Practical Observations on the Nature and Treatment of the Diseases of Europeans on their Return from Tropical Climates (London: J. Churchill, 1856), p. 35.
102. Robert Armstrong, The Influence of Climate and other agents on the Human Constitution, with reference to the Causes and Prevention of Disease among Seamen: With Observations on Fever in Central, and an Account of the Epidemic Fever of Jamaica (London: Longman and Brown, 1843), pp. 8-9.
103. Robert Armstrong, The Influence of Climate and other agents on the Human Constitution, with reference to the Causes and Prevention of Disease among Seamen: With Observations on Fever in Central, and an Account of the Epidemic Fever of Jamaica Ibid., pp. 14, 16, 19-21. Edwards (founder of the Parisian Société Ethnologique in 1841) was inspired by the racial theories of the French historians Amédée and Augustin Thierry to develop a racial map of Europe, based on facial features and anatomical measurements.
104. Robert Armstrong, The Influence of Climate and other agents on the Human Constitution, with reference to the Causes and Prevention of Disease among Seamen: With Observations on Fever in Central, and an Account of the Epidemic Fever of Jamaica Ibid., pp. 22-25, quotation on p. 25.
105. Robert Armstrong, The Influence of Climate and other agents on the Human Constitution, with reference to the Causes and Prevention of Disease among Seamen: With Observations on Fever in Central, and an Account of the Epidemic Fever of Jamaica Ibid., pp. 99-100.
106. See Michael Banton, Racial Theories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 54-59;
107. Seymour Drescher, "The Ending of the Slave Trade and the Evolution of European Scientific Racism," Soc. Sci. Hist., 1990, 14: 440-41.
108. Robert Knox, The Races of Man: A Fragment (London: Henry Renshaw, 1850), p. 107.
109. The French "paleontologist" Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) denied organic evolution as championed by the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829). Cuvier's concept of distinct animal types was loosely underpinned by a Christian Platonism that saw each species as the original and unalterable creation of God. See William Coleman, Georges Cuvier: Zoologist: A Study in the History of Evolution Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964);
110. William F. Bynum, "Time's Noblest Offspring: The Problem of Man in the British Natural Historical Sciences 1800-1863" (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1974), p. 89;
111. Ludmilla Jordanova, Lamarck (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984);
112. Pietro Corsi, The Age of Lamarck: Evolutionary Theories in France 1790-1830, trans. Jonathan Mandelbaum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988);
113. John Hedley Brooke, Science, and Religion: Some Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), chap. 7.
114. Knox, Races of Man (n. 81), p. 215.
115. Julius Jeffreys, The British Army in India: Its Preservation by an Appropriate Clothing, Housing, Locating, Recreative Employment, and Hopeful Encouragement of the Troops (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1858), p. 3.
116. Julius Jeffreys, The British Army in India: Its Preservation by an Appropriate Clothing, Housing, Locating, Recreative Employment, and Hopeful Encouragement of the Troops Ibid., p. 9.
117. Julius Jeffreys, The British Army in India: Its Preservation by an Appropriate Clothing, Housing, Locating, Recreative Employment, and Hopeful Encouragement of the Troops Ibid., p. 14.
118. Julius Jeffreys, The British Army in India: Its Preservation by an Appropriate Clothing, Housing, Locating, Recreative Employment, and Hopeful Encouragement of the Troops Ibid., p. 15.
119. Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Sanitary Stain of the Army in India, Parliamentary Papers, I and II (London: HMSO, 1868).
120. Report of the Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India (Calcutta: Government of India Press, 1870), p. 1.
121. Joseph Fayrer, European Child Life in Bengal (London: J. and A. Churchill, 1873), pp. 30-31;
122. William J. Moore, "The Constitutional Requirements for Tropical Climates, with Special Reference to Temperaments," Trans. Epidemiol. Soc. Lond., 1884-85, 4: 37-38, 46, 48.
123. See also J. S. Ewart, "The Colonisation of the Sub-Himalayas and Neilgherries, with Remarks on the Management of European Children in India," Trans. Epidemiol. Soc. Lond., ibid., 1883-84, 3: 96-117.
124. Harrison, Public Health in British India (n. 7), chap. 3.
125. Harrison, Public Health in British India Ibid., chap. 1.
126. Curtin, Image of Africa (n. 3), p. 56;
127. Stepan, "Biology and Degeneration" (n. 66).
128. See Bynum, "Time's Noblest Offspring" (n. 82), p. 8.
129. Stepan, Idea of Race (n. 66).
130. Drescher, "Ending of the Slave Trade" (n. 80).
131. Douglas A. Lorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978), intro. and chap. 7.
132. Christine Bolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971).