Contagionism Catches On : Medical Ideology in Britain, 1730-1800

350 Pages·2017·7.142 MB·English

by  Margaret DeLacy (auth.)

Contagionism Catches On
MargaretDeLacy
Contagionism
Catches On
–
Medical Ideology in Britain, 1730 1800
MargaretDeLacy
Portland,Oregon,USA
ISBN978-3-319-50958-7 ISBN978-3-319-50959-4(eBook)
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-50959-4
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017940808
©TheEditor(s)(ifapplicable)andTheAuthor(s)2017
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A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book draws on a reference base of thousands of books and articles.
Manyofthemwere borrowedformebythe interlibraryloan department
of the Multnomah County Public Library in Portland, Oregon. I thank
the library itself and the dozens of libraries that generously made these
works available to me through interlibrary loan, in most cases free of
charge.Thisbookwouldhavebeenimpossibletowritewithouttheirhelp.
Many libraries also made materials available online or allowed walk-in
accesstotheirholdings.TheyincludetheBritishLibrary,theLibraryofthe
Royal College of Physicians, the University College Library and the
Wellcome Library for the History of Medicine in London; the Bodleian
Library in Oxford; the Huntington Library in San Marino, California; the
HuntInstituteforBotanicalResearchinPittsburgh,Pennsylvania;theJohn
RylandsLibraryinManchester;DickinsonCollegeinCarlisle,Pennsylvania,
the Lancaster City Library in Lancaster; the Lancashire Record Office in
Preston; the Liverpool Record Office in Liverpool; the Manchester City
Library in Manchester; the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda,
Maryland, which also provided and created many microfilms; the
Newcastle City Library; the Yale University Library; and, in Portland: the
FamilyHistoryCenteroftheChurchoftheLatterDaySaints,theOregon
Health Sciences University, Portland State University Library and Reed
College Library. Those libraries and librarians who assisted with specific
problems are named in the notes, but I should also like to thank Richard
Behles,GeoffreyDavenportoftheRoyalCollegeofPhysiciansLibrary,Gina
DouglasoftheLinneanSociety,StephenGreenburgoftheNationalLibrary
of Medicine, Christopher Hamlin, David Harley, Jeff and Liz McBride,
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
RichardWallandDavidZuck,andtoacknowledgedebtstothelateArthur
J.Cain,JamesCassedyandWorthEstes.
The Humanities, Science and Technology program (part of the
National Endowment for the Humanities) provided a three-year grant
for 1989–1992 that initiated this project. An earlier fellowship from the
American Council for Learned Societies first enabled me to study the
history of medicine. My colleagues in the National Coalition of
Independent Scholars and the Northwest Independent Scholars
Associationofferedsupport andencouragement.
Family members, including my mother, Elizabeth Eisenstein, and my
brother, Edward Eisenstein, read and commented on early drafts; I wish
mymotherhadlivedtoreadthefinalversion.Myhusband,JohnDeLacy,
not only put up with this seemingly endless project but provided an
outstanding in-houseinformation technology service.
C
ONTENTS
1 Introduction 1
2 FeverTheory andBritish Contagionismin the Mid-
Eighteenth Century 19
3 Contagionismafter1750:John Pringle andJamesLind 55
4 AnimateDiseaseafter1750:Exanthemata Viva 89
5 CountingandClassifying Diseases: Contagion,
EnumerationandCullen’sNosology 125
6 JohnHaygarth andthe Campaign forContagion 165
7 Contagionism,Politicsand the Publicin Manchester,
1780–1795 207
8 InstitutionalizingContagionism:The Manchester
Houseof Recovery 243
Conclusion: ANew Medicine 283
vii
viii CONTENTS
Appendix:Four DifferentApproachesto Organizing
IllnessExcerpted fromBoerhaave,Huxham, Fothergill
andCullen. 285
Bibliography 295
Index 327
A S T
BBREVIATIONS AND HORT ITLES
BM seeMB
DM seeMD
ECCO Eighteenth-CenturyCollectionsOnline,parts1and2,createdby
Gale Digital Collections from digitally scanned microfilms of
bookspublishedinBritainduringtheeighteenthcentury
FRCP Fellowofthe(Royal)CollegeofPhysiciansofLondon
FRS FellowoftheRoyalSociety
Google Bookdatabaseathttps://books.google.com/
HathiTrust TheHathiTrustDigitalLibrary,www.hathitrust.org
JHMAS JournaloftheHistoryofMedicineandAppliedSciences
JP justiceofthepeace
MB BachelorofMedicine(includingOxfordBM)
MD DoctorofMedicine(includingOxfordDM)
MP memberofParliament
Munk’sRoll WilliamMunk,TheRolloftheRoyalCollegeofPhysiciansofLondon
Phil.Trans. PhilosophicalTransactionsoftheRoyalSocietyofLondon,onlineat
rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org
N&R NotesandRecordsoftheRoyalSocietyofLondon
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004–), www.
oxforddnb.com
ix
CHAPTER1
Introduction
Contagionism is the idea that a material substance transmits disease from
patient to patient. This book will trace the development of British con-
tagionism during the eighteenth century, the interlinked evolution of
increasingly definite and detailed ideas about the nature and behavior of
contagious diseases during this period, and the effect this had on the
transformation ofthe medical profession,and medicalinstitutions during
the early industrial period. Within an apparently ossified and actually
chaotic profession, the mainstream conceptualization of many acute
illnesses gradually shifted from a “physiological” theory that attributed
illness to changes in a patient’s internal equilibrium to an “ontological”
theory that blamed diseases on different entities that invaded the body
fromoutside.Thisshiftenabledphysiciansindifferentplacestocooperate
in new ways. Contagionism benefited from broader social developments
such as the improvement of transportation, foreign wars, and the growth
of provincial towns, but it especially flourished within a community of
doctorstrainedoutsideEnglandthathademergedfromthreecoincidental
transformations within British medicine: in medical ideas, in the nature
and content of medical education, and in the sort of men who became
physicians.
Contagionism has always been contentious and its history has been
fragmented, evolving from being uncritically celebratory in the
late nineteenth century to predominately negative by the late twentieth
century. Historians of the idea have concentrated on particular
©TheAuthor(s)2017 1
M.DeLacy,ContagionismCatchesOn,
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-50959-4_1