Profound Science and Elegant Literature: Imagining Doctors in Nineteenth-Century America PDF
Preview Profound Science and Elegant Literature: Imagining Doctors in Nineteenth-Century America
Profound Science and Elegant Literature This page intentionally left blank Profound Science and Elegant Literature Imagining Doctors in Nineteenth-Century America STEPHANIE P. BROWNER PENN UniversityofPennsylvania Press Philadelphia Copyright© 2005 UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress Allrightsreserved PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaonacid-freepaper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Publishedby UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress Philadelphia,Pennsylvania19104-4011 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Browner,StephanieP. Profoundscienceandelegantliterature:imaginingdoctorsinnineteenth-century America/StepanieP. Browner. p. cm. ISBN0-8122-3825-7 (acid-freepaper) Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. 1.Americanliterature-19thcentury-Historyandcriticism. 2.Physiciansin literature. 3. Literatureandmedicine-UnitedStates-History-19thcentury. 4.Literatureandscience-UnitedStates-History-19thcentury. 5.Medicalfiction, American-Historyandcriticism. 6. Physicians-UnitedStates. 7. Medicinein literature.I.Title PS217.P48B76 2004 813'.3093561-dc22 2004054972 To Stephen This page intentionally left blank Contents Introduction: What's a Doctor,AfterAll? 1 1. Professional Medicine, Democracy, and the Modern Body: The DiscoveryofEtherization 15 2. Reading the Body: Hawthorne's Tales ofMedicalAmbition 39 3. Carnival Bodies and Medical Professionalism in Melville's Fiction 70 4. Class and Character: Doctors in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals 103 5. Gender, Medicine, and Literature in Postbellum Fiction 135 6. Social Surgery: Physicians on the Color Line 182 Epilogue: From the Clinic to the Research Laboratory: A Case StudyofThree Stories 217 Notes 227 Bibliography 271 Index 289 Acknowledgments 303 This page intentionally left blank Introduction: What's a Doctor, After All? What'sadoctor, afterall?-Alegitimizedvoyeur, a strangerwhom we permitto pokefingers andeven handsinto placeswherewe would notpermitmostpeople to insertso much asafinger-tip, who gazesonwhatwe take trouble to hide; asitter-at-bedsides, an outsideradmitted to ourmostintimate moments (birth, death, etc.), anonymous, aminorcharacter,yetalso, paradoxically, central, especiallyatthe crisis ...yes,yes. -Salman Rushdie, Shame, 1983 The profession towhichwe belong, oncevenerated on account ofitsantiquity,-itsvariousand profoundscience-itselegant literature-itspolite accomplishment-itsvirtues,-hasbecome corrupt, and degenerate, to the forfeiture ofitssocial position, andwith itthe homage itformerlyreceivedspontaneouslyand universally. -Minutesofthe FirstAnnual MeetingoftheAmerican Medical Association, 1847 Theworld ofillness and pain is aforeign landwewould rather notvisit. Wedistanceourselvesfrom thesick, and thosewe anointasofficialheal ers carry the burden ofour most ambivalent feelings about the shame and pleasure oflivingin material, mortal bodies.1We maywish to think of the healer as a minor character in our lives, one who lingers in the wings and makes only briefappearances. Butwe also turn to healers in moments ofgreatneed, hoping thatthey, alongwith theirexpertise,wis dom, language, and therapies, will return us to the land ofthe healthy. Inevitably, then, in every portrait of a doctor, nurse, shaman, or lay healer,we heara culture negotiatingwho shouldhave the dutyand priv ilege ofenteringthe sickroom, listeningto the patient'sstory, attending the ailing body, andwitnessing at the deathbed. Medical practice in the United States has two traditions-folk and professiona1.2Throughoutthe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the divide between the twowas not rigid. Afamily might call in a lay healer on one occasion and a "regular" on another, and practitioners turned
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