Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Surgery, Slavery and the Circulation of Knowledge in the French Caribbean

2011; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0144039x.2011.604920

1743-9523

Karol K. Weaver,

History of Medicine and Tropical Health

Abstract Over the course of the eighteenth century, the reputation of surgery in France dramatically improved. Similarly, surgery thrived in the French Atlantic. Surgical expertise was a necessity in colonies that served as naval bases. Moreover, the violent brutality engendered by colonial slaveholding meant that surgeons dominated health care in France's Atlantic empire. As a result of these factors, Europeans as well as white Creoles practised surgery. Degreed practitioners offered their services in cities, while plantation surgeons and managers held the knives on the plantations. Enslaved men and women practised surgery too. Some tended their fellow slaves in the plantation hospitals and cabins, while others performed surgical procedures in urban areas. Due to the practical need for surgery in colonial and slaveholding environments and the lively exchange of surgical information, the surgical craft flourished in the French Caribbean and was practised by both free and enslaved persons. Notes Laurence Brockliss and Colin Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 551–564, 567–576; Toby Gelfand, ‘A “Monarchical Profession” in the Old Regime: Surgeons, Ordinary Practitioners, and Medical Professionalization in Eighteenth-Century France’, in Professions and the French State, 1700–1900, ed. Gerald L. Geison (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 149–180. Christiane Bougerol, La Médecine populaire à la Guadeloupe (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 1983); Jean-Claude Eymeri, Histoire de la médecine aux Antilles et en Guyane (Paris: Éditions L'Harmattan, 1992). An English-language exception is James E. McClellan, III, Colonialism and Science: Saint Domingue in the Old Regime (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). ‘The Non-Spanish Caribbean Islands to 1815’, in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Latin America and the Caribbean, eds. Simon Collier, Thomas E. Skidmore and Harold Blakemore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 201–203. Charles Arthaud, Observations sur les lois, concernant la Médecine et la Chirurgie dans la Colonie de St. Domingue, avc des vues de Reglement, adressées au Comité du Salubrité de l'Assemblée nationale et à l'Assemblée coloniale (Cap François, 1791), 5–7, Archives Nationales: Section d'Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence (hereafter CAOM) 87/MIOM/41, Bibliothèque Moreau de Saint-Méry (hereafter BMdSM). For a secondary source analysis, see Bougerol, La Médecine populaire, 98–99. McClellan, Colonialism and Science, 131, 138–139; Bougerol, La Médecine populaire, 98–99. Eymeri, Histoire de la médecine, 244–249. Jean-Baptiste Labat, Nouveau voyages aux Isles de l'Amérique , 3 vols. (The Hague, 1724), 2: 247. For biographical information about Labat, see McClellan, Colonialism and Science, 112. Nicolas Bourgeois, Voyages intéressans dans différentes colonies françaises, espagnoles, anglaises, & c (London, 1788), 458–459. McClellan, Colonialism and Science, 135. Bougerol, La Médecine populaire, 99. LeCesne, ‘Compte’, December 1789, Archives Nationales, Paris (hereafter AN), T561. LeCesne, ‘Correspondance’, 28 January 1790, AN, T561. Ibid., 10 May 1789, 28 January 1790 and 22 October 1790, AN, T561. LeCesne, ‘État d'esclaves’, 1 January 1791, AN, T561; LeCesne, ‘Procuration’, 1 May 1789, AN, T561. Gelfand, ‘“Monarchical Profession”’, 158. McClellan, Colonialism and Science, 133. Jean-Damien Chevalier, Lettres à M. de Jean, docteur-regent de la Faculté de Médecine, en l'Université de Paris (Paris, 1752), 27; Antoine Poissonnier-Desperrières, Traité des fièvres de l'île de Saint-Domingue (Paris, 1766), 70. McClellan, Colonialism and Science, 133–134. J. Laborie, The Coffee Planter of Saint Domingue (London, 1798), 167, 188. Bougerol, La Médecine populaire, 105–109. Evidence suggests that male hospitaliers managed hospitals without the supervision of a European medical practitioner and had the opportunity to receive specialised instruction. For more information, see J.F. LaFosse, Avis aux habitans des colonies, particulierement à ceux de l'isle S. Domingue… (Paris, 1787), 126–127; Supplément a la Gazette de Saint Domingue, 1 January 1791, 17–18, CAOM 87/MIOM/72, BMdSM. Gabriel Debien, Les Esclaves aux Antilles Françaises (XVII–XVIIIe siècles) (Basse-Terre: Société d'Histoire de la Guadeloupe, 1974), 87, 92; Bernard Moitt, Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 1635–1845 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 73, 77. Supplément aux Affiches Américaines 14 (3 April 1781): n. pag. For information on the history of smallpox and efforts made to eradicate it, see F. Fenner et al., Smallpox and Its Eradication (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1988); Donald Hopkins, Princes and Peasants: Smallpox in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). For information on the history of smallpox in colonial settings, see David Arnold, ‘Smallpox and Colonial Medicine in Nineteenth-Century India’, in Imperial Medicine and Indigenous Societies, ed. David Arnold (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 45–66; Ola Elizabeth Winslow, A Destroying Angel: The Conquest of Smallpox in Colonial Boston (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974); Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001); Megan Vaughan, ‘Slavery, Smallpox, and Revolution: 1792 in Île-de-France’, Social History of Medicine 13, no. 3 (2000): 411–428. Jean-Barthélemy Dazille, Observations sur les maladies des nègres, leurs causes, leurs traitemens et les moyens de les prevenir (Paris, 1776), 98–103. For secondary source analyses, see Jacques Cauna, Au temps des isles à sucre: histoire d'une plantation de Saint-Domingue au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 1987), 121; Debien, Les Esclaves, 69–70, 312–313. S.J. Ducoeurjoly, Manuel des habitans de Saint-Domingue, 2 vols. (Paris, 1802), 1: 47. Genton, ‘Feuille d'hôpital’, May 1789, AN, Sous-Série AB XIX 3355, Dossier 5; Genton, ‘Hon d'Agoult au camp de Louis’, 1 June 1789, AN, Sous-Série AB XIX 3355, Dossier 5. Planteaux, ‘Correspondance du gérant’, 8 May 1789, 2 June 1789, 5 July 1789, and 6 August 1789, AN, T561. LeCesne, ‘Correspondance du gérant’, 11 May 1790, AN, T561. Paul Erdman Isert, Voyages en Guinée et dans les Îles Caraïbes en Amérique. Translaté de l'allemand (Paris, 1793), 221, CAOM 87/MIOM/15, BMdSM. Charles Arthaud, Mémoire sur l'inoculation de la petite vérole (Cap-François, 1774), 9, CAOM 87/MIOM/63, BMdSM. Duchemin de l'Étang, ‘Inoculation’, Gazette de Médecine pour les Colonies 5 (1 January 1779): 30, CAOM 87/MIOM/63, BMdSM. Eugenia W. Herbert, ‘Smallpox Inoculation in Africa’, Journal of African History 16, no. 4 (1975): 547–548. Also consult Larry Stewart, ‘The Edge of Utility: Slaves and Smallpox in the Early Eighteenth Century’, Medical History 29, no. 1 (1985): 54–70. Ann M. Becker, ‘Smallpox in Washington's Army: Strategic Implications of the Disease during the American Revolutionary War’, Journal of Military History 68, no. 2 (2004): 387; Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650–1838 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 56; Elizabeth A. Fenn, ‘Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century North America: Beyond Jeffrey Amherst’, Journal of American History 86, no. 4 (2000): 1563; Fenn, Pox Americana, 31–36; Hopkins, Princes and Peasants, 171–174; Ann Jannetta, The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the ‘Opening’ of Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 16; Margot Minardi, ‘The Boston Inoculation Controversy of 1721–1722: An Incident in the History of Race’, William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 61, no. 1 (2004): 48–49, 55–57, 60, 62–63, 65, 74–76; Richard Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves: A Medical and Demographic History of Slavery in the British West Indies, 1680–1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 88; Vaughan, ‘Slavery, Smallpox, and Revolution’. Laborie, Coffee Planter, 167. Debien, Les Esclaves, 316–317. Michel-René Hilliard d'Auberteuil, Considérations sur l'état présent de la colonie française de Saint-Domingue, ouvrage politique and legislative, 2 vols. (Paris, 1776), 1: 219. Bourgeois, Voyages intéressans, 497, 503. For more information on the medicinal uses of these plants, see Julia F. Morton, Atlas of the Medicinal Plants of Middle America: Bahamas to Yucatan (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1981), 932–933. Robert Voeks, ‘African Medicine and Magic’, Geographical Review 83, no. 1 (1993): 73. Chevalier, Lettres, 47. Bourgeois reported that this was common practice among the slaves. If the worm broke while exiting the skin, the part that remained in the body would cause a massive infection. Bourgeois, Voyages intéressans, 476. Ducoeurjoly, Manuel, 2: 108–109. Affiches Américaines 3 (16 January 1781): n. pag. Eymeri, Histoire de la médecine, illustration titled ‘Négresse échiqueuse’. Ducoeurjoly, Manuel, 1: 52. Also see Bernard Moitt, ‘Women, Work and Resistance in the French Caribbean during Slavery, 1700–1848’, in Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective, ed. Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton, and Barbara Bailey (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), 155–175. Debien, Les Esclaves, 312. Supplément aux Affiches Américaines 40 (3 October 1772): 479. Affiches Américaines 5 (3 February 1768): 43. Supplément aux Affiches Américaines 14 (3 April 1781): n. pag. Additional informationNotes on contributorsKarol K. Weaver Karol K. Weaver is Associate Professor in the Department of History, Program Coordinator for Women's Studies and Co-Director of Medical Humanities at Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania 17870, USA.