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THE PATHOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT Author(s): Anita Guerrini Source: The Eighteenth Century, Vol. 31, No. 2 (SUMMER 1990), pp. 173-179 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41467748 Accessed: 05-06-2017 20:46 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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The Eighteenth Century, vol. 31, no. 2, 1990

THE PATHOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT Anita Guerrini

To the eighteenth-century valetudinarian, the world was a

frightening place. The environment teemed with dangers both natural and man-made, from reeking swamps and putrid rivers to fetid alleyways and cold, dank churches. Such places, obviously,

were unhealthful. In an era when medicine could accomplish

little, modification of the environment offered a promise of disease avoidance whose effectiveness seemed self-evident. Bolstered by a medical theory which stressed the role of miasmata and effluvia in

the contraction of epidemic disease, such prophylactic measures as swamp drainage, ventilation, and streetcleaning were proposed,

and sometimes accomplished, across Europe and in the American

colonies in the era before 1800.

Although the miasmatic theory of disease-causation achieved a greater notoriety in the nineteenth century, the notion grew to fruition during the eighteenth century. Miasmatic theory in general held that contagion could not adequately explain widescale epidemics; rather, a tainting of the atmosphere as a whole was responsible. Alain Corbin has shown that miasmatic theory in the eighteenth century centered particularly on bad smells, a concept linked to cultural changes in attitudes toward poverty,

class consciousness, personal hygiene, and the nature of the

erotic.1 Medical attention therefore focused on the air and its

mutability, and physicians turned to Boyleian chemical theory, which visualized air as a congeries of particles. Its noxiousness or purity depended on the admixture of good or bad particles. The same literal-minded atomism which gave credence to the

weaponsalve envisioned disease-causing emanations from a

variety of sources, including more obvious ones such as dead bodies and piles of refuse, but also influences from the earth itself, ranging from swamps to volcanic fissures. John Arbuth-

not noted in 1731 that air was the one common denominator

in epidemic disease; moreover, it could conceivably be analyzed chemically to isolate its infectious components, although this proved to be more difficult than he supposed. Various concepts 173

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1

74

THE

EIGHTEENTH

CENTURY

and attitudes came togethe revive the ancient miasmati addition, to lead to the conc be prevented by modifying cusses

Avoid

The

some

Disease

of .2

these

inspiration

ideas

for

in

T

envir

rather confusingly calls "env the Hippocratic treatise 4 'A tended it as a guide for the

depended

upon

accurate

p

peculiarities of each site - a would enable the newly arri eases he would encounter, a

Milieu, local character and inevitably linked in the G topography and climate. W

seemed to be especially imp Neither Hippocrates nor h successor Thomas Sydenham the influence of the enviro noted, in their voluminous c "epidemic constitutions," t

eases

and

particular

envir

"epidemic constitution" was not an explanatory hypothes According to Riley, the est as a theory that stimulated ments: the rise of statistica

optimism that nature changed to meet man's

coul need

work covered the history of d the Age of the Demographic R that statistics figure largely i well-known Natural and Politic

of

of

Mortality

burial

(1662)

and

and

Will

christening

r

generally acknowledged as th statistics. Riley's close analy

ticularly his concept of cau formed the basis for subseq

century

to

explain

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environ

GUERRINI- THE PATHOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT 1 75

Petty' s "Political Arithmetick" was a complete p

in mathematical form, including not only pop

but details of site, climate, and culture. A

consciously sought to demonstrate statistically assertion of the relationship between change

ment and prevailing diseases, and also, mo general influence of the environment on d

According to Riley, Petty' s conflation of concur

tion in the presentation of environmental

statistics persisted throughout the following cen

environmentalist position a spurious legitimac

mathematics was revered as the cornerstone of scientific truth

(4-6, 55-59). Riley argues that the goal of environmental medicine was to establish a causal relationship between environment and dis-

ease, proving the truth of the miasmatic theory. But since statistical techniques were not adequately developed at this time, this attempt at proof failed. However, Ian Hacking has

shown that the use of statistics to predict future events reached

a high level in the eighteenth century in the calculation of

annuities. Hacking maintains that Petty was not attempting to

establish a causal connection between his data and the mias-

matic theory (which Petty believed did not require additional proof) . Instead, Petty sought a better way to assess the evidence

before him. Hacking distinguishes between epistemological

criteria for evidence - which, he argues, is what Petty looked

for - and the causal concept of evidence held by earlier

physicians, who saw, for example, swarming mice as both a sign

and a cause of plague. Hacking states, "Only when epistemological criteria can be grasped independently of causal

theory can probability and the use of statistics emerge."3 Riley provides ample illustration of the collection of data, both medical and environmental, which dominated the activity of environmentalist physicians in the eighteenth century. The

German clergyman J. P. Sussmilch, in 1741, used birth and

death records from Frankfurt-am-Main to establish God's divine

plan, a goal also sought by Arbuthnot in his study of sex ratios earlier in the century. Once collected, however, such numbers could be put to diverse uses. J. P. Burggrave and J. A. Behrends employed Sussmilch' s data to show the relative healthfulness of Frankfurt. Zealous physicians across Europe and in the North

American colonies collected meteorological data from their

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1

76

THE

EIGHTEENTH

localities.

CENTURY

Some

individual

Carolina and Jean Razoux of disease statistics or general find meaningful correlatio physicians from all over Fra

meteorological,

topograph

shadowed these scattered am medicine. Under the auspice

Médecine,

Vicq

d'Azyr's

generated masses of analyzed. According to Riley, the purpose of this collecting was to

observ

generate statistical correlations between various environmental phenomena and the occurrance of epidemic disease, delineating their relationship. Owing to inadequate statistical techni-

ques, the task proved to be impossible; rather than an overarching theory of disease causation, the environmental

physicians of the eighteenth century left behind heaps of mean-

ingless numbers (5153, 6869). Well into the nineteenth cen-

tury, physicians continued to seek more data in an attempt to

demonstrate the elusive connection which they assumed to

exist.

While the act of collection may have been fruitless for medical theory, it was not as futile as Riley suggests in the wider scientific context. The eighteenth century fell in the middle of

a period when much more was becoming known about the

environment. Inspired as much by Baconian method and the goals of natural history as by medical motives, the careful recording of climatic data and other natural events began in the middle of the seventeenth century. Robert Boyle's Heads for the

Natural History of a Country , published in 1692, set forth an agenda not only for scientists but for any interested traveler. Boyle enjoined his readers to observe and record, not randomly but according to his instructions, without drawing further conclusions. Foucault has shown that naming and classifying were

central intellectual activities in this era. Naming an object

asserted the namer's control, and placing it in its proper niche

affirmed the orderliness, even lawfulness, of nature. The act of

collecting in itself imposed order on the natural phenomena

collected and recorded. Plants, animals, minerals, diseases,

shared the same epistemological ground; so Boissier de

Sauvages saw nothing strange in establishing a nosology along

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GUERRINI- THE PATHOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT 1 77

the lines of Linnaeus's classification of plants recorded both for medical purposes and also

finding general truths about the operation of t

for the same reason, one sought information

cal events.

Indeed, even from the medical point of view celestial

phenomena commanded attention. Not only did the heavenly bodies influence weather and climate, they also had a more

direct influence on human health and well-being. We need only remember Newton's theory of comets as the source of

atmospheric regeneration. In Richard Mead's De imperio solis ас

lunae (1704), environmental medicine takes a detour not ac-

knowledged by Riley, who notes only Mead's more conventional theories. In De imperio, Mead uses Newton's theory of tides as an analogue for lunar influences on health, a discussion smacking faindy of astrology. William Coleman has written, in addition, that this

knowledge of nature empowered Enlightenment man to find 4 4 the moral, social, and physical conditions of existence most suited to ensuring his happiness, prosperity and bodily wellbeing." To the bourgeoisie, he argues, the concept of hygiene as an all-encompassing program for the promotion of health was defined specifically in terms of the classical six non-naturals:

air, food and drink, motion and rest, sleep and wakefulness,

evacuation and retention, and the passions. These factors, encompassing both the external environment and internal

body functions, were equally subject to enlightened management.4 This mingling of a natural history of the body with the natural history of the external world gives 4 'environmental medicine" a broader definition than Riley's account allows. Riley treats events outside Europe only insofar as they reflect

European concerns. But the relationship between the old

world and the new lands in America and the south Pacific was

not as one-sided as he suggests. The imperialistic overtones of the Baconian program meant that the drive to dominate nature shared crucial assumptions with the colonizing movement. The New World and, later in the eighteenth century, Australasia, provided vast new territories to remake in the image of Europe. Many felt, like Buffon, that the wilderness of the new lands was

a lesser and degenerate version of the old world and could be

suitably altered for European habitation. In addition, new

information about the environment gained in travels outside

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1

78

THE

EIGHTEENTH

CENTURY

Europe helped to revive intere While man-made miasmata we New World, the effects of un ly unhealthful. In Europe, th Lisbon earthquake of 1755 an to be directly related to volca

unhealthfulness

of

nature

recorded for the American colonists, which far exceeded those

in Europe. New diseases, and the effects of old diseases in new environments, could provide a test of climatological theory. The New World and Australasia provided new testing grounds

for modification of the natural environment, where wide-scale

modification, such as could be accomplished in few areas of

Europe, was possible. As Riley notes, this modification centered on swamp drainage and deforestation. The attitude toward nature which allowed such measures as

wide-scale drainage to be proposed became fully developed,

according to Keith Thomas, in the early modern era. One result was to place the natural environment on the same ethical level as the urban world produced by man; Roy Porter has astutely noted that 4 'environment" is itself a human category, denoting all of man's surroundings. On that level, draining a swamp, or deforesting a site, was morally equivalent to cleaning night soil off the streets of Paris. The 4 'breathtaking anthropocentricity"

of which Clarence Glacken accuses the twentieth century is, in comparison with the eighteenth, perhaps more a matter of scale than of quality. Porter calls the eighteenth century "unprecedentedly aggressive" toward the environment.5 Riley does not discuss these broader changes in attitude; nor does he make the distinction implicit in the works of Jordánová and Corbin between the urban "medical police" and modification of the natural landscape.6 Riley's four categories of environmental modification - drainage, lavation, ventilation, and reinterment - refer mainly to the man-made environment, although in this period most Europeans lived in rural rather than

urban settings. In the eighteenth century, although these

modifications were less sweeping in their long-term effects than

the measures used against the excesses of nature, their social implications were wider-ranging. When the concept of hygiene was applied to lower classes, those members of the urban environment mainly responsible for the bad smells of miasmata,

enlightenment notions of bourgeois self-help no longer ap-

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w

GUERRINI- THE PATHOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT 1 79

plied. Cameralist political theory led to man wider population as a means of ensuring its growth. Modification of the urban environm

such measures as street-cleaning and paving, th of cemeteries outside city walls, and the build redirect the flow of rivers, contributed to thi mental modification in this case incorporated

ing. But it is important to remember, as Ril

Corbin reminds us) , that the goal was to elimin

effluvia, from whatever source, natural or man-m

The history of scientific ideas is necessarily c ideas that we now consider wrong. Riley remin too often that the miasmatic theory of disease by the germ theory, and that the data collected tal physicians was statistically meaningless and t as a basis for action. He nonetheless argues tha mortality experienced in Europe from the eigh onward was related to public health measures w if for the wrong reasons, pathogens from the e Riley tells his story from the point of view of demography and the development of statistics

context, but one which makes the debate over environmen-

talism seem a dry academic exercise in number-shuffling. Yet

as Coleman has shown, the debate went to the heart of Enlightenment concern with living the good life. It deserves fuller

treatment, using the Encyclopédie and other narrative sources, than it has received from Riley. Notes

I wish to thank Michael A. Osborne for his comments.

1. Alain Corbin, Le miasme et la jonquille (Paris, 1982), translated as The Foul and the

Fragrant (Cambridge, 1986). 2. James С. Riley, The Eighteenth-Century Campaign to Avoid Disease { New York, 1987).

Page references will be included parenthetically in the text. 3. Ian Hacking, The Rise of Probability (Cambridge, 1979), 104-5. 4. William Coleman, "Health and Hygiene in the Encyclopédie: A Medical Doctrine for the Bourgeoisie, "Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 29 (1974): 400.

5. Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World (New York, 1983); Roy Porter, "The Terraqueous Globe," in GeorgeS. Rousseau and Roy Porter, eds., The Ferment of Knowledge

(Cambridge, 1980), 294-95; Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore (Berkeley, 1967). 6. L. J. Jordánová, "Earth Science and Environmental Medicine: the Synthesis of the Late Enlightenment," in L. J. Jordánová and Roy Porter, eds., Images of the Earth (Chalfont St Giles, 1979), 119-46.

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