Medicine in the Atlantic World
- LAST REVIEWED: 27 June 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 27 June 2017
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0085
- LAST REVIEWED: 27 June 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 27 June 2017
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0085
Introduction
Various medical traditions from Africa, Europe, and the Americas converged in the Atlantic world between the 16th and 19th centuries, and all of them changed as a result. On first contact, all three had significant elements in common: the medical traditions of each place had a religious dimension to them, although it was stronger in some than in others, and all three used botanical medicines of various kinds. Although Europeans had traditionally recognized the conjunction of religion and medicine (hospital nurses, for example, were often religious figures, and prayer formed a part of the healing process), they did not recognize the religious components of African or Native American medicine as legitimate. In some cases they denounced these practices as witchcraft, while in others they did not recognize crucial ceremonial components to the medical and healing process. Europeans did, however, seek to obtain botanical cures from the Americas and went in search of plants, as well as knowledge of these plants, to enhance their own medicinal capability. After initially sharing some botanical knowledge with Europeans, Native Americans eventually proved reluctant to share such knowledge. They were more likely to share botanical medicines with Africans, who had some similar traditions and plants as well as knowledge. Both African and Native American medicinal techniques changed as healers learned from one another, and Afro-Caribbean healers developed obeah, which had many uses, some of them medicinal. European medicine also changed during this period. Most European medical traditions relied on a view of the body as made up of four humors, and health depended upon a stable balance between the internal humors and external elements. An imbalance could cause ill health, and a recalibration of that balance could restore health. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the relationship between the body and its environment gained prominence in European medical thought, particularly as increasing numbers of people left their native environments to travel to distant climates. The idea that people’s health depended on their surrounding environments led to an emphasis on preventative medicine through environmental management, and these ideas contributed to the emerging field of public health. Still, physicians continued to rely on plant-based medicines like rhubarb, jalap, cinchona bark, rattlesnake root, arrowroot, dogwood, and many more. While Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans sometimes used the same plants to treat the same ailments, and Africans and Europeans both benefited from inoculation techniques, cultural differences and varying understandings of health, medicine, and the body prevented a comprehensive merging of medical techniques. As a result, health care and medicine remained culturally, regionally, ethnically, and economically specific across the Atlantic world.
General Overviews and Edited Collections
While most of the (monograph) overviews on medicine in the Atlantic world focus on British North America, edited collections can have a broader reach and give a fuller picture of the subject. Still, a couple of surveys are worthwhile overviews: Duffy 1993 argues that medicine and medical practice in colonial British America developed as its own entity, distinct both from British and from Native American medicine but incorporating traits of both. Reiss 2000 offers a fairly comprehensive survey of illness, health, medicine, and treatment in colonial British America, including particularly prevalent diseases and their treatments. Leavitt and Numbers 1985 contains a large range of topics, mostly in the 19th-century United States, from midwifery to yellow fever to environmental medicine to the development of the medical profession, though the essays (with a few exceptions) overwhelmingly discuss the white population. Leavitt’s later edited collection (Leavitt 1999) is a substantial departure from this model, and the range of contributions on women’s health in America from the 17th through the 20th century is both thoughtful and inclusive (although the bulk of the contributions discuss the 19th and 20th centuries). The essays in Arnold 1996 are not exclusively Atlantic in subject, though several touch on medicine, disease, health, and medical knowledge in Brazil, West Africa, and the Caribbean. Delbourgo and Dew 2008 offers an eclectic collection of essays on the connections between the natural world and medical knowledge; standouts include essays on Brazil and on Saint Domingue as well as an essay by Susan Scott Parrish on indigenous, African, and European knowledge sharing, production, and concealment in British colonial America. Cook and Walker 2013 is a special issue of the journal Social History of Medicine, in which the editors have collected essays on smallpox inoculation, bioprospecting, and transatlantic medical networks. Cook and Walker’s introduction to this collection gives a good overview of recent historiography on medicine in the international Atlantic world. Finally De Barros, et al. 2009 focuses largely on the 19th and 20th centuries. But the essays cover a broad range of places, peoples, and subjects, and this is one of the best edited collections of medicine in the Atlantic world today.
Arnold, David, ed. Warm Climates and Western Medicine. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996.
More than half of these essays are Atlantic in nature and discuss medical knowledge and practices in a range of “warm” places. There is a slight imperial bent, as the focus on other places tends to be on how European medical practitioners changed their practices due to contact with others.
Cook, Harold J., and Timothy D. Walker. “Circulation of Medicine in the Early Modern Atlantic World.” Social History of Medicine 26.3 (2013): 337–351.
Explains the pains European medical practitioners and merchants took to procure various foods and spices for medicinal use during the early modern period. Argues that European medicine changed from a humoral approach to one focused on medicinal simples and compounds as more products became available globally. This introductory overview precedes a special issue of the journal focused on the circulation of medical knowledge in the Atlantic world, containing articles by Pablo Gómez and Timothy Walker (see The Iberian Atlantic), Londa Schiebinger on smallpox inoculation, and Renate Wilson on transatlantic medical networks.
De Barros, Juanita, Steven Palmer, and David Wright, eds. Health and Medicine in the Circum-Caribbean, 1800–1968. New York: Routledge, 2009.
As its title suggests, most of the essays in this edited collection relate to the 19th and 20th centuries, but the subject matter departs from other collections, with several on the Spanish Caribbean and one on the Danish West Indies.
Delbourgo, James, and Nicholas Dew, eds. Science and Empire in the Atlantic World. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Although medicine is not the chief focus of this collection, it appears in several of the essays. Chief among them are François Regourd’s chapter on mesmerism in Saint Domingue; Júnia Ferreira Furtado’s piece on 18th-century Brazil and Portuguese physicians’ incorporation of local medical knowledge into their worldview; and Susan Scott Parrish’s essay on British America, which discusses white perceptions of African knowledge of plants, both poisonous and medicinal.
Duffy, John. From Humors to Medical Science: A History of American Medicine. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
An account of the development of medical practice and physicians in British America. Early chapters focus on the 18th century and on colonial medicine as distinct from native and British medicine.
Leavitt, Judith Walzer, and Ronald L. Numbers, eds. Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
A good overview of medicine and public health in the 19th-century United States for women and men of all classes, though mostly white.
Leavitt, Judith Walzer, ed. Women and Health in America: Historical Readings. 2d ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999.
A diverse range of essays on women’s health, including significant sections on health-care providers and public health. Contributions also cover subjects such as fertility, birthing, sexuality, and mental illness for women of different races and ethnicities.
Reiss, Oscar. Medicine in Colonial America. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2000.
A comprehensive survey of illness, health, medicine, and medical treatment in (mostly white) British colonial America.
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Article
- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Asia and the Americas and the Iberian Empires
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Bourbon Reforms in the Spanish Atlantic, The
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- Brazilian Independence
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cortes of Cádiz
- Cosmopolitanism
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern Amazonia
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European Enslavement of Indigenous People in the Americas
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- Founding Myths of the Americas
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- German Influences in America
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Hanoverian Britain
- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Indigo in the Atlantic World
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Maritime Literature
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Maryland
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- Nobility and Gentry in the Early Modern Atlantic World
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Phillis Wheatley
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Poetry in the British Atlantic
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Potosi
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science and Technology (in Literature of the Atlantic Worl...
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
- Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Atlantic World
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Swedish Atlantic World, The
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The Danish Atlantic World
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- The Spanish Caribbean
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Travel Writing (in the Atlantic World)
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
- Warfare in Spanish America
- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- William Blackstone
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
- William Wilberforce
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets