Abstract
I had misgivings in agreeing to address this meeting because of some doubt that I could contribute on the same plane as other contributors. Having now heard the earlier papers I am convinced that my observations must necessarily be at a more mundane level. In other company I might well venture into the philosophy of medicine and medical history, a philosophy which is inherently broader in its concepts and foundations than the philosophy of science and scientific history, even though there is considerable overlap.1 To understand the scientific and humanitarian concepts of medicine, as well as the approaches to research and practice in medicine in any society or culture, demands an understanding of contemporary philosophy. At the same time, perhaps even more than in the history of science, it is possible to adopt a reasonably pragmatic approach. Dr. Crookshank in a slightly tongue-in-cheek introduction to Cumston’s History of Medicine wrote:
... so, a dose of castor oil acts with equal efficiency whether given to expel a demon, to calm the vital spirits, to assuage the Archaeus, to evacuate morbific humours, to eliminate toxins, to restore endocrine balance, or to reduce blood pressure.2
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Notes
In recent years the best studies in this field have been by Lester King, for example (1958) The Medical World of the Eighteenth Century (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press); (1963) The Growth of Medical Thought (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press); (1970) The Road to Medical Enlightenment 1650–1695 ( London: Macdonald). I am concerned here with scientific rather than social philosophy.
Cumston, C. G. (1926) An Introduction to the History of Medicine from the Time of the Pharaohs to the End of the XVIIIth Century: with an essay on the relation of history and philosophy to medicine by F. G. Crookshank (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co.), p. xxix.
Gandevia, B. (1953) ‘Shakespeare and Chaucer: Their Use of Medical Allusion in the Story of Troilus and Criseyde’, Roy. Melb. Hosp. Clin. Rep. 23, 9.
Gandevia, B. (1977) ‘A Comparison of the Heights of Boys Transported to Australia from England, Scotland and Ireland c. 1840, with Later British and Australian Developments’, Aust. Paediat. J. 13, 91. See also Note 17.
Gandevia, B. (1976) ‘Some Physical Characteristics, Including Pock Marks, Tattoos and Disabilities, of Convict Boys Transported to Australia from Britain c. 1840’, Aust. Paediat. J. 12, 6.
Elton, G. R. (1967) The Practice of History ( Sydney: Sydney Univ. Press ), pp. 5, 28.
Gandevia, B. (1975) ‘Socio-Medical Factors in the Evolution of the First Settlement at Sydney Cove, 1788–1803’, J. Roy. Aust. Hist. Soc. 61, 1.
The word ‘welfare’ is used in Australia 1938–1988,Bull. No. 2 (1979) by Dan Coward, Brian Dickey and H. G. Butlin to mean three different things, if I understand them correctly (pp. 12, 13 and 18, respectively). ‘Welfare state’, a notoriously ill-defined term often with deliberately cultivated emotive overtones (pro or con),would give a total of four meanings, if it is conceded that the phrase is at all meaningful. Norma Townsend (‘The Molesworth Enquiry: Does the Report Fit the Evidence?’, J. Austral. Studies 1,1977, 33) noted that ‘reform’ meant different things to most witnesses to the Molesworth Committee and to the priest, W. B. Ullathorne. Social historians, in particular, need to be more aware of these semantic problems than often seems to be the case.
At the time this was written I did not have in mind (although I must have read) Elton’s comment: ‘I once heard [a sociologist] say that the study of the past is superfluous because a true understanding of the present, arrived at by sociological analysis, enables one to extrapolate and explain the past’ (op.cit.,Note 6, p. 10).
Briefly discussed in Gandevia, B. (1978) Tears Often Shed: Child Health and Welfare in Australia from 1788 (Sydney: Pergamon Press), p. 120, but different views have been expressed by Brian Dickey and Michael Horsburgh in several papers published during the last decade.
Gandevia, B. (1967) ‘Medical History in Its Australian Environment’,Med. J. Australia 2, 941.
Gandevia, B. (1974) ‘Mortality at Sydney Cove, 1788–1792’, Aust. N. Z. J. Med. 4, 111.
Gandevia, B. and Forster, F. M. (1974) ‘Fecundity in Early New South Wales: An Evaluation of Australian and Californian Experience’, Bull. New York Acad. Med. 50, 1081.
Lancaster, H. O. (1952) ‘The Mortality from Violence in Australia’, Med. J. Australia 2, 649.
Gandevia, B. (1978) ‘Malingering in the Penal Era: Its Epidemiology and Social Implications, with Contemporary Observations by Dr. James Stuart’, in Festschrift for Kenneth Fitzpatrick Russell, ed. H. Attwood and G. Kenny ( Melbourne: Queensberry Hill Press ), p. 59.
Gandevia, B. (1976) ‘The Epidemiology of Dysentery at Norfolk Island 1840–1843’, Proc. Ann. Mtg. ANZSERCH, Brisbane, p. 198.
Gandevia, B. (1975) ‘The Height and Physical Characteristics of Convicts Transported to Australia c. 1820–1850’, Proc. Ann. Conf. Aust. Assoc. Hist. and Phil. Sci., Sydney; see also Note 5, supra.
The most comprehensive source for information on the infectious diseases in Australia is D. Gordon (1976) Health, Sickness and Society (Brisbane: Univ. Qld. Press). Some further references of historical interest are in Gandevia, B. (1957) An Annotated Bibliography of the History of Medicine in Australia (Sydney: Australasian Med. Publ. Co.), and in Lancaster, H. O. (1964 and 1973) ‘Bibliography of Vital Statistics in Australia and New Zealand’, Aust. J. Statist. 6, 1964, 33 and 15, 1973, 1.
I am grateful to the Editors, Australia 1938–1988 Bulletin,for permission to use material published in Bulletin No. 3, 1979. M. M. Postan (1968) ‘Fact and Relevance in Historical Study’, Hist. Stud. (Melb.), 13, 411,looks at analogous problems from the historian’s viewpoint.
I claim no special expertise or experience in teaching the history of medicine. I have given more seminars in this subject outside medical faculties than in them. The role of medical history in medical education and the means of teaching it have been the subject of many notable publications in recent years: see, for example, a series entitled ‘Viewpoints in the Teaching of the History of Medicine’ in issues of Clio Medica for 1975; Blake, J. B. (ed.) (1968) Education in the History of Medicine (New York: Hafner); Poynter, F. N. L. (ed.) (1969)Medicine and Culture (London: Wellcome Inst. Hist. Med.). Other recent books offer suggestions for courses and syllabi.
Op. cit.,Note 2: p. xviii.
Garlick, H. W. (1972) ‘The Winds of Change’, Med. J. Australia Supplt. 1, 17. A student referring correctly to a collection of dilated and tortuous veins as a ‘caput Medusa(e)5 added that Medusa was the Italian who first described the lesion. Is it possible to cope with this level of ignorance by teaching history and ethics? Some ’educationists’ (â curious word) would wonder if it matters.
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Gandevia, B. (1983). No History without Health. In: Home, R.W. (eds) Science under Scrutiny. Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7672-7_5
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