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History of Medicine Award 2026 — Transcript

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0:00It's a pleasure to be here and it's
0:03exciting to hear the three finalists who
0:06we sat at great length and
0:09chose from
0:12from a list of applicants who really
0:14submitted a wonderful variety of
0:16submissions in terms of the topics and
0:19the sorts of applicants that they were
0:21there's a really diverse range of people
0:24which speaks volumes for the sort of
0:26field that we're interested in
0:28but it's my pleasure to introduce you
0:31consecutively because we'll take each
0:33paper
0:34in a three in a row and then we'll have
0:36the Q&A. So I'm going to introduce each
0:38speaker and then we'll ask them to sit
0:41at the front and take questions. Okay.
0:44So the first finalist Daisy's put them
0:46in alphabetical order
0:49is Sudarshana Banerjee who's a PhD
0:53candidate in modern history at the
0:55University of St. Andrews.
0:58Sudarshana
0:59studied for her MPhil at
1:02Jadavpur University on juvenile
1:05periodicals, print nationalism and the
1:08child reader in colonial Bengal 1880 to
1:121930.
1:13Research topics include Renaissance
1:16women, weather knowledge in the Indian
1:19Ocean world and colonial childhoods.
1:23And the paper we're going to hear
1:24tonight is entitled incorporation and
1:28marginalization,
1:30medical knowledge making, power and the
1:32politics of knowledge circulation during
1:36the company era. Thank you very much.
1:40>> [applause]
1:49>> Hello.
1:51Thank you everyone for being here and
1:52thank you for that lovely introduction.
1:57Sorry. Uh
2:04Is that
2:05and it
2:06Yeah.
2:07Okay.
2:11Good Good evening, everyone, and thank
2:13you so much for being here. As you can
2:14see, the title of my presentation is
2:17incorporation and marginalization,
2:19medical knowledge making, power, and the
2:21politics of knowledge circulation during
2:23the company era.
2:25Broadly, my paper attempts to
2:27investigate the complex and contested
2:30politics of medical knowledge making in
2:32early 19th century company ruled India
2:34through the career of George Playfair,
2:37an East India Company official and
2:38member of the Indian Medical Service.
2:41Playfair served as the medical
2:42professional in the East India Company
2:44Service from 1805 to 1843. Over the
2:47course of his career, he rose from
2:49assistant surgeon to garrison surgeon,
2:52superintendent surgeon, and eventually
2:54to a member of the medical and inspector
2:56general of hospitals in Bengal.
2:58These successive appointments required
3:00him to move across North India, serving
3:03different regions in different
3:04capacities.
3:05Playfair belonged to a family rooted in
3:07St. Andrews, Scotland, with generational
3:09ties to the Indian subcontinent and the
3:11British Empire.
3:14Throughout his service, Playfair, like
3:16many of his medical peers, was
3:19actively involved in the acquisition,
3:20testing, and circulation of indigenous
3:22remedies. This paper focuses on two key
3:25moments in Playfair's engagement with
3:27indigenous medicine.
3:28The first concerns his attempt to
3:30introduce mudar, or sometimes known as
3:32madar, which is essentially a powdered
3:35form of the bark of a plant belonging to
3:37the genus Calotropis, and abundantly
3:40found in various regions of India and
3:42utilized by native healers, into Western
3:44medicine as a remedy for various
3:46disruptive diseases like leprosy.
3:48The second examines his 1833 English
3:51translation of the Talif Sharif, an 18th
3:54century Persian medical text.
3:56I will contrast and interrogate the
3:58enthusiasm with which the knowledge of
4:00mudar was circulated and received in the
4:03British medical press with the relative
4:05silence surrounding the Talif. Through a
4:07comparative analysis of these two case
4:09studies, I will demonstrate that early
4:1119th century knowledge making by company
4:14officials within the Indian subcontinent
4:16was characterized simultaneously by
4:18processes of collaboration and erasure,
4:21selective incorporation and systemic
4:23marginalization.
4:25Now, historians of science and medicine
4:27in late 20th and early 21st century have
4:30amply shown that medical knowledge
4:31making in the colony was a hybrid,
4:34negotiated and dependent on asymmetrical
4:36collaboration. They have explored how
4:38knowledge collected in these colonial
4:40contact zones was recorded and
4:42circulated, focusing particularly on
4:44European travelers, orientalist scholars
4:46and missionaries. However, while many
4:48studies have explored the movement of
4:50knowledge, much less attention has been
4:52given to the institutional and
4:54intellectual structure that determine
4:57what kinds of knowledge, once collected
4:59and recorded, could circulate more
5:00widely and what kinds did not.
5:03Only very recent work on
5:05transnationality have begun to explore
5:07the blockages of knowledge transmission
5:09alongside movement. This paper argues
5:12that George Playfair's career activities
5:14in India provides an excellent potential
5:16to uncover the frictions in knowledge
5:18transmission, especially at the level of
5:21the company state and the metropolitan
5:23medical press.
5:26Following is the brief summary of the
5:27details of the two case studies that I
5:29wish to talk about in this presentation.
5:32First, you can see a case for mudar from
5:34indigenous remedy to from indigen- from
5:36indigenous therapeutic to imperial
5:38medicine.
5:41Playfair first encountered mudar or
5:43calotropis in 1811 being used by
5:46indigenous practitioners as an
5:48ingredient in a recipe for a remedy
5:50against leprosy.
5:52In 1814, Playfair attempted to introduce
5:54mudar to government hospitals by
5:57appealing directly to the medical board
5:58of Bengal. However, the board failed to
6:01give it a fair trial and never properly
6:03communicated the results.
6:05Faced with this institutional and
6:07bureaucratic obstacle, Playfair changed
6:09tactics.
6:11In 1825, he published a paper on mudar
6:14in the transactions of the Medical and
6:16Physical Society of Calcutta, the first
6:18English language medical journal
6:19produced in India.
6:21Now, a brief note about this society is
6:24warranted.
6:25The society was founded in 1823 and in
6:271825 it it published its first-ever
6:30medical journal to be produced in the
6:32colony. The objective was
6:34essentially to act as a forum for
6:37discussion of medical discoveries and
6:38experiment by EIC physicians and
6:41surgeons and collect all medical
6:43findings in the subcontinent into a
6:45medical journal.
6:46The journal also imagined a dual
6:48audience, medical practitioners in the
6:50colony and readers back in Britain.
6:54Playfair's paper was devoted entirely to
6:56justifying mudar's worth through Western
6:59norms of scientific validation.
7:01How did he do that? In the paper, he
7:03attached details of case studies,
7:05extracts of correspondence with fellow
7:07medical practitioners, and their
7:09testimonies where mudar was hailed to
7:11have been found beneficial for diseases
7:13like leprosy and syphilis, which were
7:15seen as a threat to military and
7:17imperial stability.
7:19So, indigenous knowledge therefore was
7:21revalidated through European epistemic
7:23practices.
7:24You can see in this slide, this is the
7:26concluding part of his paper where he is
7:28reiterating the fact that he has duly
7:31followed norms of scientific validation
7:33through peer evaluation.
7:35And after the publication of this paper
7:37in the transactions, mudar quickly
7:39attracted attention in Britain.
7:42Articles appeared in Edinburgh Medical
7:44and Surgical Journal and prominent
7:46physicians from Edinburgh and Glasgow
7:48suggested that it could replace
7:50expensive imported drugs and even
7:52potentially emerge as a profitable
7:55export from Britain's Eastern Empire.
7:59And as Mudar circulated, however, its
8:01indigenous origins faded into
8:03background. In correspondence and in
8:05metropolitan publications, Playfair was
8:07increasingly credited, sometimes
8:09explicitly and sometimes implicitly as
8:11the drug's discoverer.
8:13The local practitioners vanished as the
8:15drug gradually acquired economic and
8:17strategic value.
8:19So, in short, Mudar neatly aligned with
8:21imperial priorities. It addressed
8:23diseases that threatened military and
8:25imperial stability and promised
8:28commercial utility and is circulated.
8:31You can see in this slide, it is an 1878
8:34text on new commercial plants where
8:36Mudar is mentioned and Playfair is
8:38described as one of the discoverers. So,
8:40you can see that the commercial prospect
8:42of Mudar was recognized even beyond the
8:44metropolitan medical circle.
8:47The second case study, however, unfolded
8:49quite differently.
8:52In 1833, Playfair published an English
8:54translation of the Unani medical text
8:57Kalifi Sharifi, originally written by
9:00Hakim Muhammad Sharif Khan, the court
9:02hakim to Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah.
9:05Now, the Unani system was a system of
9:07humoral medicine derived from ancient
9:09Greco-Roman medical traditions. It was
9:11brought to India in the 8th century and
9:14developed through Perso-Arabic
9:15scholarship. It was patronized by
9:17Sultanate and Mughal rulers from the
9:1913th century and it thrived through a
9:21dialogue with other pre-colonial
9:23knowledge systems like the Ayurveda.
9:26Now, while in the late 18th and early
9:2719th century, the company medical
9:29officials, still unfamiliar with the
9:31medical landscape of the colony,
9:33maintained a degree of collaboration
9:35with local Unani practitioners and drew
9:38upon their knowledge and healing
9:39practices as Western medicine acquired
9:42greater formalization and simultaneously
9:45a notion of superiority, this
9:46collaborative environment weakened. At
9:49times, there were reports of direct
9:51tensions between colonial medical
9:52practitioners and the Unanis. And annual
9:55reports of company dispensaries alleged
9:58that local hakims, that is Unani
9:59practitioners, were attracting a greater
10:02number of patients through false rumors
10:04about the ill effects of Western
10:06medicine. Unani practitioners were often
10:08portrayed in these reports as greedy,
10:10concerned purely with monetary gain.
10:13So, Playfair's translation work was done
10:15in this transitional period between
10:17collaboration and contestation.
10:19The English version was titled the Talif
10:22Sharif or the Indian Materia Medica and
10:24it was published by the same Calcutta
10:26society that had printed his Mudar
10:28paper.
10:30The original text, that is Sharif Khan's
10:32text, is essentially a compendium of
10:34indigenous botanical and animal-derived
10:36therapeutics. And Playfair's intention
10:39was to provide a guide to young medical
10:41officers navigating unfamiliar terrains
10:44in India.
10:46But why did he choose this particular
10:47text? To understand that, we have to
10:50peek into the narrative structure of the
10:52original text.
10:55Beyond listing drugs, the original
10:58author frequently adopted a dialogic
11:00narrative style, referencing and
11:03engaging with works of other hakims
11:05regarding the effectiveness of a certain
11:08drug or a botanical produce. You can see
11:11here in the left picture, you can see
11:13that the reference to opinions of two
11:15hakims in the original text regarding
11:17the effects of mango.
11:19This narrative style is significant
11:21because it reveals the elements of
11:22debate, disagreement, and peer
11:24evaluation, which were forms of
11:26reasoning that we have seen that
11:28Playfair himself clearly valued. And I
11:30argue that this dialogic structure have
11:33been one of the reasons the text
11:35appealed to him as it closely resembled
11:38the correspondence and peer evaluation
11:40practices he relied upon in his own
11:42work. However, at the same time,
11:44Playfair frequently intervened within
11:46the text, clarifying, commenting, and
11:48comparing indigenous practices with his
11:50own clinical experiences. Here you can
11:52see in the right image, he is commenting
11:54that he has tried this particular
11:56therapeutic for lepra without much
11:58effect and he he is clearly dis-
12:00tinguishing his statement from that of
12:02the original text.
12:04But, despite aligning with company's
12:07stated goals of collecting, translating,
12:09and formalizing indigenous knowledge,
12:11the Talif Sharif was largely ignored in
12:13Britain.
12:15It did appear in certain library
12:17catalogs and lists of new publications,
12:20but it rarely featured in medical
12:22journals and discourse, in contrast to
12:25other contemporary compilations of
12:27Indian materia medica authored by
12:29Playfair's medical peers and
12:31contemporaries such as
12:34Whitelaw Ainslie's Materia Medica of
12:37Hindustan or R. H. Irvine's Short
12:39Materia Medica of Patna.
12:41The Talif was also notably notably
12:44excluded from W. O'Shaughnessy's Bengal
12:47Dispensatory and Pharmacopoeia,
12:49which specifically drew upon these
12:51contemporary colonial Indian materia
12:53medical literature or catalogs of Indian
12:56indigenous therapeutics compiled by
12:58company officials. And this exclusion is
13:00striking since Playfair's journal and
13:02correspondences reveal O'Shaughnessy as
13:05a close professional peer.
13:08So, why this uh distinction? The most
13:11probable reason for this lukewarm
13:14reception or in certain cases outright
13:16exclusion of Talif is, I suggest, the
13:19ambiguity of authorship.
13:21The Talif was different from the other
13:23colonial medical texts uh on Indian
13:26materia medica. All these other
13:27contemporary texts were clearly authored
13:30by the colonial medical officers
13:32completely. The presumption then was
13:34that the list of useful botanical
13:36therapeutics and local medical knowledge
13:38that these texts provided were then
13:40already verified and validated by these
13:43officers. The Kalif, however, was
13:45published as a complete translation. And
13:49therefore it could not be easily
13:51detached from its indigenous
13:53epistemological roots. And it seems
13:55Playfair himself was acutely aware of
13:58the potential loss of legitimacy. His
14:00name alone dominated the title page and
14:03the indigenous author remained unnamed
14:05throughout.
14:07There is also a very revealing editorial
14:09note at the end of the translation
14:11stating that sections dealing with
14:14sorcery and incantation were omitted
14:16with the translated permission. This on
14:18one hand reassured the reader of
14:20editorial propriety, but also
14:22acknowledged that erasure was necessary
14:25to render the text acceptable.
14:27So the Kalif did not, I suggest, align
14:30comfortably within the conventions of
14:33reliable medical authority. It was
14:35perhaps too visibly a translation, too
14:37ambiguously authored, and too closely
14:39tied to a medical tradition not yet
14:41wholly subordinated to Western modes of
14:44validation.
14:48So the case of the Mudaran Kalif
14:50exemplified cases of facilitation and
14:52blockage of knowledge. The enthusiasm
14:54regarding the Mudaran is in stark
14:56contrast with the relative silence
14:58surrounding Kalif. Although the Mudaran
15:00also initially encountered challenges
15:02from the medical board, Playfair's
15:04strategy of appealing to the wider
15:06medical community ultimately proved
15:08successful.
15:09Combined with its proven efficacy
15:11against diseases such as leprosy and
15:13syphilis, conditions that were
15:14notoriously difficult to treat in the
15:16pre-antibiotic era, and potentially
15:19threatened the stability of empire and
15:21its commercial prospect, Mudar was
15:23enthusiastically welcomed. And to early
15:26scholars of knowledge exchange, such
15:27cases might appear as examples of a form
15:30of scientific internationalism.
15:32However, this notion, which has already
15:34been amply criticized, greatly breaks
15:36apart in case of the Talif. Mudar could
15:39be disassociated from its indigenous
15:41roots and reinvented as a colonial
15:43medical discovery. This was difficult to
15:45achieve in the case of Talif. While
15:48published as a translation, we have seen
15:50that it nevertheless attempted to
15:52subject indigenous knowledge to
15:53processes of formalization and scrutiny,
15:56which is evident in Playfair's frequent
15:58authorial interventions within the text.
16:00Yet, the translated Talif perhaps
16:02retained too many visible traces of the
16:04epistemological tradition from which it
16:06emerged, traces that the colonial
16:08medical discourse at this point in time
16:10was in context with.
16:13So, these two case studies therefore
16:15reveal much about the process of
16:17selective promotion and marginalization
16:19of knowledge within imperial systems of
16:21circulation. Even knowledge that had
16:23been translated, reordered, and
16:25partially reframed according to Western
16:27epistemic traditions could be
16:29marginalized and excluded from medical
16:31discourse if it retained too strong an
16:34association with the with intellectual
16:36traditions of its origin. Thank you very
16:38much.
16:40>> [applause]
16:44[applause]
16:53[clears throat]
16:53>> Thank you so much for a fantastic start
16:56to our proceedings um and
16:59brilliant time keeping also. Um I will
17:02now introduce our second speaker. Um
17:05Matthew Daniel Eddy is Professor in the
17:07history and philosophy of science at
17:09Durham University and co-director of the
17:13Institute of Medieval and Early Modern
17:15Studies.
17:17Pub- Publications include the books
17:19Media and the Mind, Art, Science, and
17:22Notebooks as Paper Machines,
17:24and the Language of Mineralogy, John
17:27Walker, Chemistry, and the Edinburgh
17:29Medical School 1750 to 1800.
17:33And tonight's paper is titled Moral
17:36Medicine, Health Activism, Human Rights,
17:40and the Afterlife of the Scottish
17:42Enlightenment in Colonial Trinidad.
17:51>> [applause]
17:52>> Thank you, and it's a pleasure to be
17:54here today.
17:55In 1824,
17:57the black physician Dr. Jean Baptiste
18:00Philippe petitioned the British
18:02Secretary of State for War and Colonies,
18:05Lord Bathurst, to censor and remove the
18:08pro-slavery governor of Trinidad, Ralph
18:12Woodford.
18:13To support his case against Woodford,
18:16Philippe published a 300-page
18:19pamphlet that detailed the governor's
18:21attempts to institute apartheid.
18:24In addition to offering crucial insight
18:27into the dynamic forms of health
18:29activism developed on the ground by
18:32black actors in the British Empire
18:35between the 1807 and 1833 anti-slavery
18:39acts, this paper suggests that
18:42Philippe's pamphlet was a noteworthy
18:44contribution to the moral philosophy of
18:47public health, an understudied but
18:49eminently important genre of
18:52abolitionist thought during the early
18:5419th century.
18:59So, my interest in Philippe is part of a
19:01larger project provisionally titled
19:03Moral Data.
19:04It explores how Scottish-educated
19:07black doctors used medical evidence
19:09during the early 19th century to
19:12advocate on behalf of people who did not
19:15have a voice, many of whom were either
19:18poor or of African descent.
19:20The project focuses on the doctor's
19:22activities in Britain, North America,
19:25and West Africa.
19:28Though many black apothecaries,
19:30surgeons, and doctors operated in the
19:32Atlantic world during the 19th century,
19:35hardly any research has been done on
19:38their lives.
19:39And my work on Philippe and other black
19:42doctors seeks to reclaim their legacy,
19:45thereby adding a rich new strand to the
19:49history of medicine as we presently know
19:51it.
19:55So, who was Philippe? Philippe was a
19:57native of Trinidad and came from a free
20:00black family that owned land in the area
20:02of Naparima um Naparima.
20:05Philippe's early education is unknown,
20:09but as a teenager, his family sent him
20:12to London to study at the Alfred House
20:14Academy run by the Huguenot doctor
20:18Nicholas Bonne Strake.
20:20The school specialized in preparing
20:22students for legal education, but for
20:25reasons that are presently unclear,
20:28Philippe decided to pursue a medical
20:30doctorate at Edinburgh University.
20:34He began his Edinburgh studies in 1812,
20:37and he finished his medical doctorate in
20:391815,
20:41making him the earliest Afro-Caribbean
20:44student known to graduate from a British
20:46University.
20:48He received a surgeon's license from the
20:50Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh
20:52in the same year he graduated, that is
20:541815.
20:56So, my recent research in Edinburgh
20:59University special collection has
21:00discovered Philippe's name on the lists
21:03for courses for midwifery, practice of
21:06medicine, institutes of medicine,
21:09clinical surgery, materia medica, and
21:12anatomy.
21:13Notably,
21:15the records reveal that Philip's
21:17practice of medicine course was taught
21:18by John Gregory, a member of this
21:21esteemed college, whose lectures touched
21:24on the relationship between mind and
21:26body.
21:27Perhaps this might explain why Philip
21:30wrote a Latin medical dissertation on
21:33madness, a topic which in Scotland fused
21:37medicine with an understanding of the
21:40mind that was strongly influenced by the
21:44behavioral and emotional cognitivist
21:46model developed by Scottish moral
21:48philosophy.
21:50Philip's dissertation concentrated
21:53mainly on the physiological causes and
21:56cures of female hysteria and male
21:59hypochondria.
22:01But his required clinical training in
22:04the Edinburgh Infirmary
22:06and the sources he cites in his
22:08dissertation also addressed the mental
22:11aspects of madness.
22:13And this Scottish cognitive model
22:16recogn- recognized the psychological
22:19impact of a person's social environment
22:22upon their mental health. And we'll see
22:24this is very important in his work in
22:26Trinidad.
22:28So, why did he write his pamphlet?
22:31So, Philip finished his Edinburgh
22:32studies in 1815 and returned to Trinidad
22:36with the goal of practicing as a surgeon
22:38or even possibly a medical doctor.
22:41But his efforts were thwarted by the
22:44pro-slavery governor Ralph Woodford.
22:47And from the time of Philip's return
22:49until 1823,
22:51Woodford issued numerous executive
22:54orders that were designed to reduce the
22:57civil and human rights of the the and
23:00enslaved black population and the
23:03indigenous population.
23:05Contrary to the aim of the 1807
23:08Anti-Slavery Act, Woodford wanted to
23:12create an apartheid state.
23:15The orders he filed against the black
23:17and indigenous populations included
23:20restriction of movement,
23:22lower pay for labor, impressed service
23:25for government infrastructure projects,
23:28reduced access to public officials,
23:31mandated salutes to white inhabitants,
23:34denial of due process in the courts, and
23:36more.
23:41In response, Phillippe filed a complaint
23:43in the form of a petition against
23:45Woodford in 1824
23:47with Lord Bathurst, Britain's Secretary
23:50of the Colonies.
23:52To bolster the limited claims he was
23:54allowed to make in the brief space of
23:57the petition, he published a 300-page
24:01pamphlet entitled Address to Lord
24:04Bathurst.
24:06Drawing from his legal training under
24:07the Van der Waals Rocks and his
24:09psychiatric training at Edinburgh
24:11University, he crafted a narrative that
24:14demonstrated Woodford had not only
24:17broken civil and moral laws by
24:21rescinding rights, but he also created
24:25an environment of collective trauma that
24:28threatened the stability of the island.
24:32Phillippe supported his argument with
24:34scores of documentation ranging from
24:37excerpts of dispatches he hand-copied in
24:40the colony's archive in Government House
24:42here
24:43to the personal testimony of black
24:45inhabitants.
24:46The purpose of the pamphlet was to
24:49indict Woodford for the crimes against
24:52the black population.
24:56In the longer version of this paper, I
24:58explored the sources related to the
25:00universal natural right of liberty that
25:03Philip used to challenge Governor
25:05Woodford's apartheid measures, but for
25:07the sake of time, I shall move on to my
25:10next section.
25:12And this addresses the role of social
25:14psychiatry.
25:16So, Philip his comments about the
25:19relationship between mental health and
25:22well-being reveal
25:25his interest in what today would be
25:26called social psychiatry.
25:28And as shown by R. A. Houston and
25:30others, social and environmental
25:32conditions played a notable role in
25:35early Scottish psychological and
25:37psychiatric theories.
25:39Drawing from the works of Locke, John
25:42Locke, and other Lockean's such as
25:44William Paley and French authors such as
25:46the anti-colonial writer Abbe Raynal,
25:49Scottish medical professors like Cullen
25:52and Gregory emphasized the environmental
25:55factors that facilitated
25:57poor mental health.
26:00In promoting this model, physicians
26:02operated within the domain of moral
26:05philosophy as practiced during the
26:07Scottish Enlightenment.
26:09And true to this tradition, Philip cites
26:12Locke, Paley, Raynal when discussing the
26:15relationship between the mind and
26:18society.
26:23Philip held that the consistent depri-
26:26deprivation or oppression of a large
26:29group of people created a collective
26:31form of trauma. And this view is
26:33expressed throughout his pamphlet, but
26:35it crystallizes in his discussion of
26:38William Robertson's thoughts about the
26:41mental impact of impotent or corrupt
26:44governments.
26:46Robertson was an Edinburgh historian
26:48significantly influenced by the
26:50cognitivist model of Scottish moral
26:52philosophy.
26:53In his book History of Scotland, which
26:56Philip quotes at length, he argued that
27:00discriminatory discriminatory decisions
27:03made by governments or rulers created a
27:06collective public resentment.
27:09In Roberts Robertson's words, quote,
27:12resentment, for obvious reasons, one of
27:14the strongest passions of the human
27:16mind,
27:18the demand of this passion is that one
27:20person who feels injury should himself
27:22inflict vengeance due to that account.
27:25Unquote.
27:26The implicit argument here is that
27:28corrupt governments deny natural rights,
27:31which in turn corrupts the human mind
27:34via the introduction of uncontrollable
27:37passions shared [snorts] by a large
27:39amount of the public.
27:45So, what was this notion of collective
27:47trauma?
27:50Following the moral philosopher William
27:52Paley, sent um since all minds were
27:55blank at birth, who held that Philip
27:58held that mental operations, a core part
28:02of 18th-century psychiatry,
28:05must be trained to recognize the concept
28:09or the application of a rule.
28:11Philip extended this psychological
28:13tenant in his pamphlet and argued that
28:15emotion, which he called feeling,
28:19if habitually harassed by a power, such
28:22as the state, has the capacity to
28:24override a person's desire to follow a
28:27rule.
28:28Accordingly, he documented numerous
28:30instances where Woodford's revocation of
28:33natural rights caused extreme negative
28:36emotions within the black population.
28:40And this is core psychia- psychia-
28:42psychiatric country at this time period.
28:45The emotions that he cites includes
28:48in his words, improper feeling,
28:51low feeling. These are all things that
28:52the governor was inciting. Jealous
28:54feeling, indignant feeling, wounded
28:58feelings, painful feelings, outrage
29:00feelings, low and contracted feelings.
29:03In today's terminology, the repeated
29:05experience of these feelings across
29:07the entire black population as recounted
29:10by Philippe, could easily be described
29:13as a form of collective trauma.
29:16His collective terms for the situations
29:18were demoralized condition and mental
29:22degradation.
29:23Both of which were, in his words, the
29:26source of destruction to moral
29:27principle.
29:31Though Philippe does not explicitly
29:33state that mental degradation could
29:35cause the black population to revolt, he
29:38suggests that it could likely, in quote,
29:41inspire an injured race with deadly hate
29:44against the abettors of a system which
29:46lends willing sanction to the oppression
29:48and tyranny, unquote.
29:51It is on this point about commonly
29:54shared deadly hate
29:56where Philippe cites William Robertson's
29:58view about the destructive impact of
30:00collective resentment.
30:02The implication being that Governor
30:04Woodford's revocation of natural rights
30:07had created a dangerous epidemic
30:10of collective trauma that, if left
30:12unchecked, would destroy the political
30:15and social stability of Trinidad and the
30:17Caribbean more broadly.
30:19This message was especially poignant in
30:221824,
30:24the year Philippe published the the
30:25petition. Indeed, ins- enslaved worker
30:29rebellions had taken place in the
30:32Caribbean in 1816 and 1821, and also two
30:36had recently taken place in 1823.
30:43So, a final few words of conclusion.
30:47So, this In this paper, we've seen that
30:50Philip's position on the relationship
30:52between social factors and moral
30:55development constituted what could be
30:57called a moral philosophy of public
31:00health that, like the writings of
31:03contemporary
31:04uh Scottish trained psychiatrist, called
31:08for a better understanding of the
31:10state's responsibility to recognize the
31:13role it played in social psychiatry.
31:16This jointly medical and social approach
31:20to health constitutes the earliest known
31:23example of this kind of thinking
31:26published by a black medical doctor in
31:29Britain or its former colonies,
31:32making Philip's life a notable chapter
31:35in the history of medicine and its
31:38cultural influences.
31:40Thank you.
31:57>> Thank you so much. Um we have one final
32:00paper to give you tonight, and that is
32:03um
32:04Shin-yi Wang, who is a long-term
32:07research fellow in intellectual cultural
32:10and art history at the Warburg
32:12Institute, School of Advanced Study,
32:15University of London.
32:17Um with a PhD from University of
32:19Cambridge on the signature of plants in
32:22early modern Europe, 1580 to 1720,
32:27and interests in topics such as
32:30astrological medicine, microscopy, and
32:34botanical illustration.
32:36Um
32:37Shin-yi's paper title tonight uh is the
32:41intriguing The Doctrine of Signatures, A
32:44Reversed History, 1896
32:48to 1584.
32:52>> [applause]
32:56>> Thank you, everybody. It's with pleasure
32:59and honor to be here.
33:01So, to begin with,
33:03let me ask you a question.
33:05Have you heard of a saying that you are
33:08what you eat?
33:10If you eat an apple, you're an apple,
33:12right? If you eat carrots and a
33:14broccolis, you are carrots and
33:16broccolis.
33:18Yeah, we know that the fruits and the
33:20vegetables we eat every day are
33:22extremely important for us.
33:24And believing in that, somebody argued
33:27that
33:29to be in a better health, you should eat
33:31the food that resemble the organ that
33:33they're good for.
33:35For instance, if you want to be smarter,
33:38you should eat walnuts because walnuts
33:40look like a brain.
33:42If you want to have a good eyesight, you
33:44should eat carrots if you resemble an
33:46eye if you cut the carrots, right?
33:49vertically.
33:50And that idea is called the doctrine of
33:52signatures. It's about how a plant's
33:55appearance could reveal its medicinal
33:58purpose.
33:59And by signature, it means that the part
34:01of a plant that resembles body part, the
34:04resemblance is called its signature.
34:07So, question two.
34:09According to the doctrine of signatures,
34:11what should it be the best plant to eat
34:13in the world?
34:15Right?
34:16It should be a plant that resembles the
34:19entire human body, isn't it?
34:22For instance,
34:23the mandrake, as the one in Harry
34:25Potter, looks like a human.
34:28Or the ginseng, like in Chinese
34:30medicine. They both look at human,
34:32doesn't doesn't they?
34:35And also apologies in the 19th century
34:37called Edward Tyler is extremely
34:39interested in this doctrine of
34:41signatures.
34:42He made a whole page of notes see on the
34:45doctrine of signatures.
34:47And he even made a drawing. Can you see
34:49it? Right here.
34:51That is a drawing of a mandrake. A
34:54mandrake with a body and two legs that
34:56are crossing each other.
34:58And if you compare that to his actual
35:00collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum in
35:02Oxford.
35:04There is actually a mandrake that looks
35:06like this. But it's really huge, like
35:09this huge. And with body and with legs
35:12that really looks like a human.
35:14But actually it's a fake mandrake. It's
35:16a bryony, not mandrake.
35:17Don't tell him.
35:19He's also interested in collecting
35:21ginsenosides and he even bought some
35:23ginseng samples from a missionary Robert
35:27Fortune who once worked in China in
35:28Manchuria. And he got See, that's his
35:31ginseng.
35:33Smaller than the bryony, but here here
35:35it is.
35:36Also at Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.
35:40And the for Tyler, the doctrine of
35:42signature is something that belongs to
35:44the global what he called primitive
35:46cultures. Right? The ginseng which is
35:48used in China was also employed by the
35:50Indians of North America. And in both
35:53countries its virtues was deduced from
35:55the shape of its roots, which is
35:57supposed to resemble the human body.
36:00Just like a mandrake. And that is called
36:02the doctrine of signatures.
36:04It's written in his work on the early
36:06history of mankind and the development
36:08of civilization.
36:10And for him, the doctrine of signatures
36:13is an occult science that is based on
36:16the association of ideas.
36:19And it's a kind of original thinking
36:21that at the very foundation of the
36:23original thinking. And as with the
36:25normal prejudices you would expect from
36:28a Victorian anthropologist towards non
36:30the the non-Western people, he believed
36:33that this is something for the human
36:35beings in a lower intellectual
36:38condition.
36:40However,
36:41let me highlight that. Tyler didn't
36:43learn the word doctrine of signatures
36:46from America or Asia, and I can assure
36:48you that there isn't a Chinese word that
36:51directly translates into doctrine of
36:53signatures.
36:55This reading note he's writing is
36:57actually
36:58the reading note of a pharmacopoeia
37:01textbook by John Harris,
37:03which
37:05heavily relied on a historical
37:07introduction of the on the history of
37:10pharmacy in a treatise of materia medica
37:14by da da da da da our
37:17very president of the Royal College of
37:19Physicians of
37:21Edinburgh, William Cullen. We have
37:23Cullen's seal right over there.
37:26And the for Cullen, the doctrine of
37:29signatures, right? It is just
37:30ridiculous.
37:32Let me see how he's writing about
37:33doctrine of signatures.
37:35He's talking about a one plant called
37:37rhubarb, I'm sure you're familiar with
37:38it.
37:39The rhubarb has been said to operate
37:41upon the liver and to be useful for
37:43jaundice, but I cannot find any
37:46foundation for this either in theory or
37:48practice, and I believe this opinion has
37:51arisen entirely from the ridiculous
37:54doctrine of signatures about which he
37:56has written so much.
37:58So, why did he say that
38:00the rhubarb using for jaundice is a
38:03doctrine of signatures? You know about
38:04jaundice, right?
38:06The season of which is having red uh the
38:09yellow skin and yellow eyes, and if you
38:11look at the
38:13rhubarb powder both today and in the
38:1518th century, it's a kind of yellow
38:17powder.
38:18And the yellowness, that is the
38:20signature could be in, right? And
38:24that's a signature.
38:26But, if we look into the actual
38:28prescription that Cullen has been given
38:31to his his patients, like like for this
38:34one, a Captain Ramsay,
38:36apparently, there is no sort of doubt
38:38about this person's disease, and the
38:41Cullen is confident that he just has
38:43jaundice.
38:44And his prescription is half an ounce of
38:47Spanish soap, a drachma each of
38:49wormwood, and powdered rhubarb
38:52electuary, and some common syrup
38:56to be divided into pills.
38:59And for another person, called Ralph
39:01Bates,
39:04he's also plainly got a jaundice, and
39:06probably some gallstones.
39:10And again, the same prescription. A
39:12drachma each of very good powdered
39:14rhubarb, and a crushed powder of
39:17wormwood, some Spanish soap, and a
39:19simple syrup to make an electuary.
39:22So, seeing that, although he's
39:24criticizing rhubarb's use for jaundice
39:26so much,
39:28he's still using the same medicine as
39:30his go-to medicine for jaundice
39:32patients, right?
39:34Didn't you say that rhubarb curing
39:36jaundice was the ridiculous doctrine of
39:38signatures? Why is he arguing against
39:41himself?
39:43Right?
39:43To understand that, we need to go back
39:46in time again
39:48to Culpeper's botanical reference book
39:52by the common botanist John Ray in the
39:5417th century, the Historia Plantarum.
39:58And in there, John Ray offered a
40:00systematic
40:02criticism against the doctrine of
40:04signatures, which which is what I
40:06believe Cullen's criticism came from.
40:09First, most plants in nature did not
40:11have signatures, and those with
40:13signatures were only a small part,
40:16right?
40:17And the many plants resemble a wide
40:19range of natural and artificial things
40:21to which they have no relation
40:23medicine-wise.
40:25And third, many current resemblances are
40:28just obscure and not easy to observe.
40:31Makes sense, doesn't it?
40:34But,
40:36John Ray also says that
40:38the signatures can also serve to aid the
40:41memory and make it easier for us to
40:44remember the medical faculties of the
40:47plants that bear this kind of mark as if
40:50imprinted on their foreheads, the
40:53plants' foreheads. So, it doesn't really
40:55matter that many plants that don't have
40:58signatures. What matters is that some
41:01plants have signatures and that we can
41:03use the signatures to remember their
41:05medical faculties.
41:07That's what John Ray has been saying.
41:10And if we look into the medical herbals
41:13published in the 17th century, we can
41:16see that the signatures have always been
41:19memory and a search aid.
41:21This is a botanical and popular herbal
41:23published by botanist William Coles in
41:26the 17th century. And then we can see
41:28that it has a really long title. This
41:31page is all about the title.
41:34It's called Adam in Eden or Nature's
41:36Paradise blah blah blah, the history of
41:38all kinds of plants and of fruits and
41:41herbs and flowers with their names and
41:43their signatures and medical virtues.
41:47And this book is written because
41:50the author wants the ingenious
41:52practitioners
41:54to find from their own fields and
41:56gardens and on emergent and sudden
41:59occasions
42:01the cheapest, the easiest, and most
42:04wholesome cures for any part of the body
42:07that is ill affected.
42:09So, it's mainly a handbook
42:11for people of all kinds to find the
42:14remedies easily.
42:16And that is why he's using doctrine of
42:18signatures in it.
42:20In this book, we can see that
42:22William Coles arranged all kinds of
42:25plants based on their signatures. Like
42:28an index.
42:29In the beginning, there are some plants
42:31for the heads. For instance, the
42:33walnuts, the peony, the poppy, all kinds
42:35of plants that walnuts we know has a
42:37resemblance to a brain, right? And the
42:39peony has a red flower, as very easy in
42:42the signature is.
42:45And then for the
42:47for the ears, for the hair, for the
42:49nose, for the tooth.
42:52He categorized all those plants in a
42:54sequence from head to toe head to toe
42:57and assigned a signature to all of them.
43:00So, if you have a headache, you enter
43:02the first chapter. If you have some ear
43:04pain, then the third or fourth chapter.
43:07That's the convenience of the
43:09signatures.
43:11And
43:13the point is for William Coles,
43:16in order to have signatures, the plants
43:19doesn't really have to look like
43:21anything. I'll give you a test.
43:24Look at this plant.
43:26Does it look familiar to you? Anybody
43:28know what it is?
43:29All right. And what does it look like to
43:32you?
43:33Does it resemble anything?
43:35It's hard to say, isn't it?
43:38And this is what William Coles said.
43:41First, this is
43:43dropwort, and this is the root of
43:45dropwort, which consisting of round
43:48tuberous pieces,
43:50do somewhat resemble the stone in a
43:53man's bladder. And it signifies that it
43:56is an excellent remedy for the stone.
43:59And it can help to break and expel the
44:02stone either in the kidneys or in the
44:05bladder.
44:06Yeah.
44:08Does it really look like a
44:09kidney stone to you. Really? No, right?
44:14As William Cole said, right? It's only
44:16somewhat resembling the stone in a
44:18bladder.
44:19So,
44:20the resemblance isn't something that
44:22really matters. What it matters is that
44:25the dropwort is really an excellent
44:28remedy for the stone, and that's why
44:31Cole tried to assign a signature to it.
44:35So, the remedies it actually used came
44:37first, and the signature came after that
44:40as a way to remember it.
44:43And that brings us to the beginning of
44:45doctrine of signatures. We might wonder,
44:47right? Who really invented it? What
44:49happened in the first place?
44:51And there's somewhat of a kind of
44:53popular image from southern Germany in
44:55the 16th century, which is the God
44:58dressing and a working like a farmer,
45:00like a apothecary, with a lot of bottles
45:03that has labels.
45:05And that is what Paracelsus, the
45:07alchemist, said
45:09in 1584,
45:11that God has marked all kinds of natural
45:14things with their signatures, just like
45:17the vessels and boxes in the drug shops,
45:20which are all distinguished by peculiar
45:22names and labels affixed to them.
45:25So, signatures are just like the labels
45:28that God have given to different kind of
45:30plants.
45:31Not all of them has a label, but some of
45:33them do, and the labels are always
45:35correct, right? Because God is correct.
45:38So, here's conclusion.
45:40We've gone through a lot of weird plants
45:43from the 19th century to the 18th
45:45century, 17th century, and the 16th
45:47century, from ginseng and mandrake to
45:49rhubarb to dropwort and to God's
45:52medicine.
45:53After all this,
45:56what is the doctrine of signatures?
45:59You can see that in a reversed history,
46:01the doctrine of signatures was invented
46:04and imagined in the 19th century as an
46:07orientalist fancy, as something
46:10belonging to the so-called primitive
46:12people, the non-Western people.
46:15And in the Enlightenment, it was
46:17criticized as a ridiculous theory that
46:19makes no sense to anybody by our very
46:22own William Cullen and many renowned
46:24physicians.
46:26But actually, it emerged in the 16th and
46:2917th century as a very practical
46:32technique, as an index of plants, as a
46:35label of plants, as something that
46:37simply can help you remember and help
46:40people remember plants' different
46:42virtues.
46:44Right?
46:45It's only for labeling the useful
46:47plants.
46:48So, these plants were useful not because
46:51not because they resemble anything.
46:55Rather, because they were useful, people
46:58assigned them with resemblances.
47:00Sometimes, it doesn't even look like
47:02anything, but people would assign them
47:04resemblances.
47:06That's what I'm going to show you.
47:09Thank you.

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