Review of Impossible Engineering

Chandra Mukerji’s Impossible Engineering

Chandra Mukerji’s 2009 monograph Impossible Engineering: Technology and Territoriality on the Canal du Midi[1] narrates the mid-late seventeenth century construction of the Canal du Midi, a feat of engineering that connected the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Exploring several aspects of its creation ranging from the logistical problems with a project of that scale to the politics which alternately drove and threatened its completion, Mukerji addresses how the interaction of technological knowledge interacted with state affairs to produce an enormous hydraulics endeavor which soon became a symbol for the power of Louis XIV and France. Using correspondence of major figures, financial records, maps and even her own contemporary photographs, Mukerji demonstrates not only how the canal was completed through the collective knowledge of the many people involved, but also how its completion exemplified the absolutism that logistical power gave to leaders.

                Mukerji’s title Impossible Engineering refers to the “superhuman” accomplishment of the functioning canal which by the contemporary standards of hydraulics and elevation should never have been built. Though the standard narrative of the Canal du Midi credits solely the heroism and lone genius of the tax-farmer Pierre Paul Riquet who knew the region of Languedoc intimately, she offers much evidence to discredit this thesis. First, while she acknowledges the importance of Riquet to the project, especially his financial and political connections, she explains that his background was not in engineering. In order to show the slow but gradual progress that allowed for continued support from the monarchy, Riquet depended on a bevy of expert contributors. Though he did employ the expertise of military engineers and other formally educated contractors, he also relied on the labor of artisans and peasants throughout the region. She particularly credits the role of peasant women from the Midi-Pyrenees who used a complicated system of canals and locks for their own domestic water supply and who Riquet employed in large numbers to contribute labor to the canal. Though slightly counterfactual, her analysis shows that the canal was only built due to the combined knowledge of a large group of otherwise different individuals and through the trial and error that such a varied array of knowledge allowed. Related to this idea of collective knowledge, Mukerji dedicates much of her book to the idea that the Canal was reminisant of a “New Rome” in France. Not only did the court of Louis XIV frequently use rhetoric to describe France as a modern Rome, most engineers were educated with the works of Vitruvious and other Roman engineers when they went to work on the Canal. Additionally, the hydraulics practices of the peasants and artisans operating in Languedoc unknowingly consisted of Roman engineering passed down over generations.

                Though her discussion of collective knowledge was extremely significant, her last chapter exploring the role that the canal played in the logistical power of the monarchy was far more interesting. She explains how, though his work constructing the canal, Riquet actually transferred power from the nobles to the king. The king, by placing trust in the efforts of an entrepreneur with no pedigree but the ability to harness the talents of vast amounts of people, created a pseudo merit based technocrat, loyal only to the crown. Riquet, who used his authority to commandeer land from the nobles for use in a project of the king, assisted in undermining the power of the nobles and giving more absolutist power to the monarchy. Additionally, the canal represented a significant instance when a monarch was able to wield not only strategic power, power over people, but also logistical power, power over nature. This is important pragmatically since it allowed the state better trade routes and in theory, strategic military advantage. However, this is also important symbolically since it literally took some of nature’s power and placed it into the hands of the king. Finally, while the canal took some power away from nature, Mukerji demonstrates the importance of non-human actors in historical developments. The nature of the water, stones and terrain of southeast France actually changed the course of the canal and had large political impacts since error on the canal resulted in political fallout.

                Mukerji’s book is an extremely interesting and well-written account of a remarkable episode in history. She successfully argues that an impossible canal was built only by the collective knowledge of a large community and that such a canal had important political implications. Additionally, her prolific use of correspondence within the text humanizes the creation of the Canal du Midi and reminds readers that major achievements in architecture and engineering were neither inevitable nor built by superhuman but are instead the result of people and knowledge interacting together in new ways. It is an important book for French, technological and environmental historians.

---

[1] Mukerji, Chandra. 2009. Impossible engineering: technology and territoriality on the Canal du Midi. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press

Review of Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell

In her 2009 monograph A Paradise Built in Hell, journalist Rebecca Solnit analyzes the effect that disasters have played on communities affected by massive tragedy. She contends that in times of crisis, survivors usually respond in one of two ways. In the case of most communities, people are generally altruistic, “urgently engaged in caring for themselves and those around them,” without the interference of authority figures or the use of money. However, in all these communities, there are elites, usually wealthy and white who panic and commit atrocities believing “that others will behave savagely and that they themselves are taking defensive measures against barbarism.”[1] Largely limiting herself to events in the twentieth century North America, Solnit uses a variety of disasters ranging from earthquakes to terrorism to illustrate these reactions. Beginning with the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, she gives examples of the city uniting to share food and shelter and generally maintaining good spirits. This contrasts with the reaction of wealthier elites as well as those in positions of military leadership who looted, accidently exacerbated the Great Fire, and even shot innocent civilians. She next analyzes the 1917 Halifax explosion, showing how civilians organized rescue efforts seeming to personify Kropotkin’s evolutionary theory of mutual aid. She then jumps forward almost seventy years to the Mexico City Earthquake in 1985. This disaster, which killed far more people than any other tragedy in this volume, resulted in citywide movements to assist refugees with housing and provisions. However, simultaneously, industrialists left their workers to their deaths and used soldiers to salvage their equipment instead. This resulted in a large-scale rejection of the apparent corruption in the government and ultimately, the crumbling of the Industrial Revolutionary Party. She next discusses the apolitical altruism which arose all over the country in the aftermath of 9/11. She argues that the city was drawn by a need to help their neighbors, even making symbolic gestures like giving blood or playing music when their services were rejected at ground-zero. Finally, she concludes with Hurricane Katrina, and contrasts the owners of small vessels who rescued people from their homes with the vigilantes in Uptown who shot strangers fearing a riot.

Solnit addresses two ideas of nature in her book. First, she addresses the havoc that the natural world, such as earthquakes and hurricanes can wreck on human populations. Even more prevalently however, she addresses the concept of human nature within the context of disasters. Using a great deal of sociological evidence, she suggests that in a crisis, people react calmly and with overwhelming altruism. She gives countless examples of people who risked their own lives or sacrificed their property to aid their neighbors. Even more puzzling, she gives many instances of individuals who reminisced fondly over the time immediately after the disaster, due to the community spirit and sense of togetherness. She also discusses the phenomena of “elite panic,” where when the government is in disarray, elites and those with a semblance authority panic and takes extreme measures to maintain what they think is law and order. That often includes endangering the lives of lower income populations. Beyond this, it is apparent that Solnit views natural disasters to be one of the quasi-objects characteristic of Bruno Latour. She shows how though a disaster like an earthquake may alter a natural landscape, it mainly affects human populations and structures. Further, death rates and injuries are exacerbated or even caused by human activity. Disasters like the Halifax Explosion, 9/11 and the Chernobyl meltdown are caused explicitly by human actions where the deaths caused by earthquakes and hurricanes usually come from shoddy construction, gas leaks and overzealous city officials. Natural disasters, therefore, are human disasters.

Solnit’s text is interesting for many reasons. She offers a unique perspective and comprehensive analysis of a variety of historical events that have already been studied in depth. However, there are several problems with her text. For example, she offers no clear or consistent definition of disaster or crisis, and simply equates the political act of 9/11 to the San Francisco Earthquake in 1906. This is somewhat problematic as all of the events that she compares happened within separate and distinct economic, political, social and environmental situations.  For example, the racial unrest between whites and blacks during Hurricane Katrina is vastly different from the Protestant-Catholic tensions in 1917 Halifax and the anti-Japanese sentiment during the SF Earthquake. Additionally, by limiting herself to North America, she is examining a (relatively) homogenous area of the world. Finally, some of her analysis is misleading. She suggests that the government only acts as an intrusion and an unwelcome distraction at best in the post-disaster communities, giving little note of the organized efforts of the municipal government during 9/11, and the disease prevention efforts of the army during the San Francisco Earthquake.  Additionally, during Hurricane Katrina, most of the problems came from the lack of government response, not unwelcome intrusions. However, her analysis is an interesting and welcome contribution to the field of disaster studies and the history of the environment.

               

---

[1]Solnit, Rebecca. 2009. A paradise built in hell: the extraordinary communities that arise in disasters. New York: Viking. p. 2

Critique of Penna's The Human Footprint

In his 2010 monograph The Human Footprint, environmental historian Anthony Penna argues that the environment and world history cannot be understood without a billion-year scope. Combining the growing fields of both environmental and world history, he synthesizes the entire history of the earth in about three hundred pages. The first two chapters are entirely pre-historical and address the formation of the modern earth and the evolution of humanoids, ending with the dominance of homo-sapiens.  The remaining chapters are arranged thematically and address the following: Food production, population fluctuation, urbanization, mining/manufacturing, industrialization, trade, energy, and climate. Within each chapter, Penna explains how humans and the environment have interacted historically beginning in the pre-ancient world and ending very close to present-day. He ends his text with a reflective commentary on how “no species has changed the natural world as significantly as Homo sapiens”[1] mainly for the worse.

            Penna’s text fits, as it is largely a historical synthesis, fits within a large body of both world and environmental histories. He draws largely on the environmental work of J.R. McNeill, Vaclav Smil, and Alfred Crosby, the economic studies of T.H. Breen and K.N. Chaudhuri, and even the technological histories of David Nye and Lewis Mumford just to name a few. In his essay “World History and Environmental History,”[2] Kenneth Pomeranz also demonstrates how the study of environmental history can complement the field of world history. While asserting that historical research is generally conducted along regional lines, Pomeranz contends that the environment, which does not recognize political and cultural boundaries, is an ideal lens for examining history from a global perspective. Additionally, since some version of imperialism, state-making, developmentalism and resistance are universal to environmental history over very large periods of time, it allows historians to make very large scale comparisons in their studies. By examining world history through an environmental lens, “reinforce[ing] the still-contested point that the modern world was not simply born in Europe,”[3] scholars are able to examine historical consequences in an extremely far reaching manner, from pre-historical times up to current problems with global inequalities. This is clear in The Human Web as Penna tries to give equal historical importance to issues like ancient mining practices and coal pollution from the nineteenth century.

Penna’s integration of the study of technology with that of the environment is a tactic similar to that of Sarah Pritchard in Confluence, her 2010 book that examines the history of the Rhone River, though there are some major differences. In her book she assumes that not only does the natural world have an agency, but, like in the case of Bruno Latour’s “quasi-objects,” there is no real way to divide the study of nature from the study of humans. Though many historical actors and historians alike have attempted to separate nature from technology, she shows that they are necessarily linked. But in her environmental history she integrates the history of technological systems, “artifacts, practices, people, institutions, and ecologies.”[4] She brands this sort of study to be envirotechincal analysis. The systems that envirotechnical studies analyze encompass not only everything that would traditionally fit within the realm of environmental history, but also all of the social, cultural and political dimensions of the history of technology. By creating this field, she makes clear a concept that many previous historians have implied: the indivisible link between technology and the environments where they are used. Though Penna also makes many of these connections, after his second chapter, he makes distinction between human society and nature as separate entities that are frequently at odds. This could be due to his age. Though Penna was clearly a pioneer in the field, in the generation of world environmental historians like Stephen Pyne, Carolyn Merchant, and Alfred Crosby, later generations of environmental historians such as William Cronon, J.R. McNeill, along with Pritchard start to consider humans as a part of nature that cannot be analyzed independently and really cannot ever be at odds with each other. In fact, they question previous ideas that there even has been a “natural balance” in the environment that could have been interrupted by people.

            This brings up another issue in Penna’s text. Penna’s first two chapters act as a way to show how geological events such as the formation of the Himalayas impacted the long-term climate conditions in the area and therefore the eventual human land use there. The chapters were reminiscent of a high school environmental science textbook. Though they were very interesting, I am not sure that they really contributed to his text. The events that he narrates occurred so long before the existence of people that it is unclear whether or not they contributed to events in human history. Additionally, these chapters assume that historians must accept current science in order to understand history. This is problematic for any historian of science. Almost every scientific paradigm from the past has been disproved and it stands to reason that many of the current scientific paradigms are also culturally and socially determined and do not necessarily represent any objective truth. It also forces a lot of speculation about ‘what could have happened’ in the past without knowing what actually did. This section is especially problematic due to Penna’s stylistic choices. His grammar is especially poor and the quotations from his sources are awkwardly situated within the paragraphs. This gives the impression that he is unclear about the science that he is citing. It also means that the reader is far less efficient and invests more reading time than necessary to understand the content. Another issue with The Human Footprint and environmental histories generally is the fact that they often contain a lot of presentism. The study of environmental history, which became widely popular in the late 1980s, emerged alongside the environmentalist history. This leads to the problem of taking modern concerns and transporting them into the past where they did not really exist. On this note, it can lead historians, like Penna does, into adopting a moral or political stance in their work. Though it does essentially negate any pretense of an objective history, this is not necessarily negative. In fact, it can also make the study of history relevant to many more people and applicable to many of today’s political and social issues. A final issue with Penna’s text is also his attitude of environmental determinism. Penna is not the only historian who engages in environmental determinism[5] but since he begins his narrative so early in earth’s history, it is especially clear in his book. It suggests that there is some measure of inevitability in history; if people are from an environmentally suitable place, they will be economically successful. Of course, this is almost a tautology. In the words of Eric Hobsbawn: “what happened was inevitable because nothing else happened.”[6]

One unique aspect of Penna’s book is his large discussion about the environment in urban history. Though some historians such as Martin Melosi, and Joel Tarr and Clay McShane have recently examined the history of urban environments coming from a history of technology perspective, traditionally, environmental historians have ignored the urban landscape, possibly due to a perception that once urbanized, a landscape no longer has any value as an environmental space.[7] The main ways that historians have embarked on this sort of environmental history is through the examination of waste management, disease control, and the role of animals in history. Penna engages with these topics, explaining the role of both infectious and environmental disease in chapters four, six, seven, and nine; waste management in three, five, six, and seven; and animals in four, five, seven, and nine. He also engages in the growing field of energy history. This was explored at length by Alfred Crosby in Children of the Sun, who basically argues that the history of humanity has been driven by the search for more energy.[8] Though he does explore the use of animal muscle power in industrialization, he does not examine the role of animals as energy storage units. Sam White in particular has shown the value of pigs as energy depositories for excess calories that could be harvested in times of energy shortages. Asian pigs in particular were such valuable resources that they managed to spread all over the world and replace nearly all other varieties of pig. [9]

The Human Footprint certainly offers many ways that one could examine the environment and world history. However, I am not sure that he contributes much new to the field as he only synthesizes the work of others. Of course it is perfectly possible to write an original argument based on the research of others like McNeill and McNeill did in The Human Web, but since Penna’s text lacks any specific narrative other than that people and their environments impact each other. Additionally, large macro-histories present many problems particularly in overgeneralization and even threaten to venture on superficial and essentialist versions of history. This is not necessarily completely negative. The Human Footprint has the capacity to introduce concepts of “big history” and environmental world history to a lay audience or a low-level college classroom, readers who would be unlikely to appreciate a more serious academic work. As such, despite some problem areas, this text could easily have a valuable function for designing a course on the environment and world history.

---

[1] Penna, Anthony N. The Human Footprint: A Global Environmental History. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

[2] Pomeranz, Kenneth “World History and Environmental History,”[2] in Burke, Edmund, and Kenneth Pomeranz. The environment and world history. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. p. 3-32

[3] Ibid 8

[4] Pritchard, Sara B. Confluence: the nature of technology and the remaking of the Rhône. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2011. p. 19

[5] See Jared Diamond, William McNeill’s Plagues and Peoples

[6] Hobspawn, Eric “Marx and History” New Left Review I/143 (January 1987): 39-50 p. 43

[7] Di Chiro, Giovanna “Nature as Community: The Convergence of Environmental and Social Justice” Cronon, William. 1996. Uncommon ground: rethinking the human place in nature. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

[8] Crosby, Alfred W. Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity's Unappeasable Appetite for Energy. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006.

[9] Sam White, “From Globalized Pig Breeds to Capitalist Pigs: A Study in Animal Cultures and Evolutionary History,” Environmental History 16 (January 2011): 94–120.

Review of Brian Ogilvie’s The Science of Describing

Brian Ogilvie’s 2006 macro-historical monograph The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe¸[1] charts the history of naturalism through four generations of naturalists from the late fifteenth through the early seventeenth century. He begins by explaining that through integrating the traditions of medical humanism, Aristotelian philosophy, and natural philosophy, Renaissance naturalists formed a new discipline dedicated to discovering and describing plants and animals. Through examining evidence culled from published herbals, woodcuts, drawings, correspondence, travel journals and garden plans, Ogilvie successfully outlines the evolution of the practice of natural history through the Renaissance and Early Modern Europe.

In his first chapter, Ogilvie sets the framework for Renaissance natural history. He describes the various geographical settings for naturalists, particularly urban centers in Western and Central Europe,[2] scholarly communal relationships between naturalists,[3] and the preeminence of botany over zoology in the study of nature.[4] For this reason, Ogilvie says he will focus the remainder of his book on botanical studies.[5] Ogilvie begins his narrative in the late fifteenth century when naturalists concentrated their studies on the ancient and medieval understandings of nature.[6] Through studying ancient writers, medical humanists used the methods and accounts of Pliny, Galen, and especially Dioscorides to justify their studies and frame their pursuit of medical knowledge through studying plants.[7] In the mid-sixteenth century, the second generation of Renaissance naturalists drifted towards a different goal. Due to the massive influx of new plants from abroad, they recognized that the ancients had limited access to plant diversity and sought to create their own catalogues of every possible plant[8] through stockpiling massive collections of dried and fresh plant in curiosity cabinets, botanical gardens and herbariums.[9] Finally the third generation moved toward a different approach of studying nature. Facing collections of thousands of new plant species, these naturalists worked on taxonomically classifying the knowledge that their predecessors had had accumulated.[10]

Ogilvie’s analysis focuses not only on the evolution of the practitioners of natural history from medical humanists to phytograpers to cataloguers between 1490-1590, but also gives some account of who specifically was studying natural history and how they contributed to the larger discipline. He emphasized that no one individual could accumulate such knowledge on their own. In fact, frequently when collecting in the field, the naturalist was accompanied by a team; sculptors, apothecaries, medical students, and painters.[11] Additionally they frequently used the testimony of gardeners, midwives, apothecaries, and peasants for their studies, though these individuals based on their professions, were not part of the scholarly community of naturalists.[12] Furthermore, naturalists were expected to freely share their knowledge and specimens and did so through vast correspondence. This has strong implications for the ways in which knowledge was shared and understood in the Renaissance. By imagining an international community of naturalists that opposed the hierarchy and commerciality of the general society, “unsullied by either servitude or filthy lucre,”[13] natural history was constructed as a liberal art that could be purely and objectively knowledge based.

Ogilvie’s work is comparable to much of the vast literature on botany and the scientific art history in Early Modern Europe. In their book Wonders and the Order of Nature, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park deliberate the subject of wonder in the integration of art and nature in early modern Europe between 1150-1750 AD. Most of the images that they discuss involve artists using their work as a vehicle to fuse the "wonders of art and the wonders of nature."[14] They describe many botanical paintings that were intended to bring nature to the viewer, similar to Ogilvie’s discussion of naturalists using images to further spread their knowledge. Additionally, in her article “Ad vivum, near het leven, from the life”[15] Claudia Swan's analyzes the claims of "ad Vivum" and "ad Naturam" in botanical books and discusses the evolution of this terminology as it applied to nature illustrations. She also suggests that botanical illustrations that were part of curiosity cabinets would allow viewers to see subjects that instead of being present, when unavailable "were collected by proxy…and deemed capable of standing in for an otherwise unavailable or impermanent specimen."[16] Her article corresponds with many of Ogilvie’s points on how plants were drawn in various herbals, with both fruits and flowers intact. Finally, Daston and Galison’s Objectivity[17], published after The Science of Describing, brings further depth to the topic of untainted studies of botany and bring truth to nature through botanical studies. However, though there are several parallels between this book and others in the same field, since it offers a unique look at natural history in the Renaissance by providing background and charting the evolution of how natural history changed over a century.

Beginning with the humanists in the fifteenth century and ending with the systematic cataloguers in the early seventeenth century, Brian Ogilvie successfully demonstrates the changing progression of natural history over four generations of Early Modern naturalists. He also addresses unique qualities of the botanical community and the invention of new methodology for addressing this knowledge. His book also fits very well within the field of the Early Modern natural history and is an essential read for those interested in Early Modern Science, Early Modern Art, and intellectual history.

---

[1] Ogilvie, Brian W. The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Print.

[2] Ibid p. 63

[3] Ibid p. 54

[4] Ibid p. 49

[5] Ibid

[6] Ibid p. 87

[7] Ibid p. 138

[8] Ibid p. 139

[9] Ibid p. 175

[10] Ibid p. 209

[11] Ibid p. 70

[12] Ibid. 55

[13] Ibid 58

[14] Daston, Lorraine, and Katharine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750. New York: Zone Books, 1998. Print p. 206

[15] Swan, Claudia “Advivum, near het leven, from the life: Considerations on a Mode of Representation” Word and Image 11 (Oct-Dec 1995)

[16] Ibid 369

[17] Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books, 2007. Print

The Standardization of Knowledge in Enlightenment Hospitals

A common perception in the history of medicine, one that embodies the idea of ‘progressive science,’ was that until the 1950’s hospitals were dangerous dens of death to be avoided at all costs, where more died than were cured. A brief examination of the hospital movement in the Enlightenment shows that this was not necessarily the case. Though mortality rates in hospitals were not low by modern standards, during the Enlightenment a “hospital movement” swept through Europe.[1] These hospitals, rather than previous uses as religious institutions that provided segregation and confinement of the chronically ill and impoverished, were tools of both the private sector and the state to invest in the social order and material economy of their societies. Due to rapid population growth and urbanization, health conditions in the early eighteenth century were extremely poor. Fitting with Enlightenment ideals, such hospitals were developed with the premise that sickness could be controlled and even removed from society. Hospitals soon admitted hundreds of patients with the expectation that they could be cured as were also considered valuable tools for medical instruction. Though presently hospitals revolved around teaching medical and surgical students, they were organized for serve as observational tools only which in turn, standardized treatments and behaviors of doctors in Western Europe.

Clinical instruction in hospitals was not unique to the eighteenth century. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a few professors of medicine brought their students to hospitals in order to present examples of conditions on which they lectured. Surgeons, apothecaries and midwives had long, deeply entrenched traditions of clinical training but this was new ground for physicians. Since at this time hospitals were places that used the skills of surgeons and physicians, these fields became more blurred than ever before. Additionally, the demand for skilled practitioners in the military required that some standardized venue be used to educate military doctors. Initially at the Royal Hospital in Edinburgh, students were allowed to freely observe the actions of surgeons and physicians until their large numbers proved to be a distraction and inconvenience. Though in London students were allowed free access well into the eighteenth century, since many of their patients were non-paying, the hospital administration at Edinburgh began to rely on revenue from admission tickets as early as 1738, also restricting the hours and rooms that students could visit. For the most part of the eighteenth century, clinical lectures were popular and encouraged among medical students though they were not actually required until 1783.[2] In many hospitals, autopsies were also used for pathological purposes in order to instruct burgeoning students about the effects of certain conditions on anatomy.

Given the very strict purposes of the hospitals to be both centers of research and teaching, as well as rehabilitating institutions to improve the social order and economic efficiency of an area, the type of patients admitted was very specific. First, though hospitals were working to get away from an image of havens for the poor only, some even changing their titles to “infirmaries,” they were still mainly populated by the poor who were more likely to get sick to begin with and could not afford in-home care. However, these poor generally needed to be deemed deserving by an outside sponsor; that is to say, they generally needed to be working individuals with good character. Most hospitals would not even treat venereal disease. Rehabilitating these figures, it was assumed, would ensure that they could quickly return to work without becoming a permanent burden on society. In order to meet these goals, they did not see a practical value investing in those with chronic conditions or serious untreatable injuries. Most patients suffered from acute injuries and potentially non-fatal diseases.  Due to the teaching agenda of many hospitals, administrators often ensured that they maintained a quota of certain types of patients.[3] Patients were sought who displayed an extremely rigidly typical set of symptoms as they were the best suited for teaching purposes.  This set of manner of collecting specific types of patients in order to demonstrate specific disease or treatments meant that for the first time, diagnosis as well as treatment became relatively standardized. Since hospitals around Europe modeled themselves after their neighbors, this because the case internationally.  This standardization as well as the routine nature of autopsies also made hospitals rather than private anatomies schools the main centers for medical research. For the first time, professionals had large collections of people with potentially treatable problems in a single setting who could scarcely object to experimental treatment.

However, perhaps more important than the standardization of diagnosis and treatment, hospital served another purpose in regimenting patient care, establishing a particular tradition of bedside manner, just as regulated as fever treatments. Students, who generally were required to have some knowledge of medicine before embarking on clinical lectures, were able to do little more than observe and occasionally ask questions of patients. Students were forced to adhere to specific types of questions and before speaking to patients themselves, were required to observe the interactions between patients and senior doctors.[4] They were encouraged to be friendly and professional as well as respectful of the patients’ privacy and failure to abide by these precepts could result in expulsion. The development of bedside manner established a particular relationship between doctors and patients, which was not an aspect of medical education before this time. Additionally, since the majority of patients in these types of hospitals were there experiencing an acute and treatable condition, they were generally cooperative and deferential to physicians due to the kind treatments and relative success rate of such institutions, as opposed to the more standard view of doctors in earlier times as skilled men from whom one could buy services.

Though in a standard narrative, the Enlightenment was a relatively stagnant time in the history medicine, sandwiched between the plethora of anatomical discoveries of the previous century and the ‘scientific’ efficiency of the next, clearly this period was important in the development of modern medicine. Not only did it begin a shift from hospitals as religious institutions dedicated to hospice to social institutions hoping to reform disease into submission and place hospitals at the center of medical education and research, it saw the reconciliation of surgical and standard medical education, previously separate fields and lead to the standardization of medical diagnosis, treatment and behavior so that arriving with a fever in Edinburgh, Vienna or Philadelphia would garner patients a similar experience in regards to their health.

---

[1] Porter, Roy. 2004. Flesh in the Age of Reason. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. p. 214

[2] Risse, Guenter B. 1986. Hospital life in enlightenment Scotland: care and teaching at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press.

[3] Risse, Guenter B. 1999. Mending bodies, saving souls: a history of hospitals. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 236

[4] Ibid 253

Review of Cathleen Cahill's Federal Fathers & Mothers

In her 2011 book Federal Fathers & Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869-1933,[1] Cathleen D. Cahill examines the conceptual framework and objectives around which the US Indian Service were set, then provides a detailed analysis of how federal employees actually practiced these goals. She demonstrates that there was a frequent disconnect between the policy makers intention and the way that the Indian Service was actually implemented. Cahill divides her text into three sections. In the first, she shows how the Reconstruction influenced the development of assimilation policy and how due to concerns about corruption, they subcontracted management to religious groups. The second, and most detailed part of her book detail the everyday lives of “The Men and Women of the Indians Service,”[2] particularly the impact of hiring workers of each gender, both Native and white to administer policy. Finally, she explains how the implementation of the Indian Service for thirty years caused policy changes due to forces both internal and external to the BIA. Using a variety of sources, particularly personnel files for employees, Cahill successfully demonstrates how the complicated, varied, and sometimes contradictory goals and tasks of Indian Services workers collided with the policy makers assumptions and yielded unintended consequences.

Cahill begins by discussing how the post Civil War dealings with former slaves served as a model for Indian policy. They generally agreed that the Indian population should be treated as “wards” of the nation rather than full citizens and in order to make up for past wrongs, the federal government designed programs, implemented at first by Quakers and then other religious groups, that would give Indians the tools to become good citizens while avoiding the dangers of dependency.  She suggests that this was the first program of its kind; rather than repaying soldiers, for example with pensions or land, it instead used national resources to fund social programs aimed at civilizing. Though this required treaty-breaking, it was believed to be the best way to assimilate the native population and pull them out of poverty. They focused most of their educational efforts on idealizing the Western notion of home and family. They believed that physical homes would incentivize capitalist tendencies among and that changing the living arrangement of Indians would alter family relationships, highlighting the necessary gender roles of a white nuclear family. To do this, they hired farmers, craftsmen, teachers and administrators and well as seamstresses, cooks and laundresses so that Indian children and adult males could be educated in English and agriculture and, keeping in expectations about gender roles, the females in laundry and housekeeping.

The largest portion of her book discusses the day to day activities of workers in the Indian Service. She notes that the Indian Service was unusual due to its large reliance on female workers, often in leadership positions, who drew larger salaries and had more independence than any other job. However, hiring women to serve as examples to the Indian population was paradoxical and represented the little opinion that the federal government had for Indians.  First, the kind of women, especially single women who were drawn to the Indian Service were usually not ideal subservient housewives, a quality which would have never let them receive such a coveted job among sometimes fierce competition. Additionally, the authority given to these women over Indian men did not accurately represent the relationship between men and women in normal middle-class settings. In fact, the authority of many of these women were routinely challenged and only kept in place due to the threat of violence, subverting the moral influence that they were supposed to have on Indian women.[3]

Married couples represented a large number of Indian Service workers. In fact, they were highly valued as they could provide an example an ideal married couple to Indians. However, this also led to complications especially as their children were usually not able to attend school with Native children, and in many cases, political manipulations were required to keep both spouses stationed together. The Indian service also drew a large number of Indian workers, usually graduates of either boarding schools or reservation schools who filled every possible position in the Indian service though usually in a place subservient to whites. Though frequently Indians were stationed far from their tribe, they began to identify which each other as Indians and bond through common experiences. Indians used their positions within the Indian Service to try to elevate their community and draw a respectable paycheck without destroying their culture or leaving the Indian community. Finally, due to large groups of single, educated and similarly thinking people of both races and gender living and working together in a fairly close proximity, the Indian Service resulted in a least hundreds of interracial and inter-tribal marriages, which to both many Indians and whites were disagreeable.

Cahill concludes with a discussion of the impact of Progressivism on the Indian Service. While some ideals espoused by Progressivism could have helped complete assimilation, hardening notions of race changed the goal of policy makers from creating a voting, land holding middle class to a racially segregated working class. This resulted in the closing of several boarding schools, emphasizing vocational training and limiting opportunities for educational advancement. This had devastating effects on the entire Native population, especially the thousands of former students who were well educated even by white standards, but overlooked by the federal government. When the Indian Service began to issue pensions to former employees, which created another group of dependent individuals, they frequently excluded Indian workers from receiving benefits. This was especially true of Indian women. She finally remarks that although the Indian Service is characterized by its and ineptitude corruption, which was present in some cases, most employees were effective and had been trained as much as any public school teacher. The Indian Service was simply not prepared for the situation and did not expect many of the consequences of their actions.

Cahills’s book is interesting in several ways. First, she paints a very human picture of the Indian service and based on her sources is able to provide a balanced view of all workers, men and women, Indian and white. She demonstrates that in the case of any social policy, the ideals of policy makers cannot measure up to the realities on the ground. She does bite off slightly more than she can chew, with the final chapters of her book. While the middle is extremely rich and interesting, when she discusses the end of the Indian service and forces that led to its demise, it feels rushed and incomplete. But as a social history rather than a political one, it is an excellent text for anyone interested in nineteenth century history, womens' or Indian history, or History of the American West.

---

[1] Cahill, Cathleen D. 2011. Federal fathers & mothers: a social history of the United States Indian Service, 1869-1933. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press

[2] Ibid  61

[3] Ibid  76

Peter Dear’s “Miracles, Experiments, and the Ordinary Course of Nature”

In his 1990 article “Miracles, Experiments, and the Ordinary Course of Nature,” Peter Dear expands on the discussion previously propagated by Robert Merton and Thomas Kuhn dividing scientific methodology in early Modern Europe between Catholic and Protestant countries. According to the standard narrative, during early seventeenth century, scientific practices split between mathematical and experimental traditions. Though there was some overlap with figures like Newton, scientists from a Protestant, particularly English tradition practiced “experimental philosophy,” where scientists on the continent instead focused their attention on mathematical traditions. Dear argues that the behaviors associated with handling miracles in French life, absent in the Protestant belief in the cession of miracles, valued the same inferential practices of universalized experiences found in mathematical sciences ahead of the singular experiences found in English experimental philosophy.

According to Dear, the dominant theory of natural knowledge in the early seventeenth century involved the assumption that true knowledge was sharable through common experience rather than coming from a contrived situation. Therefore when mathematical practitioners such as Pascal performed experimental practices, they discussed them in terms of behavior that happened routinely. For example, when Pascal carried a partially inflated bladder up Puy de Dome, rather than referring to the results as a single experiment contrived by him on that particular volcano, he referred to it generally as a universalized knowledge true on any “five hundred fathom”[1] mountain. The English experimental tradition, in contrast, usually involved recorded experiments in the first person, the circumstances under which it was performed and who witnessed it. For English Protestants, since nothing occurred “outside the laws of nature,” anything thing could be observed in a contrived experiment. However, this was not the case for their Catholic contemporaries. According to a traditional theory of miracles, a miracle was a singular event which occurred outside of “the laws of nature.” It could only occur via divine mandate and life English experiments, in order to be validated, required many witnesses and specific details.

Dear’s account of English experiments and French miracles in seventeenth century Europe shows how religious and cultural attitudes towards miracles shaped scientific dialogue and methodology. In the English tradition, where miracles were non-existent, the most valued form of science was based on a singular artificial experience with several witnesses. In the French tradition, where miracles were regular occurrences of events unexplainable by science, the most valuable scientific truth was that which was universal and shared by any person. His explanation successfully shows how cultural perception of certain phenomena changed scientific practice and theory for French and English scientists in Early Modern Europe.

---

[1] Dear, 678