Representation of Medics in British and Bengali Literatures (The 1850S-The 1950S): a Comparative Study

Representation of Medics in British and Bengali Literatures (the 1850s-the 1950s): A Comparative Study Thesis submitted to Vidyasagar University for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Arts (English) Pritha Kundu Department of English Vidyasagar University Midnapore, West Bengal 2017 1 Certificate To Whom it May Concern This is to certify that Ms Pritha Kundu, a Ph.D participant in the Department of English, has been working under my supervision. Her thesis entitled “Representation of Medics in British and Bengali Literatures (the 1850s – the 1950s): A Comparative Study”, is an original work and it has not been published anywhere else. The thesis is meant exclusively for submission to Vidyasagar University for evaluation for the award of doctoral degree. Debashis Bandyopadhyay Professor of English Vidyasagar University 2 Declaration I do hereby declare that the thesis entitled “Representation of Medics in British and Bengali Literatures(the 1850s-the 1950s): A Comparative Study” submitted by me for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Arts (English) of Vidyasagar University is based on my own work under the supervision of Prof. Debashis Bandyopadhyay. This work is the result of original research and neither this thesis nor any part of it has been submitted previously anywhere for any degree or diploma. 3 Contents Acknowledgement i-ii Introduction 1-23 Chapter 1: 24-59 Social Doctoring and Victorian Literature: The Physician as Protagonist Chapter 2: 60-95 The “Metaphysical Physician” in Victorian Fiction: Psychiatry and the Occult Chapter 3: 96-130 “The Doctor’s Dilemma” in Modern Literature: A Bioethical Approach Chapter 4: 131-167 Doctoring the Empire and Nationalizing “Daktari”: Fictional Medics in Colonial British and Bengali Literatures Chapter 5: 168-202 “Lady Doctors” in Colonial Bengal: Narratives of their Own Chapter 6: 203-238 Doctor-Patient Relationship in Literature: Visions of Life, Mortality and Healing across Cultures Conclusion: 239-251 Towards a Comparative Medical Humanities Works Cited 252-275 4 Acknowledgement The completion of this dissertation is the result of the support I have received from numerous sources. I would first like to acknowledge the debts I owe to my teacher and supervisor, Prof. Debashis Bandyopadhyay, Dept. of English, Vidyasagar University. His feedback and guidance have been vital in shaping this dissertation into its present form. I also wish to express my gratitude to the other Professors of the department – especially Prof. Tirthankar Das Purkayastha, Dr. Joyjit Ghosh (the present Head of the Dept.) and Dr. Indranil Acharya, whose kindness towards me at a personal level, and academic interest in my work have continued to encourage me. My sincere thanks are due to Prof. Jayati Gupta (West Bengal State University) and Prof. Niladri Chatterjee (University of Kalyani) who attended my pre-submission presentation as experts, and provided me with their valuable suggestions. My teachers who taught me at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels have been kind enough to keep our relationship alive and a constant source of inspiration to me. Their valuable advices have helped me to balance my professional duties with the academic pursuit of the doctoral degree. I am especially indebted to Prof. Prodosh Bhattacharya, Prof. Samir Mukhopadhyay, Prof. Sanjukta Das, Prof. Chandreyee Neogi, Prof. Chaitali Maitra and Dr. Arpita Chattaraj Mukhopadhyay for their continuous support. Friends and colleagues – especially Prodosh, Sanchayita di, Dhritiman da, Pabitra da, Ujjwal da and Mir, deserve my cordial thanks for their encouraging words and support. Special thanks are due to Prodosh, who introduced me to the world of e- books. He downloaded for me the first two books I read as background studies, for the preparation of my Ph.D research-proposal. 5 My family has rendered me wonderful support throughout my Ph.D research: my aunt, Dr. Ira Haldar, my parents – Dr. Bisweswar Kundu and Smt. Pratima Kundu, my uncle and aunt, Dr. Narayan Haldar and Smt. Anupama Haldar, my elder sister Smt. Shelly Datta and my younger sister, Susmita. I can never be able to properly acknowledge the sacrifices they have made, willingly, for the sake of my higher studies. I am ever beholden to their love. Finally, I must thank Sreelipi Printers, Station Road, Medinipur, for getting my dissertation properly formatted, printed and bound. Errors and limitations, whatever they may be, are mine. 6 Introduction I swear by Apollo [sic] Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant: […] I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice. I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art1. −So proceeds the famous medical oath, attributed to Hippocrates, the Greek philosopher-physician of the 5th century B.C. Though the identity of the actual author of this oath is much-debated2, it is still held as the manifesto of the ideal conduct of a physician. Hippocrates was celebrated as a natural philosopher of medicine, who brought the art of healing away from the ancient corpus of magical and religious orientations. Even so, the oath reflects the deep-rooted customary belief in the invocation of the Greek deities associated with health and hygiene, claiming their witness as a moral and spiritual authority behind the sacred duty of doctoring. The Hippocratic image of a doctor thus appears to be a bridge between the ancient supernatural arts of healing and the Classical period of Greek medicine when it became somewhat independent of the supernatural and the magical. As Jane Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion points out, several modern technical terms of medicine had their origins in the Greek rituals and religious belief. 7 “Pharmacy” and “Pharmacology”, for instance, are derived from the Greek “Pharmakos”, a scapegoat-figure through whom diseases and evils were to be purged3. In pre-classical and Homeric times, there had also been ample references to the intimate association between religion and medicine, and healing was also an art like literature, music and so on. Apollo the god of art and poesy was also associated with healing. Orpheus was a poet, a lyricist and a healer whose divine strain of music could bring health and joy, and cast sorrows, illness and pains away. Later in Christianity, the religious and spiritual elements of cure got merged with the image of a doctor, in a deeper way. The ideal Christian physician was to be seen as a brother- figure to the priest: one doctors the body, and the other cares for the soul4. It is to be noted that in a close critical examination, “healing” and “cure” do not appear to be exactly interchangeable terms, though there is a tendency to confuse the two, even in scholarly writings5. Healing can be viewed as a restoration of the wholeness of being ─ of body, mind and spirit. In the Galenic physiology, the idea got associated with the need to restore a balance of the humours in human body. “Cure”, on the other hand, implies a successful application of some remedy for a particular physical or mental discomfort or disorder. In a broader sense, however, cure can be of a moral and spiritual nature as well. It is through this shared concern of moral and spiritual aspects, perhaps, that “healing” was sometimes confused with the notion of cure; and this had often elevated the social, cultural and moral status of the figure of the physician. As David Greaves has shown in The Healing Tradition: Reviving the Soul of Western Medicine, the medical philosophy in ancient cultures was a discourse of moral and spiritual concern, along with the pathological.6 The philosophy of cure, in Classical thoughts and in Christianity, had enjoyed an overall respectable status – though there were some differences in the cultural 8 representation of the doctor-figure. In medieval England, saints and hermits were often associated with healing. However, a binary was usually maintained, between the divine or moral power of cure and medical practice as a profession. Since Chaucer’s portrayal of the “Doctour of Physik”, the professional doctor in the Western-English literary tradition has acquired associations with maladies – both physical and mental; with delirium, deformity and derangement. Sometimes he is a passive observer of the incurable troubles of existence/being, like the doctor in Macbeth. In the Victorian age, the doctor’s role within the narrative becomes more complex with the improvement in the medical sciences and a growing interest in “case narratives”. The doctor-character, sometimes represented as a good man, stands at odds with the social disease – trying to do his best but unable to transcend the squalor (Bleak House). Dr. Jekyll becomes the victim of his own experiment and cannot sustain his integrity. Wilkie Collins’ doctors often function as agents of dark psychiatry. In Marie Corelli, doctors are often occult philosophers, or tragic figures of failure, unable to assume the role of a divine healer’. In Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma, the Victorian doctor-figure becomes both pathetic and ironic, himself being poor, consumptive and unable to help his working- class patients properly. Moreover, in the Victorian literature of the Empire, the imperial anxiety over the tropical health-situation, and the British doctors’ experience in colonial India, provide interesting political and psychopathological aspects of disease and cure, alongside the corporeal and the ethico-philosophical. Several fictional and autobiographical works by Kipling, P.

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