Imperial Fever: Tropical Medicine, British Literature, and the Return to South America, 1880-1930
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
IMPERIAL FEVER: TROPICAL MEDICINE, BRITISH LITERATURE, AND THE RETURN TO SOUTH AMERICA, 1880-1930 A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Kathleen E. Hames January 2013 © 2013 Kathleen E. Hames IMPERIAL FEVER: TROPICAL MEDICINE, BRITISH LITERATURE, AND THE RETURN TO SOUTH AMERICA, 1880-1930 Kathleen E. Hames Ph.D. Cornell University 2013 Imperial Fever: Tropical Medicine, British Literature, and the Return to South America, 1880-1930 explores the ways in which British writers engaged with the new developments in tropical medicine in their fictional representations of tropical fever in the early twentieth century. With the British Empire undergoing its largest expansion through predominantly tropical regions of the globe between 1860 and 1920, the demand for ‘tropical medicine’ and specialized training in ‘tropical diseases’ was at the utmost importance. Scottish physician and bacteriologist Ronald Ross proclaimed, “Malaria is the greatest enemy of the explorer, the missionary, the planter, the merchant, the farmer, the soldier, the administrator, the villager and the poor; and has…profoundly modified the world’s history by tending to render the whole of the tropics comparatively unsuitable for the full development of civilization” (Prevention vii). Medical and scientific journals celebrated new discoveries made in tropical disease transmission and immunity, and promoted the study of tropical medicine. The opening of the tropics to British investment and re-settlement that tropical medicine now made possible captured the British imagination. The three British writers examined in Imperial Fever – Arthur Conan Doyle, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh – engage with the colonial optimism, reservation, and anxiety inspired by the medical sciences in their depictions of modern British travelers combating tropical diseases and conquering the unruly terrain and indigenous populations of South America. Imperial Fever examines the ways in which developments in tropical medicine shaped British cultural and imperial identity as a growing tropical empire in the early years of the twentieth century. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Kate Hames began her studies in English Literature at the University of Washington, where she graduated with a B.A. in 2004. At Cornell University, she completed her M.A. in 2008 and her Ph.D. in English in 2013. While conducting research in literature and medicine, Kate was inspired to expand her work in the Medical Humanities to include Medical practice. In 2011 she was accepted to the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, where she will receive her M.D. in 2014. Kate is currently living in Ontario where she is studying Orthopedic Surgery and Diagnostic Radiology and conducting research on the intersections between Medicine, Literature, and the body. iii To Jade iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank all those at Cornell who have lent me their support as I worked to complete this project. My research aims have changed markedly over the past few years, and my committee members have never failed to encourage me in my pursuits. I would like to thank my chair, Elizabeth Anker, for her willingness to take me on as her first graduate student at Cornell just as she was beginning her tenure in the English Department. With an interdisciplinary background in law and literature, Dr. Anker served as an invaluable resource as I sought to expand my research into literature and medicine. I will always appreciate her detailed comments on my writing and her genuine interest in my scholarly and clinical pursuits. I am also grateful to Dr. Anker for the many hours she spent talking with me over Skype, and for her unwavering support as I worked to finish the dissertation. I would like to thank Tim Murray as well, who was gracious enough to join my committee while I was a Graduate Mellon Fellow at the Society for the Humanities. His boundless energy and enthusiasm for my research and my cross- disciplinary ambitions continue to be nothing short of inspiring. Our conversations in the A.D. White House were enlightening and transformative. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude both to Dr. Murray as well the Society for giving me the opportunity to work with such an amazing group of scholars. Among the Society Fellows was Aaron Sachs, who has also served as a generous and valuable my committee. His rich knowledge of environmental history and his commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration made him an ideal addition to my committee, and I feel incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to work with him. Not only did I gain a greater appreciation for the role of landscape in history, literature, and disease, but I also learned to be attentive to the ambiguities, v ambivalences, and anxieties within a cultural imaginary that complicate and enrich the writing of history. I am also extremely grateful to my committee for being so supportive of my desire to pursue a medical degree, and for their patience and encouragement as I completed the dissertation while in medical school. Numerous other faculty members have engaged with and responded to my work during my time at Cornell. I would especially like to thank Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Douglas Mao, and Nicole Waligora-Davis who advised me early on in my graduate work. Although each of these amazing scholars is now housed at other universities, they each contributed to the development of this project and my growth as a scholar. Elizabeth DeLoughrey served as my committee chair while at Cornell, and I will always be thankful for her insight into the political and theoretical possibilities of my research and her invaluable comments on my writing. Douglas Mao, Nicole Waligora-Davis, and Molly Hite also provided valuable advice concerning the project’s initial modernist approaches, and I am thankful to each of them for their time and help as I sought to articulate my early research interests. While at Cornell, I received generous support from the English Department as well as the Society for the Humanities, where I worked as a Graduate Mellon Fellow from 2008-2009. I would like to thank the Department for the Sage Fellowship and the Shin Yong-Jin Fellowship for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship, which allowed me the time and resources necessary to further my research and writing. I am thankful for the support of Cornell’s Graduate School as well, which provided me with conference funding for national and international conference travel. I owe my greatest thanks to the Society for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation. My time at the A.D. White House vi proved to be the most inspiring and informative year of my time at Cornell. The rich conversations among the Fellows during our weekly seminars and the more informal interactions in the hallways of A.D. White created a vibrant environment for scholarly collaboration and growth. I would also like to thank the Society for the summer research grant that afforded me the opportunity to conduct research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. To the London School as well, I extend my appreciation for their help as I navigated the archives of Patrick Manson and Ronald Ross. I am also thankful for the countless friends that supported me along the way. Among them, I am particularly grateful for the camaraderie of Taryn Hakala, Angela Burkley, Sze Wei Ang, Kewin Stoeckigt, and Joanna Burke, whose constant cheerleading, humor, and candid stories from the writing-trenches provided both the necessary distraction as well as encouragement I needed to complete the dissertation. I would also like to thank my family, including my mother, my late aunt Diana, and uncle Loren for their encouragement and support as I worked towards the Ph.D., as well as their enthusiasm for my medical studies. Although we do not see each other as often as we would like, I am grateful for their love and support and their constant presence in my life. And finally, to Jade Ferguson, my constant support and the love of my life, I cannot begin to express my gratitude. Her endless support and sacrifice has been nothing short of heroic. There are not words or pages enough to articulate how grateful I am for her encouragement and her passionate and honest engagement with my work. Her sacrifice and patience means the world to me, and I fear I will never be able to repay all that she has given me. Her extraordinary close reading and editing of this project helped transform both my work, as well as me as a scholar and writer in more ways than I can vii count. Without her faith and support, I would never have been able to pursue a medical degree while also finishing the dissertation. To her I owe this project, and my future career in the medical humanities and as a medical doctor. And last but not least, I am grateful for our loving cat, Gilmore, who served as my constant companion and occasional furry paperweight. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch …………………………………………………………………….iii Dedication……………………………………………………………………………….iv Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………….v Introduction The Body Must Be Defended: Immunology and the Imperial Imaginary……………………………………………………………......1 Chapter 1. To Conquer the Tropics: Disease, Empire, and the Rise of Tropical Medicine……………………………………………………………………..22 2. “At the Extreme Edge of the Knowable”: The Biological Frontier in the Writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle…………………………………………52 3. Reproducing Great Britain: Biopolitics, Disease, and Sexuality in Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out…………………………………………………….93 4. Concerning the “Contaminated” Native: Tropical Medicine and Colonial Economies in Evelyn Waugh’s Ninety-two Days, Travels in Guiana and Brazil………………………………………………………………………..135 Coda Medical Reflection…………………………………………………………..173 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………….187 ix — Introduction — The Body Must Be Defended: Immunology and the Imperial Imaginary The first intercourse between natives and Europeans is invariably attended with the introduction of fever, dysentery, or some other disease, which carries off numbers of people.