Thomas Apel
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780804797405
- eISBN:
- 9780804799638
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804797405.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
From 1793-1805, yellow fever devastated American port cities, killing thousands and prompting a desperate search for its cause. The question of the fever’s origin divided disease investigators into ...
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From 1793-1805, yellow fever devastated American port cities, killing thousands and prompting a desperate search for its cause. The question of the fever’s origin divided disease investigators into rival camps: “contagionists” thought it came from abroad and could be transmitted from person to person, while “localists” believed it arose from domestically-situated miasmas. Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds uses correspondence, newspaper and periodical articles, as well as published fever pamphlets to resurrect the course of the debate and to explore its significance in the history of American science. Localists gradually pushed the argument in their favor, winning more and more converts to their view, and the contagionists increasingly retired from the debate. Without proving that yellow fever arose from miasmas, localists rationalized it as a more plausible element in God’s world. Their success showcases the high value of common sense as an ingredient in scientific knowledge-making, and it shows that claims about disease causality were inseparable from other realms of thought, including assumptions the investigators made about how to develop reliable knowledge about the natural world, their understanding of God’s nature and activity, and their experiences with political conflict in the early American Republic. The localist victory came at a cost, however. Years of bitter fighting left rival parties wanting to exert greater top-down control over scientific knowledge-making. The breakdown exposed the fragility of common-sense science and facilitated the removal of science from the public sphere.Less
From 1793-1805, yellow fever devastated American port cities, killing thousands and prompting a desperate search for its cause. The question of the fever’s origin divided disease investigators into rival camps: “contagionists” thought it came from abroad and could be transmitted from person to person, while “localists” believed it arose from domestically-situated miasmas. Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds uses correspondence, newspaper and periodical articles, as well as published fever pamphlets to resurrect the course of the debate and to explore its significance in the history of American science. Localists gradually pushed the argument in their favor, winning more and more converts to their view, and the contagionists increasingly retired from the debate. Without proving that yellow fever arose from miasmas, localists rationalized it as a more plausible element in God’s world. Their success showcases the high value of common sense as an ingredient in scientific knowledge-making, and it shows that claims about disease causality were inseparable from other realms of thought, including assumptions the investigators made about how to develop reliable knowledge about the natural world, their understanding of God’s nature and activity, and their experiences with political conflict in the early American Republic. The localist victory came at a cost, however. Years of bitter fighting left rival parties wanting to exert greater top-down control over scientific knowledge-making. The breakdown exposed the fragility of common-sense science and facilitated the removal of science from the public sphere.
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The Practice of Misuse
Unexpected Alliances
Mediterranean Enlightenment
Poetic Force
Architects of Austerity
Common Knowledge?
The Expanding Spaces of Law
Islam in the Balance
