Constructing the Body

Abstract

In the beginning there was no Man. Disease was not mapped onto human anatomy as there was no body on which to inscribe the contours of illness; medicine addressed a world without boundaries, a primaeval space characterized by shifting humours and movements of cold and damp. Early nineteenth century accounts of public health show that the primordial landscape in which Man was to crystallize in modern form was a world governed by natural forces. ‘Elemental disturbance (such as) long drought, excessive heats, hot burning winds, clouds of suffocating dust, heavy rains …’ (Bascombe 1851: 189) provided the environment in which epidemic pestilence could emerge. The origins of many diseases were grounded in meteoric phenomena (Haviland 1855) or in low, marshy and alluvial soils (Parkin 1859). This was an inhospitable world, of earth, sky, and weather, in which diseases roamed free.