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Treating, Preventing, Feigning, Concealing: Sickness, Agency and the Medical Culture of the British Naval Seaman at the End of the Long Eighteenth Century
Seen as a crucial historical step in the development of ‘modern’ institutional healthcare, eighteenth-century British naval medicine has traditionally been studied from the point of view of the state and of physicians and surgeons: naval sailors’ attitudes towards health, medicine and their own bodi...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Oxford University Press
2021
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9427142/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36051848 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkab108 |
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author | Caputo, Sara |
author_facet | Caputo, Sara |
author_sort | Caputo, Sara |
collection | PubMed |
description | Seen as a crucial historical step in the development of ‘modern’ institutional healthcare, eighteenth-century British naval medicine has traditionally been studied from the point of view of the state and of physicians and surgeons: naval sailors’ attitudes towards health, medicine and their own bodies remain virtually unexplored. Using official and personal sources, this article sketches a ‘patient’s history’ of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century British ratings. Aiming to counterbalance Foucauldian interpretations, it highlights some of the ways in which individuals, even when apparently most powerless, confined in ships far from home, and controlled by rigidly disciplined institutions, could take responsibility for their health, successfully or otherwise, within, against or alongside the system. If the unprecedented administrative requirements of the French Wars strengthened and standardised top-down medical authority, they also brought opportunities for evasion and negotiation. This complicates established narratives of the relationship between modern medicine, the armed forces and power. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9427142 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Oxford University Press |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-94271422022-08-31 Treating, Preventing, Feigning, Concealing: Sickness, Agency and the Medical Culture of the British Naval Seaman at the End of the Long Eighteenth Century Caputo, Sara Soc Hist Med Original Articles Seen as a crucial historical step in the development of ‘modern’ institutional healthcare, eighteenth-century British naval medicine has traditionally been studied from the point of view of the state and of physicians and surgeons: naval sailors’ attitudes towards health, medicine and their own bodies remain virtually unexplored. Using official and personal sources, this article sketches a ‘patient’s history’ of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century British ratings. Aiming to counterbalance Foucauldian interpretations, it highlights some of the ways in which individuals, even when apparently most powerless, confined in ships far from home, and controlled by rigidly disciplined institutions, could take responsibility for their health, successfully or otherwise, within, against or alongside the system. If the unprecedented administrative requirements of the French Wars strengthened and standardised top-down medical authority, they also brought opportunities for evasion and negotiation. This complicates established narratives of the relationship between modern medicine, the armed forces and power. Oxford University Press 2021-12-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9427142/ /pubmed/36051848 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkab108 Text en © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Original Articles Caputo, Sara Treating, Preventing, Feigning, Concealing: Sickness, Agency and the Medical Culture of the British Naval Seaman at the End of the Long Eighteenth Century |
title | Treating, Preventing, Feigning, Concealing: Sickness, Agency and the Medical Culture of the British Naval Seaman at the End of the Long Eighteenth Century |
title_full | Treating, Preventing, Feigning, Concealing: Sickness, Agency and the Medical Culture of the British Naval Seaman at the End of the Long Eighteenth Century |
title_fullStr | Treating, Preventing, Feigning, Concealing: Sickness, Agency and the Medical Culture of the British Naval Seaman at the End of the Long Eighteenth Century |
title_full_unstemmed | Treating, Preventing, Feigning, Concealing: Sickness, Agency and the Medical Culture of the British Naval Seaman at the End of the Long Eighteenth Century |
title_short | Treating, Preventing, Feigning, Concealing: Sickness, Agency and the Medical Culture of the British Naval Seaman at the End of the Long Eighteenth Century |
title_sort | treating, preventing, feigning, concealing: sickness, agency and the medical culture of the british naval seaman at the end of the long eighteenth century |
topic | Original Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9427142/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36051848 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkab108 |
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