Review, Thomas A. Apel, Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds (original) (raw)
In this new monograph, Thomas A. Apel provides a compelling examination of the intellectual controversy surrounding outbreaks of yellow fever in the northeastern United States at the turn of the nineteenth century. As well as an account of the " yellow fever controversy, " Apel unpacks the debate's broader cultural and intellectual underpinnings. At the center of the discourse on yellow fever, Apel demonstrates, were well-known physicians such as Benjamin Rush and Samuel L. Mitchill, who wrestled with broader streams in Enlightenment thought, including the influence of materialism, conspiratorial fears of political factions in the new American republic, the chemistry of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, and history's role in understanding the natural world. Through chapters organized around these themes, Apel teases out the deeper intellectual anxieties present in the debate over the origins of yellow fever. In chapter one, Apel establishes the terms of the debate: did yellow fever spring from local causes or was it imported? University-trained physicians such as Benjamin Rush and Samuel L. Mitchill led the localists, who ultimately won the debate, while surgeons such as William Currie and Isaac Cathrall acted as spokespeople for the contagionists. Rush and other localists, noting that yellow fever seemed to strike only swampy ports, reasoned that yellow fever was produced from the local environment. In contrast, contagionists concluded that since yellow fever outbreaks followed the arrival of diseased ships, the only observable solution was that it had been imported. In short, localists saw a common sense connection between places and epidemics , while contagionists championed their theory due to the coincidence of diseased ships and cases of yellow fever. In the next two chapters Apel enriches what is otherwise a familiar narrative, uncovering how contagionists and localists used history and chemistry to undergird their theories of yellow fever's origins. Contagionists created historical narratives of