James Ranald Martin opens his 1837 \u2018Notes on the Medical Topography of Calcutta\u2019, with a quote from Hippocrates on the title-page:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2018It is necessary for a Physician, when entering a city of which he knows nothing, to examine its exposure, the predominant winds, the seasons, the nature and elevation of the soil, the quantity of the waters of which the inhabitants make use, and the kind of life they follow<\/em>\u2019.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n <\/p>\n However, rather than examining the habits and lifestyle of the inhabitants, Martin was one of many European travelers to \u201cthe Tropics\u201d to look upon their lives with utter disdain. \u2018The Foundation of an English<\/em> School of Medicine\u2019, he writes, \u2018\u2026must prove one of the most direct and impressive mores of demonstrating to the natives the superiority of European knowledge in general\u2019 (italics in original).2<\/a><\/sup> There is little of the Hippocratic call to examine and learn about the life or habits of the local population in Martin\u2019s remarks. Instead, they reveal a sense of superiority, and a belief in the righteousness of European colonialism. Shang-Jen Li argues that as the 19th<\/sup> c. progressed, British medical practitioners were less and less inclined to learn from native customs or from indigenous medicine- it was now seen as a \u2018loss of the white self\u2019, as a sign of contagion.3<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 Tropicality, with its pseudo-scientific observations, creates the perfect environment for the cultivation of scientific racism. Unlike Orientalism, which is rooted in an interest in history, languages and cultures of South Asia, Tropicality takes its inspiration from science, nature and observation. Despite its seeming dedication to empirical evidence and interest in the environment, writings about the tropics frequently omit mention of the local population or local practices, and instead focus on discussing the discrepancies between the imagined tropics and the actual environment travelers encountered.<\/p>\n For instance, in Joseph Hooker\u2019s 1855 Himalayan Journals <\/em>he does little to hide his disappointment at the disparity between the tropics he had imagined in his mind, and the \u201ctropics\u201d he encountered. Of the Sunderbunds he writes \u201cthese exhibit no tropical luxuriance, and are, in this respect, exceedingly disappointing\u201d.4<\/a><\/sup> As David Arnold argues, despite their \u201cscientific\u201d backing, the Tropics were frequently romanticised. Romanticism in tropicality played the role of glorifying nature, selling travelers the idea of a wild landscape which was rarely found by the traveler upon their visitation.5<\/a><\/sup> As we can see from Hooker\u2019s memoirs, , \u201cthe tropics\u201d for him are more a playground for the medic, the naturalist, the botanist, the geologist, rather than a place on equal grounds with Europe. The tropics in these writings exist for European observation, cultivation and improvement. Even Hooker\u2019s desire to see true \u201ctropical\u201d and \u201cwild\u201d nature appears false. When visiting the botanic garden during his travels, he writes that instead of a beautiful tropical garden he finds \u2018an unsightly wilderness, without shade (the first requirement of every tropical garden) or other beauties\u2019.6<\/a><\/sup> Clearly, the reality he was in did not match the very specific European conception of a wild, yet cultivated tropics.<\/p>\n Beyond his disappointment with the nature, Hooker\u2019s account of his early travelling experience seems devoid of people. He dedicates paragraphs to describing plants he sees, or buildings he stays in, but there appears to be no mention of the native population. Therein lies the contradiction of the tropics: they must maintain wilderness, but also careful cultivation. They must be a place of novelty for the European, but the medicine, the food, and the buildings must be European in style. Most revealingly, however, travelers\u2019 disdain for the experiences, voices, and habits of the indigenous populations of the places the visited show that tropicality was and continues to be an imagined place.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bibliography:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Arnold, David. 2005. The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape and Science 1800-1856<\/em>. Ranikhet: Permanent Black.<\/p>\n Hooker, Joseph Dalton. 1954. Himalayan Journals: Notes of a Naturalist<\/em>. London: J. Murray.<\/p>\n Martin, Sir James Ranland. 1837. Notes on the Medical Topography of Calcutta<\/em>. Calcutta: G.H Huttmann.<\/p>\n Shang-Jen, Li. 2013. \u201cEating Well in China: Diet and Hygiene in Nineteenth-Century Treaty Ports.\u201d In Health and Hygiene in Chinese East Asia: Policies and Publics in the Long Twentieth Century<\/em>, edited by Qizi Liang, Che Leung, Angela Ki, and Charlotte Furth. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.<\/p>\n James Ranald Martin opens his 1837 \u2018Notes on the Medical Topography of Calcutta\u2019, with a quote from Hippocrates on the title-page: \u2018It is necessary for a Physician, when entering a city of which he knows nothing, to examine its exposure, the predominant winds, the seasons, the nature and elevation of the soil, the quantity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":559,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions\/559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}