Health and Sickness in the Early American Novel

Social Affection and Eighteenth-Century Medicine

Maureen Tuthill

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137597144
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137597151
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

This book is a study of depictions of health and sickness in the early American novel, 1787-1808. These texts reveal a troubling tension between the impulse toward social affection that built cohesion in the nation and the pursuit of self-interest that was considered central to the emerging liberalism of the new Republic. Good health is depicted as an extremely positive social value, almost an a priori condition of membership in the community. Characters who have the "glow of health" tend to enjoy wealth and prestige; those who become sick are burdened by poverty and debt or have made bad decisions that have jeopardized their status. Bodies that waste away, faint, or literally disappear off of the pages of America's first fiction are resisting the conditions that ail them; as they plead for their right to exist, they draw attention to the injustice, apathy, and greed that afflict them.

© The Author(s) 2016

M. TuthillHealth and Sickness in the Early American NovelPalgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicinehttps://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59715-1_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: “The Glow of Health”: Medicine Meets the Novel in Early America

Maureen Tuthill¹

(1)

English Department, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, USA

End Abstract

“The Cure of what I feel at any time amiss in my Condition, lies Within.”

–Cotton Mather, The Angel of Bethesda ¹

Five months into the Siege of Boston at the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, Abigail Adams had experienced some of the worst effects of the British military occupation: vague reports from the front lines, the destruction of nearby Charlestown, the death of Dr. Joseph Warren at the Battle of Breed’s Hill, the constant “roar of the cannon,” and a crushing lack of supplies. ² “We live in continual expectation of hostilities,” she writes in 1775 to her husband, John Adams, as the siege gets underway. ³ Added to these difficulties, a dysentery epidemic swept through Boston during and after the siege. Early Americans were all too familiar with dysentery; it was, in fact, the “most significant disease in eighteenth-century America,” according to medical historian Gerald Grob. ⁴ Mortality during an outbreak ranged between five and ten percent, and colonial Americans had little knowledge about how to prevent transmission of the pathogens that caused it. Often, their treatments only magnified the dangers posed by the disorder. ⁵ The illness from the military camps in 1775 reached as far as the Adams’s home of Braintree, killing Abigail’s mother, her brother-in-law, a beloved servant, and scores of other family members and friends in the community. ⁶ Abigail and her youngest son, Thomas Boylston Adams, caught the disorder and survived, although she laments that three-year-old “Tommy” was changed by it: “From a hearty, hale, corn-fed boy, he has become pale, lean, and wan.” ⁷

As Abigail Adams conveys the details of the 1775 dysentery epidemic to John, who at the time was sitting in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, she calls it a “doleful tale”: “A general putrefaction seems to have taken place, and we cannot bear the house only as we are constantly cleansing it with hot vinegar.” ⁸ In one letter, dated November 27, 1775, now seven months into the siege, she describes the impact of the sickness:

’Tis a fortnight to-night since I wrote you a line, during which I have been confined with the jaundice, rheumatism, and a most violent cold; I yesterday took a puke, which has relieved me, and I feel much better to-day. Many, very many people who have had the dysentery, are now afflicted with the jaundice and rheumatism; some it has left in hectics, some in dropsies. The great and incessant rains we have had this fall (the like cannot be recollected) may have occasioned some of the present disorders. The jaundice is very prevalent in the camp. We have lately had a week of very cold weather, as cold as January, and a flight of snow, which I hope will purify the air of some of the noxious vapors. It has spoilled [sic] many hundreds of bushels of apples, which were designed for cider, and which the great rains had prevented people from making up. ⁹

In this letter to her husband, Abigail Adams perceives her present illness (“jaundice, rheumatism, and a most violent cold”) as an extended consequence of the dysentery epidemic that originated in the military camps outside Boston before it spread outward to the countryside, eventually coursing through her own household. ¹⁰ In the aftermath of the epidemic, she perceives her own compromised state of health as aggravated by unseasonably low temperatures. The lingering effects of the sickness and the cold weather have also disrupted the production of cider in the community. The people around Boston are physically weakened, while heavy rains give rise to ancillary disorders such as hectics and dropsies. Adams hopes that the snows that “purify” the air will also invigorate the people’s health.

Abigail Adams’s philosophy of health weaves together body, environment, community, and economy. Clearly, the overall chaos occasioned by the Siege of Boston has erupted in manifold ways, not the least of which is the physical impact of disease in the camps of both the American and British military forces. Abigail, as she reports to John from Braintree during the early stages of the Revolution, does not separate the health of the community from other major events of the year. It is part of an overall package of wellness across many platforms—physical, social, emotional, intellectual, financial, and spiritual. Her story of illness suggests that the sickness grew out of a set of interlocking conditions, most of which operate outside of her body but which materially influence it. Eighteenth-century Americans viewed health as an expression of one’s relation to the social and physical environment, a concept that could cause considerable consternation because sickness was rampant in eighteenth-century America. A continual flood of ailments such as dysentery, malaria, fevers, coughs, smallpox, yellow fever, and diphtheria—to name a few—were practically unavoidable, no matter how healthy a person was in general.

Treating illness in early America was a routine but time-consuming household duty, like putting food on the table. Healing began in the garden, where women planted medicinal herbs to make poultices and tonics in preparation for the sicknesses that would inevitably arise. As we see from Abigail Adams’s correspondence, medical care often involved physically demanding work—tending round the clock to ailing family or household members, washing bedding in vats of boiling water, cleansing sick rooms with hot vinegar. Women, especially, were expected to stay abreast of the latest medical practices, and to administer to the sick in their communities. Even as the professionally trained (male) physician stepped onto this medical scene, traditional healing from within the community—the kind that was highly personal and intensely local—was still the most prevalent form of medicine practiced in the early days of nationhood. Most people managed their own illnesses and those of their neighbors as part of the daily turnings of their lives, and the ways in which they did so reflected their character and status as individuals. Medical sociologist Bryan Turner observes that social relations are “central to the explanation of health and illness.” ¹¹ Certainly, in early America, states of health indicated how fluidly people moved through their environment and how solidly they were integrated into their communities. And so it was for characters in the novels they read.

This book examines how depictions of health and sickness in the early American novel, 1787–1808, reveal a troubling tension between the impulse toward social affection that built cohesion in the nation and the pursuit of rational self-interest that was central to the ethos of the new Republic. I examine a range of texts, including canonical works such as Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple, Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette, Tabitha Gilman Tenney’s Female Quixotism, Charles Brockden Brown’s Arthur Mervyn, and Hugh Henry Brackenridge’s Modern Chivalry. While these works have become staples of early American literary discussions, their medical aesthetics have not been explored extensively. (Brown’s fever novel, Arthur Mervyn, is an exception, but the yellow fever epidemic at the center of the narrative is only one of a host of medical issues I consider in this text). I also investigate lesser known novels by some of these authors, such as Rowson’s Lucy Temple and Reuben and Rachel, along with Brown’s Ormond and Edgar Huntly, to demonstrate the consistency with which they employ theories about health and sickness in their characterizations and plot themes. Additionally, I discuss texts that have garnered less critical attention, including Ann Eliza Bleecker’s The History of Maria Kittle, Lenora Sansay’s Secret History and Laura, as well as Peter Markoe’s The Algerine Spy in Pennsylvania, all of which convey medical ideas that are consistent with those of more recognizable early national fiction, with slight variations that reflect local socio-cultural attitudes. I situate these works within the medical contexts of their day by analyzing influential medical tracts, such as those of American physician-patriot Benjamin Rush and Scottish physician William Buchan, whose writings and opinions had a tremendous impact on early American medical theories and everyday healing practices. Furthermore, I capture the popular medical discourse of the era by including the voices of eighteenth-century periodical writers, who were debating health issues in a public medium, or of ordinary physicians looking to share medical knowledge through occasional pieces of writing. To round out my discussion, I incorporate commentary by political thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin who saw distinct connections between health and human social behaviour.

The fiction of early America conveyed the basic idea that good health was an extremely positive social value, almost an a priori condition of membership in the community. Our first novelists clearly presumed an association between physical well-being and social belonging, and by writing about why characters fall ill and how they heal one another, they were commenting on the functioning of the community itself. In this regard, their works prefigure twentieth and twenty-first century notions of the convergence of medicine and society, wherein healing practices are thought to be shaped by cultural and political frameworks. As medical anthropologist Paul Farmer suggests, we see sociologically, but we act medically. ¹² How we heal is who we are. The early American novel is filled with medical information that describes what a healthy American looked like, what social and financial factors dictated who would heal or be healed, and how people determined whether they had a duty to heal others. Many American novelists of the era employed a simple medical aesthetic that was implicitly understood by their readers: Good health secured one’s place in society while illness quite often erased it. Because health was understood as a marker of connectedness, healing itself was an act that validated the patient’s right to belong. Characters who have the “glow of health” in these novels tend to enjoy wealth and prestige; others become sick because they are burdened by poverty and debt or have made bad decisions that have jeopardized their status. Bodies that waste away, faint, or literally disappear off of the pages of America’s first fiction are resisting the conditions that ail them; as they plead for their right to exist, they draw attention to the injustice, apathy, and greed that afflict them.

Considering the way early American novels comment on the boundaries of personal and civic compassion, I argue for calling them novels of “social affection.” The term “social affection” was commonly used in the eighteenth century to describe feelings of attachment to people in one’s community. The concept helps us to capture how characters within these texts grapple with the nature and extent of their responsibility toward others. Their concerns in this regard lay at the core of the healing encounters depicted in the narratives. ¹³ Social affection, portrayed in moments of healing, is often withheld or diverted by matters of self-interest. This dilemma–over whether to heal or not, and to what extent—provides a foundation on which our early novelists sketch out a prototypical strain of the American character. As Elizabeth Dill remarks about the early American novel, “[W]hat is most glorious about these stories is their unfailing insistence that at the center of all of life’s plots is this messy and ambiguous business of what brings us together.” ¹⁴ When faced with illness, their own or someone else’s, characters make decisions about how far they should extend themselves to their neighbors before incurring social or financial slippage on their own parts. Early American novels are meticulous in describing the way characters struggle to make medical choices that will, on many levels, signify their ethical standards. They portray the interior dilemmas of characters who view healing as a socially necessary act but balk at providing medical assistance to those who become ill through their own selfishness, irresponsibility, or lassitude. Early Americans believed that personal regimens, attitudes, and actions contributed to one’s state of health. While they sought relief from illness in standard ways—pills, powders, tonics, poultices, and herbs—they also sought...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: “The Glow of Health”: Medicine Meets the Novel in Early America
• 2. A “Very Unfeeling World”: The Failure of Social Healing in Rowson’s America
• 3. “Your Health and My Happiness”: Sickness and Social Control in The Coquette and Female Quixotism
• 4. “The Best Means of Retaining Health”: Self-Determined Health and Social Discipline in Early America
• 5. “The Means of Subsistence”: Health, Wealth, and Social Affection in a Yellow Fever World
• 6. The “Learned Doctor”: Tyler’s Literary Endorsement of a Federal Elite
• 7. “Some Yankee Non-sense About Humanity”: Hiding away African Health in Early American Fiction
• Back Matter