Entrepot and Backwater: A Cultural History of the Transfer of Medical Knowledge from Leiden to Edinburgh, 1690--1740 (2007)
Casteel, Eric Grier (Author)
University of California, Los Angeles
Jacob, Margaret C.
Edition Details: Advisor: Jacob, Margaret C.
Physical Details: 336 pp.
Language: English
The medical faculty of the University of Edinburgh was founded in 1726. It is widely recognized that the initial members of the faculty, all of whom took a portion of their medical training under Herman Boerhaave at the University of Leiden, taught a medical curriculum largely based on Boerhaave's curriculum. Surrounding this event there has grown a tacit myth in Scottish historiography that the Scottish physician Archibald Pitcairne, who was Professor of Practical Medicine for one year at Leiden (1692 - 1693) taught his system of medicine to Boerhaave who then passed it on to the next generation of Scottish students. I call this the 'Myth of Pitcairne's End-run.' Both Scottish and Dutch historians who have treated these events have failed to contextualize the 'other side' in order properly to understand the totality of this moment of knowledge transfer. Dutch historians work in Dutch archives, and the Scots in the Scottish archives. This project constitutes the first, I went to both. This project disassembles the Pitcairne myth from several standpoints. It first examines Pitcairne's activities while in Leiden and after returning home in light of new archival research. Far from having any lasting effect on medical teaching at Leiden, Pitcairne's ideas lasted for only a brief time. His reputation as one who had abandoned his academic duties made him persona non grata in Leiden; in fact, the pressure against him was so great while he was there that we can now establish that this is why he left Leiden never to return. The works of Herman Boerhaave and several of his students are also examined. From these we can demonstrate that a solid Hippocratically-based and chemically-oriented medicine is what Boerhaave delivered to his students. The project ties in recent work on Boerhaave's Calvinist faith and alchemical activities and demonstrates that these elements - which bear no resemblance to the work of Pitcairne - are the basis of the Edinburgh curriculum. Indeed, in Boerhaave's activities we can now establish the roots of the great advances made in chemistry in Edinburgh in the latter half of the eighteenth century.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 69/02 (2008). Pub. no. AAT 3302590.
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