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Article ID: CBB157239641

"A Little Seasoning Would Aid in the Digestion of Our Factums": Wit, Evidence, and the Evolving Form of Medical Debate in New Orleans, 1853–1868 (2017)

Forbes, Amy Wiese (Author)

Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Volume: 91
Issue: 3
Pages: 524-552
Publication date: 2017
Language: English

URI: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/674944

DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2017.0059

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Medicine and race Rhetoric in scientific discourse Disease and diseases Medicine and race Medicine Yellow fever 18th century New Orleans (Louisiana, U.S.) Deléry, Charles François Jean Charles Faget

This history of the categorization of yellow fever explores the interchange between rhetoric and evidence in understanding the disease. Eighteenth-century models of medicine relied on rhetorical manipulation to convince readers of accuracy, unlike modern medicine, which claims objective evidence as the professional standard. But how did the physician as intellectual give way to the physician as scientist? This article analyzes the transition through a case study: J.-C. Faget, who famously discovered the definitive sign of yellow fever, and Charles Deléry disputed how doctors should attempt to understand the disease in New Orleans, a vital yet understudied medical center dominated by Francophone creole interests. It addresses the use of ideas about immunity to define racial, ethnic, and class differences; the rhetoric of health and medicine; and developing ontological theories of disease. It shows the struggle to employ intellectual realizations to understand this disease that cost the region dearly in lives and income.

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