Quigley, Killian Colm (Author)
Eighteenth-Century Life
Volume: 41
Issue: 2
Pages: 139-153
Publication date: 2017
Irish men and women made up more than a quarter of the approximately one hundred and sixty thousand convicts transported from the British Isles to Australia in the period 1787-1868. They feature, in major accounts of early New South Wales, as irredeemably shiftless, and prone to escapism. And in the medical literature of convict transportation, this characterization sometimes intersects with another, specifically pathological, impression: the Irish, on account of their “habits” and “character,” appeared uniquely predisposed to scurvy. This essay explains how this intersection was established, by ships' surgeons and others, via reference to theories of constitution, which had their roots in Hippocratic thought but were revitalized and revised in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century maritime and colonial contexts. In the literature of colonial Australia, indolence, illness, and Irishness often appear as conjoined energies, suggesting the importance of pathology and its sources—apparent or actual—for the constitution of New South Wales.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Bladin, Peter F.;
(2001)
A Century of Prejudice and Progress: A Paradigm of Epilepsy in a Developing Society, Medical and Social Aspects, Victoria, Australia, 1835-1950
Article
Cardona Rodas, Hilderman;
Vásquez Valencia, María Fernanda;
(2011)
Enfermedad deformante, degeneración y clima en Colombia, 1880--1920
Article
Levene, Alysa;
Siena, Kevin;
(2013)
Reporting Dirt and Disease: Child Ill-health in Eighteenth-Century England
Book
Jones, Greta;
Malcolm, Elizabeth;
(1999)
Medicine, disease, and the State in Ireland, 1650-1940
Book
Kelly, James;
Clark, Fiona;
(2010)
Ireland and Medicine in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Book
Geary, Laurence M.;
(2004)
Medicine and Charity in Ireland, 1718--1851
Book
Tim McInerney;
(2023)
Nobility and the Making of Race in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Book
Carroll, Patrick;
(2006)
Science, Culture, and Modern State Formation
Article
Mary O’Sullivan;
(2024)
Ireland’s Role in British Colonial Capitalism: “Men of Capitals” and Pitt’s Irish Proposals, 1784–1785
Article
Lynsey Black;
(2020)
The Pathologisation of Women Who Kill: Three Cases from Ireland
Article
Keith Johnston;
(2016)
Music and Montesquieu's Climate Theory in the Criticism of Joseph Baretti and His English Contemporaries
Article
Tésio, Stéphanie;
(2012)
Climatologie et médecine au Canada au XVIIIe siècle
Article
Grace Karskens;
(2016)
Floods and Flood-mindedness in Early Colonial Australia
Article
Bruce H. Short;
(2021)
The Little-Known Surgeon at the Port Jackson Settlements: Edward Laing from 1792 to 1794
Article
Toby Raeburn;
Kayla Sale;
Paul Saunders;
Aunty Kerrie Doyle;
(2022)
Aboriginal Australian mental health during the first 100 years of colonization, 1788–1888: a historical review of nineteenth-century documents
Book
Tommaso, Lisa Di;
(2012)
Art of the First Fleet: Images of Nature
Book
Starbuck, Nicole;
(2013)
Baudin, Napoleon and the Exploration of Australia
Book
Scott, Anne M;
Hiatt, Alfred;
McIlroy, Claire;
Wortham, Christopher;
(2011)
European Perceptions of Terra Australis
Article
Weaver, Karol K.;
(2004)
“She Crushed the Child's Fragile Skull”: Disease, Infanticide, and Enslaved Women in Eighteenth-Century Saint-Domingue
Book
Sharma, Madhuri;
(2012)
Indigenous and Western Medicine in Colonial India
Be the first to comment!