The Contagious City: The Politics of Public Health in Early Philadelphia

5. “Improvement in Every Part of the Healing Art” : Transatlantic Cultures of Medical Improvement

76 5 “Improvement in Every Part of the Healing Art” Transatlantic Cultures of Medical Improvement As medical men became self-conscious agents of reform in a broader social context, they came to view their ambit as encompassing nearly the whole of the world. They launched ambitious collaborative investigations into natural philosophy, pursuing knowledge that they promised would benefit all humankind. As these far-flung but closely linked researchers sought out universal principles, their shared ventures kindled humane, fraternal, and philanthropic sentiments. Promoting health was more than the idle pursuit of medical elites. It was a cornerstone of the Enlightenment culture of universal improvement. Reformers such as Benjamin Franklin and his friend John Fothergill, London’s renowned Quaker physician and philanthropist, established relationships for collaborative medical and natural inquiry, animated by the belief that improvement was only possible through open exchange. By making scientific knowledge central to social reform, transatlantic improvers had embarked on a decidedly political project. They hoped that the culture of scientific cooperation would not only advance natural knowledge and medical practice but also make sense of a wildly diverse empire. Sharing knowledge across the sea provided “a means of uniting Ingenious Men of All Societies together,” and thereby establishing “a natural harmony.” Thomas Bond grandly exulted that transatlantic collaboration would be “the Nurse of universal Friendship,” transcending narrow parochialism by uniting people all over the world in a common project.1 Transatlantic Cultures of Medical Improvement 77 Collecting Specimens and Corresponding Societies Far from being passive recipients of metropolitan knowledge, colonial Americans were critical participants in creating that knowledge, and among those colonists, medical men “formed so vital a part . . . that they might be said to have formed its core.”2 It was another project made possible through the alchemy of association that turned myriad cumulative contributions, as minor as they might have been individually, into far more than the sum of their parts. As one participant observed, the “surest method of improving science is by a generous intercourse of the Learned in different countries, and a free communication of knowledge.” And it was only natural that such information should concentrate, as though by centripetal attraction, in London: “it the head of a mighty Empire, the greatest that ever commanded the Ocean: It is compos’d of Gentlemen, as well as Traders: It has a large intercourse with all the Earth . . . and therefore this hour is justly due to it, to be the constant place of residence for that Knowledge, which is to be made up of the Reports, and Intelligence of all Countreys.”3 Fothergill reveled in living at he heart of an empire that “abounded with so many opportunities of observation . . . connected with so many of such distant parts of the universe , that was the courier outré of intelligence to them all.”4 Natural philosophy was moving away from an age of prodigies and monstrosity and toward a belief that, all things—plants and animals, climates, and geological formations—followed regular and comprehensible patterns that careful and sustained observation would reveal. European naturalists relied on colonists to gather the specimens and offer the firsthand reports necessary to compile the catalog of American nature. No European expert could predict what amateurs such as John Bartram and Cadwallader Colden might find on the imperial fringe, and medical men anxiously followed their progress in exploring a colonial world radiant with the potential of providing a whole new pharmacopeia, unknown and undreamed of by Galen.5 British patrons such as Fothergill and the seed merchant Peter Collinson financed expeditions, offered comparisons from their own expanding collections , made introductions to other potential patrons, and offered the metropolitan validation that so many colonists desired. The Americans conveyed everything from fossils and eggs to seeds and shells to their peers and patrons across the sea. Colden longed to present Collinson with “something that will not be disagreeable to the Lovers of Learning.” Israel Pemberton, meanwhile, sent Fothergill a specimen valuable enough to justify insuring it for £200.6 The generosity of American observers helped Fothergill amass the largest private botanical garden in England at his home in Upton. His letters to the seed merchant Humphrey Marshall are filled with requests for American plants. Corresponding with American experts, including John and William Bartram, Fothergill compiled their experiences as a kind of anecdotal 78 “Improvement in Every Part of the Healing Art” empiricism. He also played patron and host to American botany...