ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Shifting Perspectives: From an Atlantic World Medical Complex to a Pacific World Medical Complex

• In Event: New Perspectives on the Circulation of Knowledge

English Abstract

The idea of an Atlantic World Medical Complex, which refers to the rise of medical knowledge and practices thanks to the fusion of Amerindian, African, and European traditions, is now well established thanks to the work of Londa Schiebenger, who introduced that notion. In this paper we propose to shift the perspective to the Pacific World where Asian traditions, together with Amerindian and European ones, have taken part in the development of what we offer to identify as a Pacific World Medical complex, parallel to that of the Atlantic World.
As in the Atlantic side, in the Pacific, medical knowledge is created, adopted, adapted, and rejected, all because of the necessity to maintain and restore the health of the population in this large space. In this context we observe the presence, the interweaving and the circulation of knowledge about food and diseases in newly installed colonies, trading posts, and transoceanic voyages, where the Manila Galleon, the many commodities, the people, and the information that were transported, were an essential element.
In this paper, we therefore present how and why, in the context of the Manila Galleon, naturalist knowledge was apprehended, understood, experimented, blocked, discredited, and even held secret in the process of the creation of medical knowledge necessary for the success of the colonial, religious, and commercial enterprises that were taking place in Early Modern period. To this end, we will draw from a large diversity of sources, including the works by Georg Kamel regarding his botanical garden in the Philippines, the writings by the ship surgeon Agustín Sánchez, and the missions reports from the Jesuits in the Mariana Islands.

Author

• Mariana Estela Sanchez, KU Leuven