Assembling the tropics : science and medicine in Portugal's empire, 1450-1700 / Hugh Cagle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cagle, Hugh, author.

Series:

Studies in comparative world history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tropical medicine--History.

Tropical medicine.

Public health--Portugal--Colonies.

Public health.

Science.

History.

Portugal.

Colonies.

Science--Portugal--History.

Tropical Medicine--history.

Colonialism--history.

Public Health Practice--history.

Science--history.

History, 15th Century.

History, 16th Century.

History, 17th Century.

Medical Subjects:

Tropical Medicine--history.

Colonialism--history.

Public Health Practice--history.

Science--history.

History, 15th Century.

History, 16th Century.

History, 17th Century.

Portugal.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xix, 364 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Summary:

"From popular fiction to modern biomedicine, the tropics are defined by two essential features: prodigious nature and debilitating illness. That was not always so. In this engaging and imaginative study, Hugh Cagle shows how such a vision was created. Along the way, he challenges conventional accounts of the Scientific Revolution. The history of "the tropics" is the story of science in Europe's first global empire. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, Portugal established colonies from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia and South America, enabling the earliest comparisons of nature and disease across the tropical world. Assembling the Tropics shows how the proliferation of colonial approaches to medicine and natural history led to the assemblage of "the tropics" as a single, coherent, and internally consistent global region. This is a story about how places acquire medical meaning, about how nature and disease become objects of scientific inquiry, and about what is at stake when that happens"--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Reading between the Lines: A Prologue; Part I. The Coast of Africa, 1450-1550: 2. Dead Reckonings; Part II. The Indian Ocean World, 1500-1600: 3. Itineraries and Inventories; 4. Drug Traffic; 5. Facts and Fictions; Part III. The Portuguese Atlantic, 1550-1700: 6. Moral Hazards; 7. Split Decisions; 8. Fault Lines; 9. Epilogue: South-South Exchanges.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9781107196636

1107196639

OCLC:

1032359025