Louis Westenra Sambon: Pioneer of Tropical Medicine by Gerald Hugo Ree

Abstract

Health & History ● 20/1 ● 2018 159 this might be unsatisfying. The authors could, for example, have used Rosenberg’s concept of framing disease to examine how the conceptualisation of disease reflected the colonial physicians’ institutional and intellectual history, shaped the identity of the carriers of a disease and their position in society, and structured the doctorpatient interaction. The authors by no means neglect these issues and explicitly acknowledge in the epilogue that ‘aspects of race, cultural difference, class and gender’ remain underexposed (p. 431). It is regrettable that these topics are not addressed systematically, because it may be precisely these issues rather than the medical accomplishments of ‘the great doctors’, as such, that deserve our full attention. SEBASTIAAN BROERE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM Gerald Hugo Ree, Louis Westenra Sambon: Pioneer of Tropical Medicine (Brisbane: Paradigm Print Media, 2017). ISBN: 9780 -646-97177-3 (PB). Black and white and colour illustrations. 6 + 190pp. In his biography of Louis Westenra Sambon: Pioneer of Tropical Medicine Gerald Hugo Ree puts into practice the exploration of ‘failures’ or ‘dead ends’ instead of the more commonly narrated ‘progress through discovery’ stream of medical history. Sambon was far from a complete professional failure in Ree’s telling. Yet he does emerge from obscurity here as a man whose scientific and professional habits made him a magnet for controversy and criticism in his day. Ree’s book follows Sambon from his early life as the son of French political exiles in Italy, where he developed an abiding interest in medical history, through the various scientific disputes and controversies he became embroiled in. Largely dependent on the sympathetic patronage of Sir Patrick Manson for much of his career, Sambon was a prominent figure in debates about tropical climates and disease, malaria, sleeping sickness, schistosomiasis, cancer, and pellagra. In some of these areas, especially discussions about climate, sleeping sickness, and schistosomiasis, thorough research by other investigators ultimately vindicated Sambon’s theoretical contributions. Several researchers confirmed, for example, his 160 BOOK REVIEWS hypothesis that the tsetse fly was one of the hosts in the trypanosome parasite’s double-lift cycle and not a mere mechanical vector for the disease. In other areas, however, Sambon’s theoretical preoccupation with germs and their vectors led him to false conclusions that ultimately damaged his career. The failure of his germ theory of pellagra, at a time when new scientific knowledge of nutrition pointed in other directions, was especially damning professionally. Regardless of whether Sambon was successful or misguided in his endeavours, Ree develops an image of him as a voracious theorist who engaged in a great deal of speculation and frequently careless epidemiological research. Although he worked diligently in the laboratory, his official reports on field studies were often meandering and anecdotal, featuring lengthy digressions about ancient history and lacking epidemiological rigour. One United States Army surgeon accused Sambon of ‘free-lance methods of theorizing about different diseases’ (p. 102). In response to one of his reports, a cancer expert described him as a ‘literary artist, an accomplished parasitologist and a learned antiquarian’ but who ‘appears ... rather as an advocate than as an investigator’ (p. 152). Sambon was not shy about defending himself from criticism from many luminaries of tropical medicine, including Ronald Ross. Reacting to criticism from German parasitologist Arthur Looss concerning his views on the life cycle of Schistosoma mansoni, he declared that, ‘Respect for authority is one thing, slavish submission to authority is another’ (p. 86), a response suggestive of his mentality. It is a testament in fact to the thoroughness of Ree’s research that the reader gets a full sense of this critical and often hostile relationship between Sambon and many of his colleagues and contemporaries. As Ree shows clearly, Sambon’s willingness to flit from one field of investigation to another was a recurring motif of his career and one that usually prompted irritated researchers to question his expertise and credentials. Ree succeeds here in a thorough reconstruction of the career of a man who is relatively obscure to history but was a figure of some notoriety. Whilst the book is organised as a conventional biography, the extent of Ree’s research has allowed him to capture a...