Textualizing Illness: Medicine and Culture in New England, 1620–1730

Abstract

The study of religion, medicine, and cultural encounters on the New England frontier may seem to deal with separate topics. However, as Marc Priewe makes clear in Textualizing Illness, these topics are part of a larger cultural whole. Most importantly, for those interested in the history of medicine, Priewe's monograph goes a long way toward demonstrating the important cultural work done by ideas about illness and the body. As the title suggests, Priewe is interested in the ways illness is constructed through text. He bases his arguments on a wide range of documents—from letters and diaries to sermons and poetry—and examines them in the context of cultural exchange and synthesis. The book begins with a look at the meanings of illness in the context of the cross-cultural contact of the early New England frontier. Priewe notes that both English and indigenous cultures shared the belief that the health of the body was tied to the cosmos. As Priewe puts it, “both indigenous and imported theories of disease relied on an interrelation between natural and supernatural causes” (p. 94). In Anglo-American culture the idea of supernaturally inflected illness became particularly strong. Such a belief justified colonial conquest—weak native bodies had succumbed to disease through divine providence. Priewe suggests that the idea of inferior indigenous bodies influences not just colonial New England but much of American culture, including the doctrine of manifest destiny and other ideologies of conquest. Furthermore, this conception of illness helped shape the colonists' sense that they were part of a divine mission—another factor that contributed to American culture.