Appealing to the Republic of Letters: An Autopsy of Anti-venereal Trials in Eighteenth-century Mexico.
This study analyses the narrative elements of a little-known report into anti-venereal trials written by an Irish military physician-surgeon, Daniel O'Sullivan (1760-c.1797). It explores the way in which O'Sullivan as the narrator of theHistorico-critical reportcreates medical heroes and anti-heroes as a means to criticise procedures initiated by staff in the Hospital General de San Andrés, Mexico City. The resulting work depicts a much less positive picture of medical trials and hospital authorities in this period than has been recorded to date, and provides a critical and complicated assessment of one of Spain's leading physicians of the nineteenth century, Francisco Javier Balmis (1753-1819).
Fiona
F
Clark
France; Mexico; eighteenth century; republic of letters; venereal disease