Fever. Global Histories of (a) Disease, 1750–1840

Introduction

Fever is one of the most basic and pervasive of human experiences. Even before the current COVID-19 pandemic took this to new extremes, fever and the attendant sensations – of ‘burning up’, or having one’s temperature taken – had long been familiar to men, women and, indeed, children. While fever is a universal feature of humans’ material existence, however, its relevance and meaning differed from one historical context to another.

Project Overview

The proposed ERC project studies fever globally, particularly in societies within or tied to the Atlantic world, in the century spanning from the 1750s to the 1840s. This was a time when fever was not only considered the most common ailment that afflicted mankind, but also its most fatal one; ‘more persons died of fever than of all other ailments combined’, as contemporaries saw it. Given that fever was a threatening, ubiquitous presence for men and women around 1800, we know surprisingly little about it. As one medical historian recently put it, ‘fever has been the invisible elephant in the china shop of the medical past’.

Research Focus

Premised upon archival research in countries across the world, the various subprojects expose and explain:

1. The unusual prevalence of fever in the period’s medical record.
2. Its persistent association with particular, ‘insalubrious’ environments rather than contagion.
3. The unceasing relevance of vernacular, ‘folk’ and indigenous fever remedies in many Atlantic societies.
4. Fever’s resonance and relation with similar disease concepts in other, non-European empires.

Methodological Approach

The project also breaks new ground methodologically in its global, ‘new materialist’ and interdisciplinary approach. It engages in dialogue with:

• The medical sciences
• History and philosophy of science
• Environmental studies

Fundamental Questions

It poses questions fundamental to our understanding of both the past and the present, including:

• The rise and fall of diseases
• The credibility of medical knowledge
• How cultural and historical contexts affect suffering and physiology, and vice versa.