Natural History, Conservation and Health: Scottish-Trained Doctors in New Zealand, 1790–1920s

Abstract

This article considers the nexus between environment, health and colonial development through the migration, and visits, of Scottish-educated doctors to New Zealand. In arguing for the importance of local social, environmental and economic factors to explain their changing prominence within, in particular, the field of natural history, this article enriches and in some cases modifies the work of Richard Grove and John M. MacKenzie.

Keywords:

• natural history
• science and imperialism
• medical education

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Warwick Brunton, Dr Neil Clayton, Dr David Galloway, Dr Paul Star, Ondine Godtschalk, Dr Brad Patterson, Professor John MacKenzie and members of the following departments to whom I presented these ideas: Stirling University and; ‘Fakultät für Geschichtswissenschaft, Philosophie und Theologie’, Bielefeld University. For research funding, I would like to thank the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Contestable Research Fund, The University of Waikato; The ‘Asia New Zealand Research Cluster’, University of Otago; and my research assistant, Petra Jane Edmunds, for converting the references. Finally special thanks are due to Wendy Harrex, editor of the University of Otago Press, and Ruth Ireland, Palgrave Macmillan, for allowing me to revise and comprehensively update earlier chapters: Beattie, ‘W.L. Lindsay, Scottish Environmentalism’ and Empire and Environmental Anxiety.

Notes

 [1] MacKenzie, Empires of Nature.

 [2] Grove, Ecology, Climate and Empire; Grove, Green Imperialism, 380–473; Grove, ‘Scottish Missionaries’.

 [3] Grove, Green Imperialism, 11.

 [4] Grove, Green Imperialism, 380–473.

 [5] Oosthoek, ‘Worlds Apart?’, 69–82; and Das, ‘Hugh Cleghorn’, 55–80.

 [6] Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety.

 [7] For exceptions, see, for instance, Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora; and Beattie, ‘Environmental Anxiety in New Zealand’, 379–92.

 [8] Mitman, ‘In Search of Health’, 185. On New Zealand, see Beattie, ‘Colonial Geographies of Settlement’, 583–610.

 [9] Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore; and Hannaway, ‘Environment and Miasmata’, 292–308.

[10] Nash, ‘Finishing Nature’, 36; Harrison, Climates and Constitutions; Beattie, ‘Tropical Asia and Temperate New Zealand’; and Salesa, ‘“The Power of the Physician”’, 13–40.

[11] Newman, The Evolution of Medical Education, 12–3.

[12] Ibid., 109; and Dow, ‘The Medical Curriculum at Glasgow’.

[13] See ‘Medical Licences: Return to an Address of the Honourable The House of Commons dated 14 April 1856’, printed 17 July 1856 in ‘Papers of John Hutton Balfour, Dean of Faculty of Medicine’, Da 43, Volume 1, Special Collections, University of Edinburgh Library.

[14] Balfour, Guide to the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, 1.

[15] Balfour, ‘Remarks on the Teaching of Science in Universities’, letter copy, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, 30 March 1869 in ‘Papers of John Hutton Balfour, Dean of Faculty of Medicine’, no page.

[16] Balfour, ‘Remarks on the Teaching of Science in Universities’, letter copy, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, 30 March 1869 in ‘Papers of John Hutton Balfour, Dean of Faculty of Medicine’.

[17] Balfour, ‘Remarks on the Teaching of Science in Universities’, letter copy, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, 30 March 1869 in ‘Papers of John Hutton Balfour, Dean of Faculty of Medicine’.

[18] Grove, Green Imperialism, 11; Grove, Ecology, Climate and Empire, 67; and Das, ‘Hugh Cleghorn’, 57.

[19] Sangwan, ‘From Gentlemen Amateurs to Professionals’, 217.

[20] Newman, The Evolution of Medical Education, 97; and Sangwan, ‘From Gentlemen Amateurs to Professionals’, 217. On botanical education in medicine, see Chitnis, The Scottish Enlightenment, 178–9; Pyenson and Sheets-Pyenson, Servants of Nature, 152–4. On the use of museums and botanical gardens in Edinburgh, see Chitnis, The Scottish Enlightenment and Early Victorian English Society, 11.

[21] Galloway, ‘Joseph Hooker’.

[22] Professor Balfour, ‘Notice of the Palm-House in the Royal Botanic Garden at Edinburgh’, Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, Volume 6, Session 1857-8 in H. Cleghorn, Attics 65.5.1, no. 11, Special Collections, University of Edinburgh Library, 1.

[23] Weatherall, Gentlemen, Scientists and Doctors, 33–6, 110–41 (quote, 33).

[24] Allen, The Naturalist in Britain; and Beattie and Stenhouse, ‘Empire, Environment and Religion’.

[25] On the Germans, see Kirchberger, ‘Deutsche Naturwissenschaftler’, 621–60; and Kirchberger, ‘German Scientists’.

[26] On the influence of Scottish medicine on health and medical practices in general, see Dow, The Influence of Scottish Medicine. For the wider influence of Scottish-trained doctors, see Raj, ‘Colonial Encounters’; and Hargreaves, Academe and Empire, 5–32, 54–5, 61–7.

[27] See ‘Medical Licences: Return to an Address of the Honourable The House of Commons’.

[28] In 1850/1, for instance, some 23% (71 in number) non-Scottish-born students matriculated from Sir Goodsir's class of a total of 314 graduates. In the Summer Session of 1854 of Sir Goodsir's anatomy course, 27% of students (24 in number) born outside Scotland attended his class. Calculated from ‘1850/1 from evidence in Matriculation Index, From the Goodsir Papers’, Da 35, ANAT 9; and ‘Summer Session 1854’, Da 35, ANAT 17, ‘From the Goodsir Papers’, University of Edinburgh Library.

[29] Although in the period from 1860 to 1880 the intake of IMS (Indian Medical Service) medical recruits trained in Scotland dropped to less than a third, Edinburgh graduates still monopolised the senior positions in the IMS. Between 1897 and 1914, 27 per cent came from Scottish institutions, but by this time their prominence had been overtaken by doctors educated in England, who in this later period constituted 53.6 per cent of all IMS doctors. Harrison, Public Health in British India, 26.

[30] Spary, ‘“Peaches Which the Patriarchs Lacked”’, 32.

[31] Drayton, Nature's Government; and Gascoigne, Science in the Service of Empire.

[32] McCracken, Gardens of Empire, 132–81.

[33] Drayton, Nature's Government, 170–220; and Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion, 77–102.

[34] Headrick, ‘Botany, Chemistry, and Tropical Development’, 3.

[35] Beattie, ‘Colonial Geographies of Settlement’.

[36] Lindsay, A Popular History of British Lichens, 10.

[37] Lindsay, ed., Excelsior 38 (1878): 3–4; emphasis in original; and Lindsay, Guide to the Museum of the Murray Royal.

[38] Lindsay, ed., Excelsior 37 (1877): 23.

[39] Lindsay, ed., Excelsior, 38 (1878): 3.

[40] Livingstone, Putting Science in its Place, 68–72.

[41] MacKenzie, Victorian Vision; Henare, Museums, Anthropology and Imperial Exchange; and MacKenzie, Museums and Empire.

[42] This phrase comes from Sitwell, Escape With Me!, 274.

[43] Beattie and Stenhouse, ‘Empire, Environment and Religion’; Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora; and Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors.

[44] Shteir, Cultivating Women; and Moyal, ‘Collectors and Illustrators’.

[45] Broks, ‘Science, the Press and Empire’.

[46] Beattie and Stenhouse, ‘Empire, Environment and Religion’.

[47] Headrick, ‘Botany, Chemistry, and Tropical Development’.

[48] Lindsay, The Place and Power of Natural, 5, 7; emphasis in original.

[49] Otago Colonist (henceforth OC), January 24, 1862, 4.

[50] OC, 18–23, 25–27 (quote, 26).

[51] See Brunton, ‘Our Endeavours’.

[52] Boase, Modern English Biography, 438.

[53] Testimonials in Favour of William Lauder Lindsay , 10.

[54] Lindsay stated that he arrived in Dunedin on 7 October 1861. See Lindsay, Contributions to New Zealand Botany, 10–11. However, the Otago Witness (henceforth OW) records ‘W.L. Lindsay’ as being a steerage passenger aboard the Robert Henderson. See OW, October 12, 1861, 3.

[55] Brunton, ‘Our Endeavours’.

[56] Lindsay, Contributions to New Zealand Botany, 10–11.

[57] Otago Daily Times (henceforth ODT), January 15, 1862, 2.

[58] OC, January 24, 1862, 4–8; Supplement to the ODT, January 31, 1862, 1. Lindsay, Place and Power appeared in a slightly modified form in 1863 as The Place and Power of Natural History in Colonisation with Special Reference to Otago (New Zealand), Edinburgh: Neill & Company, 1863. I shall refer exclusively to his address in Dunedin.

[59] Grove, Green Imperialism; and Das, ‘Hugh Cleghorn’.

[60] Lindsay, Place and Power, 26, 28; emphasis in original.

[61] Lindsay, ‘On the Conservation of Forests in New Zealand’, 39–42, 45.

[62] Galloway, ‘The Extra-European Lichen Collections of Archibald Menzies’.

[63] McAloon, ‘Resource Frontiers’, 52–66; Roche, A History of Forestry, 14–44; and Gascoigne, Science in the Service of Empire.

[64] Holzer, ‘Ferdinand von Hochstetter’; and Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety.

[65] Wright-St Clair, Thoroughly a Man of the World, 27–8, 48, 71–7, 260–1.

[66] Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, March 30, 1870, 5, note; Wellington Independent, September 18, 1871, 2; and Price, ‘Hedges and Shelter Belts’.

[67] Monro, ‘On the Leading Features’, 8.

[68] Wright-St Clair, Thoroughly a Man of the World, 13, 156.

[69] Belgrave, ‘“Medical Men” and “Lady Doctors”’, 143–4.

[70] Molloy, ‘Sinclair, Andrew’.

[71] Hooker, Handbook of the New Zealand Flora; Simpson, ‘Hooker, Joseph Dalton’; and Endersby, ‘“From Having No Herbarium”’.

[72] Belgrave, ‘“Medical Men” and “Lady Doctors”’, 145–6.

[73] On which connection, see Beattie, ‘Tropical Asia and Temperate New Zealand’.

[74] Quote from Fulton, Medical Practice in Otago and Southland, 53–8 (quote, 56); Otago Witness, June 15, 1858.

[75] Admittedly, Featherston practised medicine in the 1840s in Wellington, while Campbell briefly served as a surgeon aboard an immigrant ship. See Hamer, ‘Featherston, Isaac Earl 1813–1876’; and Stone, ‘Campbell, John Logan 1817 – 1912’.

[76] Hoare, Reform in New Zealand Science.

[77] Shepherd and Cook, The Botanic Garden Wellington, especially 33–43.

[78] See My Dear Hector . Hooker, clearly, did not like Lindsay. See Hooker to Hector, 13 January 1866, Kew, My Dear Hector, 66.

[79] See Reid, ‘The Province of Science’.

[80] For background, see Beattie and Star, ‘Global Influences and Local Environments’.

[81] Belgrave, ‘“Medical Men” and “Lady Doctors”’, 144–151; and Belgrave, ‘Medicine and the Rise of Health Professionals.

[82] See Belgrave, ‘“Medical Men” and “Lady Doctors”’; Dow, Safeguarding the Public Health; and Tennant, Children's Health.

[83] These societal and cultural changes are expertly summarised in Olssen, ‘Towards a New Society’; and Polaschek, Government Administration, 3–55, 93–111.

[84] Rice, ‘Makgill, Robert Haldene’.

[85] Dow, ‘Mason, James Malcolm’.

[86] A voluminous literature exists on this topic. For an excellent summary, see Gieryn, Cultural Boundaries; and Brunton, ‘The Emergence of a Modern Profession?’. In New Zealand, see Belgrave, ‘“Medical Men” and “Lady Doctors”’.

[87] Galbreath, DSIR; and Stenhouse, ‘The “Battle” Between Science and Religion over Evolution’.

[88] Roche, A History of Forestry, 175–265.

[89] Belgrave, ‘“Medical Men” and “Lady Doctors”’, table 3.2, 100.

[90] Warboys, ‘Germs, Malaria and the Invention of Mansonial Tropical Medicine’; and Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness, 71–177.

[91] Makgill, ‘Nature's Efforts at Sanitation’, 139.

[92] Beattie, Heinzen, and Adam, ‘Japanese Gardens’; and Caldwell, ‘Truby King and Seacliff’, 42–3.

[93] King, The Feeding of Plants and Animals, no page.