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Abstract
For many modern observers, West Africa now stands as the most acute expression of a situation common throughout the tropics: a natural world defined by prodigious nature and debilitating febrile illness. I argue that this connection was inaugurated as a possibility – though not a definitive condition – over the course of the late fifteenth century, as a consequence of Portuguese voyages to West Africa. That connection was gradual rather than immediate. When seafarers first arrived at the African coast they believed it was uniquely healthy. Only by about the turn of the sixteenth century had observers come to the opposite conclusion. I first chart gradual shifts in opinions about the health of West Africa. I then argue that the interpretive challenges the region posed to fifteenth-century observers both at the Portuguese court and aboard ship along the Guinea Coast were the result of influences ranging from the authoritative texts of Pliny and Ptolemy to little known Portuguese devotional literature, and from the Hippocratic corpus to Aristotelian cosmology. Ultimately West African encounters with febrile disease engendered questions about the relationship between climate, environment, and health that had more global implications, especially where equatorial regions were concerned.
Acknowledgements
For their comments, suggestions, and encouragement, I would especially like to thank Michael Adas, Iona McCleery, Monica Green, Isabel Moreira, Ginger Smoak, Jim Lehning, and the participants in the NEH-funded seminar on Health and Disease in the Middle Ages, which was created by Monica Green and Rachel Scott and hosted by the Wellcome Collection in the summer of 2012.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding
Support for this research has come from the Fundação Luso-Americana, Harvard University's International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the University of Utah.
Notes
1Cà da Mosto, “Voyages.” In the text, I use the popularized spelling of his name (“Cadamosto”) following Crone, the editor of the edition in which the translated version of the account appears.
2Cà da Mosto, “Voyages,” 14–15.
3Cà da Mosto, “Voyages,” 16.
4Cà da Mosto, “Voyages,” 27–28.
5Kiple, Caribbean Slave, 13, 20–22. For detailed information on the etiology, epidemiology, clinical manifestations, and common prognosis for these, see the entries in Kiple, ed., Cambridge World History of Human Disease.
6Webb, Humanity's Burden, chapters 1 and 2, and especially 68 for general conclusions on the presence malaria in the Mediterranean during the period in question; Sallares, Malaria and Rome, 219–34, also argues that P. falciparum was endemic to Rome. On yellow fever see Beck et al., “Phylogeographic Reconstruction.”
7See for example Cosgrove, “Tropic and Tropicality”; Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature; Harrison, Climates and Constitutions; and Arnold, Problem of Nature, 141–68.
8This of course is not to say that sixteenth-century and twentieth-century observers understood fever in the same way. See Packard, Making of a Tropical Disease, especially chapter 5; and Hamlin, More Than Hot.
9Webb, Humanity's Burden, 33; and Kiple, Caribbean Slave, 23–37.
10Dunn, “Malaria”; and Cooper and Kiple, “Yellow Fever”, both found in Kiple, Cambridge World History of Human Disease.
11Domingues and Guerreiro, A vida a bordo.
12Cunningham, “Identifying Disease”; Arrizabalaga, “Problematizing Retrospective Diagnosis”; and Mitchell, “Retrospective Diagnosis.”
13Grafton with Shelford and Siraisi, New Worlds, Ancient Texts. The literature on this issue is now quite substantial. Influential treatments of the subject include Hodgen, Early Anthropology; Elliott, Old World and the New, especially 1–53; Pagden, Fall of Natural Man; Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions; Pagden, European Encounters; and Abulafia, Discovery of Mankind.
14Wey Gómez, Tropics of Empire; Bennett, “'Sons of Adam'”; Mignolo, Darker Side of the Renaissance; Cañizares-Esguerra, “New World, New Stars”; Earle, Body of the Conquistador; Martínez, Genealogical Fictions. Important counters to claims of transatlantic continuity include Stevens-Arroyo, “Inter-Atlantic Paradigm”; and Blackmore, “Imaging the Moor.”
15Webb, Humanity's Burden, 39–40.
16They are discussed, for example, in work ranging from Delumeau, History of Paradise, 46–56 and 71–96; and Russell, Prince Henry, 109–34; to Thornton, Cultural History, 15–25.
17Zurara, Chronica, 277–78. Importantly, there are issues with the dating of this manuscript. See Hair, “Early Sources on Guinea.”
18Pereira, Esmeraldo, 79–80. Unfortunately, Esmeraldo only survives in the form of two copies from the eighteenth century, both of which are incomplete. See Domingues, “Portuguese Navigation,” 464.
19Zurara, Chronica, 194.
20Cà da Mosto, “Voyages,” 69.
21Domingues and Guerreiro, A vida a bordo.
22Pina, “Chronica,” 894; which must have been the source used by Barros when he repeated the story in Da Ásia, “Decada Primeira,” bk. 3, ch. 8: 223. See Hair, Founding, 114–15.
23Pereira, Esmeraldo, bk. 1, ch. 27: 82 and bk. 2, ch. 1: 102.
24Pereira, Esmeraldo, bk. 2, ch. 5: 114–15. On the constitution of ethnic identities based on culture and color see Bennett, “‘Sons of Adam.'”
25Pereira, Esmeraldo, bk. 2, ch. 5: 114–15.
26Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Corpo Cronológico, parte 1, maço 13, número 48.
27I have borrowed the notion of the “Edenic” as central to Portuguese endeavors from Holanda, Visão do paraiso.
28Despite many claims, a careful reading does not make clear in what capacity Barros spent his time at São Jorge. For the most careful discussion of Barros's activities as they relate to the castle see Hair, Founding, 114–15.
29Barros, Da Ásia, “Decada Primeira,” bk. 3, ch. 12: 266.
30Barros, Da Ásia, “Decada Primeira,” bk. 3, ch. 8: 223. Barros's comments were not published until 1552 as a passage in his landmark chronicle Da Ásia. But the words had been penned no later than 1539. Barros's Da Ásia was published along with subsequent volumes by Diogo do Couto and Antonio Bocarro under the better-known title of Decadas da Ásia. The publication of these was intermittent and irregular. Boxer, Three Historians, 7–8. Although the first volume of Da Ásia was published in 1552 and the second in 1553, the third volume was not printed until 1563 and the fourth only posthumously in 1613 or 1615.
31Cà da Mosto, “Voyages,” 1; Pereira, Esmeraldo, bk. 1, ch. 27: 79–80. See also Barros, Da Ásia, “Decada Primeira,” bk. 3, ch. 12: 265–66.
32Although it stretches to thirty-seven books and references to the Nile are spread throughout, see especially Pliny, Natural History, vol. 1, bk. 5, ch. 10; vol. 2, bk. 6, ch. 35, bk. 8, chs. 32 and 37–39, and bk. 9, ch. 84; and vol. 3, bk. 13, ch. 28.
33Zurara, Chronica, ch. 60: 277–87, ch. 61: 289, ch. 62: 296–301; Pereira, Esmeraldo, bk. 1, ch. 37: 79–80.
34Freedman, Out of the East, 93. Scafi, Mapping Paradise, 218–30. A discussion of this important shift follows below.
35Cà da Mosto, “Voyages,” 5.
36Seed, “Navigating the Mid-Atlantic”; Russell, Prince Henry, 109–34.
37Cà da Mosto, “Voyages,” 5.
38Russell, Prince Henry, 123–26.
39 Libro del conosçimiento, especially 63–79.
40Delumeau, History of Paradise, 72–77.
41Delumeau, History of Paradise, 72–77.
42Delumeau, History of Paradise, 79–96.
43Russell, Prince Henry, 126; and Thornton, “Portuguese in Africa,” 138–39.
44Mejía, “El libro.”
45Correia, Lendas da Índia, 3: 73–74.
46Cattaneo, Fra Mauro's Mappa Mundi, 202–4; Alegria et al., “Portuguese Cartography,” 981–83, 1006.
47For a survey see Lowe, “‘Representing’ Africa.”
48Scafi, Mapping Paradise, [unnumbered page] plate 12b.
49Durand, “L'economie cistercienne au Portugal.”
50Burton and Kerr, Cistercians, 143–48.
51Amos, Fundo Alcobaça, vol. 1: xvii–xx. No medical texts or herbaria survive. Significantly, Amos claims this Cistercian pharmacy was Portugal's first.
52McCleery, “Writings of King Duarte of Portugal.”
53 Orto do esposo; and Boosco deleitoso. For a discussion see Carvalho, “Portuguese Mysticism.”
54Carvalho, “Portuguese Mysticism,” 42; and Goehring, “Breviary of Eleanor of Portugal,” 144.
55Williams, “Breve estudo do Orto do Esposo.”
56Martins, “Experiência religiosa e analogia sensorial”; Fernandes, “A pedagogia da alma no Orto do Esposo”; Freedman, Out of the East, 76–103, discusses the common medieval association between spices, the earthly paradise, and health.
57 Orto, 27–28.
58Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, 80–115, 150–70 and 188–354; Kupperman, “American Climate”; Wear, “Place, Health, and Disease”; and Earle, Body of the Conquistador, 30–52.
59Lloyd, ed., Hippocratic Writings, 148–65.
60Cà da Mosto, “Voyages,” 27.
61Zurara, Chronica, ch. 8: 51.
62Pereira, Esmeraldo, bk. 2, ch. 5: 114–15.
63Barros, Da Ásia, “Decada Primeira,” bk. 3, ch. 8: 217–19.
64Barros, Da Ásia, “Decada Primeira,” bk. 3, ch. 8: 220.
65Wear, “Place, Health, and Disease,” 451.
66Pereira, Esmeraldo, bk. 1, ch. 27: 82.
67Cà da Mosto, “Voyages,” 21.
68Coomans and Geltner, “Medieval Galenism”; and McVaugh, Medicine before the Plague, especially chapter 5; and Nutton, “Fracastoro's Theory of Contagion.”
69Carmichael, Plague and the Poor; and Park, Doctors and Medicine.
70Arrizabalaga, Henderson, and French, Great Pox; French, Medicine before Science, 157–84; Nutton, “Seeds of Disease”; Lonie, “Fever Pathology”; and Carmichael, Plague and the Poor.
71Richardson, “Generation of Disease”; Lonie, “Fever Pathology”; and Nutton, “Seeds of Disease.”
72Barros, Da Ásia, “Decada Primeira,” bk. 3, ch. 8: 125. In his translation of this section of Barros's text, Crone explains that the river “Gufitembo” is probably the modern Feleme; the red color is due to the iron-rich laterite soil from which the much sought-after gold was mined. See Barros, “Asia of João de Barros,” 137 n. 1.
73Pereira, Esmeraldo, bk. 1, chs. 6–10.
74Wey Gómez, Tropics of Empire.
75Scafi, Mapping Paradise, 172–79; Delumeau, History of Paradise, 83–96.
76Scafi, Mapping Paradise, 170.
77Scafi, Mapping Paradise, 160–83. Wey Gómez, Tropics of Empire, 231–91 discusses the position of Albertus in detail.
78Scafi, Mapping Paradise, 174.
79McCleery, “Opportunities for Teaching and Studying Medicine.”
80Amos, Fundo Alcobaça, vol. 3: 236; Orto, 14–16.
81This is the subject of an ongoing research project by the present author.
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Hugh Cagle
Hugh Cagle is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Utah, where he specializes in the history of science in Portugal and its empire. He is now revising a book manuscript tentatively titled Dead Reckonings: Science and Medicine in the First Tropical Empire, 1450–1700.