This book tells the story of how chemists, physicians, and surgeons attempted to end the problem of urinary stones. From the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, chemists wanted to understand why the body formed urinary, pancreatic, and other bodily stones. Chemical analysis was an exciting new means of understanding these stones and researchers hoped of possibly preventing their formation entirely. Physicians and surgeons also hoped that, with improved chemical analysis, they would eventually identify substances that would reduce the size of stones, leading to their easier removal from the body. Urinary stones and other stones of the body caused the boundaries of surgery, chemistry, and medicine to blur. The problem of the stone was transformational and spurred collaboration between chemistry and medicine. Some radical physicians in America and Britain combined this nascent medical advancement with older disciplines, like humoral theory. Chemists, surgeons, and physicians in Charleston, Philadelphia, and London focused on the stones of the body. Chemical societies and museums also involved themselves in the problem of the stone. Meanwhile, institutions in Charleston, Philadelphia, and London served as repositories of specimens for testing and study as previously disparate practitioners and disciplines worked toward the comprehensive knowledge that could, perhaps, end suffering from stones. The primary audience of this book is historically-minded chemists, surgeons, physicians, and museum professionals.
Author(s): E. Allen Driggers
Series: Perspectives on the History of Chemistry
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 195
City: Cham
Preface
Acknowledgements
Contents
About the Author
1 The Pain of the Stone: Backgrounds of Urological Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century
1.1 History and the Problem of the Urinary Stone
1.2 Humoral Theory at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
1.3 Pain and Lithotomies
1.4 Chemical Medicine
1.5 Revolutions in Chemistry
1.6 The Chemical Revolution Spreads to England and America
1.7 Medicine Prior to the Period of Professionals
1.8 A Plan of Action
References
2 No Stone Unturned: The Chemistry of Morbid Concretions
2.1 What Was Animal Chemistry During the Early Nineteenth Century?
2.2 Major Chemists Investigate Stones
2.3 The Chemistry of Gout: Physicians and Surgeons
2.4 Systematic Research into Concretions: Chemists Examine Diabetes, Blood, and Other Fluid-Based Diseases
2.5 Medicine, Chemistry, and Diabetes
2.6 Concretions and Diabetes
2.7 Conclusion
References
3 Race, Concretions, and Humoral Theory in the World of Benjamin Rush
3.1 Rush Trains in the Latest Chemical Ideas
3.2 Chemistry and the Problem of Race: The Legacy of Benjamin Rush
3.3 Racial Chemistry in Animal Chemistry
3.4 Internal Parasites and Chemistry
3.5 The American Revolution: Chemistry and Humoral Theory
3.6 Yellow Fever, Blood Letting, and Humoral Chemistry
3.7 Rush and His Own Final Bloodletting: Conclusion
References
4 Medico-Chemistry and the American South: The Life of Edward Darrell Smith
4.1 Urological Cases and a Spur to Action
4.2 Education from North to South: The Life of Edward Darrell Smith
4.3 A Humoral Education: The Dissertation of Edward Darrell Smith
4.4 Medical Cases that Encouraged Smith’s Turn to Chemistry
4.5 Smith’s Turn to Chemistry
4.6 Conclusion
References
5 Radicalism and Humoral Chemistry: Thomas Cooper’s Atlantic Journeys
5.1 Thomas Cooper’s Education and Background
5.2 Cooper’s Perception of Humoral Pathology
5.3 Cooper’s Work to Validate Humoral Theory
5.4 Weather, Disease, and Humoral Theory
5.5 Cooper, Malaria, and Philadelphia
5.6 The End of Cooper’s Life
References
6 Partnerships Between Surgeons and Chemists
6.1 The Character of Alexander Marcet
6.2 Marcet’s Chemical Research into Urinary Stones
6.3 Marcet Discusses the Chemical Nature of the Stones of the Body
6.4 Questions About Stones
6.5 Assembling Knowledge About Stones Through Chemistry
6.6 Applying Chemistry to Treating Urinary Stones
6.7 A Surgeon and Medico-Chemist Work Together
6.8 Humoral Pathology in the Surgical Mind of Astley Cooper
6.9 Boundary Objects and Partners in Friendship, Medicine, and Surgery
References
7 Communities, Chemistry, and Communication: Intellectual Societies in London, Philadelphia, and Charleston
7.1 Chemical Research, Debates, and Societies in Philadelphia
7.1.1 Chemical Society of Philadelphia
7.1.2 Columbian Chemical Society of Philadelphia
7.2 Intellectual Life in Nineteenth Century South Carolina
7.3 Medical, Chemical, and Surgical Knowledge Production in London: The Medico-Chirurgical Society
7.4 The Royal College of Surgeons, Collection Building, and the Need for Chemists
7.5 Institutions of Stones
References
8 The Meaning of Bodily Concretions, History, and Concluding Remarks
References
Index
