British imperial medicine in late nineteenth-century china and the early career of patrick manson

This thesis is a study of the early career of Patrick Manson (1844-1922) in the context of British Imperial medicine in late nineteenth-century China. Recently historians of colonial medicine have identified a distinct British approach to disease in the tropics. It is named Mansonian tropical medicine after Manson. He was the medical advisor to the Colonial Office and founded the London School of Tropical Medicine. His approach to tropical diseases, which targeted the insect vectors, played a significant role in the formulation of British medical policy in the colonies. This thesis investigates how Manson devised this approach.

After the Second Opium War, the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs was administered by British officers. From 1866 to 1883 Manson served as a Customs medical officer. In his study of elephantiasis in China, Manson discovered that this disease was caused by filarial worms and he developed the concept of an intermediate insect host. This initiated a new research orientation that led to the elucidation of the etiology of malaria, yellow fever, sleeping sickness and several other parasitological diseases.

This thesis examines Manson's study of filariasis and argues that Manson derived his conceptual tools and research framework from philosophical natural history. It investigates Manson's natural historical training in the University of Aberdeen where some of his teachers were closely associated with transcendental biology. The concepts of perfect adaptation and the harmony of nature were crucial to the formulation of his research problematic. Moreover, this thesis demonstrates that biogeographical concepts played an important part in Manson's research methodology and helped him identify which species of insect was the intermediate host. Finally, this thesis analyzes how the sanitary problems that Manson encountered in China contributed to his formulation of a disease prevention strategy aimed at bypassing native involvement and reducing public health expenditure.