Why Galen's Teeth Fell Out: Shifting Medical Attitudes Among Nicolas Baudin's Doctors

Abstract

The five-man medical team appointed to the Baudin expedition of 1800-1804, sent by Napeolean to explore the terres australes (the southlands) or New Holland, embodies some of the key differences in attitudes towards disease and its treatment prevailing in pre- and post-Revolution France. Educated in the last decade of the ancien régime, the two oldest members represent a tradition dating back to the ancient Greeks. The youngest member of the team, who received his training after the Revolution in the newly-constituted Ecole de Médecine in Paris, exemplifies the new emphasis on empirical medicine, what Michel Foucault has called the birth of the clinic. The divergence between this newer approach based on empirical observation and the older approach informed by a tradition built on the authority of classical texts is evidenced in the respective post-expedition writings of these men. By focussing on the theme of melancholia, a recognised symptom of scurvy, and the place melancholic states held for Baudin's doctors in their beliefs about the causation and cure of this and other diseases, the paper hopes to illuminate the transition between the old and the new world of medical thinking.