POISONS, PUTRESCENCE AND THE WEATHER - A GENEALOGY OF THE ADVENT OF TROPICAL MEDICINE

This paper attempts to problematise the founding of 'Tropical Medicine ' in the late 19th century as a classificatory act by posing a questio n: why was the discipline founded when it was and not earlier? In the process, it offers en alternate genealogy of its advent by arguing for a mid-19th century episteme, in terms of fevers, the constitution of the body, and the weather-in originating fevers and in predisposing th e body towards disease-both in the temperates and the tropics, as bein g crucial to an understanding of the discourse on the tropics.