Medical Practice in Early Colonial Spanish America: A Prospectus

This paper outlines the current state of research on medical practice in early colonial Spanish America. It argues that medical practice in Spain was more diverse than generally supposed, and that this complicated the exchange that occurred between Native American, African and European medical traditions in the Americas. Control of medical practice in Spanish America was exercised not through the establishment of state institutions, but through the close working of the state and the Church that on the one hand promoted medical care as a charitable activity and on the other sought to suppress practices that were incompatible with Catholic beliefs. However, due to the shortage of trained medical practitioners, the authorities were relatively tolerant of alternative medical practices and this enabled a process of exchange and fusion. The paper illustrates these processes with respect to medical practice in Cartagena de Indias in the early seventeenth century. It concludes with suggestions of avenues for future research.     

Mrs. John Marshall Harlan's Memories: Hierarchies of Gender and Race in the Household and the Polity

While legal papers and case decisions have been the traditional focus of judicial biography, the family papers of Justice John Marshall Harlan the Elder demonstrate the importance for understanding a judge's conception of the polity of shifting our sights to the household. Historians of the 19th century have overestimated the distance between the private and the public spheres. The memoirs of Harlan's wife Malvina offer us unparalleled, and hitherto neglected, testimony. Her depiction of the antebellum Harlan household shows its two hierarchies based on assumptions of fundamental differences—those of gender and of race—and both positing a benevolent white male paternalist at their apex. Malvina Harlan's memoirs indicate the lifelong persistence of this paternalism in her own relationship with Justice Harlan and in his relationship with a black servant. These patterns of hierachy, separation, and mutual devotion were essential to Harlan's understanding of his family identity and personal duty. His famous dissents in favor of black civil rights protections and his lapses from his color-blind rule have their roots in this paternalism even as Harlan came to embrace the racial egalitarianism of the Civil War amendments.     

The case of abortion

Abortion as an issue is tried in a courtroom situation. The followi ng questions are dealt with: 1) At what point in the gestation process is the fetus recognized to be a human being and accorded the protection of a human being? and 2) Does a woman have a right to abort her pregnancy? Witnesses present evidence and viewpoints from the following disciplines: law, religion, biology, history, legal history, and medicine. The advocate for abortion focuses on a woman's right to privacy and to control over her own body. The opponent of abortion emph asizes the sacredness of life.