Beastly Pasts: Animals, Medicine, And Health In The Nineteenth-century Philippines

Abstract

Over the last few decades, animal history has become an established field of academic inquiry. For the most part, however, scholars in the history of medicine and health persist in treating animals as circumstantial figures. Relinquished of their agency, animals tend to be viewed as background material in narratives that pivot on the human. In contrast, this paper argues for the need to resituate animals as central actors within histories of human medicine and health. The paper begins with an overview of the secondary literature on human-animal studies, identifying key themes and issues. Next, it examines the complex role of animals in shaping human health, including: as vectors and hosts of disease; as sources of medicine and medical knowledge; and as integral components of indigenous healing. The paper concludes with a discussion of human-animal relationships in an Asian context, specifically in the nineteenth-century Philippines. Drawing on preliminary research, the argument is made that tracing the evolution of animal-human relations can provide new perspectives on the constitution of colonial and indigenous health regimes.