9 DOCTORS & GOD

By | 2017年8月21日
9 DOCTORS & GOD ブックカバー 9 DOCTORS & GOD
Francis John Halford
University of Hawaii Press
First edition, october 1954 /Second edition April 1955
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306
KEICHI KIMURA

A doctor presents a lively account of nineteenth-century New Englanders who sailed upon a six-months voyage around the Horn as medical missionaries to the primitive inhabitants of subtropical Hawaii. With them they took brides who had been strangers to them only weeks before. Stubbornly clinging to temperate-zone clothing, food, and traditions, these "parlorraised Priscillas" faced mountainous household tasks. Meantime their husbands crossed treacherous channels and threaded perilous mountain trails to deliver missionary babies, to fight leprosy and smallpox, and to try to save the natives from the common cold and other newly introduced disease against which they had had no opportunity to build up a resistance.
The resentment of sailors and whaling captains at introduction of the Decalogue, the distrust of kings and chiefs, the jealousy of native medical practitioners-these were some of obstacles which beset the missionary doctors.
Relying upon bleedings, blisterings, purges, and emetics, they practiced in a day when anesthetics,antisepsis, and abdominal surgery were unknown.Theirs was a record of gallant dedication in the face of almost insuperable odds.
But this book is far more than a record of the hardships and triumphs of missionary physicians.It is an account of a critical era of rapid change ithin a primitive island community struggling to survive the sudden impact of Western civilization.
Nine Doctors and God is based largely upon the personal letters and private journals of the doctors and their wives-relatively obscure and highly fruitful sources of first-hand information.The result is a rare combination of scholarly research and spirited presentation-a splendid contribution to the annals of an eventful period of transition in Hawaii and America.

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ハワイの西洋との接触からその歴史のなかで大きな役割を果たしてきた9人の宣教医を紹介する。本書もGrove Dayの「Books about Hawaii-FIFTY BASIC AUTORS-」に掲載されている。著者Francis John Halfordも医者であり、宣教師の血を受け継ぐMarjorie Athertonと結婚。四半世紀のハワイ生活を経験している。

自分はジャッド家に関する箇所しか拾い読みしていないが、西洋との接触で文化・体制の大変動と、とくに伝染病等に対峙しなければならなかったこの時代のハワイを理解するに良い書と考える。宣教師の妻たちの記録等から読者の関心を惹くエピソードをうまく引き出している。

自分はGerrit Juddへの関心から本書を手にしたが、分量的にも本書は読みやすく思う。彼は着任してすぐに先住民の人口激減がクックらとの接触によるものと認識していたのだ。ただし、本書の性格からハワイの体制・政治への影響について詳しく知るためにはまた別の書を探さなければならない。例えば「グレート・マヘレ」については少し言及される程度であるので、それについては別の評伝、研究書をあたるべき。

目次

Contents
Chapter
FOREWORD…
PART 1: HAWAII’S FIRST PHYSICIAN
I.GOD AND NATIVE MEDICINE
II.THOMAS HOLMAN, PIONEER
III.ARDENT SPIRITS
IV. WHITENING FOR HARVEST
V. EXCOMMUNICATION

PART 2: THE OTHER EIGHT
VI. THE STORK AND ABRAHAM BLATCHELY
VII. GERRIT JUDD, KING’S COUNSELLOR
VIII. DWIGHT BALDWIN, DOCTOR-DOMINIE
IX. VERSATILE ALONZO CHAPIN
X. THOMAS LAFON, ABOLITIONIST
XI. NATURALIST SETH ANDREWS
XII. JAMES SMITH, KAUKA OF KOLOA

PART 3: THE FOUR WHO STAYED
XIV. SMALLPOX AND LEPROSY
XV. PLANNING FOR POSTERITY
XVI. THE ELECANT EICHTIES
XVII. THE LAST OF THE NINE

Appendix
A. CHAPIN’S “DISEASES OF THE SANDWICH ISLANDS”
B. LAFON’S “UTILITY OF THE BANDAGE”
D. CHRONOLOGY OF MEDICAL EVENTS IN HAWAII, 1778-1899
E. TABLE OF HAWAI’S POPULATION, 1778-1900
F.GLOSSARY OF HAWAIIAN WORDS
G. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY