Lynteris Christos
Med Hist. 2017 Jul;61(3):343-357. doi: 10.1017/mdh.2017.32.
A pressing question during the first half-decade of the third plague pandemic (1894-9) was what was a 'suitable soil' for the disease. The question related to plague's perceived ability to disappear from a given city only to reappear at some future point; a phenomenon that became central to scientific investigations of the disease. However, rather than this simply having a metaphorical meaning, the debate around plague's 'suitable soil' actually concerned the material reality of the soil itself. The prevalence of plague in the working-class neighbourhood of Taipingshan during the first major outbreak of the pandemic, in 1894 in Hong Kong, led to an extensive debate regarding the ability of the soil to harbour and even spread the disease. Involving experiments, which were seen as able to procure evidence for or against the demolition or even torching of the area, scientific and administrative concerns over the soil rendered it an unstable yet highly productive epistemic thing. The spread of plague to India further fuelled concerns over the ability of the soil to act as the medium of the disease's so-called true recrudescence. Besides high-profile scientific debates, hands-on experiments on purifying the soil of infected houses by means of highly intrusive methods allowed scientists and administrators to act upon and further solidify plague's supposed invisibility in the urban terrain. Rather than being a short-lived, moribund object of epidemiological concern, this paper will demonstrate that the soil played a crucial role in the development of plague as a scientifically knowable and actionable category for modern medicine.
在第三次鼠疫大流行的头五年（1894 - 1899年），一个紧迫的问题是，什么样的“适宜土壤”适合这种疾病滋生。这个问题与鼠疫被认为具有的一种能力有关，即它能够从某一特定城市消失，却在未来某个时间再度出现；这一现象成为了该疾病科学研究的核心。然而，围绕鼠疫“适宜土壤”的争论并非仅仅具有隐喻意义，实际上它关乎土壤本身的物质现实。1894年香港鼠疫首次大爆发期间，太平山工人阶级聚居区鼠疫肆虐，引发了一场广泛的争论，焦点是土壤滋生甚至传播疾病的能力。这场争论涉及一些实验，这些实验被视为能够为拆除甚至焚烧该区域提供支持或反对的证据，科学界和行政部门对土壤的担忧使得它成为了一个不稳定却极具成效的认知对象。鼠疫蔓延至印度，进一步加剧了人们对土壤作为疾病所谓真正复发媒介能力的担忧。除了备受瞩目的科学辩论，通过高度侵入性方法净化受感染房屋土壤的实际操作实验，让科学家和行政人员能够采取行动，并进一步强化了鼠疫在城市环境中难以察觉的观念。本文将证明，土壤并非只是流行病学关注的一个短暂、垂死的对象，而是在鼠疫发展成为现代医学中一个可科学认知且可采取行动的类别过程中发挥了关键作用。
