SH03 SLAVERY, SERPENTS, SPELLS & SURGERY: DR ETIENNE RUFZ DE LAVISON IN MARTINIQUE

Martinique, an island in the archipelago of the Lesser Antilles, and today a d???rtement of France, was throughout the 19th century a much‐feared outpost of the French empire. “This is a region”, wrote one early commentator, “where the land is shaken by earthquakes, the towns turned upside down by hurricanes, the air poisoned by yellow fever, and the different social classes in a perpetual state of hostility”. The healthcare needs of Martinique?s diverse population were shouldered by a small mix of military surgeons, civilian doctors and local healers. In 1804, Etienne Rufz de Lavison was born to Creole nobility in St Pierre, Martinique’s thriving, cosmopolitan former capital. Sent to mainland France at the age of 13, Rufz studied medicine in Paris before returning to St Pierre, where he spent 20 years as a clinician, scientist and prolific historian. A man of astonishing intellectual curiosity, with a self‐confessed ‘mania for writing’, Dr Rufz’s publications encompass local surgical techniques, the yellow fever epidemics, snake bites, plantation and slave health, ethnology, island flora, and the effects of climate. An innovative practitioner, he was a pioneer of anaesthesia on the island. Dr Rufz was also a leader in health politics; he inaugurated Martinique’s public hygiene campaigns, led the vaccination committee, established the colony’s first psychiatric hospital, and became mayor of St Pierre. The quintessential Renaissance man, Dr Rufz upheld the belief that good medical practice requires an understanding not only of disease, but of history, people and the natural world. The story of his life and work offers a vivid portrait of early colonial medicine and surgery.