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The Nurse of Parasites: Gender Concepts in Patrick Manson's Parasitological Research

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Abstract

Patrick Manson (1844–1922), the so-calledfather of tropical medicine, played a pivotalrole in making that discipline into aspecialty. During his early career in Chinahe discovered that the mosquito was theintermediate host of the filarial parasite andhe somewhat peculiarly called the mosquito the``nurse'' of the filarial worm. The discoverycontributed greatly to the intellectualfoundation of modern parasitology. In thispaper I situate Manson's nomenclature in thecontext of nineteenth-century biologicalresearch on reproductive mechanisms and arguethat Manson's concept of the ``nurse'' wasderived from nineteenth-century theories ofsexual division of labor in nature's economy. The way he framed the relation between themosquito and the parasite, moreover, can beunderstood in the terms of the domesticarrangement of the colonial European household. Manson's research demonstrates the significantexchange between medical concerns over Europeanwomen's procreative role in the tropics andbiological studies of parasitic reproduction.

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    Shang-Jen Li

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Li, SJ. The Nurse of Parasites: Gender Concepts in Patrick Manson's Parasitological Research. Journal of the History of Biology 37, 103–130 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:HIST.0000020280.93881.48

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