Spirits and Scientists: Ideology, Spiritism, and Brazilian Culture by David J. HessReview by: Seymour H. MauskopfIsis, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Sep., 1993), pp. 552-553Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/235653 .

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552 BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 84: 3 (1993)

New Jersey naturalist Mary Treat in her backyard "Insect Menagerie" (reprinted in Bonta, Women in the Field, from Treat, Home Studies in Nature [1880]).

David J. Hess. Spirits and Scientists: Ide- ology, Spiritism, and Brazilian Culture. xii + 260 pp., fig., table, apps., bibl., indexes. University Park: Pennsylvania State Univer- sity Press, 1991. $29.95.

"At first Brazil appeared to be familiar; it is, after all, modem, urban, industrial, and Western, and even the visual landscape- peppered with Texaco stations, Levi blue jeans, McDonald's 'golden arches,' Marl- boro cigarettes, and Hollywood sitcoms on TV-seemed familiar. How different could it be?" (p. 177). Not surprisingly, the author of this provocative book, a cultural anthropol- ogist, answers: very different. Specifically, David Hess examines what he calls the "ideological arena" (cognitive, professional, and sociocultural relations and interactions) of spiritism, religion, and (medical) science in twentieth-century Brazil. The focus of his examination is spiritism, particularly the spir- itist tradition deriving from the nineteenth- century French spiritist "Allan Kardec" (Hip- polyte Leon Denizard Rivail). Hess's thesis appears to be twofold. (1) Sharply differen- tiated categories of "religion," "science," and "popular belief" that hold (perhaps) in the

analysis of European and North American cultural configurations do not begin to cap- ture accurately the Brazilian cultural land- scape; here these categories are much more blurred and interactive. (2) Regarding spirit- ism, the class-based analysis of the French Brazilianist Roger Bastide, in which spiritism is dichotomized into an upper-class "intellec- tual spiritism" associated with the more sci- entific parapsychology of North America and Europe and a lower-class spiritism associated with Brazilian-African religious practices (Umbanda), is too rigid and simplistic for the Brazilian scene.

To examine this scene, Hess adopts a lit- erary approach: in the five central chapters he uses a particular book as a prism, charting the vicissitudes of its reception over time. Thus, in the second of these chapters (Ch. 4) Hess situates the genesis of Insanity through a New Prism, by the Brazilian spiritist Adolfo Be- zerra de Menezes Cavalcanti ("Menezes") (1897), in the context of the complex fac- tional infightings among the early Brazilian spiritists (including those with "scientific" orientation), govemment persecution of spir- itism, the increasing hostility of the Roman

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BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 84: 3 (1993) 553

Catholic Church toward popular religious healing, and the attitude of the Brazilian medical establishment, of which Menezes himself was a member.

Menezes's own theory of insanity was that those forms that could not be linked directly with neurological lesions were caused by wandering spirits (not demons); treatment is by "disobsession" of the perturbing spirit. Although Menezes's focus would on the face of it appear to be most closely related to the "low" spiritism of Brazilian-African religion, his book is in fact a melange of different ide- ologies: scientistic and Christian (if not or- thodox Catholic) as well as spiritist. Hess summarizes Insanity through a New Prism as a book "which bridges divisions not only within the spiritist movement and among the spirit-medium religions, but also between the spiritist movement and the official ideologies of the Catholic church and the medical profession" (p. 98).

This and the other case studies (spiritism and the parasciences, spiritism and medicine, and spiritism and the social sciences) serve to illustrate synchronically and diachronically what Hess terms "a kind of leakage among discourses [scientific, religious, medical, spiritist], a leakage that would be considered undesirable and even unusual in North Amer- ica and Western Europe" (p. 178). This is indicated by the existence, for example, of spiritist priests and spiritist psychiatrists and psychiatric centers.

The study of the so-called pseudosciences can throw into relief aspects of scientific practice that otherwise might remain ob- scured. I believe that this study of the de- velopment of spiritism in Brazil does just this with regard to the transfer of more main- stream scientific activities and traditions be- tween cultures, especially between Western industrial ones and semi- or non-Western cul- tures. In studying such transfer, local "ideo- logical arenas" must be examined with the detail, care, and sophistication that Hess has bestowed on the Brazilian scene and spirit- ism.

SEYMOUR H. MAUSKOPF

Jose M. L6pez Pinero. Cldsicos me'dicos valencianos del siglo XVI. 141 pp., illus. Va- lencia: Generalitat Valenciana, Conselleria de Sanitat i Consu, 1990. (Paper.)

Jorge Navarro. La imagen de ultramar en la medicina valenciana del siglo XIX. Preface by Jose M. L6pez Pinero. 136 pp., tables, bibl. Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana, 1990. (Paper.)

These two books, in different ways, docu- ment the development of medicine in Va- lencia, Spain. The first book, by the distin- guished Spanish historian of science and medicine Jos6 L6pez Pifiero, chronicles the development of medical science during Spain's golden age. It consists of two parts. The first is a historical treatise by L6pez Pifiero on the medical faculty of the University of Valencia beginning shortly before 1500 and extending through the sixteenth century. The faculty at the University of Valencia was in the fore- front in medical innovations and was known throughout Europe during this period for dis- coveries in anatomy, surgery, medicinal bot- any, and public health. L6pez Pifiero de- scribes how the physicians of the day took their influence from both the ancient Greeks and the Arabs who had occcupied Spain for several centuries. This opening essay is a tes- tament to the historical work of L6pez Pifiero, who is the foremost expert on medical sci- ence in Spain. He describes the medical knowledge at the time and the way in which the leading scholars came to view their sci- ence and their training of students. By the end of the sixteenth century, we are told, the Uni- versity of Valencia was regularly graduating students in medicine. The essay concludes with a discussion of the events that led from em- inence in surgery to an increased emphasis on ailchemy, with the eventual diminution of the status of the medical faculty at the University of Valencia.

The second part of the book consists of eighteen original and translated articles writ- ten by sixteenth-century Valencian physi- cians. These articles, mostly written in Latin and translated into Spanish, are short and fas- cinating. They include the opening pages of the first medical book published in Valencia in the sixteenth century, an article on syphilis and its treatment, and works on medicinal plants and on the establishment of botanical gardens. Other articles are anatomical reports of the dissection of the heart, lungs, and or- gans for hearing, smelling, and taste. An in- teresting article describes what was known about epilepsy and its treatment. Also in- cluded is an article on the commonly held views regarding the societal uses of medicine

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