Book Review

In what ways did Europeans adapt both intellectually and physically to the demands of an alien continent? Such is the theme that runs through Anderson's thoroughly researched, clearly written and original monograph. Others have explored the ways in which the British arrivals sought to understand their foreign surroundings through art or literature but Anderson addresses a relatively novel theme: the way in which these strangers in a strange land sought to come to terms with their situation through medical science.	1
One of the considerable merits of Anderson's study is that it avoids reading back into the past the scientific concepts that became dominant in a later age. Thus he avoids reading many of the debates about the nature of race and racial variation through the lens of Darwinism. The result is a work that pays full tribute to the extent to which contemporaries focussed on the environment as a way of accounting for the human body's ailments and the character of racial change. Lamarck, rather than Darwin, tended to be the presiding scientific mentor for colonists concerned with how they might be remoulded by an alien land. Even in the twentieth century, after Darwin had carried all before him scientifically, major figures of Australian medicine such as Cilento continued to subscribe to a sort of crypto-Darwinism.	2
Given the centrality of the environment in such discussions there was ample cause for concern about the ways in which white racial characteristics might be eroded. In the temperate south the alien landscape could cause disorientation and undermine racial discipline; even the growth of cities could compound such a process. But it was in the tropical north where such concerns were particularly acute. Not only were there the issues of whether whites could survive but also the question of whether they could maintain their racial vigour. Such issues — which became more and more pressing as immigrant populations moved north in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — were linked to perceptions of the nature and characteristics of the indigenous Aboriginal population. In what ways had they adapted to the tropics and would a white population drift in time to adopting some of their features. What could be done to reduce racial dilution through miscegenation between white and black?	3
Overall, then, Anderson's book takes us on a journey which encapsulates the experience of European engagement with the Australian environment and its effects from early settlement to around World War II. He does so by exploring a new route through such theorising, focusing as he does on relatively novel medical sources.	4
However, in his eagerness to highlight the way in which the medical profession concerned itself with the alien influences of the Australian environment, he is inclined to downplay the extent to which settlers could also dwell on the more benign aspects of the countryside — at least in the temperate south. Joseph Banks, who largely prompted the British government to establish New South Wales, described the area around Botany Bay as having a Mediterranean climate. Early colonists rejoiced in the effect that the climate could have on the health of the refuse of British society: one such remarkable transformation was, according to contemporaries, the way in which convict women became much more fertile. As Anderson acknowledges, some immigrants came to Australia to cure environmentally-linked diseases such as tuberculosis but this he attributes, rather too ingeniously, to the fact that the weirdness of Australian conditions could both make sick bodies well and well bodies sick.	5
There is the issue, too, of how much the hand-wringing about the effects of the environment reflected distinctively Australian conditions. This applies particularly to the role of cities where the concern about the enervating effects of mass urban life could be paralleled with a copious European and North American literature. The issue of survival of whites in the tropics was, of course, widely discussed particularly in the context of British imperial expansion. Indeed this imperial dimension is one that this careful study might have done more to recognise. The sort of medical discussions it outlines were part of a wider debate that flowed to and fro from the wide expanse of the British Empire to the London scientific and medical world. For many of the authors cited the intended audience was as much in Britain or British colonies or dominions as in Australia.	6
But, as always, a good book raises new questions as well as suggesting possible answers. Anderson's book has conclusively added medical science to the range of materials that were used to answer the question of what it meant to be both Australian and European in a land so remote, both geographically and environmentally, from Europe. Such concerns led to a preoccupation with being white and it is the achievement of Anderson's book to provide an insight into the ways in which the language of medicine and science could shape such racial preoccupations.	7
University of New South Wales JOHN GASCOIGNE

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