Case Closed?: Physician-Patient Encounters in American Colonial Philippines

The Lecture

The breadth and depth of the Philippines’ history of medicine have been cultivated and developed through the years, and historians have offered a variety of lenses which could be used to magnify, scrutinize, or reorient experiences in the past. They have critically dissected through the cracks of colonial medical sources, traced overarching transitions and transformations, and reoriented narratives away from “linear” or “progressive” frameworks. Medical encounters between the physician and the patient across the country’s history, have been narrated within institutional frameworks and nuanced through the Foucauldian “clinical gaze.” But interestingly, aside from relevant historiographies that have considered the roles of American colonial medicine in pathologizing the Filipino body, or those that have contextualized instances of medical harm, there is a noticeable paucity of historical studies that have woven biomedical experiments and treatments into the complex tapestries of medical ethics and the contentious histories of human-subject experimentation. 

By engaging with the histories of biomedical experiments involving tuberculous and leprous patients in American colonial Philippines (early 20th century), this research attempts to critically re-appraise the dynamics of physician-patient relationships, particularly in how physicians made their decisions, and how patients participated in the decision-making process. This research has identified notable sources (e.g. patient case histories) on tuberculosis and leprosy which, when critically read against the grain and through the lens of medical ethics, depicted how a physician’s judgment was not the only resounding voice in a medical encounter. Physicians benefitted from the exchanges of knowledge and experiences from their colleagues in the medical field, and gave ample opportunities for their patients to either question, resist, or even completely abandon their treatments. It is important to emphasize this, considering that these adaptable aspects of the physician-patient relationship existed at a time of rigid, disciplinary, and at times exclusionary colonial policies on the prevention of infectious diseases in the country. 

Moreover, this research also attempts to problematize both the methodical and ethical aspects of writing, publishing, and discussing patient histories. During the 20th century, considerable attention was given to the systematic recording of a patient’s history, where preference was given for organized and “objective” records, without much information on the patient’s own account of their condition. By comparing and corroborating relevant medical sources, the following guide questions will be further explored: How did physician-historians conscientiously filter through their patient’s narratives? How did they differentiate confidential information from those which could be publicly shared and discussed? Was the patient considered as a “reliable” source of information?

The Speaker

Bianca Angelien Aban Claveria is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History, Leiden University. She is part of an ERC-funded research project COMET: Human Subject Research and Medical Ethics in Colonial Southeast Asia, led by her supervisor, Dr. Fenneke Sysling. Her PhD research project broadly covers the history of  tuberculosis and leprosy in American colonial Philippines, with particular focus on biomedical experiments, physician-patient encounters, and medical ethics. 

Prior to pursuing her doctorate, she was an Instructor at the Department of History, Ateneo de Manila University, and an Editorial Assistant of the Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints journal. In 2023, she won the Young Historian’s Prize (YHP), granted by the Philippines’ National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) for her master’s thesis on a comparative history of early 20th century typhoon warning systems between the Philippines and Hongkong. She is also an editor of Shells and Pebbles, a history of science blog.

Registration

You can attend this lecture online or in person in the Herta Mohr building, room 0.28 (IIAS Conference Room), Witte Singel 27A, Leiden. Please use the registration form on this page.