Climate, Medicine, and Peruvian Health Resorts

Abstract

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Peruvian Andes ranked as a key international destination for those afflicted with one of the world’s most deadly diseases, tuberculosis. Physicians, scientists, policy makers, and patients believed that high-elevation mountain climates worldwide would help cure the disease. Historical processes driving the creation of Andean health resorts, which are understudied in the historiography, uncover an important story in the history of tuberculosis, and also reveal how global health initiatives and disease treatment played out within the global South, where national forces and local environmental conditions influenced the trajectory of science and medicine. Jauja, Peru, became an internationally recognized health resort for tuberculosis treatment not only through science and medicine but also through national political integration campaigns, transportation initiatives, economic development agendas, social (race and class) relations, cultural perspectives of the Andean landscape, and the impact of the physical environment. This historical case about the evolution of Jauja reveals how science and medicine are shaped by distinct spatial forces that illuminate a geography of science in the postcolonial setting, as well as the ways in which climate is culturally constructed in specific sites, by different peoples, and at distinct points in time.

Embracing the cordillera: Luis Carranza Ayarza and the development of environmental imaginaries in late-nineteenth-century Peru

“…Thus, many of the political and economic motivations that led to the incorporation of the Andes and its populations into modernizing efforts were in line with the interests of a still-centralized bureaucratic elite. The criollo ruling class saw the problems of the Andes as a synonym for the Indian problem, evidenced in their frequent use of tropes such as “integration” and “progress” to define the role of the cordillera in their environmental imaginary ( Carey, 2014 , p.806-807; Méndez, 2011 , p.94; Orlove, 1993 , p.320-321). More than the possibility for substantive and widespread change in modern Peru, it paved the way for a flood of scientists into the bureaucratic realms of the government in the coming years.…”

Climate and colonialism

“…Recent work in the Americas has highlighted how the city of Jauja in Peru served a similar function, and “was one of the most acclaimed places to cure the disease through climate therapy” (Carey 2014, p. 796). As Carey (, p. 798) shows, “various constructions of climate were appropriated and used by various groups‐ not only physicians promoting the health benefits of high elevation Andean climate ‐ but also politicians, entrepreneurs, the Lima elite and economic developers seeking scientific justification for their endeavours in the Andes.” Recent research, however, has also highlighted the importance of health in motivating European emigration from colony to colony, for example, from the unhealthy tropical plains of India to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (Beattie, ). Hill stations across Australia and New Zealand in particular became places where the public health of British administrators and military personnel could be restored through seasonal furlough and, as Beattie (, p. 105) notes, “officials in Australia's fledgling colonies, along with those in New Zealand and South Africa, clamoured to attract wealthy white settlers from India,” commonly sounding “a note of alarm by playing on the dangers of India's climate while reassuring migrants of their own colony's salubrity.”…”

“…Some colonies or topographic features within colonies began to be identified as places offering "climate therapy" for those invalided back home through old world disease or indeed those whose health had been diminished elsewhere in the colonies. Much has been written, for example, on the development of hill stations in India, the Caribbean highlands and various parts of Africa (e.g., Adamson, 2012;Carey, 2011;Kenny, 1995;Njoh, 2008), and mountainous regions in the tropics generally were recognized as key sanatoria for some of the world's most problematic diseases (Carey, 2014). By the second half of the 19th century, temporary stays in some colonial destinations such as Australia, New Zealand, and the Cape Colony also offered a retreat from degenerative diseases such as tuberculosis, then associated with crowded urban environments in Europe (Bell, 1993).…”

Contributions and perspectives from geography to the study of climate

“…Geographers in Peru, for example, Luis Carranza who founded the Geographical Society of Lima in 1888, advocated Jauja as a health tourism capital away from the coastal plains. 59 Terjung, likewise, developed an interest in a bioclimatic classification, that is, how human comfort was influenced by climate, in his aspiration to construct an index of comfort. 60 Terjung recognized, however, that comfort was as much psychological and individual, though he thought the value of trying to derive an index regardless would be of value to retirees, tourists, and the military.…”

“…Local specificity was something acknowledged for example in the use of hill stations in India and in medical climatological research including the promotion of particular kinds of climatic health tourism. Geographers in Peru, for example, Luis Carranza who founded the Geographical Society of Lima in 1888, advocated Jauja as a health tourism capital away from the coastal plains . Terjung, likewise, developed an interest in a bioclimatic classification, that is, how human comfort was influenced by climate, in his aspiration to construct an index of comfort .…”