July 2015
Statistic of cases in Santiago de Cuba’s military hospital in 1890 presented by García to the “Comisión para el estudio de la cámara polar” of the Army Medical Service in 1892.
In 1893, the head of the Spanish Army Medical Service (SAMS) in Cuba presented a long report on the therapeutic experiences made with a so-called ‘polar chamber’ in the First Pan-American Congress of Medicine held that year in Washington, DC (United States). The ‘polar chamber’ was a device invented by a Spanish doctor Alfredo García, settled in Santiago de Cuba, in 1891.
Francisco Javier Martínez-Antonio, one of the speakers at the workshop Tropical Diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Historical Perspective hosted by Fiocruz on 1-3 July, explained the concept during his presentation Freezing the island: the ‘polar chamber’, Spanish politics and yellow fever research in the late 19th century Cuba.
According to his research, the ‘polar chamber’ consisted of a rectangular wooden box, large enough to place a bed inside it and with room enough for the patient’s assistant to move around. After the patient was placed on the bed inside the chamber, the temperature was lowed to 10º C, enough for destroying or at least preventing the expansion of the yellow fever germ, which, as it is known, only lets its mortal effects being felt during the warm season. The patient could perfectly stand that temperature without experiencing any alteration in his general condition, even if he or she was under the influence of the fever triggered by the invasion and very quick multiplication of the microbe.
Medical associations in France and Italy praised García’s invention, which also attracted the interest of the SAMS, to the extent that a commission was set up in early 1892 to study its eventual therapeutic effects. Experiences took place in Havana’s military hospital under direction of the army doctor Casimiro Roure y Bofill, who had developed his whole medical career in Cuba since the 1850s. During the 19th century, the SAMS became the main actor in Spanish research on yellow fever in Cuba.
Francisco explains that the polar chamber symbolized a particular view among the competing visions existing at the time on the future of Cuba and its relations with Spain. Politics at that time could not consist either of denying all Cuban demands or ending with any kind of Spanish presence in the island. The pragmatic goal was to prevent the outbreak of confrontations between Spaniards and Cubans.
“Such prevention could only be achieved by identifying the local factors that provoked conflict between Spaniards and Cubans and by taking measures to prevent confrontations”, analyzes Francisco. This could only be made by developing local institutions and a local administration in Cuba and by giving power to Cuban residents, either Spaniards or Cubans.
In that way, the polar chamber’s way to ‘freeze’ conflict consisted of ‘freezing’ the hostility of individual Spaniards against Cubans. Spaniards could easily become ‘fevered’ with hostility against Cubans but as long as that hostility did not pass to a more advanced phase, conflict could be prevented. So the polar chamber proposed to place a ‘fevered’ Spaniard into a ‘purified’ cold environment so that its hostility was ‘frozen’.
“This approach was different from the mosquito theory, which tried to prevent all Spaniards as a group from being ‘infected’ with Cubans’ hostility”, explains Francisco. “Cubans could always hold the ‘germs’ of hostility against Spaniards within them but no confrontation would explode as long as such hostility was not transmitted to Spaniards. It focused not on Spaniards but on the relations between Spaniards and Cubans”.
In the author’s view, ‘freezing’ Cuba in medical and political terms was in tune with ‘autonomist’ political approaches at that time that wished to retain Spanish sovereignty while allowing an increased participation of creoles in the island’s governance.
Read further:
Book chapter on Dr. Casimiro Roure y Bofill, president of the SAMS polar chamber commission, in which information can be found about Spanish yellow fever research in Cuba in the late 19th century (in Spanish).
See related articles in HCS-Manguinhos:
Tropical medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries. Editor’s note of HCS-Manguinhos (vol.21, no.2, Apr./Jun. 2014) by Jaime Benchimol.
See further presentations on the workshop:
El combate de la fiebre amarilla en Guatemala y las bananas. Talia Rebeca Haro Barón discute la intervención de actores locales y extranjeros en el control de la fiebre amarilla y la transformación del conocimiento científico.
La fiebre amarilla y la medicina china en Perú. Artículo de Patricia Palma explora el crecimiento de diversos saberes médicos durante y tras la epidemia de fiebre amarilla en Lima, Perú.
A history of yellow fever, environment and nationalism in 19th century Florida, US. Elaine LaFay discusses how regional assessments raise questions about meanings of tropicality and cultural understandings of tropical diseases.
Workshop on tropical diseases to be webcasted live.
How to cite this post [ISO 690/2010]:
Martínez-Antonio, Francisco Javier. The polar chamber and the freezing of Cuba politics. Hist. cienc. saude-Manguinhos online [viewed on DD MM AAAA]. Available at <http://www.revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br/english/the-polar-cham…eezing-of-cuba/> ISSN 1678-4758.
