REPORT 1
For this week,I read some primary and secondary sources about John Farrell Easmon, including his work entitled The Nature and Treatment of Blackwater Fever and I also read Adell Patton Jr's article about his career and experiences of racism. Easmon's work helped me see how used observations from his patients to develop medical knowledge and question existing explanations.Patton's article on the other hand showed me how racism limited his authority and opportunities despite his qualifications.I also created a Zotero folder to organize my findings and also explored the library's history research resources, especially the African history section, where I looked at some newspapers.I also searched the Internet Archive for more materials about Easmon and colonial medicine.
Reading these sources together has helped me think about African physicians as partakers of the production of medical knowledge and the conditions under which their expertise was recgonized. As I rethink my proposal,I would want to also look into how Easmon understood conditions surrounding illness:did he focus mainly on symptoms and treatment or did he also consider how colonial life affected health?.One challenge I have faced is finding resources. Although I have used most of the resources provided by the library, the material I have found is still limited.I plan to explore other libraries and archive to find more information about Easmon and more evidence to help answer my research question.