Public Health Disruptions in Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush and Catharine Parr Traill’s The Backwoods of Canada

Shane Neilson

Articles

Vol. 48 No. 1 (2023): Special Issue: The Ruptured Commons

Public Health Disruptions in Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush and Catharine Parr Traill’s The Backwoods of Canada

Shane Neilson^▸^▾

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Submitted: May 15, 2024
Published: 2024-05-21

References

Act to Create a Fund for Defraying the Expense of Providing Medical Assistance for Sick Emigrants, and of Enabling Indigent Persons of That Description to Proceed to the Place of Their Destination. 25 Feb. 1832. British North America Database, U of New Brunswick, bnald.lib.unb.ca/sites/default/files/2019-11/LC_1832_cap%2017_edited.pdf.
Ainley, Marianne Gosztonyi. “Science in Canada’s Backwoods: Catharine Parr Traill.” Natural Eloquence: Women Reinscribe Science, edited by Barbara T. Gates and Ann B. Shteir, U of Wisconsin P, 1997, pp. 79-97.
Alexander, Vera. “Transcultural Food and Recipes for Immigration: Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill.” Food and Media, edited by Jonatan Leer and Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, Routledge, 2016, pp. 38-61, doi:10.4324/9781315582603-3.
Atwood, Margaret. Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. House of Anansi Press, 1972.
Ballstadt, Carl, et al. “‘A Glorious Madness’: Susanna Moodie and the Spiritualist Movement.” Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 17, no. 4, 1982, pp. 88-100.
Berlant, Lauren Gail. On the Inconvenience of Other People. Duke UP, 2022.
Besson, Françoise. Memory of Nature in Aboriginal, Canadian and American Contexts, edited by Claire Omhovère and Héliane Ventura, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.
Bilson, Geoffrey. A Darkened House: Cholera in Nineteenth-Century Canada. U of Toronto P, 1980.
“Biomedicine, N.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/6695609186.
Bleakley, Alan. Thinking with Metaphors in Medicine: The State of the Art. Routledge, 2017, doi:10.4324/9781315389448.
Byrne, Angela. “‘My Little Readers’: Catharine Parr Traill’s Natural Histories for Children.” Journal of Literature and Science, vol. 8, no. 1, 2015, pp. 86-101, doi:10.12929/jls.08.1.06.
“The Ruptured Commons.” Studies in Canadian Literature, vol 47, no. 1, 2022, pp. 310-11.
“Contagion, n.” OED Online, Oxford UP, Mar. 2023, www.oed.com/view/Entry/40032.
Cooke, Nathalie, and Fiona Lucas. “Introduction.” Catharine Parr Traill’s The Female Emigrant’s Guide: Cooking with a Canadian Classic, edited by Nathalie Cooke and Fiona Lucas, McGill-Queen’s UP, 2017, pp. xiii-xxx.
Dean, Misao. Practising Femininity: Domestic Realism and the Performance of Gender in Early Canadian Fiction. U of Toronto P, 1998.
Doughty, A.G. “Preface.” Four Centuries of Medical History in Canada, by John J. Heagerty, vol. 1, Macmillan, 1928, pp. vii-x.
Duffin, Jaclyn. History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction, 3rd ed., U of Toronto P, 2021.
Engel, George L. “The Need for a New Medical Model: A Challenge for Biomedicine.” Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), vol. 196, no. 4286, 1977, pp. 129-36.
“The Evolution of the Historic Role of Grosse Île.” Parks Canada, parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/qc/grosseile/culture/histoire-history/evolution.
Fleming, Robert. “Supplementing Self: A Postcolonial Quest(ion) for (of) National Essence and Indigenous Form in Catharine Parr Traill’s Canadian Crusoes.” Essays on Canadian Writing, no. 56, 1995, pp. 198-223.
Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic. Routledge, 2014.
Frye, Northrop. “Conclusion to a Literary History of Canada.” Literary History of Canada, edited by Carl F. Klinck, U of Toronto P, 1965, pp. 821-49.
Godeanu-Kenworthy, Oanu. “‘Mind above Matter’: Work, Gender, and Social Class in Susanna Moodie’s Immigration Memoirs.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 56, no. 3, 2020, pp. 370-83, doi:10.1080/17449855.2020.1729228.
Godfrey, Charles M. The Cholera Epidemics in Upper Canada, 1832-1866. Secommbe House, 1968.
Grant, Mark. Galen on Food and Diet. Routledge, 2000.
Halliday, Stephen. “Death and Miasma in Victorian London: An Obstinate Belief.” British Medical Journal, vol. 323, no. 7327, 2001, pp. 1469-71, doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7327.1469.
Hanlon, Phil, et al. “Making the Case for a ‘Fifth Wave’ in Public Health.” Public Health, vol. 125, no. 1, 2011, pp. 30-36, doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2010.09.004.
Humphries, Mark Osborne. The Last Plague: Spanish Influenza and the Politics of Public Health in Canada. U of Toronto P, 2013.
Inness, Sherrie A. “‘An Act of Severe Duty’: Emigration and Class Ideology in Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush.” Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, vol. 113, 2002, pp. 290-377.
Jensen, Jody, and Rebecca Weaver-Hightower. “Botany and the Woman Colonizer in Catharine Parr Traill’s Backwoods of Canada and Anna Brownell Jameson’s Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada.” Settler Colonial Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, 2021, pp. 242-58, doi:10.1080/2201473X.2021.1881343.
Kiechle, Melanie A. “Revisiting a 19th Century Medical Idea Could Help Address COVID-19.” Washington Post, 21 Apr. 2021. Gale Academic OneFile.
Massicotte, Claudie. Trance Speakers: Femininity and Authorship in Spiritual Séances, 1850-1930. McGill-Queen’s UP, 2017, doi:10.2307/j.ctt1w6tgpg.
“Miasma, n.” OED Online, Oxford UP, Mar. 2023, www.oed.com/view/Entry/117825.
Moodie, Susanna. Roughing It in the Bush: Or, Life in Canada, edited by Carl Ballstadt, McGill-Queen’s UP, 1988.
—. “The Sailor’s Return: Or, Reminiscences of Our Parish.” Voyages: Short Narratives of Susanna Moodie, edited by John Thurston, U of Ottawa P, 1991, pp. 49-63.
Muir, Clark. “Canada and the 1833 Leonids.” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, vol. 108, no. 2, 2014, p. 66-69.
—. “An Early Canadian Zodiacal Light Eyewitness Account.” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, vol. 111, no. 6, 2017, pp. 261-64.
Neilson, Shane. Canadian Literature and Medicine: Carelanding. Routledge, 2023.
Peterman, Michael. “‘Splendid Anachronism’: The Record of Catharine Parr Traill’s Struggles as an Amateur Botanist in Nineteenth-Century Canada.” Re(dis)covering Our Foremothers, edited by Lorraine McMullen, U of Ottawa P, 1990, pp. 173-85.
Polianski, Igor J. “Airborne Infection with COVID-19? A Historical Look at a Current Controversy.” Microbes and Infection, vol. 23, nos. 9-10, 2021, art. 104851, doi:10.1016/j.micinf.2021.104851.
Rubin-Miller, Lily, et al. COVID-19 Racial Disparities in Testing, Infection, Hospitalization, and Death: Analysis of Epic Patient Data. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2020.
Steffler, Margaret, and Neil Steffler. “‘If We Would Read It Aright’: Traill’s ‘Ladder to Heaven.’” Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 38, no. 3, 2004, pp. 123-52.
Thompson, Elizabeth. “Introductory Essay to Catharine Parr Traill’s ‘Something Gathers Up the Fragments.’” Canadian Poetry, no. 42, Spring-Summer 1998, pp. 140-56.
—. The Pioneer Woman: A Canadian Character Type. McGill-Queen’s UP, 1991.
Thurston, John. “‘The Casket of Truth’: The Social Significance of Susanna Moodie’s Spiritual Dilemmas.” Canadian Poetry, no. 35, 1994, pp. 31-62.
Traill, Catharine Parr. The Backwoods of Canada, edited by Michael A. Peterman, Carleton UP, 1997.
—. The Female Emigrant’s Guide by Mrs. C. P. Traill. 5th ed. Old Countryman Office, 1855.
Turner, Kate, and Bill Freedman. “Nature as a Theme in Canadian Literature.” Environmental Reviews, vol. 13, no. 4, 2005, pp. 169-97, doi:10.1139/a05-013.
Zhang, Sarah. “We’re Just Rediscovering a 19th-Century Pandemic Strategy.” The Atlantic, 22 Feb. 2021, www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/02/bad-air/618106.

How to Cite

Neilson, S. (2024). Public Health Disruptions in Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush and Catharine Parr Traill’s The Backwoods of Canada. Studies in Canadian Literature, 48(1), 87–108. Retrieved from https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/SCL/article/view/34168

Copyright Notice

[1] Act to Create a Fund for Defraying the Expense of Providing Medical Assistance for Sick Emigrants, and of Enabling Indigent Persons of That Description to Proceed to the Place of Their Destination. 25 Feb. 1832. British North America Database, U of New Brunswick, bnald.lib.unb.ca/sites/default/files/2019-11/LC_1832_cap%2017_edited.pdf.

[2] Ainley, Marianne Gosztonyi. “Science in Canada’s Backwoods: Catharine Parr Traill.” Natural Eloquence: Women Reinscribe Science, edited by Barbara T. Gates and Ann B. Shteir, U of Wisconsin P, 1997, pp. 79-97.

[3] Alexander, Vera. “Transcultural Food and Recipes for Immigration: Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill.” Food and Media, edited by Jonatan Leer and Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, Routledge, 2016, pp. 38-61, doi:10.4324/9781315582603-3.

[4] Atwood, Margaret. Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. House of Anansi Press, 1972.

[5] Ballstadt, Carl, et al. “‘A Glorious Madness’: Susanna Moodie and the Spiritualist Movement.” Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 17, no. 4, 1982, pp. 88-100.

[6] Berlant, Lauren Gail. On the Inconvenience of Other People. Duke UP, 2022.

[7] Besson, Françoise. Memory of Nature in Aboriginal, Canadian and American Contexts, edited by Claire Omhovère and Héliane Ventura, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.

[8] Bilson, Geoffrey. A Darkened House: Cholera in Nineteenth-Century Canada. U of Toronto P, 1980.

[9] “Biomedicine, N.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/6695609186.

[10] Bleakley, Alan. Thinking with Metaphors in Medicine: The State of the Art. Routledge, 2017, doi:10.4324/9781315389448.

[11] Byrne, Angela. “‘My Little Readers’: Catharine Parr Traill’s Natural Histories for Children.” Journal of Literature and Science, vol. 8, no. 1, 2015, pp. 86-101, doi:10.12929/jls.08.1.06.

[12] “The Ruptured Commons.” Studies in Canadian Literature, vol 47, no. 1, 2022, pp. 310-11.

[13] “Contagion, n.” OED Online, Oxford UP, Mar. 2023, www.oed.com/view/Entry/40032.

[14] Cooke, Nathalie, and Fiona Lucas. “Introduction.” Catharine Parr Traill’s The Female Emigrant’s Guide: Cooking with a Canadian Classic, edited by Nathalie Cooke and Fiona Lucas, McGill-Queen’s UP, 2017, pp. xiii-xxx.

[15] Dean, Misao. Practising Femininity: Domestic Realism and the Performance of Gender in Early Canadian Fiction. U of Toronto P, 1998.

[16] Doughty, A.G. “Preface.” Four Centuries of Medical History in Canada, by John J. Heagerty, vol. 1, Macmillan, 1928, pp. vii-x.

[17] Duffin, Jaclyn. History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction, 3rd ed., U of Toronto P, 2021.

[18] Engel, George L. “The Need for a New Medical Model: A Challenge for Biomedicine.” Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), vol. 196, no. 4286, 1977, pp. 129-36.

[19] “The Evolution of the Historic Role of Grosse Île.” Parks Canada, parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/qc/grosseile/culture/histoire-history/evolution.

[20] Fleming, Robert. “Supplementing Self: A Postcolonial Quest(ion) for (of) National Essence and Indigenous Form in Catharine Parr Traill’s Canadian Crusoes.” Essays on Canadian Writing, no. 56, 1995, pp. 198-223.

[21] Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic. Routledge, 2014.

[22] Frye, Northrop. “Conclusion to a Literary History of Canada.” Literary History of Canada, edited by Carl F. Klinck, U of Toronto P, 1965, pp. 821-49.

[23] Godeanu-Kenworthy, Oanu. “‘Mind above Matter’: Work, Gender, and Social Class in Susanna Moodie’s Immigration Memoirs.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 56, no. 3, 2020, pp. 370-83, doi:10.1080/17449855.2020.1729228.

[24] Godfrey, Charles M. The Cholera Epidemics in Upper Canada, 1832-1866. Secommbe House, 1968.

[25] Grant, Mark. Galen on Food and Diet. Routledge, 2000.

[26] Halliday, Stephen. “Death and Miasma in Victorian London: An Obstinate Belief.” British Medical Journal, vol. 323, no. 7327, 2001, pp. 1469-71, doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7327.1469.

[27] Hanlon, Phil, et al. “Making the Case for a ‘Fifth Wave’ in Public Health.” Public Health, vol. 125, no. 1, 2011, pp. 30-36, doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2010.09.004.

[28] Humphries, Mark Osborne. The Last Plague: Spanish Influenza and the Politics of Public Health in Canada. U of Toronto P, 2013.

[29] Inness, Sherrie A. “‘An Act of Severe Duty’: Emigration and Class Ideology in Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush.” Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, vol. 113, 2002, pp. 290-377.

[30] Jensen, Jody, and Rebecca Weaver-Hightower. “Botany and the Woman Colonizer in Catharine Parr Traill’s Backwoods of Canada and Anna Brownell Jameson’s Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada.” Settler Colonial Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, 2021, pp. 242-58, doi:10.1080/2201473X.2021.1881343.

[31] Kiechle, Melanie A. “Revisiting a 19th Century Medical Idea Could Help Address COVID-19.” Washington Post, 21 Apr. 2021. Gale Academic OneFile.

[32] Massicotte, Claudie. Trance Speakers: Femininity and Authorship in Spiritual Séances, 1850-1930. McGill-Queen’s UP, 2017, doi:10.2307/j.ctt1w6tgpg.

[33] “Miasma, n.” OED Online, Oxford UP, Mar. 2023, www.oed.com/view/Entry/117825.

[34] Moodie, Susanna. Roughing It in the Bush: Or, Life in Canada, edited by Carl Ballstadt, McGill-Queen’s UP, 1988.

[35] —. “The Sailor’s Return: Or, Reminiscences of Our Parish.” Voyages: Short Narratives of Susanna Moodie, edited by John Thurston, U of Ottawa P, 1991, pp. 49-63.

[36] Muir, Clark. “Canada and the 1833 Leonids.” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, vol. 108, no. 2, 2014, p. 66-69.

[37] —. “An Early Canadian Zodiacal Light Eyewitness Account.” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, vol. 111, no. 6, 2017, pp. 261-64.

[38] Neilson, Shane. Canadian Literature and Medicine: Carelanding. Routledge, 2023.

[39] Peterman, Michael. “‘Splendid Anachronism’: The Record of Catharine Parr Traill’s Struggles as an Amateur Botanist in Nineteenth-Century Canada.” Re(dis)covering Our Foremothers, edited by Lorraine McMullen, U of Ottawa P, 1990, pp. 173-85.

[40] Polianski, Igor J. “Airborne Infection with COVID-19? A Historical Look at a Current Controversy.” Microbes and Infection, vol. 23, nos. 9-10, 2021, art. 104851, doi:10.1016/j.micinf.2021.104851.

[41] Rubin-Miller, Lily, et al. COVID-19 Racial Disparities in Testing, Infection, Hospitalization, and Death: Analysis of Epic Patient Data. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2020.

[42] Steffler, Margaret, and Neil Steffler. “‘If We Would Read It Aright’: Traill’s ‘Ladder to Heaven.’” Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 38, no. 3, 2004, pp. 123-52.

[43] Thompson, Elizabeth. “Introductory Essay to Catharine Parr Traill’s ‘Something Gathers Up the Fragments.’” Canadian Poetry, no. 42, Spring-Summer 1998, pp. 140-56.

[44] —. The Pioneer Woman: A Canadian Character Type. McGill-Queen’s UP, 1991.

[45] Thurston, John. “‘The Casket of Truth’: The Social Significance of Susanna Moodie’s Spiritual Dilemmas.” Canadian Poetry, no. 35, 1994, pp. 31-62.

[46] Traill, Catharine Parr. The Backwoods of Canada, edited by Michael A. Peterman, Carleton UP, 1997.

[47] —. The Female Emigrant’s Guide by Mrs. C. P. Traill. 5th ed. Old Countryman Office, 1855.

[48] Turner, Kate, and Bill Freedman. “Nature as a Theme in Canadian Literature.” Environmental Reviews, vol. 13, no. 4, 2005, pp. 169-97, doi:10.1139/a05-013.

[49] Zhang, Sarah. “We’re Just Rediscovering a 19th-Century Pandemic Strategy.” The Atlantic, 22 Feb. 2021, www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/02/bad-air/618106.