殖民医学视角下《梦想之城》中的外科医生

The Surgeon in The City of Dream in Light of Colonial Medicine

殖民医学是西方医学的变体,也是殖民主义在医学领域的反映,成为西方国家殖民扩张的重要方式之一。殖民地医学是本土医学和殖民医学的杂糅体。本文从后殖民主义角度、以外科医学的发展史为主线研究贝弗利·斯沃林的《梦想之城》,发现作品人物通过杂糅、模仿、抗争等策略,颠覆了荷、英两国以爱丁堡医学为代表的殖民医学统治,实现了从殖民医学向殖民地医学再至民族医学的转换,这一过程也是民族独立和纽约城市重建的过程。因此,小说中的外科医学、草药医学发展史也见证了家族的分裂与融合、城市的毁坏与重建、民族的灾难和国家的新建。

Colonial medicine, a variant of Western medicine and a reflection of colonialism in the field of medicine, became one of the important ways of colonial expansion for Western countries. The medicine on a colony is a mixture of native medicine and colonial medicine. This article offers a study of Beverly Swerling’s The City of Dreams from the perspective of postcolonial medicine with a focus on the developmental history of the surgical medicine and explores how, through such strategies as hybrid, imitation, and opposition, the characters in the novel subvert the dominance of the colonial medicine represented by the Edinburgh medicine in Netherland and England and complete the transformational process from the colonial medicine to the medicine of colony and back to native medicine again, a process that coincides with the national independence and the reconstruction of the New York City. Therefore, the history of surgical medicine and herbal medicine also witnesses the division and integration of the family, the destruction and reconstruction of the city, the national disaster, and the new construction of the nation.