Introduction
On 20 April 1903, the grand North German Lloyd steamship Princess Irene, which had left New York nine days earlier, safely reached Gibraltar. Among the more than 1,000 émigrés crowded on the lower deck and the 400 passengers aboard the liner was one distinguished gentleman, urgently bound for Madrid to attend the Fourteenth International Medical Congress. This was the president of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States, Davis Griffith (b. 1850). For Dr Griffith, as for 6,000 other participants, the stop in Gibraltar was just one foray ‘under an intoxicating Oriental atmosphere’.Footnote 1 That morning, a small ferry took him to the nearby town of Algeciras, after which he headed for Madrid, with daily stops for sightseeing in Ronda and Seville. Three days later, Griffith finally arrived at the congress. Yet upon attempting to register, he faced a sudden disappointment:
To say that we found a second Babel on entering the registration room, but feebly expresses it; German, English, in fact, every dialect known was being expounded, not in whispers by any means, by an immense throng of hurrying physicians, seven-tenths of whom could not make themselves intelligible to the Latin at the window or behind the counter.Footnote 2
The mix of languages and lack of interpreters for Spanish, French and English made it difficult for the participants of the congress to follow the discussions and caused many to leave the sessions. Similarly, the issue of multilingualism continued to plague scholars at many other international conferences around 1900, but what lay beyond that?
For the first time in medical history, congresses emerged as an unprecedented channel for transnational communication. There physicians could instantly share new theories with thousands of colleagues and challenge the old ones, test new medicines and gather first-hand data on emerging treatment methods. Yet one question remained: which language to speak? This article explores how physicians expected to communicate in medical congresses before global English. What language(s) were chosen as their primary means of communication, and why? More broadly, how was scientific cooperation between physicians carried out within the framework of these congresses and what kinds of power and linguistic hierarchies did it sustain or surpass in light of multilingualism? Considerations of these questions still remains on the periphery of contemporary medical history research.
Recent literature on ‘internationalism’ proposes to view nineteenth-century European governments and scientific organisations as actors of a ‘global family’. The transnational networks they established grew from standardising information transmission to creating common legal and sanitary regulations.Footnote 3 This specific area has been well researched by medical historians focusing on the international sanitary conferences from 1858 to 1938.Footnote 4 Yet, there has been limited analysis of the structure of scientific communication and the role of language hierarchies at such conferences as part of the broader imperial rivalry.
Pioneering studies in the field of new imperial history have traced the process of nationalisation of science against the backdrop of mounting geopolitical tensions in nineteenth-century Europe.Footnote 5 While previous scholars have examined specific languages as instruments of imperial domination or as vehicles for transferring scientific knowledge across national vocabularies, my analysis foregrounds multilingualism as both a reflection of and structuring force in the production of imperial hierarchies.Footnote 6 I argue that the issue of multilingualism, which might initially appear trivial, was in fact instrumental in reinforcing centre–periphery dynamics among scientists at the congresses. Here imperial ambitions, cosmopolitan aspirations and nationalistic rivalries simultaneously intersected and confronted each other via linguistic misunderstandings that arose from language diversity.
My second argument addresses the notion of cosmopolitanism. Why does cosmopolitanism matter here? Because participants in these congresses placed considerable importance on it. The congresses became vibrant arenas for promoting the 1900 ideal of a ‘world citizen’ beyond nation, state or class,Footnote 7 while also serving as international gatherings that celebrated national diversity and competition.Footnote 8 Accordingly, this ‘Janus-faced’ character of international cooperation at the congresses called into question the meaningful notion of cosmopolitanism, reducing it to representations as mere exchanges of pleasantriesFootnote 9 amid competing national interests. Rather than departing from such a normative understanding of cosmopolitanism, I view it as a historically contingent concept, that is, as a language of actors’ self-description. Therefore, I approach it as a set of practical discursive strategies that shaped the certain type of social (or, what I call ‘ceremonial’) interaction among nationally diverse actors. The appeal to ‘ceremonial cosmopolitanism’ makes it possible to move beyond the binary of ‘real’ or ‘fake’ internationalism, and instead to examine how actors mobilised cosmopolitan rhetoric to manage tensions, assert international legitimacy and structure scientific interaction in the absence of the established global means of communication.Footnote 10 Although the ceremonial dimension of this interaction may be, and as demonstrated in conclusion is, disputed, this study nonetheless argues for revisiting its historical meaning in the context of growing national and imperial contradictions among scientists in the late nineteenth century. In this regard, the article is in line with recent scholarship on modern conference culture.Footnote 11
The study is based on the printed press and personal impressions of English-speaking Russian and German physicians, many of which have received little attention. Sources are chosen based on the premise that participants were foreign attendees at the event (e.g., a Russian doctor at an Italian congress). Their accounts have then been compared with those in the medical press in other languages, revealing consistent patterns in the narrative. With that in mind, I focus on three key points. First, I trace the institutional evolution of the congresses to depict their global value to the medical world around 1900. Second, I explore how their internal structure embodied the cosmopolitan and international dynamics of scientific interaction during its ascendance. Third, I examine the problem of multilingualism and flesh out its implications for the transformation of scientific cooperation at the congresses in Rome (1894), Moscow (1897) and Madrid (1903). Overall, I combine three key contexts – first cosmopolitanism, then (inter)nationalism and multilingualism – to offer a novel contribution to an understanding of the hierarchies of uneven dependencies between different regions where science was produced through the lens of the languages spoken at these congresses.
A Brief Overview of the Congresses’ Institutional Evolution
The first International Medical Congress took place in Paris in 1867. The idea originated from a suggestion by French professor Henri Giutrac during the French Medical Congress in Bordeaux in 1865.Footnote 12 Prior to that, doctors mainly had limited scientific interactions through short internships or modest student exchanges. Giutrac suggested hosting an international congress in anticipation of the influx of foreign visitors to Paris for that year’s Universal Exhibition. Dr Pantaleoni from Rome recommended that the Paris congress should be the inaugural event of a series of similar gatherings, while Dr M. Vidal proposed that each subsequent meeting should coincide with universal exhibitions. Thus, exhibitions helped set the stage for extensive cross-border collaboration among physicians. Without them, the congress would have had little chance of success on its own.Footnote 13
Despite its promising start, the Paris congress did not have many international members in attendance.Footnote 14 The second International Medical Congress took place in Florence in 1870, with most participants being Italians. Among about 400 participants in attendance, 108 were international medical journalists and eighty-seven physicians.Footnote 15 The third congress took place in Vienna in 1873, with a significant increase in physicians (668), but also not international ones.Footnote 16 A few of them were also seen at the Seventh Congress in London in 1881, with two-thirds of the delegates being ‘British and Irish medical men’.Footnote 17
From the 1890s onwards, there was a significant increase in the number of participants coming from diverse countries, truly reflecting the congresses’ global nature. The Moscow Congress (1897) gathered around 7,500 attendees, up to half of which were international visitors.Footnote 18 At the 1900 Paris congress there were 6,170 attendants; at the 1903 Madrid Congress, 6,961; and the 1913 Congress in London hosted more than 7,500 delegates, almost three times as many as thirty-two years earlier in 1881.Footnote 19 By the early twentieth century, the congresses began to feature participants from outside Europe, with physicians from the United States, Australia, Japan, the British Raj and Latin America eager to attend.
What could have caused this sudden rise? The professionalisation of medical knowledge across Europe had been exerting a profound influence in those years. However, the main factor was the growth of transport networks, which enabled the institutionalisation of these events and their transformation into global events. The explosive growth of steam and train transport facilitated the prompt movement of thousands of people. Once incorporated into the travel routes of major transportation companies, the congresses became safe and accessible destinations that physicians from around the world might not have reached on their own. For instance, to attend the Moscow Congress, the major British travel company Thomas Cook & Son provided a first-class train journey from London to Berlin/Warsaw and then onwards to Moscow.Footnote 20 The same carrier managed the transatlantic transportation of US participants participants to Madrid in 1903. Reliance on transportation networks was greater than ever before. Even minor delays or logistical errors risked reducing attendance and diminishing the event’s international prestige. For example, a reporter for the British Medical Journal had to retract false information given to a British audience about the absence of a free travel ticket to Moscow, as the postal reply from Moscow refuting this claim failed to reach London within the expected eight days.Footnote 21
Thus, the congresses became large-scale enterprises that demanded careful planning. Organising committees were responsible for coordinating tourist itineraries, offering additional assistance for transportation, negotiating discounts with travel companies and distributing educational materials to familiarise attendees with the host country’s medical and scientific establishments in advance.Footnote 22 Since the fourth meeting in Brussels in 1875, the congresses began to be equipped with a bureau and an executive committee, chosen beforehand through a popular vote at the last general session of the previous meeting. The bureau then selected national committees, which acted as the official representatives of the congresses in each participating country. The national committees were responsible for sharing essential announcements of the bureau. They also engaged in advertising the congresses through national and local media. For example, two years before the Moscow Congress (1897), nearly 2,000 announcements about the time and location of the event were sent to the editorial offices of political and medical newspapers around the world, and over 5,000 leaflets with the titles of proposed presentations and other detailed information were distributed to national committees in other countries.Footnote 23
Eventually, the congresses evolved into a complex networked organism, or in contemporary terms ‘a monster meeting of all nationalities’,Footnote 24 which had to function seamlessly and routinely over the three preparatory years to bring together doctors from around the world. As the president of the 1867 Paris congress, Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud (1796–1881), aptly put it, they soon resembled a ‘second Olympics’ in the field of medicine, certainly pointing to the competition between nations on the international stage.Footnote 25 The staged dimension of the congresses also included highly ritualised displays of cosmopolitan interaction. Underlying these gestures was a constant tension between cosmopolitan and nationalising tendencies, which is analysed next.
Sham Cosmopolitanism? Grand Openings, (In)formal Meetings and Other Forms of Performative Interactions
Let’s imagine it’s Paris, 1900. You had just arrived at the congress. What were your first steps? First, you had to register at the information desk, where you received a bronze participant badge, a ticket for a complimentary visit to the Universal Exhibition from the 2nd to the 9th of August, the congress programme and invitation tickets to the opening ceremony and the dinner at the president’s residence in the Élysée Palace. Everyone was anxious to get to the opening ceremony, but barely a few thousand managed to do so. For example, during the Moscow Congress, the city’s largest public building, the Bolshoi Theatre, was used for gala events. In Madrid, the Teatro Real was converted for this purpose, and in Berlin, the new Prussian parliament building (Abgeordnetenhaus) was provided for hundreds of visitors in 1899.Footnote 26 Buildings used for opening ceremonies, general sessions and laboratories, as well as entire city streets, were adorned ‘with rows of flags’ from all nations to symbolise their unity in the pursuit of global science.Footnote 27
The opening ceremony was usually preceded by the playing of the national anthem and the passage of the royal personages to the front stage. Their personal attendance not only heightened media interest in the event but also facilitated dialogue between physicians and high-ranking officials, who were also regularly invited. Then there was a speech by the president and secretary general of the congress, honorary members or government representatives, imbued with the pathos of cosmopolitanism. In Paris, the president of the congress, Odilon Lannelongue (1840–1911), ended his final speech with the following exhortation:
Nowadays, the question of nationalities, whether it is fair or not, is beginning to receive special importance. The result is a certain isolation of states, a life of their own and apart from each other.… The role of international congresses is to counter these isolationist tendencies; they expose the banal truth that science should not have a fatherland.Footnote 28
After speeches given by the organisers and trustees, official national delegates were called on stage in turn to deliver a short ritual address on the benefits of international unity between scientists, royal families and host nations. Interestingly, these speeches were often given in the speakers’ native languages without translation. However, potential misunderstandings were of little consequence here as the symbolic demonstration of ‘unity in diversity’ was intentionally prioritised over linguistic clarity. Following these speeches, the section meetings for each field opened and the congress moved into the routine of scientific work.
The discourse of ceremonial cosmopolitanism weaves like a thread through the whole event, prompting researchers to question whether they were solely ritual gestures. Geert Somsen argues that ‘Explained as such, the expressions of internationalism may seem pedestrian, like casual pleasantries rather than profound statements.… But it is still vital to remember the importance of performances of community in collective gatherings’.Footnote 29 However, these expressions had one important thing to add. The ritual repetition of identical speeches along the chain from the main gala session to the small section triggered a certain ‘performative’Footnote 30 setting, which signalled that physicians of all nations should leave political or national squabbles aside and tune in to peaceful work.
Instead of focusing on cultural and national differences, the speakers systematically addressed global challenges, such as fighting epidemics and improving urban sanitation. These symbolic gestures aimed to showcase the unity of doctors worldwide in advancing medical science ‘for the benefit of humanity’ and reducing ‘its suffering’.Footnote 31 As a result, this helped establish a common ground for discussions, where national interests were not exacerbated but instead positioned within the framework of serving a common good. This understanding was best encapsulated in the succinct phrase of UK minister John Elliot Burns (1858–1943) at the London Congress in 1913: ‘Medical knowledge in particular is cosmopolitan. Each country has brought its contribution…and every nationality has added its quota’.Footnote 32
Contemporaries recognised the profound social importance of ceremonial cosmopolitanism in sustaining amicable relations. The London Congress of 1881 became a major reason for attracting international visitors from Europe, the United States and Canada to the traditional dinner of the British Medico-Psychological Association. One of the dinner attendees opened with a toast invoking the words of the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–93), who had once famously declared that science transcends national and racial boundaries and for years welcomed international scientists to his Paris clinic. This invocation of Charcot’s authority was more than rhetorical: it set the tone for the gathering by affirming a shared sense of belonging to global medical family. The emotional impact of this moment was such that the usual distinction between nationalities seemed suspended. As one observer noted, the very term ‘foreigner’ felt out of place in the minds of those present.Footnote 33
One British observer pointed out that the Copenhagen Congress dinners were a refreshing change from the traditional English banquets, often associated with a sense of gloom. At these dinners, guests were required to say the local ‘Skaal’ and bow to each other before toasting, fostering an atmosphere conducive to forging new connections.Footnote 34 Such practices infused a sense of fellowship into an otherwise solemn affair. The conveners also formed special ‘ladies committees’ to bring together female members attending the congresses, assist with organisational matters and provide entertainment for the wives and children usually accompanying their husbands.Footnote 35
Ceremonial cosmopolitanism was meaningful not only from a social standpoint but also in scientific terms. The Russian hygienist Adam Girshgorn (1829–97), who attended the Seventh International Hygienic and Demographic Congress in London in 1891, was deeply disappointed by the organisers’ decision to forgo general sessions. At earlier meetings in Vienna and Berlin these sessions held great attention among novice doctors. Prominent medical figures traced shifts in scientific paradigms and emphasised mutual contributions of leading Darwinists and bacteriologists, including Pasteur, Koch, Lister and Pettenkofer. The lack of plenary sessions, in this view, undermined the congress’s claim to international authority and contributed to its premature dissolution.Footnote 36
Thus, ceremonial cosmopolitanism was a unique cultural practice for cultivating a physician’s global identity, which could only be mastered at international congresses. Yet the national dimension never vanished. Often it was present in the positioning of guests in the congress venue. For example, in Madrid: ‘The Congressists were arranged in separate halls of the palace according to nationality, so that the king’, as one participant put it, ‘made a round-the-world journey through the world of medical science, starting it from the throne room’.Footnote 37 At another venue, an official dinner with German Chancellor Chlodwig Hohenlohe (1819–1901) was arranged for a select group of twenty-six individuals, who were ‘evenly chosen from all nationalities’.Footnote 38
The influence of nationalism in nurturing ‘friendly’ internationalism became evident, particularly in the preparation for the Paris congress of 1900. Unlike the British at the London hygiene congress, the organisers did not put French forward as the sole lingua franca of the event. In one of the rooms at the École Pratique, information desks were set up separately for each nation, allowing attendees to receive the necessary information in their first language. The French also cared to arrange special ‘national committees’ – gathering points for compatriots named after prominent French physicians. For example, the Pasteur Hall of the medical faculty was designated for the Russian committee, the Broussais Hall for the German committee, the Charcot Hall for the Italian committee and so on. Foreign visitors praised these initiatives, viewing them as inclusive, even for those unable to communicate in French.Footnote 39
While physicians were expected to embrace their nationalities by finding unity not despite but through their linguistic and cultural differences, this did not necessarily signal a complete departure from the cosmopolitan setting of the congresses. Instead, the coexistence of ‘friendly’ internationalism with emerging ‘hostile’ nationalist tendencies illustrates the complex and sometimes contradictory dynamics at play. Although the congresses solidified physicians’ goals for global collaboration, they also heightened national and imperial tensions expressed through multilingualism and deliberate linguistic policy, which will be examined further in the next section.
Scientific Centres in the Linguistic Peripheries: Multilingualism at the Congresses in Rome, Moscow and Madrid
The Babel of tongues was not as pressing in the early development of the congresses, particularly from the first one held in Paris in 1867. As one German observer wrote: ‘There was no doubt about the choice of language at this Congress, as it could be assumed that all those who had come to Paris for this occasion were able to use and understood the French language’.Footnote 40 This view reflected not only the linguistic expectations placed on attendees but also the underlying cultural hegemony that cast French as the ‘natural’ international language of diplomacy and civilisation.Footnote 41 While the dominance of French in this context may seem self-evident across ‘the long nineteenth century’, a closer examination shows that this is far from the whole story.
Since the third meeting in Vienna in 1873, the notion of an ‘official language’ became enshrined in the congress statutes, gradually replacing French as the only lingua franca. At that time, the Austrian national committee was tasked with selecting keynote speakers for the congress agenda, which was to focus on hygienic security. Since the committee appointed all speakers from among Austrian doctors, it decided to designate German as the ‘official language’ of the congress. However, the event was attended by a large number of medical officials from other European governments, who intended to implement its hygiene regulations into national legislations. To accommodate them, it was agreed to conduct discussions and provide printed materials also in French, English and Italian.Footnote 42
The Belgian Congress of 1875 designated German, French and English as official languages, but French ‘was by universal consent adopted as the medium of inter-communication’.Footnote 43 But more importantly, they were chosen for printing the multi-volume transactions of the congress and for abbreviated summaries of the presentations. Thus, this ‘lingua triumvirate’ gradually took shape as a univocal power mechanism of international communication and continued to dominate until the early 1890s. It seemed that a solution had been found, but as will become evident, it proved to be rather fragile.
At the 1891 London Congress, a Russian hygienist highlighted the clear barriers of using these languages for non-native speakers. As with previous congresses in Turin, Berlin and Vienna, only a ‘very small number of members’ were able to take part in discussions in English, French and German. In Berlin and Vienna, this obstacle was tactfully addressed by having young scholars in each section who were fluent in at least two languages in order to interpret the key points for other members.Footnote 44 It is important to note that professional interpreters had not yet been provided, and auditoriums lacked loudspeakers. When Western scholars’ monotonous speeches either bored the audience or went unheard, poster presentations and hands-on demonstrations proved to be a saving grace.Footnote 45 Nonetheless, the status of the official language allowed them to overlook this and other requests from less privileged groups. British and German physicians often chose to give talks in their first languages. This in turn caused frustration among colleagues from Eastern Europe, who were not given the chance to present in their own languages.Footnote 46
As long as the congresses remained within the orbit of the ‘old’ Franco–German and, to a lesser extent, English ‘linguistic core’, the issue of multilingualism was kept at bay. Beginning in the 1890s, however, the congresses increasingly took place in newer and flourishing scientific centres such as Spain, Russia and Italy, which nonetheless remained ‘linguistic peripheries’, as their national languages were not widely used in international academic exchange.Footnote 47 French, German and British doctors showed exceptional interest in the scientific advancements made by their Russian, Spanish and Italian colleagues in the areas of neurology, physiology, psychiatry and criminal anthropology,Footnote 48 yet they could comfortably continue conducting the congresses in their own languages as long as these events were held on their home ground. However, at the final session of the Berlin Congress in 1890, a majority of Western and Eastern European physicians voted to hold the next congress in Rome, followed by Moscow, and later in Madrid.
Consequently, the international congresses came to be in a vulnerable position. On the one hand, if they aimed to remain an international platform for scientific cooperation, they had to meet the requests of national representatives from Russia, Spain and Italy to hold the congresses in these countries, given that Russia and Spain had never hosted them before. On the other hand, recognising Russian, Spanish and Italian as the official languages would have amplified the existing issue of multilingualism and undermined the dominance of French, German and English. Conflicts over language could at best hamper scientific exchanges, and at worst threaten to stir up nationalist and patriotic feelings associated with the tense political and military situation in Western Europe, in particular after 1871. Nevertheless, this could not be avoided in any of the ‘linguistic peripheries’, starting in Rome.
The Rome congress was held from 29 March to 5 April 1894. Up to 8,000 doctors took part in it. Most of them were Germans – 1,274 members; the French were three times fewer – 426.Footnote 49 More than 200 doctors came from Russia. The city of Rome was unprepared to accommodate so many international visitors, but an even greater challenge proved to be the language barrier. Although Italian was accepted as an official language alongside German, French and English, many foreigners were annoyed that all Italians made presentations exclusively in their language. Three-quarters of the 2,700 reports were delivered in Italian, hindering the subsequent discussions between the Italians and foreign members. The frustration over the inability to understand presentations in Italian resulted in a surge of national sentiment. American surgeon Major A. C. Girard (1841–1914), not mincing his words, complained in a letter to his friend that most of the Italian reports held no scientific value. He argued that Italians failed ‘to manufacture mental food of quality sufficiently good to be worthy of presentation at an International Congress’, because Italy did not have enough qualified physicians to hold its own in this ‘Olympics’ dominated by larger powers.Footnote 50
Vladimir Chizh (1855–1922), a well-known Russian psychiatrist among his Western European colleagues at the congress, shared similar sentiments. He saw no reason for the Italians to stick to their language except for political motives, as many of them spoke French quite well. ‘In all likelihood, there was politics involved; and who does not know that where there is politics, there is no place for science’, Chizh observed.Footnote 51 With that in mind, he was alluding to the confrontations between the Triple Alliance and the Franco–Russian Union, which had finally merged not long before the congress. The way he then presented the hygiene exhibit supports this idea, as it vividly illustrates the politicisation of science in its nationalising guise.
A hygienic exhibition, as was often the case, followed the congress, and in Chizh’s view, it was called ‘international’ in vain. It served as an Italian–German or German–Italian exhibition for the public, which had almost exclusively advertised value. The significant difference in attitude towards the Germans and the French, which was clearly conspicuous, caused a baleful mood among many. German doctors everywhere were surrounded by the ‘esteem’ of their Italian colleagues. From that moment, the congress ceased to serve an ideal of ‘pure science’ and came to be perceived as a contested international gathering where ‘the most educated people bowed to the most influential’. The ominous echo of ‘Woe to the vanquished’, still reverberating from France’s defeat in the war with Prussia, hung in the air of the congress halls. Therefore, the small number of French participants was more than a diplomatic slight. It was a quiet rejection of participation in an assembly where scientific internationalism reflected Germany’s emerging imperial ascendancy.
Chizh’s final thoughts were pessimistic because the congress did not serve the cause of peace and international rapprochement between scientists. In his view, the Italians had the right to speak their language, but if they wanted to be understood, they should not use this right. Expressing a distinctly patriotic feeling, he concluded:
I am sure that at the XII Congress in Moscow, we are Russian doctors, both from a sense of delicacy and for love of the cause, will not compel our guests to attend a reading in a language they do not understand. Indeed, it is simply incomprehensible how doctors can so lose respect for knowledge, love for their science, as to speak in Italian in the presence of their comrades who understand French.Footnote 52
He was blatantly mistaken. The Moscow Congress in many unfavourable aspects repeated, and perhaps even surpassed, the Italian one. Before the first foreigner had even crossed the Russian border in August of 1897, the press was marked by dissatisfied cries against the Russian organising committee. It decided not to accept German and English as official languages of the congress. Seeking to address the issue of multilingualism, the committee designated French and Russian as the sole official languages, while simultaneously showing respect for the French in light of the Franco–Russian alliance.
However, this decision clearly displeased the German visitors, who were the largest delegation (around 800 doctors) yet were reluctant to speak French. The honoured guests were presented by Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), Richard von Kraft-Ebing (1840–1902) and Ernst von Leiden (1832–1910). Wherever Virchow went, he was met with applause. In his Kremlin lodgings, generously provided by Nicholas II, Russian ‘lady doctors’ came to pay tribute to him for organising the women’s medical courses in Berlin, which had paved their way into the profession at home.Footnote 53 The German luminaries were clearly favoured by the younger generation of Russian psychiatrists, for whom German had, by the early 1890s, begun to rise to prominence as the primary international language, while French was beginning to lose that position. Eventually, ‘Yielding to the universal protest, the Committee of Management have announced that English and German will also be accepted as official languages, with French and Russian’.Footnote 54
Russian doctors unmistakably displayed their sympathies toward German counterparts at the congress. Germany was given the first word at the opening ceremony in the Bolshoi Theatre, where, on the closing day, Virchow, admiring the splendour of Moscow’s clinics and laboratories, pathetically pronounced: ‘Learn from the Russians!’Footnote 55 The French delegation spoke second to last.Footnote 56 The rapprochement between Russian and German sciences, occurring during the political alliance with France, was bound to ruffle French sensitivities, especially as President Félix Faure (1841–99) had only just arrived in St. Petersburg on an official visit. But the fatal blow to Russian–French relations at the congress was inflicted by the French ‘La Médecine Moderne’, which went to press with a derogatory review, depicting ‘the great Russian people as to some extent a German colony’.Footnote 57 As one British reviewer put it, ‘It has been noted with regret that German medical science preponderates in Russia. [An Englishman,] Dr. Van Coler [1873–1935] spoke in German, and the Japanese delegate likewise; it was in that language that he invited the Congress to hold the next meeting at Tokyo.’Footnote 58
The professional medical press played a surprisingly large role in fuelling patriotic sentiments by invoking imperial or colonial narratives. Given the frequent media coverage of the congresses, they turned into fertile ground for asserting one party’s more ‘civilised’ state over a ‘peripheral partner’, and what’s important, via linguistic contradictions. This was most acutely manifested at the 1903 event in Madrid. The logistical failures of the congress, including inadequate and crowded accommodation, unsuccessful attempts to register on the first day, empty auditoriums and unclear presentations of Spanish doctors, were explained by the fact that ‘the committee of arrangements was looking for a purely Latin congress’.Footnote 59 German and English speeches were also not commonly heard, indicating little interest in the congress from the ‘leading nations’ in the medical sciences.
By criticising the Spaniards, the Russian observer under the comic pseudonym ‘Don Miguel’ clearly viewed them with satirical condescension, forgetting that the French and Germans had treated the Russians in the same way six years earlier. He connected the poor state of the congress with the fact that ‘in Spain, there is a complete ignorance of foreign languages’. He mocked the French pronunciation of the Spaniards and the poorly translated congress programme, although the English-speaking medical press teased Russian doctors in a similar manner.Footnote 60 National languages, in this context, acted as vehicles of imperial hegemony, reinforcing the authority of certain ‘scientific centres’, even if that ‘centre’ had itself been considered a ‘periphery’ just the day before. Still, the Madrid congress appeared a complete failure in the eyes of foreign visitors. The Spanish doctors did not make much effort to go beyond their ‘linguistic periphery’ and, consequently, failed to make the congress truly international, that is, suitable for the needs of core attendees from other great powers. This was the common trope of the French, English-speaking and Russian presses.Footnote 61
Did the organising committees attempt to address the issue of multilingualism during this time? The answer is far from a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Upon acknowledging the challenging situation with the Italian language in Rome, the Chairman of the Russian Executive Committee, Professor Nikolay Sklifosovsky (1836–1904), delivered an apologetic speech at the commencement of the Moscow Congress. He indicated Russia’s standing within the European medical field and stressed the lack of a universal language as the primary hindrance to scientific progress between East and West:
Nowhere was this almost fatal lack so fully realised as in Russia. The great mass of Russian medical literature was a sealed book to Western peoples…. Russians recognised that their language was too difficult ever to become universally known, and they were therefore the more keenly alive to the necessity of the adoption of some international speech.Footnote 62
With this opening address, Sklifosovsky wasn’t just trying to apologise to the foreigners for the inconvenience caused by the din of Russian speech at the congress; he also proposed that a special committee be convened for a preliminary agreement on a solution to the issue of multilingualism. This agreement was to be submitted to the next congress for approval, but the idea seemed to linger unaddressed and was eventually forgotten, particularly after the Moscow committee passed the baton to Paris. After a lull in Paris, the ‘Babylonian storm’ burst forth with renewed fury in Madrid.
Some voices called for French to be enshrined as the ‘dominant language’ of conversation and printing, but this was hardly feasible after decades of political enmity between the great powers.Footnote 63 Latin could not be the solution either. Although pharmacists had confirmed as early as 1881 at the international congress in London that Latin should remain the primary language in their field, physicians in all other disciplines were unable to follow suit.Footnote 64 For instance, at the Berlin Congress in 1890, only one Italian ventured to give a paper in Latin, but he did not seem to be understood by most of the audience.Footnote 65
Things were not better with constructed languages either, despite their truly cosmopolitan goal of uniting different nations under a single, neutral tongue. Although Esperanto was gaining popularity in Russia and Eastern Europe at this time,Footnote 66 Russian doctors did not propose it as a lingua franca at the Moscow Congress. On the contrary, the constructed languages exacerbated the issue of multilingualism, at least in the medical sciences. In 1898, Spanish neuropathologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934) lamented that: ‘Nowadays, many scientific papers are published in more than six languages…. We have to acknowledge that Volapük or Esperanto are practically one more language to be learned.’Footnote 67 After the rapid growth of Volapük in Germany and partly in France in the late 1880s, the American Philosophical Society expressed concern that hardly ‘in this period of nationalism the majority of scientists will forego the claim that their language is the language of the most accomplished and most cultured people of the world’.Footnote 68
In another part of the world, the young Russian ethnographer Dmitrii Zelenin (1878–1954) harboured similar feelings. In his remarkable study, dedicated to Beermann’s concept of Volapük,Footnote 69 Zelenin regretted: ‘In an era marked by the resurgence of national cultures and the flourishing of nationalism … the achievement of this cosmopolitan ideal may have appeared as a flawless utopia’.Footnote 70 Apparently, his publication went unnoticed not only among Russian doctors but also in wider intellectual circles. Discussions about adoption of constructed languages and Esperanto were not put on the agenda until the London congress of 1913, the last one in their history.Footnote 71 Nevertheless, international medical congresses were able to adapt to this and other challenges discussed here, an analytical reading of which is provided in the conclusion.
Conclusion
Summarising the outcome of the Moscow Congress, Russian physician Dmitrii Zhbankov (1853–1932) wrote in 1897: ‘If the national enmity and competition remain so strong that one language will not soon be introduced at the international congresses, then the existing scientific value of the congresses will fall more and more.’Footnote 72 It is amazing with what piercing accuracy he turned out to be wrong. Though the congresses failed to adopt a single means of communication over half a century, they remained vital channels for sharing and disseminating transnational medical knowledge until the First World War. This was precisely the kind of congress that could bring together friendly parties such as the eminent physiologists Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) and Ramón y Cajal in 1903, or, per сontra, the feuding psychologists Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) and Pierre Janet (1859–1947) ten years later in London. As this article has shown, the international medical congresses were a peculiar form of scientific cooperation, neither unequivocally national nor cosmopolitan. Instead, they were built on a complex interplay of these two elements, which were in constant tension due to the increased linguistic diversity and the integration of new scientific regions.
By emphasising this interplay, this study for the first time has identified and examined the role of linguistic hierarchies in this process, which has not previously been addressed in studies of conference culture around 1900. Viewing international medical congresses through the lens of language struggles and accompanying imperial confrontations allowed for a glimpse into the ‘hidden’ image of these colossal events. After two decades of relatively serene existence within the established linguistic core (France, the United Kingdom, the German Empire), the congresses seemed exposed in the new regions of the ‘linguistic periphery’ (Italy, Spain, the Russian Empire), which at the same time claimed to be leading scientific centres around 1900. Their ‘internationality’ was in fact limited by the superiority of French, English and German as the only official languages of communication, and the success of their global standing depended on the maintenance of this status quo by Russian, Spanish or other ‘peripheral’ doctors.
In other words, as long as the ‘linguistic periphery’ continued to reinforce this hierarchy and did not demand for itself the rights of the ‘scientific centre’, the development of international competition followed a predictable scenario – rapprochement on the basis of cosmopolitan devotion to science. In this context, ceremonial cosmopolitanism functioned as a key mechanism for providing a common ground, where medical issues were seen in terms of global public welfare rather than isolated national interests. Although its symbolic value was not enough to critically challenge the established linguistic hierarchies, it was still essential for framing a unique social environment where representatives of unequal nations learned to practice international cooperation.
The processes of nationalisation and politicisation of science, exacerbated after 1871, jeopardised this once resilient form of cooperation. The concept of official languages could no longer be seen as a way out of the impasse of multilingualism. The priority given to one of the three languages at the congress meant even more aggravation between different groups of scientists from opposing political blocs. Moreover, the championing of one or another language as the universal one often led to a strengthening of imperial sentiment, as was evident at the Rome and Moscow congresses, when Italian and Russian medicine were perceived as German ‘scientific colonies’. Claims of Russians or Spaniards for linguistic supremacy in their ‘scientific core’ caused backlash from physicians of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, who viewed this as a threat to the ‘internationality’ of the congresses, that is, the hegemony of their ‘linguistic empires’. Although the politicisation of science was not a phenomenon unique to the post-1871 period, its peculiarity lay elsewhere: multilingualism constantly triggered national and imperial rivalries that could not have emerged outside international congresses, where scholars had never before convened and engaged on such a scale.
The tension between maintaining international cooperation and advancing national interests became increasingly difficult to manage after 1900, yet the congresses continued to thrive due to their hybrid nature, which balanced competing loyalties. Jan Surman hastens to argue that the movement towards ‘international’ cooperation in Central European sciences of this time ‘was only an extension of the “national”’.Footnote 73 This study has attempted to show that if there was such a nexus, it did not always follow this trajectory. Rather than serving purely national interests, the congresses operated through a complex and often contradictory blend of cosmopolitan, national and imperial aspirations, where linguistic diversity became a hybrid mechanism for both universalising and particularising scientific communication. Paradoxically, the more intensively global scientific cooperation dissolved borders between physicians and facilitated their unification, the more sharply national, political and imperial contradictions among them came into view.
Acknowledgements
This article grew out of a talk given at the conference ‘Mapping multilingual (counter-)expertises: Scientific and political knowledge production across borders in the long twentieth century’ at the University of St Andrews in 2023. I am grateful to Bernhard Struck and Guilherme Fians for inviting me to such a stimulating conference and for their invaluable feedback on my research. I would also like to thank the contributors to this special issue, as well as the two anonymous reviewers, for their insightful remarks on an earlier draft of this paper. My deepest thanks go to my brother, Timur Mitrofanov, for his thoughtful comments and continued support throughout the two years of this research.
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