Andrew Keitt talks medical politics in lecture at Carmichael Library

By Skye Anderson, Lifestyles editor

On February 23, UAB’s history professor Andrew Keitt visited UM to talk about the intersection of medicine and politics in the nineteenth century, as reflected in his 2024 work “A Physician in the Age of Liberal Reform.”

Keitt’s research centered on the life of Ildefonso Martínez y Fernández, a nineteenth-century physician in Spain who was against the Spanish inquisition. During his time, physicians in Spain were a powerful political force involved in the nation’s building process.

Ildefonso Martínez y Fernández lived during a global pandemic and died shortly after a political insurrection, which Keitt drew parallels to COVID and the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. However, he also emphasized the danger of looking at historical events with the distorted lens of the present.

“I want to avoid any simplistic analogies between past and present,” Keitt said. “I will say that… the Anglo-American political tradition was seen as inherently democratic and virtuous while Spain was inherently monarchical and corrupt. My exploration of nineteenth-century Spain revealed to me a much more complex reality.”

Keitt talked about the relevance of the use of metaphor in political discourse, and how taking metaphor seriously could change communication in the political landscape. “There will always be a metaphorical element to our politics,” he said. “When it comes to the politics of public health, it will never be enough just to insist that people ‘just follow the science’.”

When talking about metaphor theory, Keitt cited the work of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, who argued that “human thought is embodied and grounded in metaphor, rather than existing in some abstract, transcendental realm.”

For Keitt, researching the life of Ildefonso Martínez y Fernández meant attending many academic conferences, making connections with other scholars and traveling to Spain to see where Ildefonso Martínez y Fernández lived and died.

He said these eight years of research led to identifying with his subject, while still wanting to avoid glorifying historical figures. “I couldn’t help but admire the heroism that led to his death treating cholera victims in 1855,” he said. “But at the same time, it was important not to gloss over his flaws, such as racism and sexism—flaws that were all too common during the nineteenth century and beyond.”