Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness

by Megan Vaughan

Curing their Ills traces the history of encounters between European medicine and African societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Vaughan's detailed examination of medical discourse of the period reveals its shifting and fragmented nature, highlights its use in the creation of the colonial subject in Africa, and explores the conflict between its pretensions to scientific neutrality and its political and cultural motivations. The book includes chapters on the history of psychiatry in Africa, on the treatment of venereal diseases, on the memoirs of European 'Jungle Doctors', and on mission medicine. In exploring the representations of disease as well as medical practice, Curing their Ills makes a fascinating and original contribution to both medical history and the social history of Africa.

Genres: History, Science, Medicine, Health, Nonfiction, Africa

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vaughn's work is excellent in tracing the lasting impact of imperial domination on the African continent. She examines the the history European medicine and it's position in African communities in 19th and 20th centuries. Vaughan explores the creation of the colonial subject in Africa and and at the same time allows as to deconstruct the pretensions of colonial medical practitioners. I think she tackles a highly complex topic in a way that makes it easily accessible.

[Matthew Loftus · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting tour through medical practice and research (mostly in Eastern and Southern Africa) during the colonial era. The author has dug deep into various archives to find a wide variety of cases and writers exploring the African as object and occasionally subject in state and missionary discourse.

[Eric Wynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

My review: http://voices.yahoo.com/curing-their-...