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Empire, Nation-Building, and The Age of Tropical Medicine, 1885-1960 (Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History) 1st Edition Mauro Capocci
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MEDICINE AND BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES IN
MODERN HISTORY
Empire, Nation-building,
and the Age of Tropical
Medicine, 1885–1960
Edited by Mauro Capocci · Daniele Cozzoli
Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
in Modern History
Series Editors
Carsten Timmermann
University of Manchester
Manchester, UK
Michael Worboys
University of Manchester
Manchester, UK
The aim of this series is to illuminate the development and impact of medi-
cine and the biomedical sciences in the modern era.The series was founded
by the late Professor John Pickstone, and its ambitions reflect his commit-
ment to the integrated study of medicine, science and technology in their
contexts. He repeatedly commented that it was a pity that the foundation
discipline of the field, for which he popularized the acronym ‘HSTM’
(History of Science, Technology and Medicine) had been the history of
science rather than the history of medicine. His point was that historians
of science had too often focused just on scientific ideas and institutions,
while historians of medicine always had to consider the understanding,
management and meanings of diseases in their socio-economic, cultural,
technological and political contexts. In the event, most of the books in the
series dealt with medicine and the biomedical sciences, and the changed
series title reflects this. However, as the new editors we share Professor
Pickstone’s enthusiasm for the integrated study of medicine, science and
technology, encouraging studies on biomedical science, translational med-
icine, clinical practice, disease histories, medical technologies, medical spe-
cialisms and health policies.
The books in this series will present medicine and biomedical science as
crucial features of modern culture, analysing their economic, social and
political aspects, while not neglecting their expert content and context.
Our authors investigate the uses and consequences of technical knowl-
edge, and how it shaped, and was shaped by, particular economic, social
and political structures. In re-launching the Series, we hope to build on its
strengths but extend its geographical range beyond Western Europe and
North America.
Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History is intended to
supply analysis and stimulate debate. All books are based on searching
historical study of topics which are important, not least because they cut
across conventional academic boundaries. They should appeal not just to
historians, nor just to medical practitioners, scientists and engineers, but
to all who are interested in the place of medicine and biomedical sciences
in modern history.
This series continues the Science, Technology and Medicine in Modern
History series.
Mauro Capocci • Daniele Cozzoli
Editors
Empire, Nation-
building, and the Age
of Tropical Medicine,
1885–1960
Editors
Mauro Capocci Daniele Cozzoli
Department of Civilizations and Forms Department of Humanities
of Knowledge Pompeu Fabra University
University of Pisa Barcelona, Spain
Pisa, Italy
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2024
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
vii
Contents
1 Introduction:
The Age of Empire, the Making of the
Modern Nation, and the Advancement of Medical Sciences 1
Mauro Capocci and Daniele Cozzoli
2 Tropical
Medicine and the “Consolidation” of the
Portuguese Empire (1902–1966) 29
Isabel Amaral
3 Dutch
Colonial Medicine and Empire Building in the
Tropics: The Cases of Leprosy and Drug Use in the Dutch
East and West Indies Compared 53
Stephen Snelders
ix
x Contents
4 The
Business of Tropical Medicine: Connections Between
Anti-malarial Campaigns in Sierra Leone, 1899–1901, and
Jamaica, 1908 75
Juanita De Barros and Deborah J. Neill
5 Leishmaniases
in Brazil: A Historical Approach101
Jaime Larry Benchimol
6 Tropical
Medicine, the Nation, and the Colonial Expansion
in the View of Italian Royal Navy Physicians at the End of
the Nineteenth Century139
Mauro Capocci and Daniele Cozzoli
7 From
Universal Rats to Future Jungle Foci: Actors and
Places of Plague in Brazil (1899–1940s)161
Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva
8 Anti-Fascist
Medicine and the International Peace
Campaign Against Urban Raids in Spain and China,
1936–1939181
Carles Brasó Broggi
Index207
Notes on Contributors
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
History. Daniele has published two books in Italian and a number of arti-
cles and chapters on the history of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, biomedical sciences in the twentieth century, and historiogra-
phy of science.
Deborah J. Neill is an associate professor in the Department of History
at York University, Toronto. A European historian with an interest in
imperialism and empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries, her research focuses on medicine and health, food and nutrition, and
economic and business history. She is the author of Networks in Tropical
Medicine: Internationalism, Colonialism, and the Rise of a Medical
Specialty, 1890–1930 (2012).
Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva is a postdoctoral research fellow at the
University of St Andrews, UK, working on the global history of medicine,
zoonoses, and disease ecology. He is the author of Quand la peste connec-
tait le monde: production et circulation de savoirs microbiologiques entre
Brésil, Inde et France (1894–1922) (EHESS, 2020), and co-edited the
book Beyond Science and Empire: Circulation of Knowledge in an Age of
Global Empires 1750–1945 (2023). He has authored several chapters and
articles on the global history of plague, the history of microbiology, and
the history of science in Latin America.
Stephen Snelders studied History at Utrecht University, the Netherlands,
and obtained his PhD in 1999 at VU-University, Amsterdam. Since 2015,
he works as a researcher and lecturer in the History and Philosophy of
Science-section of the Freudenthal Institute, Faculty of Science, Utrecht
University. His research interests include the history of drugs and of colo-
nial and tropical medicine. He published books on Leprosy and Colonialism:
Suriname Under Dutch Rule, 1750–1950 (2017) and Drug Smuggler
Nation: Narcotics and the Netherlands, 1920–1995 (2021, 2023).
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 The parasitology class of Ayres Kopke at the School of Tropical
Medicine. IHMT 0000350 39
Fig. 2.2 Brigade of servicemen with suits for capturing tsetse flies (of the
glossina genus) on Príncipe Island. Relatório final da missão da
doença do sono na ilha do Príncipe. Arquivos de Higiene e
Patologia Exóticas, 1915: 111 43
Fig. 2.3 Representation of the scientific mission of sleeping sickness in
Guinea by a Guinean artist in 2014. (Courtesy of Luis Neves da
Costa)49
xv
CHAPTER 1
The essays collected in this book deal with the complex relation between
the development of modern empires and the history of tropical medicine.
We aim at broadening existing historiographical perspectives by discussing
a number of experiences that have been poorly considered hitherto. Most
of the recent literature in English language has, indeed, focused on the
history of tropical medicine in the British world system (Crozier (then
Greenwood), 2007; Edmond, 2006; Pati & Harrison, 2009; Johnson,
2010; Greenwood & Topiwala, 2015; Greenwood, ed., 2016; Haynes,
M. Capocci
Department of Civilizations and Forms of Knowledge, University of Pisa,
Pisa, Italy
e-mail: mauro.capocci@unipi.it
D. Cozzoli (*)
Department of Humanities, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: daniele.cozzoli@upf.edu
1
For the world-system analysis, see below.
1 INTRODUCTION: THE AGE OF EMPIRE, THE MAKING OF THE MODERN… 3
hygiene, sera, vaccines and a small number of drugs entered the medical
arsenal, opening new grounds for research and public health (Dubos,
1995; Geison, 1995; Gradmann, 2009). Nonetheless, the consequences
of bacteriological discoveries were not immediate. During the Spanish-
American War of 1895–1898, 13 out of every 14 casualties were still due
to diseases (Cueto, 2008).
Historiography mostly refers to the dichotomy ‘sanitation vs. conta-
gionism,’ following Ackerknecht’s (1948) classical account. In the nine-
teenth century, after the demise of the plague and the blooming of the
liberal colonial order of the British Empire, ‘anti-contagionism’ gained
new traction. Contagionism was increasingly considered a relic of the past,
a proxy for quarantine and other illiberal, unscientific and outdated mea-
sures that unnecessarily hindered the free circulation of people and goods.
The cholera waves that hit Europe since the 1820s pushed such dichot-
omy deep into European politics, though the opinion of the medical com-
munity was often oscillating. However, the medical framework deployed
to understand cholera was mostly based on two main features: class hier-
archy and colonialism (Hamlin, 2009). Though with some resistance, in
the last decade of the nineteenth century, Pasteur’s and Koch’s germ the-
ory reinstated contagion as a scientific phenomenon and allowed to fight
infectious diseases without recurring to quarantine. The conceptual expan-
sion following Pasteurian innovation was also a geographical expansion:
medical sciences found new fields in the ‘warm climates,’ and colonial
medicine, in research and policy, often followed political and diplomatic
fault-lines, within and among empires. For example, while the increased
interconnectedness of the world meant a growing exchange of people,
commodities and pathogens, the elites used medicine as one tool to con-
trol migration: sanitary restrictions were applied to ‘coolies’ from China in
California or to Polish seasonal workers in East Prussia (Conrad, 2010).
The growing population of Latin American cities and European ports
encouraged the spread of epidemics. These cities became the focus of new
efforts in controlling contagion at a global level, with medical officers and
researchers converging from European countries to contribute.
Michael A. Osborne (2014) has done substantial work on the French
tropical medicine, and in this book we aim to extend his perspective on a
number of experiences in the history of tropical medicine during the Age
of Empire, experiences connecting China with Spain, Italy with Africa and
South America, Britain with Sierra Leone and Jamaica, the Netherlands
with its American and Asian colonies, Portugal and its African colonies, or
1 INTRODUCTION: THE AGE OF EMPIRE, THE MAKING OF THE MODERN… 15