Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness

This study traces the history of encounters between European medicine and African societies in the 19th and 20th centuries. Vaughan's 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.