Colonial administrators in 1912 believed science had solved the disease problem blocking Africa

Evidence

It has taken thirty years for science to discover the nature and origin of all the great endemic diseases that seemed to have stopped civilization at the threshold of the tropical countries. All the problems have now been posed, all the solutions are in sight. The governors of our colonies think as men of science and act as administrators to apply the doctrines to which the century of Pasteur has given birth. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 225

Categorization

• QUESTION: How soon did this confidence that ‘all solutions are in sight’ collapse under actual field failures in West Africa?