Germ theory newly enabled Europeans to prevent disease and expand empire

Evidence

As a major power with a far-flung empire, the Third Republic committed itself both ideologically and institutionally to this new research through one organization in particular: the Institut Pasteur. The first opened in France in 1888, and between 1891 and 1914 no less than seven lnstituts Pasteur were founded overseas. Indeed, as Anne Marie Moulin has argued and as these figures suggest, French bacteriological research and teaching took root more successfully among doctors in the colonies than in the metropole. In France, academic physicians accepted Pasteur’s results but failed to promote the laboratory-based research he had pioneered. Microbiology did not become part of the medical curriculum before World War I, and the Institut Pasteur remained the only metropolitan center for medical research until World War II. In the colonies, however, military doctors, surgeons, and veterinarians embraced Pasteurian doctrines almost immediately. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 212 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: France’s defeat and demographic anxiety drove acceptance of Pasteur’s germ theory; Tropical medicine emerged from late-nineteenth-century germ discoveries; French bacteriological research took root more strongly in the colonies than in France — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 212 (+1 more)

Related

• French bacteriological research took root more strongly in the colonies than in France (similarity 0.89)
• French republicans embraced germ theory as a national-security solution to perceived degeneration (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial doctors embraced Pasteurian bacteriology more readily than French metropolitan physicians (similarity 0.86)
• France’s defeat and demographic anxiety drove acceptance of Pasteur’s germ theory (similarity 0.85)
• Germ theory expanded public demand for government health regulation (similarity 0.83)
• The germ theory of disease drove French hygiene priorities in West Africa (similarity 0.81)
• Bacteriology as a field emerged to conquer tropical diseases and justify colonial medicine (similarity 0.80)
• French public accepted germ theory faster than doctors did. (similarity 0.79)
• Tropical medicine emerged as an international movement around 1910. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Tropical medicine emerged from late-nineteenth-century germ discoveries #corroborates (0.70)
• French bacteriological research took root more strongly in the colonies than in France #expands (0.55) — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 212
• Colonized peoples read colonial vaccination as a tool of subjugation #complicates (0.50)