The AMI trained African assistants to displace marabouts and witch doctors’ influence.

Evidence

The AMI rested upon two guiding principles. First, it was to provide free medical care and hygiene advice to the African populations. Twenty military and civilian doctors were recruited in 1905 to this end. The difficulty in finding colonial doctors led, a year later, to the creation of a corps of African medical assistants to supplement their ranks. These students were to be trained locally to work alongside French doctors, to serve as interpreters, and, if necessary, to run a secondary medical post. They were considered ideal propagators of modern science, who would use their newly acquired information and medical skills to fight the influence of marabouts and witch doctors. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 169

Categorization

• XREF: Training African medical assistants as ‘propagators of modern science’ against marabouts illustrates how the civilizing mission deliberately undermined indigenous religious authority—core to the reader’s theme.