The colonial state moved from curative to surveillance-based preventive medicine
Evidence
In addition to combating such devastating diseases as syphilis, tuberculosis, leprosy, sleeping sickness, and malaria among the colonized, Paris innovated in another way. It demanded a shift from individualized curative medical care, based in hospitals, dispensaries, and maternities, to mobile medical units staffed by indigenous auxiliaries-doctors, midwives, nurses, vaccinators, and sanitary guards-supervised by Europeans. They would go directly to the masses and map the incidence of disease, innoculate and distribute serums, and demonstrate modern prophylactic methods and puericulture. Demographic statistics were also to be kept. Surveillance, and education and hygiene at home, held the key to the “sanitary control” and “physical regeneration of the races.” — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 772
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: The surveillance framing parallels Michel Foucault’s biopower and the shift to population management; also echoes the reader’s interest in the state’s remaking of African bodies.