The Colonial Disease: A Social History of Sleeping Sickness in Northern Zaire, 1900-1940 (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "The historian can approach the subjects of disease and medicine in a number of ways..." (more)
Key Phrases: sleeping sickness regulations, sleeping sickness team, sleeping sickness campaign, Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Congo State (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

."..a most interesting and readable account of the social history of a most important disease. Her evidence supports her argument of "medical imperialism"--that medicine was an effective mechanism for the Belgians to impose their authority over subjected peoples." Tanya Weinstein, The International Journal of African Historical Studies --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

This is a study of the early colonial history of Zaire (formerly the Belgian Congo), with special emphasis on disease and medicine. Using the example of sleeping sickness epidemics, Dr. Lyons discusses the ways that Western medicine and its practitioners came in conflict with African ideas and health practices. It is the author's contention that while the Europeans had brought scientific inquiry and Western bio-medicine to Africa, they had also introduced a harsh, repressive political system coupled with a ruthlessly exploitative economic system that led to the introduction of new diseases and the exacerbation of those already present. Sleeping sickness captured the colonial imagination to such an extent that it continued to dominate medical attention for decades, to independence and beyond. This case study in the social history of the disease and its treatment in early colonial Africa suggests that the "colonial disease" and its impact was a consequence of the Western civilizing mission.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (June 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521524520
• ISBN-13: 978-0521524520
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,730,390 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #77 in

  Books > History > Africa > Democratic Republic of Congo

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Africa's Unique Environmental Problem, January 8, 2004

By	Chimonsho (Turtle Island) - See all my reviews

The tsetse fly, and the animal and human trypanosomiasis ("nagana") it transmits, is a major, uniquely African problem, causing misery and hindering economic development over huge regions. Lyons's book adds greatly to our understanding of efforts to control the "fly," not least because she very effectively exploits Belgian, British and Sudanese archives. As a full study of policy and practice in the major colony of the Belgian Congo, it also adds an important dimension to the history of African environments, previously dominated by research on British Africa. The main contrast between the two approaches was that Britain sought to control tsetse-friendly areas by modifying the landscape, basically waging war against vegetation, while Belgium sought to minimize infection among human populations through forced resettlement and coercive quarantine measures. This enhanced Africans' resentment and sense of injury under Belgian rule, but both policies barely grasped how colonial-era changes aided the spread of fly belts. "Colonial Disease" is a fine if primarily documentary study, and would probably be better with more access to materials in Congo/Zaire. Though it has some good interview data, its fieldwork component is less strong than J. Giblin, "The Politics of Environmental Control in Northeastern Tanzania," and the forbidding classic by J. Ford, "The Role of the Trypanosomiases in African Ecology." F. Lambrecht, "In the Shade of an Acacia Tree" is a Belgian-American's vivid memoir of 1950s glossinology, or tsetse science.