Colonial Medicine and the Political Economy of Care

Steven Feierman, Professor Emeritus of History and Sociology of Science and Prof. Emeritus of History, University of Pennsylvania.

During this period medicine in a European style reached so few people, and those in such insignificant ways relative to their medical needs, that it was a minor side-show. It is problematic, I argue, that historians of medicine have focused most of their attention on the biomedical sphere. I discuss the implications of a change in the viewer’s point of entry. The work of which this is a part addresses the role of biomedicine in the larger history of health care from the 1870s (with roots in the deeper past) until today.