Imperialist medicine and local communities by David Arnold

This book's authors address the history of Western medicine and its objectives in the colonies, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in various colonies before their independence, starting from Egypt and Congo, to India and the Philippines. The authors reevaluate Western medicine in this way using a comprehensive perspective that includes interactions and influences of political, economic, environmental, and cultural factors among rulers and the ruled. The book shows that colonial administrations often used Western medicine to justify their legitimacy and prove their superiority, more than they used it for the benefit of the governed peoples. In fact, attempts to introduce concepts and practices of Western medicine into local communities sometimes caused more harm than good, especially when enforced by force on cultures that rejected them. Through discussing this in an engaging, sometimes sarcastic style, the book sheds new light on issues closely related to the current debates about the development of the Third World and its health conditions. It also highlights popular and folkloric aspects of medical practice and the medical beliefs of peoples. In this way, it demonstrates the extent of the interconnectedness and overlap between natural or scientific sciences and human or theoretical sciences.