Mid-19th Century–Early 20th Century: (Medicine as Colonial Power — Quinine Prophylaxis Enabling European Penetration of Tropical Africa, the Ambiguity of Imp…

Mid-19th Century–Early 20th Century: (Medicine as Colonial Power — Quinine Prophylaxis Enabling European Penetration of Tropical Africa, the Ambiguity of Imperial Healthcare That Both Eradicated and Introduced Disease, the Selective Application of Medical Expertise, and the Transformation of African Bodies into Objects of Scientific Study and Political Control): Before the middle of the nineteenth century, tropical Africa had been largely inaccessible to Europeans — the West African coast was known as the White Man’s Grave, and the survival rate of Europeans residing there for extended periods was extremely low. The development of quinine prophylaxis changed this dramatically, reducing death rates and enabling Europeans to remain longer, travel farther, and undertake activities previously impossible in equatorial zones. Under colonial rule, medicine took on even greater significance and demonstrated the profound ambiguity of the imperial mission. Apologists for empire — particularly in the 1950s and 1960s — claimed healthcare as an unalloyed positive: colonialism eradicated certain diseases, improved sanitation in urban areas, built clinics and hospitals, and distributed basic medicines. Yet colonialism also introduced contagious diseases, altered ecologies devastatingly, changed patterns of susceptibility and immunity, and forced populations from healthy to unhealthy environments — and above all, colonial authorities deployed medical expertise only selectively. European stereotypes reinforced anxieties about the tropics as intrinsically disease-stricken, and diseases conquered in Europe reminded Europeans of their own medieval past when encountered in Africa. By the late nineteenth century, Africa and Asia had become laboratories for medical investigation — frontiers of science where disease could be studied in forms no longer available in Europe. Medicine became a potent manifestation of European domination, while African peoples were made into objects of study and research, subjected to forms of bodily control that could no longer be imposed upon Europeans themselves.