The administration of sickness : medicine and ethics in nineteenth-century Algeria / William Gallois.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gallois, William, 1971-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Public health administration--Algeria--History--19th century.

Public health administration.

Medical policy--Algeria--History--19th century.

Medical policy.

Medical care--Algeria--History--19th century.

Medical care.

Imperialism--Health aspects--Algeria--History--19th century.

Imperialism.

Medical ethics--Algeria--History--19th century.

Medical ethics.

Health Policy--history.

History.

Imperialism--Health aspects.

Algeria.

France.

Colonialism--history.

Delivery of Health Care--organization & administration.

Ethics, Medical--history.

History, 19th Century.

History, 20th Century.

Medical Subjects:

Health Policy--history.

Algeria.

France.

Colonialism--history.

Delivery of Health Care--organization & administration.

Ethics, Medical--history.

History, 19th Century.

History, 20th Century.

Physical Description:

vi, 262 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Summary:

This book asks how ethics can help us to understand the encounter between French colonists and Algerians in the nineteenth century. It focuses on questions of medicine since the claimed goodness of the French 'civilising mission' depended on the idea that the health of the Algerian people would be improved under imperial rule. In looking at the manner in which such moral claims were constructed and the way in which they operated in practice, Gallois offers one of the first comparative histories of medicine and ethics. The book argues that while the French failure to 'medicalise' Algerian society is well understood, histories of health also need to consider ways in which policies of massacre and extermination were conceived as being morally good, and how the diminution of the Algerian population was countenanced at moments of famine and epidemic disease. It also offers the first accounts of Algerian doctors working in colonial medicine, looking at the manner in which they developed an ethics of resistance to empire.

Contents:

On the idea of medical imperialism

On humanitarian desire

On extermination

On attendance to suffering and demographic collapse

On the just and sovereign testimony of Abdel Kader Ben Zahra

On injustice and the disavowal of autonomy.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 234-255) and index.

ISBN:

9780230500433

0230500439

OCLC:

225089463

Online:

Publisher description