Medical Missionaries and Colonial Knowledge in West Africa and Europe, 1885-1914 : Purity, Health and Cleanliness / by Linda Maria Ratschiller Nasim.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ratschiller Nasim, Linda Maria.

Series:

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, 2635-1641

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Imperialism.

Africa--History.

Africa.

Medicine--History.

Medicine.

Religion--History.

Religion.

Europe, Central--History.

Europe, Central.

Imperialism and Colonialism.

African History.

History of Medicine.

History of Religion.

History of Germany and Central Europe.

Local Subjects:

Imperialism and Colonialism.

African History.

History of Medicine.

History of Religion.

History of Germany and Central Europe.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (0 pages)

Edition:

1st ed. 2023.

Place of Publication:

Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.

Summary:

This open access book offers an entangled history of hygiene by showing how knowledge of purity, health and cleanliness was shaped by evangelical medical missionaries and their encounters with people in West Africa. By tracing the interactions and negotiations of six Basel Mission doctors, who practised on the Gold Coast and in Cameroon from 1885 to 1914, the author demonstrates how notions of religious purity, scientific health and colonial cleanliness came together in the making of hygiene during the age of High Imperialism. The heyday of evangelical medical missions abroad coincided with the emergence of tropical medicine as a scientific discipline during what became known as the Scramble for Africa. This book reveals that these projects were intertwined and that hygiene played an important role in all three of them. While most historians have examined modern hygiene as a European, bourgeois and scientific phenomenon, the author highlights both the colonial and the religious fabricof hygiene, which continues to shape our understanding of purity, health and cleanliness to this day.

Contents:

1. Introduction

Part I. Spaces of Knowledge and Meanings of Hygiene in the Nineteenth Century

2. The Religious Spaces of Knowledge: The Basel Mission, Worldwide Webs and Pietist Purity

3. The Scientific Space of Knowledge: Medical Missionaries, Tropical Medicine and the Age of Hygiene

4. The Colonial Space of Knowledge: The Medical Mission in West Africa, Imperial Entanglements and Colonial Cleanliness

Part II. Negotiating Hygiene 'on the Margins' 1885–1914

5. Locating Filth: Sin, Syphilis and the Question of Segregation

6. Creating Pure Spaces: Edifices, Domesticity and the Temperance Movement

7. Subverting Purity: Magic, Medical Pluralism and Tenacious Syncretism

Part III. Reverberations of Hygiene 1885–1914

8. Purifying Science: Missionary Challenges, Scientific Controversies and the Locality of Science

9. Soothing Weak Nerves: Tropical Anxieties, Missionary Guidance and Moral Hygiene

10. Materialising Hygiene: Materia Medica, Commodities and Sanitary Practices

Part IV. Conclusion

11. Conclusion.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Ratschiller Nasim, Linda Maria Medical Missionaries and Colonial Knowledge in West Africa and Europe, 1885-1914

ISBN:

9783031271281

3031271289

OCLC:

1409697080