TRANSLATING HEALTH SCIENCE ACROSS CULTURES

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TRANSLATING HEALTH SCIENCE ACROSS CULTURES

• THE FRENCH IN SENEGAL, 1850-1920

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TRANSLATORS

• Navy physicians and surgeons
• Colonial officials
• Missionaries fathers, sisters (nurses)

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WESTERN THEORIES OF DISEASE CAUSATION

• Localists or Sanitarians
• Noxious miasmas Swamps Cemeteries Wastes
• Remedies Sanitation Hygiene - Drugs
• Contagionists
• Miasmas/poison
• Transmission through clothes and objects
• Remedies cordons sanitaires, quarantines,
  disinfection, drugs, vaccination
• Both localists and contagionists
• Predisposing factors Housing heat diet
  excesses emotion
• GERM THEORY viruses, bacteria, parasites
• Remedies drugs, surgery, vaccination

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AUDIENCE

• French-educated mulattoes and blacks
• Muslim merchant families
• Muslim indigenes (Wolof, Pulaar)
• Indigenes (Bamana, Soninke), non Muslim
• Marabouts
• Healers
• Midwives

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INDIGENOUS THEORIES OF DISEASE CAUSATION

• Illness of God (natural) - imbalance
• Illness contracted by contamination
• Transgression of prohibitions, taboos
• Illness thrown or picked up
• Instrumental magic and fetish objects
• Witchcraft (bewitching)
• Spirits

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Indigenous Therapeutics

• Symptomatic remedies purgatives, emetics
• Severe symptoms divination healing
• Nonsymptomatic cases divination - healing

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AREAS OF INCORPORATION AND CONFLICT

• INCORPORATION 1-2
• symptomatic treatment penicillin injections,
  chloroquine, testosterone, surgeries, setting
  broken bones, wounds, difficult deliveries
• CONFLICT 3-4-5 also smallpox vaccination vs.
  variolation
• TRANSLATION
• Sanitary legislation
• Law enforcement and fines
• Medical profiling (immunity)
• Military language A. Aegypti mosquito the enemy
• Vaccination campaign
• Military personnel
• Education
• Enlightened Propaganda

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Return to Summary of Brown Bag Discussion