In colonial North Africa a mutilating disease resembling syphilis was a focal point for French medical debate about the world history of syphilis, the physiological effects of climate and race, and the science of microbiology. From 1916 to 1919, the French venereologist Georges Lacapère established a pilot scheme in Fez, Morocco, for diagnosis and treatment of "native" syphilis. In 1923 he published his research findings and coined the disease concept "Arab syphilis" to describe a form of syphilis found in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, which he characterized in behavioral terms. Lacapère's work was not simply derivative of earlier discourses, nor was it a straightforward outcome of his clinical experience in Morocco. The careers of Lacapère and Arab syphilis problematize the analytical use of race to understand colonial biomedicine in the Maghreb.
Abstract:This article expands our understanding of state-society interactions in rural Algeria under French colonial rule, focusing specifically on villagers in the eastern department of Constantine. I analyze previously untapped administrative records, newspapers, petitions, and complaints to show how sanitary regulations and medical expertise came to shape relationships among villagers, local elites, and the colonial state from the early twentieth century. Villagers responded to state-led medicalization by seeking the protection of medical doctors, not only from disease but also from the state itself. In particular, they hoped to avoid heavy-handed treatment by qaids and local elites who applied emergency disease control measures without appropriate medical knowledge. Furthermore, close examination of petition literature suggests that hardships experienced by rural communities during the First World War accentuated nascent feelings of entitlement towards state medical treatment that crossed demographic, ethnic, and religious communal boundaries. The "great disease" was only the most recent misfortune to afflict the villagers in Runda.Four months previously, small-scale acts of resistance to compulsory conscription in neighboring communes mixtes and in Belezma itself had developed into widespread insurrection. 4 French troops descended on the Aurès region-a contingent of 6,142 soldiers and 106 officers in November 1916, increasing to 13,892 soldiers and 217 officers in January 1917-and engaged in a range of repressive tactics to quell resistance and enforce conscription. 5 Soldiers seized livestock and grain, destroyed silos, took hostages from the families of men refusing conscription, and burned villages; the air force bombarded the presumed mountain hideouts of deserters and resisters. 6 Predictably, epidemic disease followed in the wake of misery. In the month prior to the outbreak of disease in Runda, ninety-three of the hostages taken in the communes mixtes of Aïn Touta (ʿAin al-Tuta), Batna, Belezma, and Corneille died from typhus. 7The "great disease" in Runda may itself have been typhus, the symptoms of which were known to include fever, a rash, and altered mental states. 8 By appealing to local authority figures for a doctor to treat a terrifying affliction, villagers and elders sought the protection of the state. They did so even as French soldiers were depriving households of their men, beasts, and grain, and civil agents of the state were rounding up and isolating vulnerable members of their community.How was it that villagers in the remote mountain hamlet of Runda came to seek the aid of a French doctor? Why did they view the provision of a doctor as the authorities' responsibility?In contrast to scholarship on medicine and the state in sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, the majority of work the history of medicine in Algeria has had little to say about how ordinary people responded to state medicine. 9 The reasons for this are partly methodological, and partly due to the perception that state medici...
Focusing on colonial Algeria ca. 1890 to 1940, this article explores what Muslim intellectuals and ordinary people learned about microbes and how they responded to bacteriological medicine. Many Algerians feared invisible spirits ( jinn) and sought the healing powers of saints and exorcists. Was it then permitted for Muslims to use French treatments and follow Pasteurian rules of hygiene? Specialists in Islamic law, other intellectuals, and unlettered villagers showed a persistent concern with these and other questions in the wake of colonial conquest and violence in Algeria, as novel techniques, therapeutics, and forms of epistemic authority were introduced, and new visions of religious orthodoxy and national revival were formulated. Examining writings across a range of genres and formats-including a treatise of independent juristic reasoning (ijtihad), questions and answers prepared by a mufti, popular petitions, newspaper articles, advertisements, poetry, and a cartoon-this article argues that Islamic tradition and law were integral to the emerging science and culture of microbes in early twentieth-century Algeria. While Islamic reformists sought to displace jinn theories of illness, other Algerian intellectuals and colonial officials found it convenient to explain germs in terms of jinn. Both French and Muslim elite men sought to combine religious law with hygienic advice to advance competing hegemonic projects targeted at the Muslim family, thereby attempting to displace women's jinn-based practices.
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