Leprosy work and research in Oxford, UK: four decades in the pursuit of new knowledge about an arcane disease

Robertson, J; McDougall, A C

doi:10.1111/j.1365-4632.2005.02641.x

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…By offering a diagnostic service, the Centre facilitated the trial of drug B.663 carried out by Dr. Stanley Browne of the Research Station at Uzuakoli (Cochrane n.d.). In addition, with the Head of the Department of Dermatology at the Slade Hospital, Cochrane discussed building a unit for treating leprosy cases diagnosed in the UK, which enhanced scientific studies for four decades starting in the 1960s (Robertson and McDougall 2005). By the 1960s, there were visible flows of personnel, drugs, and biopsy sections among the research centers in the United States and the UK and various leprosaria in Asia and Africa.…”

Section: Dds and Treatment As The Control Measurementioning

confidence: 99%

Curing Leprosy with DDS: Metamorphosis of Colonial Medicine into Global Health

Hung

2022

Science, Technology, & Human Values

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This article addresses the question of how the belief that leprosy is curable became an accepted scientific statement during the processes of colonization and postwar nation-building. Following the use of chaulmoogra oil to the introduction of diaminodiphenyl sulfone (DDS) as a cure for leprosy, the article shows how medical workers in Hong Kong and Taiwan, two contact zones in the global leprosy network, helped transform leprosy medicine into a practices centered on the mass administration of DDS. Focusing on the idea of a cure and looking for all the transformations this idea went through afterward, this article argues that it was chaulmoogra oil that created the research and management infrastructure for DDS. DDS did work, but it worked because chaulmoogra oil had already produced the conditions for a cure. This article contributes to recent calls to “provincialize STS” and to investigate postcolonial technoscience by examining the situated production of the global leprosy infrastructure. It shows that by serving as laboratories and extending the network in which the belief of a cure was embedded, the colonies were key to each stage forming the cure for leprosy as an accepted scientific statement.

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Section: Dds and Treatment As The Control Measurementioning

confidence: 99%