Locating Filth: Sin, Syphilis and the Path to Purity

Abstract

This chapter explores how the Basel Mission doctors tried to spread new knowledge of hygiene in their West African mission areas by combining religious notions of purity with scientific approaches to health and colonial concepts of cleanliness. The longstanding Pietist interpretation of disease as a distorted relationship with God still held true for the Basel medical missionaries, who frequently explained physical suffering with reference to a sinful way of life. The diagnosis of syphilis, in particular, unequivocally linked disease to sin, and proved to be an effective advertising tool to promote the necessity and benefit of the medical mission beyond evangelical circles. Although there were clear indications that the prevalent condition was not syphilis, the diagnosis prevailed for twenty-five years until the young Basel Mission doctor Theodor Müller identified the illness in 1910 as yaws, which was not in fact a venereal disease like syphilis.