Contested medicines, contested colonies
United States Policy on Leper Segregation in the Philippines, 1906-1935
This paper will explore and examine the United States policy on leper segregation in the Philipines from 1906 to 1935. This will be undertaken by: a) examining the motives and purposes of the United States for carrying out leper segregation; b) problematizing the nature and content of the policy in terms of the problems in policy implementation and American efforts to address and resolve those problems; c) analyzing the impact of the leper segregation policy to Philippine society in general; and d) evaluating the results of the policy.
This study aims to fill gaps in Philippine historiography. It will rely on data drawn from library works and interviews with the former lepers and their relatives.
Most of the studies about leprosy as well as the policy leper segregation in the Philippines are limited to the medical researches and case studies. None so far has been written on the process and general picture of segregation beginning with the conditions before the American occupation to policy implementation in 1906 until the commencement of Commonwealth Government in 1935.
My study will examine how the United States colonial government managed and supervised the overall leprosy control program in the Philippines and the dynamics of how the Americans persuaded the Filipinos of the need for leper segregation. In addition, I would like to analyze how Filipino responded to the policy and how the responses changed the state of leprosy in the Philippines.
Antonio C. Galang Jr.
University of the Philippines, Diliman
Medical professionals and the use of alternative medicine in hospital spaces in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation period
The Pacific War isolated Southeast Asia from the western allies for the most part when Imperial Japan sought supremacy in the region. The Philippines, despite being a Commonwealth, half-way to independence from the United States, was attacked, and suffered the brunt of Japanese occupation until 1945. It is during the occupation period when the people suffered from numerous diseases, apart from widespread malnutrition that was aggravated by the shortage of western medical supplies.
This paper looks at a peculiar phenomenon of the period – western-trained medical professionals utilising alternative remedies inside hospitals as legalised and supported by the collaboration government. Although herbal remedies use is widespread among Filipinos, it was anathematised throughout the previous American colonial regime, specifically by policies that sought to dogmatise western medicine and hygiene, and eradicate what was then dismissed as sheer superstition and quackery. Yet by 1943, wartime realities forced mainstream physicians, with the support of the government and the print media, to actually popularise, prescribe, and utilise herbal medicines.
Sources for this research include archival records, published memoirs, and oral interviews of surviving physicians and patients whose health and lives were at risk during those times. This research borrows the framework of cultural ecology from medical anthropology to explain the widespread use of readily-available alternative remedies. It is hoped that in the history of medicine in the Philippines, which is in its infancy, this phenomenon will not simply be dismissed as mere anecdotes, but attest to the people’s health-seeking behaviour in all levels.
Arnel E. Joven
Postgraduate student of History, University of the Philippines
Competing Medical Discourses in Times of War: The Sections Administratives Specialisées and the Algerian Red Crescent, Algeria, 1954-1962
The Algerian war for independence was one of the longest and most gruesome colonial wars ever waged and one that would prove notorious for its systematic use of torture and scale of violence. The international diplomatic context in which the struggle for national liberation was ultimately won remains central to any narrative of the conflict. However, this paper focuses on an understudied yet vital element of the conflict, the strategic use of medicine and health care discourse employed by both the French government and military and the Algerian nationalists to win the allegiance of the Algerian population.
On the one hand, in 1955 the French developed the Sections Administratives Specialisées (SAS), a program that was intended to address social, political, and economic deficiencies in Algeria. The SAS sent teams of French officers, physicians, nurses, and teachers to rural areas to implement political rapprochement initiatives and give out material goods. The French aimed to integrate Algerians into the colonial state and began to build infrastructure and provide social services in previously neglected areas of the colony. By concentrating on one particular aspect of the SAS, the medical initiatives, I will explore the more subversive aims of using medicine as both a tool of conquest and development. I argue that the SAS were not only a means of trying to control the Algerians; they were also part of a campaign to retake and resettle the country as prescribed by revolutionary war theory. Yet, the SAS were an inadequate solution to a systemic long-term colonial problem of mismanagement and underdevelopment and ultimately, they did not lead to their intended outcome of quelling the Algerian war effort.
On the other hand, the Algerians countered these French strategies and developed their own health services and, more importantly, the Algerian Red Crescent (CRA). These organizations enabled the Algerians to not only establish a legitimate platform from which to claim their position as national leaders who were committed to the welfare of their people but it also provided them with an opportunity to reach out and connect with a larger network of international organizations. The CRA worked in conjunction with the National Liberation Front (FLN) and the National Liberation Army (ALN) to redefine the debate about the war and the French’s “savage” portrayal of the Algerians. Through their medical work with refugees, displaced Algerians living in regroupement camps, and increased visibility and cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross and its national societies around the world, the Algerians tried to reinvent themselves as humanitarians.
Jennifer Johnson Onyedum
Assistant Professor of History
Lehman College-CUNY