Medicine, mobility and the empire : Nyasaland networks, 1859-1960

David Livingstone's Zambesi expedition marked the beginning of an ongoing series of medical exchanges between the British and Malawians. This book explores these entangled histories by placing medicine in the frameworks of mobilities and networks that extended across Southern Africa and beyond. It argues that mobility was a crucial aspect of intertwined medical cultures that shared a search for therapy in changing conditions. The Malawi mission stations were the first permanent sites in which Western medicine was made available to Africans. Livingstonia's medical practice began in Cape Maclear in 1875, moved to Bandawe in the early 1880s and expanded to Ngoniland and north Lake Malawi. Lacking effective therapies to deal with the high levels of ill health and morbidity that plagued them, Europeans sometimes sought out cures and protection from indigenous African, Asian and American healers, many of whom were women. The lay practice of 'doctoring' African employees with elements of trickery continued into the later colonial period. Medical middles were among the most mobile individuals in colonial Southern Africa, moving as they did between mission, government and private sector employment, and across local and regional boundaries. The Second World War brought about major changes in the types of antimalarials available in the Nyasaland Protectorate and the wider empire, as quinine became a scarcer resource and new synthetic anti-malarials became more available. Western medicine became recognised as one resource among others in a pluralistic medical culture, but African medicine, for Europeans, became mainly an object of ethnographical and anthropological interest. "David Livingstone's Zambesi expedition marked the beginning of a series of dynamic medical encounters, exchanges and connections between the British and Malawians. This book explores these entangled histories by placing medicine in the frameworks of mobilities and networks that extended across Southern Africa and beyond. It provides a new approach to the study of medicine and empire, expanding the ways in which medicine and colonialism can be investigated. Drawing on a range of archival, published and oral sources, the book argues that mobility was a crucial aspect of intertwined medical cultures that shared a search for medicines and health in changing conditions. Mobile individuals, ideas and materials played key roles in the networks that facilitated medical practice and the production of medical knowledge. British ideas and practices of healthy living and mobility in South-Central Africa were made and contested in networks that connected professionals and laypeople. For some Malawians, the partly overlapping networks of transatlantic Protestant Christianity, colonial medicine and migrant labour offered new connections and access to medicines, knowledge and expertise - although these networks were also contested and limiting. Through networked studies of spiritual medicine, quinine and colonial interests in Malawian medicines, key aspects of mobile medicine are explored further, revealing new connections between the imperial metropole, colonies, missions and emerging pharmaceutical industries. This book will be of value to scholars and students of history and anthropology of colonialism and medicine, as well as a wider readership interested in the plural search for health in the modern world" --Back cover

David Livingstone's Zambesi expedition marked the beginning of an ongoing series of medical exchanges between the British and Malawians. This book explores these entangled histories by placing medicine in the frameworks of mobilities and networks that extended across Southern Africa and beyond. It provides a new approach to the study of medicine and empire. Drawing on a range of written and oral sources, the book argues that mobility was a crucial aspect of intertwined medical cultures that shared a search for therapy in changing conditions. Mobile individuals, ideas and materials played key roles in medical networks that involved both professionals and laypeople. These networks connected colonial medicine with Protestant Christianity and migrant labour.The book will be of value to scholars and students of history and anthropology of colonialism and medicine, as well as a wider readership interested in the plural search for health in Africa and globally.

Front matter Dedication Contents List of maps and figures Acknowledgements Abbreviations Glossary Maps Medicine, mobility and the empire Mobilities, medicine and health in the Malawi region: networks of empire, missions and labour, c.1859–c.1960 Laypeople, professionals and the ‘Livingstone tradition’: assessing European health, spaces and mobilities in South-Central Africa, c.1859–c.1940 Spiritual and secular medicine in Malawian–British Protestant mission networks, c.1859–c.1940 Knowledge, secrecy and contestation: early medical encounters, c.1859–c.1930 African medical middles and migrant doctors, c.1890–c.1960 Quinine, malarial fevers and mobility: a biography of a ‘European fetish’, c.1859–c.1940 Colonising African medicines? Central African medicines and poisons and knowledge-making in the empire, c.1859–c.1940 Epilogue: Mobilities, networks and the making of colonial medical culture Bibliography Index This book makes a new contribution to histories of medicine and health in the colonial era, with particular focus on Malawi, the British Empire and Southern Africa. It argues that mobility of people, ideas and materials was crucial within the dynamic, intertwined and networked medical culture of colonial Malawi.