Description
Book SynopsisUltimately, it illuminates public health not only as a showcase of colonial humanism and a tool of control, but as an arena of mediocrity, powerlessness, and stupidity.
Trade ReviewThis is a serious work that deserves serious contemplation; it will be of interest to historians from a variety of fields.
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ChoiceGuillaume Lachenal's engaging body of work has long been on the radar of global scholars of public health and medicine in Africa. It is, then, both a true pleasure for readers and vital addition to Anglophone literature in the field that we now have his monograph,
The Lomidine Files, in Noémi Tousignant's elegant translation from the original French . . . This is an innovative and sophisticated study that rewards sustained engagement. Though it will appeal to a wide audience interested in medical controversy or public health ethics, it is also an excellent addition to undergraduate and graduate syllabi in public health, the histories of science and medicine, world history, African studies, and development studies.
—Mari K. Webel, University of Pittsburgh,
Bulletin of the History of MedicineI urge medical scientists, health activists, public health experts, executives of multinational pharmaceutical companies, public officials of affected countries, and officials of international organizations, bilateral development agencies and philanthropic organizations—not to mention the sociologists, anthropologists, historians and others who study them—to read this book. And read it carefully. It cannot tell us how to avoid the catastrophic outcomes of bêtise, but it should have a humbling effect, as it offers a painful remainder of the costs to others—not of evil, but of simple passivity, stupidity and arrogance.
—Nitsan Chorev,
European Journal of SociologyTable of ContentsIntroduction
1. The Wonder Drug
2. Experiments without Borders
3. The New Deal of Colonial Medicine
4. The Spectacle of Eradication
5. Lomidine, the Individual, and Race
6. Good Citizens and Bad Brothers
7. Yokadouma, Cameroon, November–December 1954
8. “We Cried without Making a Palaver”
9. The Misfires of the Imperial Machine
10. The Swan Song of Eradication
11. How the Drug Became Useless and Dangerous
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
Notes
Index
