The role of the Colonial Medical Service - the organisation responsible for healthcare in British overseas territories - goes to the heart of the British Colonial project. Practising Colonial Medicine is a unique study based on original sources and research into the work of doctors who served in East Africa. It shows the formulation of a distinct colonial identity based on factors of race, class, background, training and Colonial Service traditions, buttressed by professional skills and practice. Recruitment to the Medical Service bound its members to the Colonial Service ethos exemplified by the principles of the legendary Sir Ralph Furse, head of Colonial Office recruitment to the Service. Thus the Service was to be a corps d'élite consisting of Furse's 'good men' - self-reliant, practical, conscientious, professionally qualified people whose personalities were 'such as to command the respect and trust of the native inhabitants of the colony'. Professsional qualifications were important but 'secondary to character'. Anna Crozier analyses all aspects of recruitment, qualifications, training as well as the vital personal factors that shaped the Service's character - religion, a sense of adventure, professional interest, ideas of imperial service, family traditions, professional ties, perceptions of service to humanity and the building up of a common service mentality among colonial medical staff. This is the first comprehensive history of the Colonial Medical Service and makes an important contribution to our understanding of the social and cultural aspects of medical history.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. The Colonial Medical Service was the personnel section of the Colonial Service, employing the doctors who tended to the health of both the colonial staff and the local populations of the British Empire. Although the Service represented the pinnacle of an elite government agency, its reach in practice stretched far beyond the state, with the members of the African service collaborating, formally and informally, with a range of other non-governmental groups. This collection of essays on the Colonial Medical Service of Africa illustrates the diversity and active collaborations to be found in the untidy reality of government medical provision. The authors present important case studies covering former British colonial dependencies in Africa, including Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zanzibar. They reveal many new insights into the enactments of colonial policy and the ways in which colonial doctors negotiated the day-to-day reality during the height of imperial rule in Africa. The book provides essential reading for scholars and students of colonial history, medical history and colonial administration.

Launched by healthcare providers in January 2018, the #aHand2Hold campaign confronted the Quebec government's practice of separating children from their families during medical evacuation airlifts, which disproportionately affected remote and northern Indigenous communities. Pediatric emergency physician Samir Shaheen-Hussain's captivating narrative of this successful campaign, which garnered unprecedented public attention and media coverage, seeks to answer lingering questions about why such a cruel practice remained in place for so long. In doing so it serves as an indispensable case study of contemporary medical colonialism in Quebec. Fighting for a Hand to Hold exposes the medical establishment's role in the displacement, colonization, and genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Through meticulously gathered government documentation, historical scholarship, media reports, public inquiries, and personal testimonies, Shaheen-Hussain connects the draconian medevac practice with often-disregarded crimes and medical violence inflicted specifically on Indigenous children. This devastating history and ongoing medical colonialism prevent Indigenous communities from attaining internationally recognized measures of health and social well-being because of the pervasive, systemic anti-Indigenous racism that persists in the Canadian public health care system - and in settler society at large. Shaheen-Hussain's unique perspective combines his experience as a frontline pediatrician with his long-standing involvement in anti-authoritarian social justice movements. Sparked by the indifference and callousness of those in power, this book draws on the innovative work of Indigenous scholars and activists to conclude that a broader decolonization struggle calling for reparations, land reclamation, and self-determination for Indigenous peoples is critical to achieve reconciliation in Canada.

George Ndege provides an examination of the conflicts and compromises between Western biomedicine and African traditional therapies in colonial Kenya.

This ground-breaking book offers unique insights into the careers of Indian doctors in colonial Kenya during the height of British colonialism, between 1895 and 1940. The story of these important Indian professionals presents a rare social history of an important political minority.

Traces the history of the British General Medical Council to reveal the persistence of hierarchies of gender, national identity, and race in determining who was fit to practice British medicine.

"This is the first full-length study of doctor migration from Ireland covering roughly a century of the export of Irish medical graduates to other parts of the world. From 1860 around forty percent of Ireland's medical graduates left to pursue careers elsewhere. The book examines the factors which drove emigration, the shifting destinations of the emigrants and the effect of migration both upon them and the Ireland they left behind. This was the migration of a part of the Irish middle class, small in terms of Irish emigration as a whole, but important in the global history of medical migration. At the end of the twentieth century doctor migration as a whole has increased and become a significant part of the medical experience. The book is a contribution to the growing literature on the global history of doctor movements across the world"--

Colonial Trauma is a path-breaking account of the psychosocial effects of colonial domination. Following the work of Frantz Fanon, Lazali draws on historical materials as well as her own clinical experience as a psychoanalyst to shed new light on the ways in which the history of colonization leaves its traces on contemporary postcolonial selves. Lazali found that many of her patients experienced difficulties that can only be explained as the effects of “colonial trauma” dating from the French colonization of Algeria and the postcolonial period. Many French feel weighed down by a colonial history that they are aware of but which they have not experienced directly. Many Algerians are traumatized by the way that the French colonial state imposed new names on people and the land, thereby severing the links with community, history, and genealogy and contributing to feelings of loss, abandonment, and injustice. Only by reconstructing this history and uncovering its consequences can we understand the impact of colonization and give individuals the tools to come to terms with their past. By demonstrating the power of psychoanalysis to illuminate the subjective dimension of colonial domination, this book will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the long-term consequences of colonization and its aftermath.

Interrelated histories of colonial medicine, market and family reveal how Western homeopathy was translated and made vernacular in colonial India.