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Disease and the African Colonial Subject

© Jessica Powers

Disease was one of the most serious impediments to British imperialism. Because of disease, the British military had to evacuate countries, create different living arrangements, and experiment with new methods of sanitation and hygiene. In order to keep colonial soldiers alive in foreign countries, British military doctors kept meticulous records and introduced new theories of disease and prevention. Though we condemn imperialism for its role in oppression, medicine made many advances because of it.

Despite the advances they made in medical theory during the imperial period (18th century), the British viewed Africans and the poor and sick in the same light: they were all deficient in character, requiring religious instruction in Christianity and formal English education to cure and eliminate disease and inferiority. Because British soldiers were dropping like flies in various parts of the Empire, the military began its experiments with hygiene. For example, they improved the water supply even though it had not been proven that dirty water caused cholera (Philip Curtin, 159-161). There was a sharp drop in deaths, to such an extent that accidents, rather than disease, became the number one killer of soldiers.

Even so, this did not change British attitudes toward the poor and the sick in their midst. It was easier to believe that moral or intellectual superiority brought health and wealth than to accept the notion that disease, like God, is no respecter of persons.

In 1842, a group of doctors in Scotland set out to discover the cause of sickness, in particular yellow fever. Their study was remarkable because it refused to believe that the poor were poor and sick because of some defect in their character. The doctors stated clearly that sickness was caused by a lack in fresh air, nutrition, exercise, and moderate temperature, along with violence and poison ("Sanitary Inquiry," 13-14).

Dr. Arnott, the writer of the report, paraphrased four prevailing views about how to cure disease among the poor: through religious instruction, through a good poor law, through anti-liquor laws, and through national education.

Arnott observed that these cures had failed to cure disease in the past. Instead, he suggested, clean air was the most important factor in preventing disease ("Sanitary Inquiry," 18-20). Instituting policies that would change ventilation in all houses (especially those belonging to the poor, because slum tenements seriously lacked good ventilation) would stop or stem epidemics. Dr. Arnott directly contradicted the common belief that disease originated among the poor, not because of lack of sanitation or nutrition, but because they lacked moral character ("Sanitary Inquiry," 42).

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