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Patriotic hygiene: Tracing new places of knowledge production about malaria in Vietnam, 1919–75

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2013

Abstract

This article examines knowledge production about malaria in colonial and postcolonial Vietnam. During the 1920s and 1930s, medical doctors cooperated with plantation managers in order to develop industrial hygiene techniques consisting of environmental modification and quinine use. By the 1930s, changing motivations, in particular racial hygiene and patriotism, drove malaria control efforts. The wartime pressures to control malaria between the 1940s and 1975 further encouraged patriotic hygiene. This history of malaria science in Vietnam highlights the tension between change and continuity and shows the importance of place in the conjunction of scientific knowledge production and nation-building projects.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2013 

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References

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13 ANOM, Rapport CC, 1915, p. 249.

14 Quoted in Bernard, Noël, ‘Notions générales sur le paludisme et les moyens de le combattre dans les centres agricole et forestiers de la Cochinchine’, Bulletin du Syndicat des planteurs de caoutchouc de l'Indochine 2, 13 (1919), p. 141Google Scholar.

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28 Morin, Entretiens sur le paludisme et sa prevention en Indochine, p. 128.

29 NAVN4 3932 Organisation et fonctionnement de la médecin rurale en Annam, 1938.

30 Research on derivatives of quinine featured prominently in the pharmacology section of Comptes-rendus du dixième congrès de medecine tropicale en extrême-orient (Tonkin: Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine [FEATM], 1938)Google Scholar. For more on FEATM, see David Arnold, ‘Tropical governance: Managing health in monsoon Asia, 1908–1938’, Asia Research Institute (ARI) Working Paper No. 116, National University of Singapore, 2009.

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32 League of Nations (LN), Intergovernmental conference of far-eastern countries on rural hygiene. Preparatory papers: Report of French Indo-China (Geneva: LN, 1937), p. 32. In 1936 the Pasteur Institute printed a volume of articles, a few previously published, on the science of malaria in Indochina.

33 For example, see Morin, Henri and Carton, Paul, ‘Contribution à l'étude de l'influence des facteurs climatiques sur la répartition de l'endémie palustre en Indochine’, Bulletin Economique de l'Indochine 37 (1934): 459–80Google Scholar. Bradley, Mark, Imagining Vietnam and America: The making of postcolonial Vietnam, 1919–1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2000), pp. 51–7Google Scholar.

34 Carton, Paul, ‘Le climat et l'homme (Les facteurs climatiques en écologie humaine)’, in Feuillets d' hygiène indochinoise, ed. Morin, Henri (Hanoi: IDEO), p. 161Google Scholar. In the conclusion, see pp. 172–4. On p. 174, the authors discuss how the same species could be an active transmitter or inoffensive, depending on the ‘microclimate’, as a comparison between a. malcultatus in British Malaya and Indochina showed. On ‘geoclimatic determinism’, see Jennings, Imperial heights, pp. 40–41, 50–51. See also Carton, ‘Le climat et l'homme’, pp. 106–8.

35 Carton quotes from Marchoux, Afrique Occidentale française’, in Brouardel, Paul, Chantemesse, André, and Mosny, Ernest, Traité d' hygiène (Paris: J.B. Baillière et fils, 1907)Google Scholar.

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37 In a letter from 12 avril 1938, the RSA, Labbey, argued that simply translating the work of Dr Moreau on malaria would not be effective. He argued that the village notables needed something with only simple ideas, in plain language, preferably with illustrations.

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41 ‘Bẹnh sót rét’, Khoa Học Phổ Thông, 15 mars 1938, no. 2.

42 Kien Tin Bui, ‘Le médecin en face du problème démographique de l’ Indochine' (Faculté de Médecine de Paris, 1940). Quote from Morin, Entretiens sur le paludisme et sa prevention en Indochine, pp. 33–4.

43 NAVN2 S.0/13 Phúc trình hành năm của Bộ Y tế 1949.

44 IMTSSA 167 Affaires diverses. Documentation sanitaire: rapport 1st Conference, ‘La pathologie speciale à l'Indochine’, 1947, p. 3.

45 For example, see Sở Quân Dân Y Nam Bộ, Bịnh sốt rét [Malaria] (n.p.: Nguyễn Văn Ba, 1954). On page 5, the work done by research institutes as well as on plantations is cited as an important source of knowledge about malaria.

46 IMTSSA 167 Affaires diverses. Correspondance et texte de la conférence sur ‘l'Organisation médico-sociale en Indochine et particulièrement au Vietnam’, 1949, p. 19.

47 Ibid.

48 While the colonial administration had indeed drawn up a number of plans for a rural health system few of these projects were ever carried out. Chuyển, Trịnh Ngọc, Contribution à la mise en pratique du programme de la santé rurale (Saigon: Université de Saigon, 1960)Google Scholar.

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51 Ibid., p. 34.

52 Ibid., xvi.

53 Sở Quân Dân Y, Bịnh sốt rét, p. 30. The authors discuss both Western and Eastern medical approaches to the disease and argue that only independence, unification, democracy, peace, and socialism would enable the complete elimination of malaria.

54 Đặng et al., Những kỷ niệm sâu sắc.

55 As quoted in Đặng Văn Ngữ et al. , ‘Studies of the epidemiology of malaria in northern Vietnam, vol. 1. Landscape malariological studies in Thai-Nguyen province’, Russian Journal of Geography 30, 3 (1961): 293Google Scholar.

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57 The DRV argued that its techniques were more successful than those of the WHO. Bộ Y Tế, Bệnh sốt rét.

58 Đặng, Những kỷ niệm sâu sắc, p. 48.

59 Ibid., p. 44.

60 Bộ Y Tế, Bệnh sốt rét, p. 39.

61 Đặng, Những kỷ niệm sâu sắc, pp. 50–51.

62 Bộ Y Tế, Bệnh sốt rét, p. 59.

63 Sở Quân Dân Y, Bịnh sốt rét, pp. 27–28.

64 Bộ Y Tế, Bệnh sốt rét, pp. 62–4.

65 Army Health Department, Chiến sĩ Điền vặn động phòng bệnh mùa hè [Soldier Điền's campaign to prevent summer maladies] (Hanoi: Cục Quân Y, 1953), p. 5Google Scholar. Cited in Malarney, Shaun Kingsley, ‘Germ theory, hygiene, and the transcendence of ‘backwardness’ in revolutionary Vietnam (1954–60)’, in Southern medicine for southern people, ed. Monnais et al. , p. 112Google Scholar.

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67 Bộ Y Tế, Bệnh sốt rét, p. 41.

68 Disease Prevention Department–Ministry of Health, Nông thôn đang đổi mới, tập I: nông thôn đồng bằng [The countryside is being renovated, Vol. 1: The delta countryside] (Hanoi: Vụ Phòng Bệnh–Bộ Y Tế, 1957)Google Scholar. Cited in Malarney, ‘Germ theory, hygiene, and the transcendence of “ backwardness”’, p. 114.

69 Malarney, ‘Germ theory, hygiene, and the transcendence of “backwardness”’, p. 111.

70 Zonal Public Health, Việt Bắc Interzone, 1956, Vệ sinh phòng bệnh nông thôn [Rural prophylactic hygiene] (Hanoi: Khu Y Tế Liên Khu Việt Bắc), p. 10Google Scholar. Cited in Malarney, ‘Germ theory, hygiene, and the transcendence of “backwardness”’, p. 115.

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