Th is is a description of the maternity hospital of Chợ Lớn, the biggest and most well-equipped facility for indigenous women in Cochinchina, by Dr. Henrittet Bui, one of its two principal obstetric doctors. The scene was an eerie reminder of the maternités (maternity clinics or hospitals) in France, which, before the second half of the nineteenth century, primarily functioned as the shelter of last resort for indigent, abandoned pregnant women, a place shunned by the wealthy owing to poor hygienic conditions and monstrously high mortality rates. Dr. Bui's description provided a different image of a modern hospital, an institution that was oft en promoted by the French authorities in Vietnam as a place where the rules of hygiene, cleanness, and comfort were supposed to replace the old mode of childbirth in local communities.

The birth of modern hospitals in the Western world inspired an immense body of literature that explored and questioned its origins and impact. Scholarship on modern hospitals in the colonial context, however, was meager by comparison. Most of the studies so far underscored the role of hospitals as agent of modernity where the medical authorities worked to combat epidemic diseases and mortality. The status of colonial hospitals was therefore evaluated on a statistical and medical account of its functions rather than a close-up investigation of its culture, organization, power structure, and architectural design. Many of the basic questions on colonial hospitals are still open for interpretation: How were colonial hospitals similar to and different from their counterparts in France? What was the role of local culture and the colonial context in shaping the internal dynamics and the outcome of their services?