Practicing Biomedicine at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital 1913-1965

Tizian Zumthurm has defended his Ph.D in February 2018 at the Institute for the History of Medicine at the University of Bern. He is a historian of medicine and Africa, interested in the everyday tensions and connections between theories and practices, between ideas and improvisations.

“Its clear grasp of contemporary debates around agency and biopolitics, the emergence of global health, and the relation of the local and the global, will make it likely for the book or individual chapters to be productively incorporated into medical history courses.” ---- Danelle van Zyl-Hermann, in: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte (2022) 72 (2): pp.320-321

• AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsIntroduction1 Utilizing a Colonial Archive in Gunsbach, Alsace2 Theorizing Hospitals in Africa and the Practice of Biomedicine3 The Context: Trade, Politics, and Health in Colonial Lambaréné4 Albert Schweitzer and His Hospital in Lambaréné: a Short Historiography1 Between Pragmatism and Order: Medical Organization and Daily Routine1 The Hospital Prior to 1927: Establishment and Adaptation2 Patient Numbers: Reflecting Global and Local Events in Orderly Records3 Patients and Their Stay: Strict Conditions, Varied Degrees of Enforcement4 Patient Motivation: Conceptions of Health and Other Treatments5 Staff from Europe: Clear Guidelines and Flexible Duties6 African Staff: Versatile Training and Reliable Service7 Staff in Comparison8 Infrastructure: Necessity and Maintenance9 Conclusion2 In and Out of Control: Technologies and Patients in Surgery1 Surgery, Technology, and Control2 Surgery at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital: Context and Development3 Controlling the Surgical Arena: Actors and Organization4 Technologies of Control: the Example of Lamps5 Controlling Bacteria: Asepsis and Manual Labor6 Controlling Patients via Technology: The Example of Anesthesia7 Beyond the Operating Theater: Limits and Implications of Control8 Conclusion3 Dimensions of Ignorance: Discourses and Practices of Obstetrics1 Depopulation, Domesticity, Ignorance: Framing Maternity Care in Colonial Africa2 Maternity Services in Colonial Gabon and at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital3 Ignoring Training: Recruitment Priorities4 Giving Birth at and Outside the Hospital5 Ignoring Context: Maternity Care as a Medical Service6 Key Areas of Ignorance: Medication and Feeding7 Conclusion4 Trial and Error: Drugs and the Treatment of Infectious Diseases1 Experiments in a Laboratory? The Treatment of Leprosy in Colonial Africa2 Leprosy in Lambaréné3 Dysentery in Africa and Lambaréné4 Trials and Errors: the Use of Pharmaceuticals at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital5 Conclusion5 Healing and ‘Civilizing’: Community and Safety in Psychiatric Care1 Psychiatric Services and Ideology in Colonial Africa and at the Hospital2 The Mentally Ill in Colonial Gabon and at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital3 Treating the Mentally Ill at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital: Drugs and Community4 Accommodating the Mentally Ill at the Hospital: Perspectives on Safety5 Conclusion6 Conclusions1 Connecting Concepts: the Incoherence of Biomedical Practices2 The Practice of Global Biomedicine: Schweitzer and the Value of the Local3 Taxonomies of Global Health and the Albert Schweitzer HospitalBibliographyArchival SourcesInterviewsPublished ReferencesIndex