UE4.

S5– Approches socio-historiques à la santé

(L3)
Pablo CORRAL-BROTO
MCF

Année 2022-2023
 Syllabus
1 History of epidemics and health issues in Caribbean history (in English) S S S S S S
Doc : Mosquito Empires (John McNeill 2010) 3 3 3 3 4 4
6 7 8 9 0 1
2 Health history of Reunion island (in French) P
Histoire de la santé réunionnaise.
P
2.1 L’expérimentation du risque sanitaire à La Réunion au XVIIIè siècle. P
Doc : L'apocalypse joyeuse. Une histoire du risque technologique (Fressoz, 2012) D
2 et diabète
2.2 Histoire des maladies vectorielles
Doc. Cilaos Pittoresque et thermal (Mac-Auliffe, 1902) C C
C C
2.3 La Réunion à la moitié du XXe siècle: rapport du Dr Oliveira de la OMS pour D D
La Réunion de 1957. Lecture du rapport, analyse des parties et travail en groupe
Doc : Rapport Oliveira (années 1950-1960 ; Archives Nationales)

Extra:
Webinar: Islands Responses to COVID-19
Webinar: The Economic Future of the Caribbean: Life After COVID-19

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How history and humanities could better explain
tropical diseases ?

Tropical
diseases
Tropical Science &
medicine technology
Social &
(Post)colonial
History

3
How history and humanities could explain
tropical diseases (and not only epidemiology)

Tropical
Medicine

Epidemics
Mosquito vector &
pandemics
4
Some mosquitoes (Aeges aegypty), malaria and yellow fever arrived after
1492 (from Columbus travels to the slave trade)

1492 Columbus (Malaria)

Slave trade (Yelow fever)
5
The slave trade brought immune slaves too, and it developped a local
immunity, lethal for European soldiers from metropolises (Haitian
Independence, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, etc.)

1791 1804

6
 The theory of the mosquito as a vector was
established in Cuba in the late XIX th century

Yellow fever
environmental
factor (vector) >
Aedes Aegypti

Carlos Juan Finlay (Camagüey, Cuba, 1833

– La Habana, Cuba, 1915 7
but this vector theory was not applied until
the Cuban war by a military Dr Walter Reed

Military health service of

encampments,
prevention of yellow fever
(Cuba War, USA vs SPAIN)

The Mosquito House

Dr. Walter Reed (Virginia, 8
USA, 1851-Panama, 1902)
Screen protection technology to prevent Yellow Fever &
Malaria (in Florida, the Cuban War and at least to win the
Panama Canal concession)

Screens and net to keep

mosquitoes from moving
freely

Malaria and Yellow Fever

prevention in Florida,
Cuba and Panama Canal

9
William Gorgas (USA, 1854-1920)
The technological innovations applied during the Cuban
War by Reeds and Gorgas, played an important role in
Panama Canal concessions (from French to US)

10
The French won the Panama Canal concession, by
Ferdinand de Lesseps (Versailles, France, 1805-1894)

11
French engineer caused thousands of deaths

“Only drunks and dissipated

men suffered from yellow
fever” (McCullough,
1977:154)

Jules Dingler (Lorient, 1836 – Paris,

12
 The first phase of French construction led to the death
of many workers, especially West Indians*
Some data about Lesseps French
Panama Canal in 1884:

19 000 employees by French

85% black West Indians
10 000 labor force died by diseases

5 000 to 23 000 deaths (Gorgas

calculated 22 189 people; 24% of
workers)

Total employees (French & US): 75 000

women and men

*First French Guyane, Guadaloupe,

Martinique and then British, Holland and
French

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 The sanitation innovations of the Americans allowed
them to win the concession and public opinion

US Finaly - Reeds &

Gorgas theories were
applied :

Screen and encampments

represented technological
and scientific innovations
capable of winning public
opinion and concessions

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Tropical science and diseases were the result of
human and social changes too

To conclude:

 Spread by colonial history and determining American independences

 Europeans lost economic influence
 differential vulnerability changed to social factors

“The richer and better organized societies and states could safeguard their
populations’ health at home, and in many cases even abroad” (McNeill, 2010: 313).

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 Short Bibliography on the topic


McNeill, John R, Mosquito Empires. Ecology and war in the Greater Caribbean 1620-1910, New
York, Cambridge University Press, 2010.


Pometti, Kevin, « Tertian Fevers in Catalonia in the Late Eighteenth Centuries: The Case of
Barcelona (1783–1786) », DOI: 10.5772/64977


World Health Organisation, « Sanitary Engineering », First World Health Assembly, A/Prog/34,
1948.

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What’s next

1930 Sanitations Engineer (OMS, Génie Sanitaire)

1940-1948 Environmental Sanitation (OMS Assainissement,

hygiène du milieu, higiene ambiental) in worldwide Islands

1940-1955 The beginning of Wellfare State + an insular, Latin

American & Indian Ocean World perspective

[Beveridge Repport 1942 (UK-Europe), départamentalisation
(France Outermost Islands), Socialist Revolutions (Cuba, Chile
& Central America)]
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