Monnais, Laurence
(2006)
Preventive Medicine And "Mission
Civilisatrice"
Uses Of The Bcg Vaccine In French Colonial Vietnam
Between The Two World Wars.
International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies (IJAPS), 2 (1).
pp. 1-27.
ISSN ISSN: 1823-6243
Abstract
This paper is part of a broader analysis of French health policy in colonial
Vietnam1 (1860–1945), and in particular of the campaigns organized in the
region by the French administration against the most important epidemic
and endemic diseases, during a key period in the history not only of the
emergence of biomedicine and its principal preventive strategies, but also of
state intervention into public health issues in Europe and in the West in
general.
The fight against tuberculosis, one of the most deadly local endemic
diseases, is a very revealing example of the contents, complexity and
ambiguity of French health policy in Vietnam. Probing the decision to use
the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine in the 1920s will be particularly
helpful for better understanding the function of public health in the
colonizing process and in the relationship between colonizer and colonized.
The use of BCG in Vietnam, which was both early and extensive in
comparison with its use in France as we will see, seems likely to provide us
with important new ways of understanding the role of the colonial empire in
driving scientific experimentation and "progress", in particular by revealing
the colonial administration's autonomy from metropolitan imperialist
directives which, when not absent, were often not responding to local needs
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