Epidémies et société

Résumé 0

Yellow fever appeared in Senegal during the Atlantic slave trade. The epidemic episodes of this pathology were both a revealer of social processes and a driving force for the transformation of colonial society. From the point of view of the history of science and medical ideas, yellow fever sheds light on the social body in its various interactions and makes more visible the essential joints of the group, the lines of force and tensions that run through it. From group survival strategies to commercial and political wars, the morbid event is a privileged place from which one can better observe colonial society in its administrative mechanisms and relationships between powers. The present study focuses on a long-term analysis of the medical discourse and practices around yellow fever with regard to, among other things, the domestication of Western biomedical science outside its zone of elaboration, as well as the implementation of a particular form of medical practice as an expression of domination. The epidemics of 1878-1881, 1900 and 1927 were important moments for the evolution of ideas about disease, while at the same time they induced ruptures and transformations in social groups and geographical space (architecture). They show how scientific views and theories condition and determine health policies in the colonies.