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Abstract
This article focuses on two medical figures of significance, each of whom came to embody a different aspect of the colonial development ideal in the post-colonial period. Dr Eugène Jamot and Dr Albert Schweitzer became associated with competing forms of development or humanitarian work through the work of their hagiographers and commentators. While this article shows how their reputation resisted the end of their original colonial setting and how it was reinvented in the light of theological and medical interpretations of their lives, it also argues that this memorialisation became closely associated with fragmented groups and to private celebrations of their lives. Ultimately this amounts to a privatisation of heroic reputations.
Acknowledgements
In memoriam John Victor Pickstone (1944–2014), colleague and friend.
Katherine Davis acted as research assistant for part of this article and has co-authored a first draft of sections of this article. Many thanks to the co-editors of this special issue for their generous input into this article.
Notes
1 Marks, ‘What is Colonial?’.
2 See, for instance, Turin, Affrontements culturels; Arnold, Colonizing the Body; and Vaughan, Curing their Ills.
3 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks; Keller, Colonial Madness; and Jennings, Curing the Colonizers.
4 Un-medicalised in Western terms of course. Dedet, Les Instituts Pasteurs; Merle, Chirurgien dans la Coloniale; and Maurot, Un Pasteurien.
5 Conklin, In the Museum of Man.
6 See, for instance, Deville, Peste et choléra, which won the Femina literary prize in 2012.
7 Wang, ‘Eugène Jamot’; and Lachenal, ‘Le Médecin qui voulut être roi’.
8 McKelvey, Man against the Tsetse; and Bado, Médecine Coloniale.
9 Worboys, ‘Colonial Medicine’.
10 Hardiman, Healing Bodies; Hardiman, Missionaries and their Medicine; and Vaughan, Curing their Ills.
11 Daughton and White, In God's Empire .
12 Arnold, Imperial Medicine.
13 Anderson, ‘Where is the Postcolonial History of Medicine?’; Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, vols 1 and 2.
14 Aujoulat, ‘Albert Schweitzer’; also Worboys, ‘The Colonial World’.
15 Among many other aspects of this, it is worth noting the French-centric worldview that made Jamot the victor of sleeping sickness even though his methods were often matched across the borders: Tilley, ‘Ecologies of Complexity’; Lyons, ‘Sleeping Sickness’; Haynes, ‘Framing Tropical Disease’; Hoppe, Lords of the Fly; and Redfield, ‘Sleeping Sickness'.
16 Schweitzer, Zwischen Wasser und Urwald; Schweitzer, ‘L'Assistance médicale aux colonies’; Schweitzer, Afrikanische Jagdgeschichten; Schweitzer, Afrikanische Geschichten; and Schweitzer, Das Spital im Urwald.
17 Cicovacki, Albert Schweitzer's Ethical Vision, 6.
18 De Pastre, ‘Cinéma éducateur’, 135; Bloom, French Colonial Documentary, 112–17, 131–32; and De Pastre, ‘Où Documentaire et propagande’.
19 Lapeyssonnie, Moi, Jamot; Gomart-Jacquet, ‘[Le] Docteur Eugène Jamot’; Bebey-Eyidi, Le Vainqueur de la Maladie du Sommeil; Froment, ‘Le Docteur Jamot’; Milleliri, ‘Jamot, cet inconnu’; Dozon, ‘Quand les Pastoriens’; and Dozon, ‘Pasteurisme’.
20 Albert Schweitzer to Helene Bresslau, 6 June 1906, in Schweitzer Miller and Woytt, Albert Schweitzer-Helene Bresslau Letters, 109. ‘I want to have the strength and the health to live my thoughts, so they become life.’
21 Yeandle, ‘“Heroes into Zeroes’”; Jones, ‘“The Truth about Captain Scott’”.
22 Time Magazine, 11 July 1949, 21 June 1963.
23 Pelletier, ‘Mission et développement’; Chanet et al., ‘Laïcité, séparation, sécularisation’.
24 Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer, 499.
25 Eckart, ‘Colony as Laboratory’; and Fevre et al., ‘Reanalyzing the 1900–1920 Sleeping Sickness Epidemic’.
26 Bado, Eugène Jamot.
27 Vertical integration is defined by medical dictionaries as: ‘A system that provides primary care, specialty care, or hospitalization, as necessary, through interdisciplinary and specialty collaboration’, Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions and Nursing © Farlex 2012. In Jamot's case it meant bringing to the field laboratory techniques enabling the systematic tracking of even asymptomatic patients, their repeated treatment and their hospitalisation when needed.
28 Echenberg and Filipovich. ‘African Military Labour’, 533.
29 See, for instance, Louis-Paul Aujoulat's privately critical report on Schweitzer's medical establishment, Ad Lucem, Q/17/0171 and Q17, ‘Rapport de Louis-Paul Aujoulat à Mgr André Boucher directeur de la propagation de la foi’, 1935, Centre de Documentation et Archives des Œuvres Pontificales Missionnaires de Lyon.
30 McKnight, Verdict on Schweitzer.
31 O'Brien, ‘The Schweitzer Legend’.
32 Davenport, ‘Moral Paternalism’, 117.
33 Ibid., 125–26.
34 Ibid., 122–23.
35 Ibid., 123.
36 Senghor, ‘L'Avenir de la France’. Senghor then preached in favour of a federated regime for the Union Française, 423.
37 David, ‘Le Docteur Schweitzer’; and Audoynaud, Chronique d'un médecin.
38 Audoynaud, Le Docteur Schweitzer.
39 Ibid., 8–10.
40 Ibid., 189.
41 Ibid., 35, 244.
42 Ibid., 85, 189.
43 Echenberg. Black Death, White Medicine; on DDT against sleeping sickness, see Symes, Colonial Insecticide Research.
44 Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer, 280.
45 Ibid., 280.
46 Gouteux and Artzrouni. ‘Persistance et résurgence’.
47 Nkanga et al., ‘Neuropathies arsenicales’.
48 Bado, Eugène Jamot, 308.
49 Tantchou Yakam, ‘Eugène Jamot’, 177.
50 Thévenin, ‘Louis-Paul Aujoulat’; and Lachenal and Taithe ‘Une Généalogie missionnaire’.
51 Denis, ‘Entre mission et développement’.
52 Lachenal, ‘Le Médecin qui voulut être roi’.
53 Lapeyssonnie, La Médecine coloniale.
54 Audoynaud, Éloge de la médecine coloniale, 1.
55 Bado, Eugène Jamot, 403–08.
56 Picht, Life and Thought of Albert Schweitzer.
57 Picht, cited in Lessly, ‘Life and Thought of Albert Schweitzer’.
58 Ibid., 258.
59 de la Guérivière, Les Fous d'Afrique.
60 Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought, 156.
61 Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer, 268.
62 Schweitzer, Philosophy of Civilization, 310–15.
63 Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought, 227–28.
64 Many scholars have asserted the philosophical foundation of the reverence for life ethic alongside their observations about the agnosticism or even atheism of Schweitzer. For example, Langfeldt, Albert Schweitzer, who concluded that Schweitzer was not Christian.
65 See Barsam, Reverence for Life, for an approach that integrates Schweitzer's theology and philosophy. Also see Clark, The Philosophy of Albert Schweitzer.
66 Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer, 87.
67 Cicovacki, Albert Schweitzer's Ethical Vision, 8.
68 Zorn, ‘Laurent Gagnebin: Albert Schweitzer’.
69 Gagnebin, Albert Schweitzer.
70 Arnold, Prier 15 jours.
71 Gagnebin, ‘La Grâce selon Schweitzer’; Aubert, Albert Schweitzer.
72 Martin. Albert Schweitzer's Reverence for Life.
73 Cicovacki, Albert Schweitzer's Ethical Vision, 8. Also see Restoration.
74 Jacques Poulain, preface in Elloué-Engoune, Albert Schweitzer.
75 Ibid.,12.
76 Ibid.
77 Ibid., 14.
78 White, Children of the French Empire.
79 Toulat, Français d'aujourd'hui, 194; correspondance de Mgr Thévenoud, Archives des Missionnaires d'Afrique (AGMA).
80 Eugène Jamot, Exposition, Saint Sulpice Les Champs, Espace Jamot, 8.
81 Moulin, ‘Conférence du centenaire’, 228; and Likin, ‘Médecins sans Frontières’, 25–29. Xavier Emmanuelli served the Alain Juppé governments as secretary of state for humanitarian action between 1995 and 1997.
82 Brunet, Gaston Monnerville.
83 The Institut de Médecine Tropicale du Service de Santé des Armées was set in Marseille between 1905 and 2013. Jamot trained there in 1910.
85 ‘Un temps de science a précédé les hommages au Dr Eugène Jamot’, La Montagne (Édition de la creuse, Aubusson), 5 May 2014.
86 Emane, Schweitzer, 44.
87 Marshall and Poling, Schweitzer.
88 Ibid., xxi.
89 Ibid.
90 Ice, Sketches for a Portrait, 1; also see Ice, Schweitzer.
91 Ibid., 3.
92 Munz and Munz, Albert Schweitzer's Lambaréné. For the preservation of his legacy and memory, see also the updated photographic collection, which also pays homage to those who participated in Schweitzer's work: Poteau, Mougin and Wyss, Albert Schweitzer.
93 Meant here in a literal, theological sense.
94 Emane, Schweitzer, 40.
95 White, Speaking with Vampires, 2000.
96 Emane, Schweitzer, 33.
97 Ibid., 50.
98 Rud, Albert Schweitzer's Legacy.
99 Meyer and Bergel, Reverence for Life, xvi.
100 Kaempf, L’Éthique d'Albert Schweitzer.
101 Cicovacki, Albert Schweitzer's Ethical Vision.
102 Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer, 502.
103 1962 TV remake of Il est minuit, Docteur Schweitzer with Jean-Pierre Marielle as Schweitzer. The 2006 TV biographical film Albert Schweitzer: Called to Africa with Jeff McCarthy as Schweitzer. The 2009 biographical film Albert Schweitzer—Ein Leben für Afrika with Jeroen Krabbé as Schweitze
104 http://www.schweitzer.org/fr/gunsbach/archive. Accessed 17 February 2014.
105 Gire, Answering the Call.
106 Ibid.
107 A recent workshop (April 2014) thus framed Jamot as the son of Creuse and combines a scientific conference with a celebration of his life as a regional luminary. http://www.esa.sante.defense.gouv.fr/actualites/hommage-au-dr-jamot.
108 Sutphen and Bridie, Medicine and Colonial Identity.