Officiers de santé et soignantes créoles face à la fièvre jaune: Co-construction de savoirs médicaux dans le cadre de l’expédition de Saint-Domingue (1802-1803)
Pierre Nobi
Histoire, médecine et santé, 10, hiver 2016, p. 45-61
This essay concerns the health service of the French expedition to Saint-Domingue (1802-1803), and its struggle with a yellow fever epidemic. It aims to reveal the multiplicity of medical actors and practices both in the core and the margins of the health service. Too few in numbers and bewildered by tropical pathologies, military health officers enlisted the colony’s practitioners and relied on their experience. They also worked side by side with creole medical practitioners when they visited patients in their homes. By uncovering this medical pluralism, this study retraces the circulations of knowledge and practices between these varied actors. Reflecting on the appropriation process of creole treatments by the health officers allows to shed light on the co-construction of knowledge in the colonial context, and to question the scientific discourses on the relation between local and universal knowledge.