85 / 105
85
A n a i s d o I HM T
trajectory of this physician, who pursued a professional
career based on the symbiosis of two distinct medical
training centers (military and civil), provides an interest-
ing tool for analysing the complementarity of the two
fields of expertise for the consolidation of Portuguese
tropical medicine overseas. It allows for filling gaps in the
study of the circulation, appropriation and imposition of
the knowledge and practices of European medicine after
WorldWar II in colonial settings, at the intersection of
bio- and tropical medicine and the realm of religious be-
liefs and practices of native populations.
The politics of disease control and their local impact are
addressed in ‘The St. Anthony’ Leprosarium of Harär: a
harbinger of Ethiopian modernity and missionary ideals
(1901-1965)’ by Vanessa Pedrotti (Institut des Mondes
Africains, Université Aix-Marseille), using written and
oral sources. After centuries of (self) isolation from the
rest world, the 20th century unfolded in Ethiopia with
the introduction ofWestern knowledge, ideas and prac-
tices which clashed with local conceptions of health and
illness. In 1901, the first leprosarium was built in Harär
under the name ‘St-Antoine’, a French missionary ini-
tiative consolidated by Dr. Jean Feron, which survived
many vicissitudes while marking the beginning of a new
conception of disease. Leprosy was gradually regarded as
a microbial virus and the struggle against the spread of
this tropical disease would become the main focus of the
Ethiopian Ministry of Health. By raising questions about
how, in the twentieth century, leprosy was perceived,
managed and institutionalized by different actors, this
study aims to provide a new perspective on the process
of Ethiopian state modernization implemented under the
reign of Haile Selassie.The St. Anthony Leprosarium of
Harär – which still survives - became the birth place of
a socio-medical construction of leprosy built around the
contagious conception of the
disease.Assuch it served as
an exemplary harbinger for the emergent modern state
and its hygienic modernist program of lepers’ isolation,
but also shows that the example of St. Antony (a French
missionary settlement) how the balance of power be-
tween religion and science was moving from France to
Harär.
Bárbara Direito (CIUHCT-FCT/UNL) discusses ‘The
relationship between human health and veterinary health
in 20th century colonial Mozambique: a view from the
colonial health system’, by delving into under-researched
aspects of colonial science in empire. Taking the growing
importance of the ‘One Health’ approach as an opportu-
nity to explore a particular historical context, the author
questions the relationship between human and veterinar-
ian health in 20th century colonial Mozambique. In the
context of recent post-doctoral research, this work in
progress focuses on the role of and the relations between
science, health and power by means of a case study of
the policies and practices of veterinarian health in for-
mer Portuguese colonies in Africa in the 20th century. It
mostly draws on published sources in order to uncover
the evolving relationship between human and veterinar-
ian health in the state run colonial health system put in
place in Mozambique.This preliminary effort, later to be
complemented with further archival and field research,
attempts to identify the evolving views of public health,
both human and veterinarian, possible instances of ten-
sions between human and veterinarian health, the role of
practitioners in both fields, the relation between health
and colonial economic projects and, last but not least,
the impact of the colonial human and veterinarian health
systems on both African and settler populations.
The professional career of ‘Francisco José Carrasqueiro
Cambournac and his role in theWHO’s Regional Office
forAfrica (AFRO), 1946-1965’ is the subject of Simplice
Ayangma Bonoho (University of Geneva)’s paper which
engages with the role of biography in historiography. Life
histories which became particularly popular in the 19
th
and 20
th
centuries.The criticisms, dilemmas and episte-
mological choices that marked the social sciences during
that period caused this discursive form to lose popular-
ity to the point of being abandoned. From the individual
story of a singular actor, this paper wishes to contribute
to the debate on the rehabilitation of biography in history
by posing the essential problem of the relations between
the actor of history and the social space. Thus, by trac-
ing the career of Francisco Cambournac – a Portuguese
military, physician and professor in public health at the
Institute of Tropical Medicine in Lisbon – it revisits the
little-known history of the establishment of theWHO’s
Regional Office for Africa (AFRO). Based upon rich and
varied archival documentation, the author moves beyond
the personality of this actor, to look at the functioning of
AFRO and its relations with the colonial territories of
Africa in the run up to the independence of many Afri-
can nations.The move of Cambournac to theWHO and
its African Office, acting both as an expert and as its di-
rector, is portrayed here against the backdrop of politi-
cal, economic, diplomatic and strategic developments in
public health and disease control inAfrica.
3.5.
FromTropical to Global Concerns:
Trajectories of Services and Biomedical
Research.
Mohsin Sidat (Faculty of Medicine, Universidade Ed-
uardo Mondlane, Maputo) discussed the ‘Diagnostics of
tropical micoses in Mozambique: past, present and fu-
ture’, a manifestly under-researched topic, attempting
to fill existing gaps in biomedical knowledge. Mycoses
or fungal infections affect humans and animals globally; as-