Curing Leprosy with DDS
Metamorphosis of Colonial Medicine into Global Health
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5414907 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yiling Hung (0000-0001-7059-3778, National Tsing Hua University, Guangfu Road, Hsinchu, Taiwan, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 28-52 |
| Publication date | 2024-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/01622439221090684 |
| OpenAlex | W4281773867 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 26 |
This article addresses the question of how the belief that leprosy is curable became an accepted scientific statement during the processes of colonization and postwar nation-building. Following the use of chaulmoogra oil to the introduction of diaminodiphenyl sulfone (DDS) as a cure for leprosy, the article shows how medical workers in Hong Kong and Taiwan, two contact zones in the global leprosy network, helped transform leprosy medicine into a set of practices centered on the mass administration of DDS. Focusing on the idea of a cure and looking for all the transformations this idea went through afterward, this article argues that it was chaulmoogra oil that created the research and management infrastructure for DDS. DDS did work, but it worked because chaulmoogra oil had already produced the conditions for a cure. This article contributes to recent calls to "provincialize STS" and to investigate postcolonial technoscience by examining the situated production of the global leprosy infrastructure. It shows that by serving as laboratories and extending the network in which the belief of a cure was embedded, the colonies were key to each stage forming the cure for leprosy as an accepted scientific statement
Archaeology · Colonialism · Leprosy · Situated · Computer Science · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Medicine · Leprosy Research and Treatment · Medicine · Dermatology
The Colonial Disease
Beyond East and West. From the History of Colonial Medicine to a Social History of Medicine(s) in South Asia
‘Things Do Look Different from Here, on the Borderlands’
Laying Out a Model Village
The Global Menace
The Zimbabwe Bush Pump
Leprosy and the Colonial Gaze
A Short History of Dapsone, or an Alternative Model of Drug Development
We Have Never Been Modern
Pandora's hope
Provincializing Sts
A Colonial Lexicon
What is Colonial about Colonial Medicine? And What has Happened to Imperialism and Health
The Colonial World as Mission and Mandate
The evangelical uses of leprosy
Science and the British Empire
Global and local contexts
The rise of surveillance medicine
Where Every Prospect Pleases and Only Man Is Vile
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |