Stephen Snelders. Leprosy and Colonialism. Suriname under Dutch rule, 1750–1950

In late eighteenth-century Suriname, the Dutch physician Godfried Wilhelm Schilling bought a ‘secret cure’ from a ‘dress mama’, a female black healer using herbal medicine and magic to treat leprosy and other illnesses on the colonial plantations. The cure consisted of administering purgative herbs, applying other herbs to the affected spots on the skin, having leprosy sufferers exercise and covering them in blankets to sweat. While Schilling considered this type of medicine to be erroneous, his curiosity and desire for ‘practical’ knowledge led him to investigate these healing methods, which overlapped to a certain extent with European practices (e.g. the application of purgatives). It is but one example of the ways in which Dutch colonial doctors effectively engaged with what they regarded ‘folk medicine’. Through a critical reading of their writings, Stephen Snelders is able to reconstruct some of the healing practices and beliefs of the Afro-Surinamese population, to which the majority of leprosy sufferers in Suriname belonged.

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