Abstract

The case of leprosy research in Congo between 1930 and 1980 offers new insights into medical research and treatment in colonial settings, as well as their afterlives. This study contributes in particular to Myriam Mertens’ concept of drug career cycles (2014) and Helen Tilley’s understanding of Africa as a living laboratory (2011). The source corpus consists of 178 articles published in the central communication channel of Belgian leprosy specialists: the Annals of the Belgian Society for Tropical Medicine. The cyclical pattern of rise and decline described by Mertens is complicated by the specific trajectory of leprosy medication: chaulmoogra injections were never popular among medical practitioners, and sulfone drugs soon exhibited serious side effects. At the same time, medicinal chaulmoogra continued to play an essential role during the antibiotic 1950s, and the much criticized sulfones – first generation antibiotics – remain part of multidrug treatment for leprosy to this day. Contrary to Tilley’s model of a biomedical research space largely confined to Africa, the Belgian leprosy research of the 1930s and 1940s was shaped above all by the dynamic between colony and metropole. Physicians, patients, samples, and pharmaceuticals travelled between Belgium and Congo and vice versa. This intense collaboration between both poles reemerged after Congo’s political independence in 1960.

How to Cite:

Deckx, F., (2024) ““[Dé]coloniser l’organisme”. Biomedisch onderzoek naar lepra in Congo en België tussen 1930 en 1980”, Janeway JS 78, 21–54.

Rights: @ the author(s)