Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2017 - 28

Book Reviews
Traces of the Future: An Archaeology of
Medical Sciences in Africa 2016. W. Geisler,
G. Lachenal, J. Manton and N. Tousignant, eds.
(University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 257 pp.).

An unusual and engrossing
book, this is a collection of items
dealing primarily with 20thcentury medical science projects
at five locations in Africa. The
"items" include everything from
photo essays that begin and end
the book, the insertion of verbatim interviews and timelines, to
brief biographies and anthropological analyses. It very much
takes a post-modern approach to
anthropology, including forays into archaeology in the "excavation" of long-neglected medical research sites, many of
them repositories for specimens, making the book of interest
to SPNHC members.
The preface by Nancy Rose Hunt, the author of several
historical studies of African medicine, sets the stage by
covering many facets of medical research on that continent
during a time span that includes both colonial periods and
independent nationhood. Throughout the book there is an
emphasis on the impossibility of discussing one without the
other. Hunt sees anachrony, the use of flashbacks and flashforwards, as important to revealing a history that is made
up of fragments of documentation, such as that of African
medicine. In other words, the story is too complex and the
information too incomplete to present as an organized, linear
narrative. She also writes of "suturing" together story segments. Both of these techniques are used repeatedly by the
authors.
After Hunt's introduction are pieces written by the editors in
which they introduce their work. These contributions, too,
are very much in a rather opaque style in which ideas are
sometimes difficult to decipher. However, they are worth
reading because they prepare the way for what is to come
in the body of the book and explain why researchers have
taken the approaches they have. In visiting these sites, in
some cases on several occasions over a period of years, they
faced issues of deteriorating records and facilities, imperfect
human memory, political obfuscation, and efforts to skew
what they were shown and told. The approach they take is to
provide a series of short pieces of evidence of many different types, to "suture" together a picture of what went on in
the past and how that influences what is happening at these
sites today in terms of health care and employment of Afri28 * SPNHC Connection

can medical workers.
The first, introductory essay, is the longest and most dense
but makes many interesting points, including observations
on what an archaeological trace entails and how it links past
and future - a constant theme throughout the book. Also
discussed is what can and cannot be unearthed through excavation. In order to deal with the serious gaps in historical
records, the researchers combined ethnography, interviews,
and study of physical remains and landscapes. Archives provide the subject for the second essay; the term here is used
broadly to include many different kinds of "traces" available
at the sites visited and what information this material can
provide. The final essay is on "half-built ruins," structures
that were never really completed before they were left to decay. Some of these are of recent origin. This speaks to one of
the major plagues to befall African biomedical science: lack
of consistent, long-term support for research facilities and
hospitals. This problem is directly related to shifting political tides both at home and abroad.
The five sites studied are in five different African nations
spread across the equatorial region. Each site is introduced
with a timeline that is useful in orienting the reader to its
history and present status. The first region explored is in
Uzuakoli, Nigeria. It began in 1932 as a leprosy center supported by the Methodist Church. Those suffering from the
disease lived there, and research was also carried out. Later,
tuberculosis was studied and treated. The site still serves
patients, but the facilities have seriously deteriorated. The
Uzuakoli contribution is the briefest in the book and focuses
on the site's most famous inhabitant, the late Ikoli Harcourt
Whyte, a composer of church music who suffered from leprosy and lived most of his adult life at the center. Vignettes
like this are at the heart of the book and add to its appeal.
Ayos, Cameroon, is the second stop: a German sleeping
sickness research facility founded in 1912 and ceded to the
French after World War I. Dr. Eugène Jamot who worked
there from the 1920s until his death in 1937, and the lives of
those living in Ayos, are the focus of interest of this study.
Dr. Jamot is revered, as are the nurses he trained. Some of
the nurses' descendants remain in the area and discovered
the fact that an old building was destroyed to build a new
hospital, evidence of the suturing of past and present. These
issues are also present in Amani, Tanzania, the subject of
the longest treatment in the book. Here, an original German
foundation was taken over by the British after WWI and
was devoted to malaria research and treatment. The site is
now largely abandoned, though there are still some underemployed staff being paid by the government. As with the
other locations, this one is described through the eyes of
the people who remember parts of its history or were told

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2017