This book is the first comprehensive study of French medicine in nineteenth-century Algeria. It argues that the medicalization was a priority for colonial regimes, but this goal was thwarted by ineffectual French medicine, institutional rivalries, and the manner in which medicine became a focus for the resistance of French domination and rule.
'A welcome intervention in an emerging field...This is an engaged and sometimes provocative exploration of the moral and ideological structures of colonial medicine in Algeria. It invites us to examine medical practices and lived experiences so that we might see the tensions and fractures which lay at the heart of the idea of colonial medicine and a medicalized colonial society.' - Revue d'Histoire du XIXe Siecle