Confronting Rabies and Its Treatments in Colonial Madagascar, 1899-1910

Abstract

Summary. Rabies constituted a point of cultural tension and divergence over disease in late nineteenth-century, post-conquest Madagascar. The Pasteur Institute and colonial authorities ascribed an extraordinary importance to rabies, given the means at their disposal, and given the other epidemiological challenges facing them. Local peoples, in turn, met this expertise with some trepidation, and in some cases, outright defiance. This article considers, in turn, colonial health priorities, connections between Malagasy cures and Pasteurian remedies, as well as issues of accommodation, resistance and rumour in a colonial context.