Curing the colonizers : hydrotherapy, climatology, and French colonial spas

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Bibliographic Information

Curing the colonizers : hydrotherapy, climatology, and French colonial spas

Eric T. Jennings

Duke University Press, c2006

  • cloth : alk. paper
  • pbk. : alk. paper

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [247]-262) and index

HTTP:URL=http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0611/2006010438.html Information=Table of contents only

Contents of Works

  • Acclimatization, climatology, and the possibility of empire
  • Colonial hydrotherapy
  • Highland hydrotherapy in Guadeloupe
  • The spas of Réunion Island: antechambers to the tropics
  • Leisure and power at the spa of Antsirabe, Madagascar
  • Korbous, Tunisia: negating the hammam
  • Vichy: taking the waters back home

Description and Table of Contents

Description

"Beware! Against the poison that is Africa, there is but one antidote: Vichy." So ran a 1924 advertisement for one of France's main spas. Throughout the French empire, spas featuring water cures, often combined with "climatic" cures, thrived during the nineteenth century and the twentieth. Water cures and high-altitude resorts were widely believed to serve vital therapeutic and even prophylactic functions against tropical disease and the tropics themselves. The Ministry of the Colonies published bulletins accrediting a host of spas thought to be effective against tropical ailments ranging from malaria to yellow fever; specialized guidebooks dispensed advice on the best spas for "colonial ills." Administrators were granted regular furloughs to "take the waters" back home in France. In the colonies, spas assuaged homesickness by creating oases of France abroad. Colonizers frequented spas to maintain their strength, preserve their French identity, and cultivate their difference from the colonized.Combining the histories of empire, leisure, tourism, culture, and medicine, Eric T. Jennings sheds new light on the workings of empire by examining the rationale and practice of French colonial hydrotherapy between 1830 and 1962. He traces colonial acclimatization theory and the development of a "science" of hydrotherapy appropriate to colonial spaces, and he chronicles and compares the histories of spas in several French colonies-Guadeloupe, Madagascar, Tunisia, and Reunion-and in France itself. Throughout Curing the Colonizers, Jennings illuminates the relationship between indigenous and French colonial therapeutic knowledge as well as the ultimate failure of the spas to make colonialism physically or morally safe for the French.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 1. Acclimatization, Climatology, and the Possibility of Empire 8 2. Colonial Hydrotherapy 40 3. Highland Hydrotherapy in Guadeloupe 64 4. The Spas and Reunion Island: Antechambers to the Tropics 90 5. Leisure and Power at the Spa of Antsirabe, Madagascar 118 6. Korbous, Tunisia: Negating the Hamman 154 7. Vichy: Taking the Waters Back Home 178 Conclusion 211 Archival Abbreviations 215 Notes 217 Bibliography 247 Index 263

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